Founded in May as Fraternidade Operária de Instrução e Recreio.
A Public Interest Institution founded in 1915, serving culture, social development and citizenship in Santarém.
Founded in May as Fraternidade Operária de Instrução e Recreio.
Debut of the
Society’s theatre group.
Renamed
Grémio Recreativo Operário.
Adopts its current name, Sociedade Recreativa Operária
The ballroom dance school is founded and gives its first public performance that same year.
Carrying forward the theatre, music and dance that are part of who we are.
Serving the community and welcoming into our halls all who wish to learn and come together.
Integrity, honour, dignity and education as our enduring principles.
Since its foundation, SRO has devoted its work to cultural activities and to social and civic development. We honour past generations and welcome future ones, carrying forward the traditions of folk culture and keeping alive the spirit of fellowship among members and friends.
The Sociedade Recreativa Operária de Santarém was founded on 31 May 1915, and since December of that same year it has been based at the Palácio Landal.
As early as 1915, it already had a small library. In 1916, it set up a theatre group. In 1917, it launched a tuna, a traditional string ensemble. And in 1919, it built a monument honouring the founder of a pioneering local retirement pension scheme for workers: Francisco Nunes da Silva, known as “Padre Chiquito”. That monument still stands today in the square in front of its headquarters.
At the time, S.R.O. revived a tradition of grassroots community associations in the city of Santarém, one that went back to the Club Artístico, which existed from 1877 to 1902, and to the Associação Operária Padre Francisco Nunes da Silva, active between 1902 and 1904.
Its original name was Associação Fraternidade Operária, and it had a dual nature. As well as being a cultural and recreational society, it was also a kind of multi-trade union representing the working class of Santarém.
In fact, one of its first priorities, back in 1916, was to organise the local celebrations of International Workers’ Day, 1 May, thereby reviving a Santarém tradition that dated back to the 19th century.
As a trade union, the society took action on matters such as working hours, workplace accidents and unemployment. It also hosted countless workers' meetings, including a congress of rural workers' unions.
However, in that original form, the authorities of the time, under the First Republic, refused to grant it legal status. They even threatened to shut it down because it served as a meeting place for workers on strike.
It was not until 1923 that the society managed to obtain legal status, with new statutes and a new name: Grémio Recreativo Operário. That lasted until 1939, when Salazar’s dictatorship banned it from using that name and forced it to adopt the one it still holds today. The same happened at the time to the Grémio Literário Guilherme de Azevedo, one of the two associations that gave rise to today’s Círculo Cultural Scalabitano. This was because the dictatorship reserved the term ‘grémio’ (guild) for employers’ associations.
In 1945, S.R.O. became actively involved in the Grupo de Coordenação Cultural, a movement that promoted a range of activities across the city and the region, until the dictatorship dissolved it in 1947.
The dictatorship also banned the 1 May celebrations, and in this repressive climate the society found itself confined to recreational activities. Even so, it endured as a place for people to come together, with dances and live music and a variety of games, from cards to billiards and table tennis, most notably chinquilho, a traditional Portuguese disc-throwing game.
SRO was born in the aftermath of the revolution that, in May 1915, overthrew the dictatorship of General Pimenta de Castro. Most of its founders had supported the opposition to that regime, and several SRO members later stood out in the anti-fascist resistance. Some became political prisoners, just as others had been earlier, under the dictatorship of Colonel Sidónio Pais in 1918.
After the Carnation Revolution of 25 April 1974, S.R.O. went through a major renewal through ballroom dancing. It became a landmark of its time as a centre for teaching and promoting the discipline across the city and the region, winning national trophies and competing abroad.
And it was ballroom dancing that brought the first women onto its board, in 1990.
