page_title: Portela (samba school)
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Portela (samba school) / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Portela, 2019. Photo: Guy Veloso
context_page_description: The Grêmio Recreativo Escola de Samba Portela is one of the most traditional samba schools of the city of Rio de Janeiro, and champion of the 2017 Carnival parade. It is the greatest winner of the top-tier Rio parade with 22 titles in total.
context_section_description: In the beginning of the 20th century, in Oswaldo Cruz, there was the carnivalesque group of dancers called Quem Fala de Nós Come Mosca (Who tells things about us eats flies), of Dona Ester. A dissidence of this carnivalesque group of dancers (called "bloco" in Brazilian Portuguese) surged in 1922 and another bloco, the Baianinhas de Osvaldo Cruz (Baianas of Oswaldo Cruz) was created. And on the other hand, a dissidence of Baianas created the Conjunto Carnavalesco Osvaldo Cruz (Ensemble of Carnaval Oswaldo Cruz) on April 11, 1926. The founders were from Osvaldo Cruz, but Grêmio Recreativo Escola de Samba Portela was founded, on 412 Portela Road, in the neighborhood of Madureira.
  After the victory of the concourse between sambistas in 1929, performed in the house of Zé Espinguela, the bloco changes its name to Quem nos Faz é o Capricho (Who makes us is caprice). In 1931, when the samba schools are still being determined, the group changes its name again, this time to Vai como Pode (Go as you can), a name that without doubt is humbler than the previous one. In 1935, the school was the champion of the first official parade of the city of Rio de Janeiro.
  The denomination "Vai como Pode" was used until 1935, when, after the Carnaval, on March 1 of 1935, on the occasion of the renovation of the licence of the school in the police, the officer Dulcídio Gonçalves refused to renovate the license with this name, considering it as vulgar and not dignified for a samba school. The same officer suggested a new name, Grêmio Recreativo e Escola de Samba Portela, in homage to the street in Madureira where sambistas had gathered. The change pleased the community; many had already been referring to the school as the "folks from Portela". In 1939, the samba of Paulo da Portela, "Teste ao Samba" (Test for the samba), is considered the first samba-enredo. In the same year, Portela renovated things by bringing to the parade costumes totally framed to the enredo.
  In 1941, after a misunderstanding with the master of ceremonies Manuel Bambã, Paulo da Portela the group stopped parading. This occurred because Paulo during a long period of time argued that all of the components would parade correctly costumed, dressed with the colors of the school, however on the day of the parade he came back from a presentation in São Paulo, along with Heitor dos Prazeres and Cartola, and all of them were dressed in black and white. With no time to change costumes, they agreed to parade without changing clothes, together, in the samba schools of each one. However, in the turn to parade for Portela, Bambã did not authorize that the other two (Heitor and Cartola), for not being from the school and not being correctly dressed, would parade. Actually Bambã already had misunderstandings with Heitor, that once belonged Portela, and that he already stayed. However, in that epoch many portelenses favoured Bambã, because they judged lack of coherency on the part of Paulo da Portela, that argued so much that they should parade with the colours of the school and then parade with black and white. After this, Paulo da Portela never paraded for his school.
  In total, Portela conquered 22 titles of Carnaval, being the school with the largest number of titles to date
  Some of the great Brazilian samba composers, such as Monarco, Zé Keti, Casquinha, Manacéa, Candeia, Aldir Blanc, Paulinho da Viola, João Nogueira, Noca da Portela, Colombo, among others, beyond being one of the most traditional samba schools of Brazil, worked for the school. Portela has an important participation in the cultural life of the city during the entire year, through the presentations of her Velha Guarda (Brazilian term for the oldest-ones (among a group of people)) and of her prizewinning bateria, among other things. The school's symbol is an eagle that in all the parades is seen in the abre alas (Brazilian term for car that opens the samba parade in Carnival) of the school. The Velha Guarda also released an album called Tudo Azul in 1999.
  Her bateria – called Tabajara do Samba (Tabajara of Samba) – is chara
caption: Portela, 2019. Photo: Guy Veloso
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