AF Ponta Delgada

The Ponta Delgada Football Association (Portuguese: Associação de Futebol de Ponta Delgada) is the governing body for association football and futsal competitions in the Portuguese former-district of Ponta Delgada. This organization regulates football in the Azorean islands of São Miguel and Santa Maria.

The foundation of the Football Association began with the growth of many social and cultural institutes and organizations, unrelated to organized sport. One was the Ateneu Comercial de Ponta Delgada (Commercial Athenaeum of Ponta Delgada) at the edge of celebrating its first century of existence, and that inherited a voluminous and well-elaborated place in the society and culture. The Associação de Socorros Mútuos União e Trabalho which began in the last century, and helped to motivate public training, that formed schools, including one in Lagoa. The Sociedade Promotora de Instrução e Recreio (Society for the Promotion of Training and Recreation), who had a century of existence, but which eventually ceased, providing an important role in the social context, during the many festivals and cultural activities.

Within the Ateneu Comercial functioned the Associação Auxiliadora do Ensino Industrial e Comercial (Auxiliary Association of Commercial and Industrial Training) taught by professors António Maria Lopes (Portuguese) and Urbano de Arruda Carreiro (Accounting). Further, there was the commercial course of the Associação dos Empregados do Comércio e Indústria do Distrito Oriental dos Açores (Association of Commercial and Industrial Employees of the Eastern District of the Azores), which ended in the middle of the 20th century, when the Escola Industrial e Comercial de Ponta Delgada (Industrial and Commercial School of Ponta Delgada) began to operate, under the direction of Governaor Rafael Sérgio Vieira, at the Solar Jácome Correia (later site of the Roberto Ivens Secondary School).

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Liga Micaelense de Instrução Pública (Micalense League of Public Instruction) founded by Aires Jácome Correia, then Marquess of Jácome Correia, operated unnoticed, if not for the acts of the Ponta Delgada Cultural Institute. One of the two initiatives, that were generously financed, was the Escola Industrial de Rendas de Bilro (Industrial School of Rendas de Bilro), which survived, with the activities of female youth in the 1930s (along a building of Rua do Brum). Also around this time, at the end of 1911 and beginning of 192, was the celebrated Sociedade Promotora da Agricultura Micaelense (Promotional Society of Micalense Agriculture), with many meetings at the building along Alameda Duque de Bragança, seat of the Meteorlogival Observatory Afonso de Chaves for more than 50 years. Dating from 1843, this organization had its agricultural garden, that later were sold off to João Augusto Carreiro de Mendonça, along Rua Diário dos Açores, later the Banco Comercial dos Açores offices.