GRES Portela

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.

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 of 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.

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Wikipedia