The bioco of Olhão: the black cloak the law banned and women refused to give up

For generations, the women of Olhão went out wrapped in a black cloak that covered them from head to toe. It was called the bioco. It was banned by law, dismissed as a mask and defended as a kind of freedom. And in Olhão it lasted far longer than anywhere else in the Algarve.

What was the bioco?

A wide black cloak reaching down to the feet, thrown over the head so that it formed a deep hood in front of the face. Passers-by saw a dark figure and little else: the woman inside could see without being seen.

The Portuguese writer Raul Brandão described it in Os Pescadores (The Fishermen, 1923), in his chapter on Olhão: "The cloak, very full and thrown elegantly over the head, made them impenetrable. It is a mysterious and alluring costume." Alongside the bioco, Olhão's women wore shoes Brandão calls cloques, which went "clock-clock" on the paving stones.

The 1892 ban

On 6 September 1892, Faro's civil governor, Júlio Lourenço Pinto, brought in new police regulations for the district. Article 32 read: "The wearing of so-called rebuços or biocos is forbidden in the streets and churches of every town in this district." The next article also caught men who dressed up as women.

To the governor, the bioco was a "mask" of "sepulchral black" that let people walk the streets without being recognised. It wasn't the first attempt either: laws against face-covering cloaks had been passed back in 1649, and nobody paid them much attention.

The 1892 ban didn't make the bioco vanish overnight. Across the Algarve, many women swapped it for a black shawl round the shoulders and a headscarf tied under the chin. Not in Olhão.

"They look like ghosts"

Raul Brandão passed through Olhão and left the best-known picture of the bioco:

"Not long ago they all wore cloques and the bioco. [...] When they go out, in black, wrapped in their biocos, they look like ghosts. They pass by, they look at us, and we cannot see them."

Note the "not long ago": by the 1920s, he already thought it was dying out. The photographs tell a different story.

Oppression or freedom?

It's tempting today to compare the bioco to a burka. At the time, not everyone saw it as a way of hiding women away. The writer and feminist Maria Veleda defended it in a 1901 article in the name of women's freedom: under a bioco, a woman could go out unrecognised, wherever she liked, and answer to no one.

As for where it came from, the idea that it dated back to Moorish times is an old one: the governor himself spoke of "traces of Muslim rule", and Brandão of "remnants of Moorish life". But these were the views of the day, with no evidence behind them. Emanuel Sancho, former director of the Costume Museum in São Brás de Alportel, has called the link to the Islamic veil "a myth".

In Olhão, it held on for decades

In 1920, the magazine Ilustração Portugueza still recorded "the cloak and the bioco" in Olhão. And Olhão's Municipal Archive holds, in the collection of photographer Domingos Santos, several photos from 1947 and 1948 of women in biocos, many of them at the door of the main church, the Igreja Matriz. More than 50 years after the ban, the bioco was still out in the streets of Olhão.

Nobody knows exactly when the last one was worn. What we do know is that while the rest of the Algarve let it go, Olhão kept it until the middle of the 20th century.

Where to see it today

• Olhão Municipal Archive, online: the 1947 and 1948 photos are in the Archive's catalogue and can be viewed on its website (links in the sources at the end of this guide).
• At the door of the Igreja Matriz: where the photos were taken. The church is on Praça da Restauração in the old town, and it's a stop on our one-day walking itinerary.
• Costume Museum, São Brás de Alportel: according to 2015 press reports, the museum holds a replica of the bioco. Check with the museum before you go, as we couldn't find up-to-date official information on what's on display.

You can also watch our video about the bioco on Instagram, in our Stories of Olhão series: @olhaolovers.