Marcos Ferreira 5ª Geração Teresa das Azeitonas

Stalls: 77-78-92-93

Teresa was only 5 days old when she discovered Mercado do Bolhão. Teresa's mother worked here with her mother — Teresa's grandmother — in the olive and lupine business, inherited from her great-grandmother. Teresa's great-grandmother had come to work at the market when it was just an open-air market in a square, at the time.

When Teresa was 8 years old, her mother opened her own stall. Thus, her grandmother kept selling olives on the top floor of the market, while her mother and Teresa had their stall on the ground floor. Teresa remembers that at such young age she was already working at the counter, and, a few years later, at the age of 12, she was left alone taking care of her grandmother's stall all by herself, when her grandmother went to France on holidays.

Teresa's grandmother spent 78 years working at Mercado do Bolhão. She was 86 years old when she passed away, just fifteen days after she had been at the market for the last time. 

Teresa tells us that it was at this market that she spent her whole life; that she learned everything she knows; and it is even here where she met her husband, José, to whom she has been married for 43 years. José worked in a bakery on Rua Santa Catarina and would often come to Bolhão to deliver bread to the bakesters who worked here. Teresa was just 14 when she met him, and they are still together.

As for Teresa's stall, which presently also sells dried fruit, in addition to lupines and olives, it will be inherited by the family's 5th generation, Marcos Ferreira, her only son.