History of Madeira in Gibraltar and shipped to Madeira, where it has been erected next to a small chapel at Santa Caterina park in Funchal. The monument is a gift and symbol of ever-lasting thanks given by the people of Gibraltar to the island of Madeira and its inhabitants. The city of Funchal and Gibraltar were twinned on 13 May 2009 by their then mayors, the mayor of Funchal Miguel Albuquerque and the mayor of Gibraltar, who had been an evacuee from Gibraltar to Madeira Solomon Levy, respectively. The mayor of Gibraltar then had a meeting with the then President of Madeira Alberto
Madeira firecrest of the Canaries, Azores, and Madeira have a volcanic origin and they have never been part of a continent. The formation of Madeira started in the Miocene and the island was substantially complete 700,000 years ago. In the distant past the major islands of these archipelagos were all colonised by "Regulus" species, which evolved on their respective islands isolated from mainland populations. The firecrest descendant evolved in Madeira and goldcrest subspecies evolved on the other islands. Cytochrome "b" gene divergence between common firecrests from Europe and Madeira firecrests suggests an evolutionary separation roughly 4 million years ago, considerably earlier than