Oliveira de Figueira
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Oliveira de Figueira is a Portuguese fictional character from The Adventures of Tintin series of classic comic books, written and drawn by Hergé. He is a salesman who can practically sell anything to anybody. He is based in the Middle East, mainly around the Arabian Peninsula.
[edit] Travelling Salesman
A native of Portugal, Oliveira de Figueira is a friendly salesman who can sell even the most trivial of items from umbrellas to roller skates to Arab patrons.
He and Tintin first met in Cigars of the Pharaoh in 1932. Tintin and Snowy had been cast adrift in the Red Sea when they were picked up by a dhow. De Figueira was a passenger who quickly talked Tintin into buying a variety of superfluous objects, Tintin taking the misguided impression that he had not been conned into buying anything useless.
In the original edition of Cigars of the Pharaoh, published in black-and-white in the 1930s, de Figueira claims to have left Europe due to the Great Depression and the fact that there was little competition off the coast of Arabia.
Tintin later discovered that the ship was smuggling weapons to warring Arab tribes and informed Rastapopoulos, whom he had recently met and misguidedly believed to be well-intentioned.
In the original edition of Cigars of the Pharaoh, the gang of drug smugglers that Tintin confronts are also engaged in smuggling weapons to warring Arabs (a newspaper article implies that it was a major issue at the time). When they meet on the film set, Rastapopoulos tells Tintin that he has been asked by people in high places to look out for smugglers and asks him to search the ship, which he does when the crew is ashore. In the edition most commonly available today, the weapons are found by chance when Snowy chases the ship's cat into the hold.
There is no direct indication in either edition that de Figueira was involved in the arms smuggling; but at the meeting of the gang's hooded leaders, one of them (presumably the Arab colonel) claims to have disposed of the captain of the sailing ship and "his Portuguese second-in-command", though he also claims that Tintin is dead, unaware that he is attending the meeting in disguise. The fates of the captain and the Portuguese are not mentioned in the later colourised edition most commonly available today.
[edit] Shopkeeper
Oliveira de Figueira eventually set up shop in Wadesdah, capital of the Kingdom of Khemed. Tintin came across him many years after their initial encounter, in Land of Black Gold and found him to be a shopkeeper and retailer/supplier to most of the local dignitaries.
On the promise that Tintin would arrange for him to become the supplier to Emir Ben Kalish Ezab, de Figueira agreed to help Tintin infiltrate the residence of Dr. J.W. Müller, where Tintin rescued the Emir's kidnapped son and exposed his operation to disrupt oil supplies. De Figueira's gift of gab proved invaluable as he was able to keep Müller's men occupied with an unending and extremely moving story about the origins of his "nephew", the disguised Tintin, who searched the residence in the meantime.
Oliveira de Figueira made a third appearance in The Red Sea Sharks, set in the mid-1950s. Khemed was now under the rule of Sheikh Bab El Ehr, an enemy of both the Emir and Tintin. De Figueira sheltered Tintin and Captain Haddock from the Sheikh's soldiers, and informed them of the political events that led to the Emir's deposal. He also arranged for them to contact the Emir and escape the city undetected, as they had a price on their heads. This escape involved them dressing up as veiled women and carrying water jugs on their heads, though this involved a whole day's worth of practice, thus destroying Oliveira's entire stock.
He was one of the people to send Haddock greetings in The Castafiore Emerald when the press wrongly reported his engagement to Bianca Castafiore.
[edit] Other Versions
In the first Portuguese edition of Cigars of the Pharaoh, published by O Papagaio, he was from Spain, fleeing the Spanish Civil War.
He was incorrectly named Oliveira da Figueira in his initial appearances. For The Red Sea Sharks Hergé changed his name to the correct Portuguese spelling of Oliveira de Figueira.
