It is the capital of the microregion of Santiago. The populace is 50,635 2015 est. in a territory of 2413.13 km².Its height is 409 m. It is found 450 km west of the state capital of Porto Alegre and upper east of Alegrete. The moniker of the city is "The Land of the Poets". Santiago Airport serves the city.In around 1860, settlement of the locale started. The state was first established by 350 Germans, 14 Belgians, 5 French people and 4 Swiss people. Colonel José Maria Pereira de Campos made and composed the province of Ijuí and conveyed Europeans to the territory. The Italians touched base in the 1880s, as the century go, with the foundation of the settlement of Jaguari, the territories of Sanga da Areia and Ernesto Alves. In 1834, Arsene Isabelle, a French representative, in routes between the zone, alludes to a region of Boqueirão de Santiago, its reality of three to four farms.