A small fishing village that is on the edges of the estuary of a river and that, during many years, lived from traditional fishing until the force of lobster fishing modified the life of its population. It is as soon that if the history of the beach of Barra de Maxaranguape is summarized, today the site of the city of Maxaranguape is experimenting with a new phase of growth, during the last thirty years

It was a beach as its other neighbors, part of the city of Touros, and that because of its localization started to be preferred for anchoring lobster boats of fishes of the lobster, during the Seventies. The activity was developed with such intensity that today, practically, there does not exist any boats dedicated to traditional fishing. Who guarantees that the fishermen have not already lost the practice there to catch fish.

When they are in the process of fishing, the lobster men activate the city. The profit from days of sea and sun circulate thru the city. The economy boils and the bohemian life is more intense. But there is a period when the sea is forbidden and the time of plenty of money in their pockets is finished. It is when the government declares the time of the "closed or fenced season", that is, when the lobsters cannot be fished, because they are in reproduction.

During these months, the professional fishermen receive a type of compensation from thegovernment, so that they stay home and do not fish lobster. The money guarantees basic sustenance, and nothing more than what this. It is at the same time that the veranistas (summer people) and the tourists arrive. The city starts to live catering to them. And this dependence is increasing, considerably, from year to year, the same ratio that fishing is decreasing.

Maxaranguape now has eyes for lobster fishing and for tourism. The city integrates with a program called Pólo Costa das Dunas, that is a program that receives resources from the World Bank, of governments both federal and state and have the coordination of the Banco do Nordeste.

The structure of the city is preparing to be a tourist destination. The waterfront is urbanized, through a project elaborated students of architecture and technicians from the Federal University. Currently there is a deficiency in terms of hotels and restaurants in the city and all tourist potential still is concentrated to the beach of Maracajaú, celebrated because of the natural swimming pools of its parrachos. But it has great international projects being implanted that are modifying the structure of the city and between them they offer great prospectives for the near future.

An important detail of the coast of Maxaranguape is the Cabo São Roque. The eastern most point of American continent is the Ponta do Seixas, in the neighbor state of Paraíba, but the part of America that is closer, in a straight-line, from Africa or Europe is the Cabo de São Roque, a formation 'tabatinga' and dune covered, that advances protected by the falésias (cliffs) of the coast, between the river Maxaranguape in the center of the city and the beach of Caraúbas