Freguesia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Freguesia (lit. civil parish, pron. IPA: [fɾɛgɨ'ziɐ]) is a secondary local administrative unit in Portugal and in the former Portuguese Empire, and a former secondary local administrative unit in Macau. It is a subdivision of a município (aka concelho, lit. municipality). Each parish takes the name of its seat, which is always the most important (or the single) village or town within its area; in cases where the seat is itself divided into more than one parish, each takes the name of a landmark within its area or of the patron saint from the usually coterminous Catholic parish. One should note that a religious parish is Portuguese is known as paróquia.

Each parish is administered by a Junta de Freguesia (pron. IPA ['ʒũtɐ dɨ fɾɛgɨ'ziɐ]), drawn from a publicly-elected four year-term Assembleia de Freguesia.

Municipalities in Portugal are usually divided into many parishes, but five municipalities have only one parish: Alpiarça, Barrancos, Porto Santo, São Brás de Alportel and São João da Madeira. The municipality and the parish, in these five cases, are coterminous and share the same name. Corvo is a special case of a municipality without parishes. Entroncamento had only one parish until January 1, 2004, but it was then divided into two. Barcelos is the municipality with the most parishes: 89.

According to the Instituto Nacional de Estatística, there are 4,261 parishes in Portugal.

See also:

• List of Freguesias of Portugal
• Municipalities of Macau