| Freguesia | |
|---|---|
| Category | 3rd-level administrative division |
| Location | Portugal |
| Found in | Municipality |
| Created | Middle Ages (Ecclesiastic Parish) 1835 (Civil Paróquia) 1916 (Freguesia) |
| Number | 4,259 |
| Government | Junta de Freguesia Assembleia de Freguesia |
Freguesia (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˌfɾɛɣɨˈzi.ɐ]) is the Portuguese term for a secondary local administrative unit in Portugal and some of its former colonies, and a former secondary local administrative unit in Macau, roughly equivalent to an administrative parish. A freguesia is a subdivision of a concelho, the Portuguese synonym term for municipality. Most often, a parish takes the name of its seat, which is usually the most important (or the single) human agglomeration within its area; in cases where the seat is itself divided into more than one parish, each one takes the name of a landmark within its area or of the patron saint from the usually coterminous Catholic parish (paróquia in Portuguese).
Each parish is administered by a junta de freguesia ([ˈʒũtɐ ðɨ ˌfɾɛɣɨˈzi.ɐ]), drawn from a publicly elected four-year-term assembleia de freguesia.
Municipalities in Portugal are usually divided into multiple freguesias, but six municipalities are not: Alpiarça, Barrancos, Porto Santo, São Brás de Alportel and São João da Madeira all consist of a single civil parish, and Corvo is a special case of a municipality without civil parishes. Barcelos is the municipality with the most civil parishes: 89.
According to the Portuguese Statistics Bureau, there were 4,259 freguesias in Portugal as of 2011[update][1].
In Spain a parroquia is similar to a freguesia.