Municipalities of Portugal

In Portugal, municipality (município) or concelho is the most stable subdivision of Portugal since the foundation of the country.

Portugal has an entirely separate system of cities and towns. Cities and towns are located in municipalities but often do not have the same boundaries, even they are continuously built up. There are around twice as many cities and towns as there are municipalities.

As a general rule, each municipality is further subdivided into parishes (freguesias); the municipalities in the north of the country usually have a higher number of parishes. Five municipalities are composed of only one parish, and Barcelos is the municipality with most parishes, with 89. Corvo is, by law, the only municipality with no parishes.

History

The municipality has been the most stable subdivision of Portugal since the foundation of the country in the 12th century. They have their origin in the foral, a legal document, issued by the King of Portugal, which assigned privileges to a town or a region. The present subdivisions have their origins in the 19th century.

The concelhos probably formed after the expulsion of the Visigothic rulers by the Moors during the Umayyad conquest of Hispania. Towns were thus left free to govern themselves, and the population started to organize in councils (concelhos in Portuguese) in order to govern the town and surrounding lands. These were also a reminder of Roman municipalities.

Most municipalities have their origin in the foral, a legal document, issued by the king, which assigned privileges to a town or a region. The present subdivisions have their origins in the 19th century after the administrative reforms conducted by the middle of 19th century by the governments of the constitutional monarchy.

In 1910, the Portuguese First Republic was founded in Portugal. By the end of 19th century, the republicans promised a federal organization for the Portuguese territory and that the country would become a municipal republic. However, when the Portuguese First Republic was formed, they did not adopt what was promised for almost half a century.

Later in the end of the 20th century, the Portuguese Third Republic granted some autonomy to municipalities. Since the creation of a democratic local administration, in 1976, the Portuguese municipalities have been ruled by a system composed by an executive body (the municipal chamber) and a deliberative body (the municipal assembly).

The municipal chamber is the executive body and is composed of the president of the municipality and a number of councillors proportional to the municipality's population. The municipal assembly is composed of the presidents of all the parishes that compose the municipality, as well as by a number of directly-elected deputies, at least equal to the number of parish presidents plus one. Both bodies are elected for four years.

Traditionally, the north and the autonomous regions are politically more conservative, while the south and the region of Lisbon are dominated by the left.

In 1991, two áreas metropolitanas (meaning "metropolitan areas") were created for the two major cities of the country (Lisbon and Porto).

Geography

Portugal is divided into 18 districts (Portuguese: distritos) and 2 autonomous regions (Portuguese: regiões autónomas), Azores and Madeira. The districts and autonomous regions are further sub-divided into 308 municipalities (Portuguese: municípios or concelhos). The municipality is usually much larger than the city or town after which it is named.

The biggest municipalities are those located in rural and inland areas where the dominating property type is the latifundia, such as Beja, Évora or Portalegre in the south, and also in other less populated areas, such as Bragança or Castelo Branco.

The most populous municipalities are those located near the sea, and especially around the metropolitan areas of Lisbon, Porto and Braga, while the less populous municipalities are located in the inland regions of Alentejo and Trás-os-Montes. The municipalities with the lowest population densities are also found in these inland regions, with smaller populations distributed over a greater area.

Demographics

This chart gives enotes the number of inhabitants in the municipality area and the area is in km² (only for populations over 100,000).

See also

• Municipality
• List of municipalities of Portugal
• Subdivisions of Portugal