Lisbon Metropolitan Area - Irregularities

Irregularities

Portugal has been through a period of administrative changes since the 1974 revolution. More recently, new standards of territorial administration have been implemented to match European Union criteria.

After some years of indefinitions, municipalities are now encouraged to associate in metropolitan areas (more than 350,000 inhabitants), ComUrbs - urban communities (150,000 inhabitants and 3 municipalities required) or intermunicipal communities (less than 150,000 inhabitants or less than 3 municipalities).

These new regional divisions are colliding with the traditional Portuguese regional structures: Distritos (Districts). Districts were implemented in the 19th century by Mouzinho da Silveira after the Liberal Revolution, to replace clerical dioceses (which held the intermediate authority between the absolute monarchy and the municipalities), and still are the official regional authorities in Portugal, thus leaving the new metropolitan authorities with no authority at all. For instance, the District of Lisbon and the District of Setubal collide and interfere with the Lisbon Metropolitan Area authority. Each District is ruled by a Governador Civil (Civil Governor). These Governors are empowered by the Prime Minister of Portugal and have most of the administrative power over the Municipalities comprised, leaving the Metropolitan Areas with a passive status and communitarian tasks.

To definitely end with these anomalies, a national Referendum was held on November 8, 1998, in order to approve a new regionalization (Referendo à Regionalização), which was rejected by over 60% of the voting population on account of disagreements over the loss of sovereignty of some districts to others (e.g. by the time of the Referendum it was not known where would be the Seat of Government of the new "Estremadura & Ribatejo" region which was a fusion of the District of Leiria with the District of Santarém, being Leiria and Santarém cities of the same size and importance).

Regionalization experiment in Portugal was only successful among insular regions when in 1976, districts of Angra do Heroísmo, Horta and Ponta Delgada were substituted by the Autonomous Region of Açores with seat of government in Ponta Delgada, while district of Funchal was replaced by the Autonomous Region of Madeira with seat of government in Funchal.