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).
Read more about this topic: Municipalities Of Portugal
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of literature—take the net result of Tiraboshi, Warton, or Schlegel,—is a sum of a very few ideas, and of very few original tales,—all the rest being variation of these.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the material and the moral nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“This is the greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation, because as a result of what happened in this week, the world is bigger, infinitely.”
—Richard M. Nixon (1913–1995)