Talk:Subdivisions of Portugal

More and more subdivisions...

One thing that should be made clear (it is briefly mentioned): there are purely administrative regions, and there are political regions, in the sense that they are governed by an elected body of representatives. Therefore, there is a central government, and local governments at both the municipality and the civil parish levels; additionally, the two archipelagos have their own regional government (as well as having the local levels of government, too).

All other 'regions' are purely administrative in scope and do not have an elected body of government; this is important to explain, as a contrast to other countries. For instance, the Metropolitan Area of Lisbon, although it has half the population of London, has no political power; it is only very loosely coordinated through an association of all municipalities inside the geographic area (which is purely arbitrary and doesn't correspond to any historic subdivision).

Districts used to have a so-called 'civil government' which was not elected, but appointed by the central government; its role diminished in importance progressively since 1974, and was finally abolished. The district remains as an administrative region, though, although often with little impact except for statistical purposes — good examples being the two Metropolitan Areas (Lisbon and Porto), which have municipalities administratively bound to different districts.

Missing from the article are the comarcas, which are a judiciary division. Since the judiciary is one of the independent branches of government, it has its own divisions; they roughly correspond to districts, but not always so — depending mostly on the population density, cities within districts may have their own comarca; and there are a few scattered historic examples of towns having their own court, although the current population size does not justify its existence.

And, of course, then there are the subdivisions of the Portuguese Catholic Church, in Dioceses, Vicariates, and Parishes. Originally, of course, what are now the civil parishes were once the religious parishes as well. They did correspond vaguely to the population size, but as the population migrated towards the cities, new civil parishes were created, and after several administrative changes, both systems have diverged quite a lot. Vicariates exist in Dioceses with very high population density, comprising several parishes that are at a relatively short distance from each other. Dioceses are possibly the oldest form of subdivision in Europe, since many can trace their origins to the last century of the Roman Empire (and sometimes before even that, such as the Diocese of Braga in Portugal, allegedly founded during the first half of the first century AD). In Portugal, they correspond very roughly to the districts (there are 20 dioceses and 20 districts, after all, and most district capitals have their own diocese) but the parishes are not bound to the same civil administrative areas; until recently, there were parishes in Spain that were administered by Portuguese Dioceses, and vice-versa, such as was the case with Olivença. Even taking into account the slow pace of change of the Catholic Church, dioceses are not static (neither its subdivisions!), and new dioceses are created, while old ones are abandoned or merged together. For instance, until the Lisbon Earthquake in 1755, the city of Lisbon had two dioceses (Lisbon West and Lisbon East), each with its Bishop, but only one of them (I forget which) was the Patriarch of Lisbon. This organisation made some sense due to the immense density of parishes inside the city, which was one of the largest in Europe up the 18th century at least (today, the city is subdivided into five vicariates, each with 4-5 parishes).

Last but not least, there are also the military subdivisions, each with a military government, with authority over the military forces deployed across the territory. I'm not sure how many military regions still exist; in the 1990s, there were five in mainland Portugal, if I remember correctly: Lisbon and Porto had their own military government, there was a North region and a South region, and, finally, the special region of Tancos, roughly in the geographic centre of the country, and which concentrates quite a lot of the armed forces which are permanently stationed there. Everything north of Tancos belonged to the North region (except Porto) and everything southwards (except Lisbon) was in the South region; and the autonomous regions of Madeira and Açores had one military region each as well.

So... lots of more subdivisions!

— Gwyneth Llewelyn (talk) 03:03, 26 July 2023 (UTC)