The municipality (Portuguese: município or concelho) is the second-level administrative subdivision of Portugal, as defined by the 1976 Constitution.
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. Six municipalities are composed of only one parish, and Barcelos, with 61 parishes, has the most. Corvo is, by law, the only municipality with no parishes.
Porto Covo is one of the two civil parishes in the municipality of Sines, located along the western Alentejo coast of Portugal, about 170 km (110 mi) south of Lisbon. The population in 2011 was 1,038, in an area of 50.72 km. Known for its beaches and ties to the ocean, the name Porto Covo likely translates as port of the covos, the term covo referring to a fishing net, used for capturing lobsters and crabs.
The Lisbon metropolitan area (Portuguese: Área metropolitana de Lisboa; abbreviated as AML) is a metropolitan area in Portugal centered on Lisbon, the capital and largest city of the country. The metropolitan area, covering 17 cities in 18 municipalities, is the largest urban area in the country and the 11th largest in the European Union, with a population in 2024 of 3,005,119 in an area of 3,015.24 km².
The Lisbon Metropolitan Area has the largest GDP (€98.5 billion) of any metropolitan area in Portugal. The region is home to the largest tech hub in the country and a majority of Portugal's major multinational corporations by revenue are based there.
The Porto Metropolitan Area (Portuguese: Área Metropolitana do Porto; abbreviated as AMP) is a metropolitan area in northern Portugal centered on the City of Porto, Portugal's second largest city. The metropolitan area, covering 17 municipalities, is the second largest urban area in the country and one of the largest in the European Union, with a population in 2024 of 1,818,217 in an area of 2,040.31 km².
The Porto Metropolitan Area is a major economic engine in Portugal, with a very high HDI (Human Development Index) and a GDP above the European average. Porto has been Portugal's largest manufacturing region since the Industrial Revolution and is home to many of the country's largest corporations.
Braga (European Portuguese: [ˈbɾaɣɐ], also [ˈbɾagɐ] ; Proto-Celtic: *Bracara) is a city and a municipality, capital of the northwestern Portuguese district of Braga and of the historical and cultural Minho Province. Braga Municipality had a resident population of 201,583 inhabitants (in 2023), representing the seventh largest municipality in Portugal by population. Its area is 183.40 km. Its agglomerated urban area extends to the Cávado River and is the third most populated urban area in Portugal, behind Lisbon and Porto Metropolitan Areas.
It is host to the oldest Portuguese archdiocese, the Archdiocese of Braga of the Catholic Church and it is the seat of the Primacy of the Spains. During the Roman Empire, then known as Bracara Augusta, the settlement was the capital of the Roman province of Gallaecia and would later become the capital of the Kingdom of the Suebi, one of the first territories to separate from the Roman Empire in the 5th century. Inside the city there is also a castle tower that can be visited. Nowadays, Braga is among the most noted entrepreneurial and technological centers of the country, as well as a major hub for inland Northern Portugal, and it is an important stop on the Portuguese Way path of the Road of St James. The city hosted two games of the UEFA Euro 2004 and was the European Youth Capital in 2012.
Portugal is a unitary state with delegated authority to three levels of local government that cover the entire country:
The Judiciary of Portugal has a separate geographic system. Portugal has a long history of complex, inconsistent and layered administrative geography. As a result, there is no single, unified layer of administrative units that spans the entire Portugal.
Freguesia (Portuguese pronunciation: [fɾɛɣɨˈzi.ɐ]), usually translated as "parish" or "civil parish", is the third-level administrative subdivision of Portugal, as defined by the 1976 Constitution. It is also the designation for local government jurisdictions in the former Portuguese overseas territories of Cape Verde and Macau. In the past, it was also an administrative division of the other Portuguese overseas territories. The civil parishes and communities in England and Wales and parroquia in the Spanish autonomous communities of Galicia and Asturias is similar to a freguesia in Portugal. The average land area of a Portuguese parish is about 29.83 km (11.52 sq mi) and an average population of about 3,400 people. The largest parish by area is Alcácer do Sal (Santa Maria do Castelo e Santiago) e Santa Susana, with a land area of 888.35 km (342.99 sq mi), and the smallest parish by area is São Bartolomeu (Borba), with a land area of 0.208 km (0.080 sq mi). The most populous parish is Algueirão - Mem Martins, with a population of 68,649 people and the least populous is Mosteiro, with a population of just nineteen people.
A freguesia is a subdivision of a município (municipality), which is a cluster of freguesias, like a US county. Most often, a parish takes the name of its seat, which is usually the most important (or the single) human agglomeration within its area, which can be a neighbourhood or city district, a group of hamlets, a village, a town or an entire city. 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). Be it a city district or village, the civil parish is often based on an ecclesiastical parish.