This principle was established many years ago in our studies and has the following meaning: the center is the country, the national governments, including the national parliaments; and the periphery is the regional governments, which also includes the parliaments; or in other words: the center is the engine of national development and the periphery is the engine of regional development. Another way of putting it: the center is the quantum capacity for development because that is where national sovereignty lies, whose primary responsibility is to guarantee the constitutional rules that all Portuguese people have the right to real equality and that the entire national territory is managed harmoniously; the periphery is the smallness of a model of self-government located in an area of greater difficulties and vicissitudes and always in a constant struggle due to a lack of people and resources.

In other words, the further we are from the country’s decision-making center, the closer we are to being alone and without that nerve center that is national and, therefore, universal.

National and regional governments have always discussed and agreed on hundreds of intentions in cooperative governance, a principle of cooperation that was created by the first constitutional text of 1976 and the first statutory text of the same year, and which remains unchanged to this day.

The issue today is that the central government, Luís Montenegro, recently, and in relation to the delay in the finance law for the autonomous regions, declared to the Azores government that it wants: “Regular summits between the Government of the Republic and the regional governments of the Azores and Madeira in a spirit of two-way cooperation.” However, in the meantime, regarding the payment of wages to workers at Lajes Air Base due to the longest US shutdown in history, Montenegro reportedly said it is up to the Region to resolve this imbroglio.

This situation in the world’s largest democracy (strange as it may seem, but that’s how it is) led several countries, including Germany, to decide to pay these salaries themselves. In the Azores, the Legislative Assembly recommended to the Regional Government, through Resolution AL-RAA No. 22/2025/A of November 6, “to make diplomatic efforts to regularize the salaries of workers of the United States Forces in the Azores, USFORAZORES.” And the Regional Government, through Government Council Resolution No. 149-A/2025/A, of November 5, authorized the Azores Social Security Institute to enter into financing agreements with banking institutions, up to a limit of €1.2 million “corresponding to the advance payment of wages in arrears to workers assigned to Air Base No. 4, in Lajes, Terceira Island, following the temporary suspension of the payment of said wages.”

From all this justifying fuss, the principle that gives this text its title stands out: knowing, in our view, that autonomy is not subsidiary to the State; knowing also that autonomy is constitutional and legal and, therefore, is not merely governmental, personal, or partisan; knowing, therefore, that autonomy is a model of self-government so that islanders can govern themselves with specific projects, but in a context of national sovereignty to ensure that they are within the harmonious development of the entire national territory for the benefit of real equality among all Portuguese; therefore, the principle that the further away we are from the center, the closer we are to the periphery, means that we must know how to develop our best qualities to the benefit of our natural limitations.

While it is true that this news is good because it resolves an issue, it is perhaps the first time that, in the context of political autonomy, we have had to go into debt to pay sums that are the responsibility of the US and the State. This is a bad omen, and we do not know what the consequences of this act will be.

But this brings us to the point we want to emphasize: First, why has the Autonomous Region never developed a legal document of cooperation with the State so that the funds from the Lajes Agreement with the US are earmarked for problems of this type, including other urgent ones, such as certain maritime works and ports? Why has the constitutional and statutory rule that the Region is entitled to international dividends in relation to its autonomous space to guarantee better conditions of governance for the islanders never been and is not included in a specific legal document, or at least in a memorandum of cooperation between the State and the Region? Secondly, why is a Luso-American Foundation necessary to manage funds that belong to the people, who have no access to their value and their final destination? Why do we have the Lajes Base Interpretation Center (CIBA), dedicated to the study of international relations, if the University of the Azores has a department in this area? What is the interest of this interpretation in view of the needs of autonomy and its income from the dividends of international agreements?

Who believes the nonsense that the Government of the Republic did not assume this exceptional and temporary expense when the Lajes Agreement is between Portugal and the US? No one.

The reasons are different. The Azores must fight in cooperation with the State; the contractual relationship of the Lajes Base is between two States.

This seems like a horror movie to us: the Azoreans are being violated, and, with their hands tied, they will continue to know it, but now we will even pay to understand how we are being violated. The modus operandi of this governmental travesty seems to us to be adrift. Taking on debt to pay salaries is a positive act because people come first. What is not positive and is very negative is what this news reminds us of and represents: we live in a very strange political tangle, without explanations or rules of transparency and legality.

Notes: the dates of the legal and regulatory documents are those of the day of their publication: the first, parliamentary, in the Diário da República (Official Gazette) and the second, governmental, in the Jornal Oficial dos Açores (Official Journal of the Azores).

In Diário Insular – José Lourenço, director

Arnaldo Ourique is a specialist on the Portuguese Constitution and the Azorean Autonomy. A researcher in the fields of Politics and Society.

NOVIDADES will feature occasional opinion pieces from leading thinkers and writers in the Azores, offering the diaspora and those interested in the current state of the archipelago insight into diverse perspectives on key issues.