If the first fifty years of Azorean autonomy were about affirmation—of identity, of political legitimacy, of institutional architecture—the next fifty may well be about calibration. Not of principle, but of scale. Not of sovereignty, but of proximity. And increasingly, that calibration is being framed through a concept that has long lingered at the margins of the autonomic debate: municipalism.

Across the archipelago, commemorations of autonomy have become spaces not only of remembrance, but of reckoning. The central tension remains unchanged: ambition constrained by revenue. Projects multiply; resources do not. The structural imbalance—long diagnosed and often managed, but rarely resolved—continues to shape the limits of political imagination. As and recent fiscal data suggest, regional revenues struggle to sustain the full weight of public expenditure, even as demands for development remain constant.

Yet the reduction of autonomy to a simple equation of revenue and expense risks missing its deeper logic. The Azores are not a self-contained economy in the classical sense; they are part of a national and European system precisely because their geography—dispersed, ultraperipheral, and strategically located—renders self-sufficiency both impractical and unnecessary. To argue that the region must live strictly within the limits of its own fiscal generation is, implicitly, to question the very rationale of belonging.

Autonomy, in this sense, is not isolation. It is negotiated interdependence.

The argument advanced here is both pragmatic and political: if the Azores contribute to the projection of Portugal—and, by extension, Europe—into the Atlantic, through their vast exclusive economic zone and geostrategic positioning, then such contribution must be reciprocated. Not symbolically, but materially. Transfers from the national budget and European funds are not concessions; they are instruments of equilibrium, designed to offset structural disadvantages and enable comparable standards of development.

Within this framework, the role of regional institutions remains central. The Legislative Assembly and the Regional Government are tasked not merely with managing funds, but with translating them into balanced growth across nine islands—each with its own scale, demography, and economic profile. This has always been the core promise of autonomy: not uniformity, but harmony.

And yet, harmony is difficult to engineer from the center alone.

It is here that municipalism re-enters the conversation—not as an alternative to autonomy, but as its deepening. The internal diversity of the Azores, often dismissed under the reductive label of bairrismo, is in fact an expression of lived reality. Each island—and within them, each municipality—experiences development differently. To ignore these differences is not to overcome division, but to obscure it.

The call for a stronger municipal role, therefore, reflects a broader shift in governance philosophy: from central coordination to distributed execution. Municipalities are not newcomers to this process. As reminds us, the architecture of autonomy already rests on layered governance—regional, national, and constitutional. What municipalism proposes is not disruption, but rebalancing: a closer alignment between decision-making and local knowledge.

In practical terms, this could take multiple forms. Greater delegation of competencies. Enhanced fiscal instruments at the municipal level. Stronger inter-municipal cooperation, particularly within islands where scale remains a limiting factor. The idea—sometimes whispered, sometimes openly debated—of “island governance” structures finds in municipalism a more grounded expression: not new bureaucracies, but strengthened local actors working in concert with regional authority.

Such a model carries both promise and risk. On one hand, it could accelerate implementation, improve responsiveness, and foster civic engagement. On the other, it demands coordination, clarity of roles, and a political culture capable of transcending fragmentation. Without these, decentralization risks becoming duplication—the very inefficiency autonomy has struggled to overcome.

But the deeper implication is philosophical. Municipalism challenges the notion that autonomy is complete. It suggests instead that autonomy is a layered process—one that must continually adjust its scale to remain effective. If the first phase brought power from Lisbon to the islands, the next may bring it closer still: from the regional center to the communities themselves.

The question, then, is not whether municipalism should be part of the future of autonomy. It already is. The question is whether it will be structured, intentional, and aligned with the broader goal that has guided the Azorean project from the beginning: the harmonious development of all islands.

Autonomy began as a response to distance. Municipalism may become its answer to proximity.

Editorial for May 1, 2026, from Diário Insular, José Lourenço, director, and Armando Mendes, PhD, editor-in-chief