Fifty years after the birth of Azorean Autonomy, the islands have undergone one of the most profound social and institutional transformations in modern European history. Yet despite undeniable advances in education, healthcare, infrastructure, and quality of life, the Region still struggles to develop an economic model that convinces younger generations to remain.

That was one of the central messages delivered Friday during the conference “From Our Island to the Region — 50 Years of Autonomy”, held at the Escola Básica e Secundária Tomás de Borba in Angra do Heroísmo.

Among the keynote speakers was former mayor of Angra do Heroísmo and former regional secretary for Education, Culture, and Environment, Álamo Meneses, who argued that the Azores often underestimate the magnitude of the progress achieved since the democratic revolution of April 25, 1974, and the subsequent establishment of regional autonomy.

“Look at the extraordinary journey we have made,” Meneses told the audience. “Sometimes we are deeply ungrateful toward ourselves and always think there must be something fundamentally wrong with us. But throughout Portugal — and especially here in the Azores — we have experienced an extraordinary transformation.”

“There is no success story in Europe quite like ours,” he continued. “In fifty years, we moved from an educational reality typical of an underdeveloped country to an essentially universal educational system.”

Although acknowledging that many of these advances emerged from Portugal’s return to democracy, Meneses argued that, within the Azorean context, autonomy itself was the principal engine of transformation.

“Most of this happened because of Autonomy,” he insisted.

Yet for Meneses, the central challenge facing the Azores today is no longer institutional consolidation, but economic modernization.

Rejecting what he described as an excessive focus on declining birth rates, he argued that demographic concerns are often misdiagnosed.

“Our problem is not quality of life, which is excellent,” he said. “Our problem is not the way society is organized, which is also excellent. We have a social support network that most places do not have. Our problem is the economy, which does not generate sufficiently well-paid jobs to satisfy the aspirations of younger generations.”

Meneses described the Azorean economy as “too heavily statist,” arguing that excessive dependence on public structures narrows opportunity and pushes younger people outward.

“Young people do not leave because they dislike their homeland,” he said. “They leave because they seek opportunities that our own economy denies them.”

For the former regional secretary, the solution lies in economic growth, greater openness, and reducing state dependency within the regional economy.

Another speaker, former Angra mayor and former regional and national deputy Joaquim Ponte, largely agreed with Meneses while emphasizing the structural constraints imposed by insularity and small scale.

“We must create conditions that make younger people want to stay in their homeland and feel rewarded for making that choice,” Ponte argued.

He described autonomy not as an abstract constitutional concept, but as something that must translate into concrete improvements in daily life.

“People must understand that autonomy serves a purpose,” he said. “It cannot remain something abstract. It only has value if people feel in their everyday lives: ‘What would my life be without Autonomy?’”

For Ponte, the legitimacy of autonomy ultimately depends on whether islanders perceive tangible benefits in their personal and economic realities.

Addressing an audience largely composed of students, historian Francisco Maduro-Dias shifted the discussion toward civic responsibility and political participation.

“Before April 25, ‘they’ were ‘they,’” he reflected. “After April 25, we became the ones who put them there.”

Maduro-Dias urged young people not merely to criticize political leaders, but to participate actively in improving democratic life itself.

“When you elect someone and lack the courage to tell that person they are doing wrong — not simply to attack them, but to build something better — then you have placed the whip in their hand,” he warned.

Responding to a student’s question about whether the Azores remain a good place for young people to live, Maduro-Dias offered a more philosophical perspective.

“A good exercise of Autonomy,” he suggested, “is to stop searching merely for employment and begin searching for a profession and a purpose in life.”

Using even ordinary labor as an example, he argued that dignity and meaning arise not solely from status, but from the capacity to transform work into vocation, curiosity, and creation.

“Is it worth living in Porto? Is it worth living in New York?” he asked. “Every place has constraints, and every place has possibilities.”

The conference ultimately reflected a broader tension shaping contemporary Azorean society after five decades of self-government: the recognition of remarkable social and democratic achievements alongside a growing awareness that autonomy’s next great challenge may not be political, but economic — creating an island future capable of sustaining not only memory and identity, but ambition itself.

Translated and adaptged from a story in Diário Insular-José Lourenço-director