On the symbolic stage of the Teatro Micaelense, during the official celebrations of the Day of the Autonomous Region of the Azores, José Manuel Bolieiro sought to frame the archipelago not merely as a peripheral territory of Europe, but as a political and strategic center within an increasingly unstable world.
“At a moment marked internationally by instability, conflicts, and uncertainty,” Bolieiro declared, “the Azores must affirm themselves as a political and social space of stability, dialogue, and institutional responsibility.”
The statement carried significance beyond ceremonial rhetoric. It arrived at a politically delicate moment for the governing coalition of PSD/CDS-PP/PPM, following recent tensions triggered by Bolieiro’s own declaration that the PSD intends to contest the 2028 regional elections independently. Those remarks had already generated visible discomfort among coalition partners, particularly within the CDS on Terceira Island, where concerns about governmental instability had publicly emerged.
Yet during the Day of the Region commemorations, Bolieiro deliberately elevated the discourse above immediate partisan turbulence, placing the Azores within a much broader geopolitical narrative.
For the regional president, the archipelago’s strategic importance is no longer simply historical memory inherited from the Cold War or from the era of Atlantic navigation. Instead, he argued, the islands are becoming increasingly central to the future architecture of the Atlantic world itself.
“The importance of the Azores manifests itself in the way the archipelago adds dimension to Portugal and to the European Union — in the sea, in space, in communications, and in science,” he stated.
That formulation reflects an evolving political vision increasingly visible within contemporary Azorean leadership: the attempt to reposition the islands not as distant outer territories dependent on continental decision-making, but as an Atlantic platform with growing relevance in defense, telecommunications, scientific research, maritime security, climate observation, aerospace development, and transatlantic connectivity.
Bolieiro’s remarks also echoed broader conversations now unfolding across Europe and NATO concerning the strategic value of Atlantic territories amid renewed geopolitical tensions, military instability, energy transitions, cyber infrastructure concerns, and the reconfiguration of global maritime routes.
For the Azorean government, geography itself is becoming political capital.
“The same geography that once isolated us,” as various regional leaders have increasingly suggested in recent years, “is now what gives the Azores strategic value.”
But Bolieiro’s speech did not remain solely in the realm of geopolitics. The president also used the fiftieth anniversary of political autonomy to present autonomy itself as one of the great success stories of modern Portuguese democracy.
“Autonomy was born from the consciousness of a real identity,” he affirmed.
According to Bolieiro, the creation of autonomous self-government after the democratic revolution of 1974 allowed the Azores to overcome generations of isolation, neglect, and underdevelopment.
“It was with political power of our own,” he argued, “that the Azores transformed themselves over these fifty years.”
The speech emphasized the dramatic social and economic transformation experienced across the nine islands since autonomy became constitutionally established in 1976. Roads, ports, airports, schools, hospitals, public services, and democratic institutions fundamentally reshaped daily life in the archipelago.
“The quality of life lived today in the Azores has nothing to do with what existed fifty years ago,” Bolieiro insisted.
One of the most symbolically important moments of the speech came when the president contrasted the old Azorean reality of mass emigration with the present demographic situation.
“We have gone from being a land of emigrants to a region that receives immigrants,” he declared.
The phrase carried profound historical resonance in a society shaped for centuries by outward migration toward United States, Canada, Brazil, and elsewhere.
Bolieiro also linked the evolution of autonomy to Portugal’s entry into the European Union forty years ago, arguing that European integration provided the financial and structural support necessary to modernize the territory and improve educational and social conditions.
Yet the president simultaneously defended the need for Europe to recognize the Azores not only through the lens of ultraperipherality — the traditional classification emphasizing geographic distance and structural disadvantage — but also through what he called the archipelago’s “Atlantic centrality.”
In this vision, the Azores are no longer merely distant islands requiring compensation for isolation.
They are instead presented as an Atlantic crossroads of growing strategic relevance for Europe itself.
This dual identity — ultraperipheral yet geopolitically central — increasingly defines contemporary Azorean political discourse.
And perhaps that was the deeper message underlying Bolieiro’s speech on this Day of the Region:
that the future of the Azores may depend not only on remembering their historical struggles against isolation, but on convincing Europe, Portugal, and the Atlantic world that these islands now occupy a position of renewed global significance.
In an era marked by fragmentation, war, uncertainty, and political volatility, Bolieiro suggested that the Azores can offer something increasingly rare:
stability,
dialogue,
and democratic continuity
in the middle of the Atlantic
Translated and adapted from a story in Açores9, Paulo Melo, director.
Novidades - The Islands and the Diaspora 