During the official celebrations marking the Day of the Autonomous Region of the Azores and the fiftieth anniversary of the archipelago’s constitutional autonomy, Pedro Neves delivered one of the ceremony’s most direct appeals for unity, warning that regional politics risks weakening itself through growing territorial rivalries and insular division.

Speaking during the solemn session held at the Teatro Micaelense, the PAN parliamentary leader argued that the future of Azorean autonomy depends not on competition between islands, but on the strengthening of regional cohesion.

“When one places island against island, city against city, hospital against hospital, people against people, project against project,” Pedro Neves declared, “one is not defending a population better. One is weakening the region as a whole.”

The speech emerged within an increasingly visible political climate in the Azores where debates over hospitals, public investment, transportation, infrastructure, and economic development have often exposed longstanding tensions between islands regarding centralization and access to resources.

Rather than denying the existence of these asymmetries, Neves acknowledged them openly.

He recognized that, despite the advances brought by fifty years of self-government, many Azoreans still feel distant from decision-making centers and continue to experience unequal access to opportunities depending on the island where they live.

“There are still islands that feel far from the centers of decision,” he stated. “There are still Azoreans who live with greater difficulties simply because they were born or reside on a smaller or more distant island.”

For the PAN leader, autonomy cannot become merely a symbolic achievement celebrated during official ceremonies while inequalities persist across the archipelago.

Instead, he framed autonomy as a daily political responsibility.

“The true defense of autonomy,” he argued, “is not shouting louder for one island against another. It is ensuring that all islands have opportunities, that all have dignified public services, accessibility, healthcare, education, housing, security, and development.”

Throughout his intervention, Pedro Neves repeatedly returned to the concept of cohesion as the central unfinished challenge of modern Azorean autonomy.

In his view, the next fifty years will demand a more mature and solidaristic regional vision — one capable of balancing the natural differences between islands without allowing those differences to become political fractures.

“Autonomy is not a privilege,” he insisted. “It is a responsibility.”

The statement carried particular resonance at a moment when political discourse across the islands increasingly reflects disputes over the location of hospitals, transportation infrastructure, economic investment, public services, and demographic decline.

Neves warned that autonomy loses meaning if it becomes trapped in what many Azoreans often describe as bairrismo — a localized insular rivalry that places territorial competition above collective regional interests.

For the PAN deputy, the historical significance of autonomy lies precisely in overcoming the old condition of distance and marginalization that once defined the archipelago within Portugal.

“Half a century ago,” he reflected, “the Azores ceased being merely a distant geographic reality and became a region with its own voice, its own institutions, and the capacity to decide its future.”

Yet he also reminded listeners that autonomy itself did not emerge accidentally.

“It was born from the will of a people who understood that no decision taken far from the islands could fully comprehend the reality of the archipelago.”

In that sense, Pedro Neves framed the autonomy project not simply as administrative decentralization, but as an affirmation of dignity and democratic recognition.

Still, the PAN leader cautioned against transforming autonomy into ritual memory alone.

“Celebrating fifty years of autonomy cannot simply mean looking backward,” he said. “It must mean asking what kind of autonomy we want for the next fifty years.”

And for Neves, the answer appears inseparable from solidarity itself.

A modern autonomy, he suggested, must not merely preserve institutions; it must actively reduce inequalities between islands, strengthen social cohesion, and create conditions where every Azorean — regardless of geography — feels equally included within the regional project.

The speech opened the interventions of the political parties represented in the Azorean parliament and added another layer to the broader reflections dominating this year’s commemorations: that fifty years after autonomy was constitutionally established, the central challenge facing the Azores may no longer be simply achieving self-government, but deciding how that self-government can continue binding together nine islands separated by ocean, history, and unequal realities — without allowing division to erode the very idea of a shared Azorean destiny.

translated and adapted from Media reports.