At the Transatlantic Relations conference, Vice-President Artur Lima argues that the traditional Azorean dimensions of land, sea and air must now encompass space, the deep ocean, submarine cables and digital connectivity
For centuries, the Azores were described through three elemental dimensions: land, sea and air. Land gave the islands their people and their agriculture; the sea carried generations toward distant continents and placed the archipelago along the routes of Atlantic history; the air transformed islands once considered remote into an indispensable stopping point between Europe and the Americas. But the geography of the twenty-first century is no longer measured only on maps. It descends beneath the ocean floor, travels through cables carrying the invisible traffic of the digital world, and rises beyond the atmosphere toward space. And according to Artur Lima, Vice-President of the Regional Government of the Azores, the time has come for Portugal, Europe and the United States to understand the archipelago within this much larger strategic geography.
Speaking at the conference “Transatlantic Relations: The Role of the Azores,” Lima argued that two new dimensions must now be added to the traditional Azorean geography of land, sea and air: space and the extended submarine platform—the deep ocean through which strategic telecommunications infrastructure, including submarine cables, passes. “The Azores are at the center of these developments,” he said, presenting the archipelago not as a peripheral European territory in the middle of the Atlantic, but as a geographical platform whose significance is being renewed by technology, defense, ocean science and global connectivity.
For Lima, recognizing that position must have practical consequences. The strategic value of the islands, he argued, should first be properly acknowledged by the Portuguese Government and subsequently by the European Union, the United States and Portugal’s NATO partners. The Azores, in his formulation, are not simply Portuguese islands situated in the North Atlantic. They constitute an important strategic territory for the defense of Europe and for the wider architecture of transatlantic relations.
At the heart of that historical argument remains Lajes Air Base on Terceira Island, one of the most enduring symbols of the Azores’ strategic relationship with the United States and the Atlantic world. During the conference’s closing session, Lima recalled the role played by Lajes in the circumstances surrounding Portugal’s participation as a founding member of NATO, describing this as something worth remembering in both continental Portugal and what he termed “European Portugal.”
The history of Lajes, he said, will be explored more deeply through the planned Lajes Air Base Interpretive Center, preserving and explaining the military, political and international importance of a place whose history cannot be separated from some of the defining events of the twentieth-century Atlantic. Lima characterized the Base as having served as a guarantor of peace in Europe for 70 years—a statement reflecting the Regional Government’s emphasis on Lajes as an enduring component of the postwar transatlantic security architecture.
Yet perhaps the most compelling dimension of Lima’s intervention came when he moved away from military installations, international alliances and infrastructure and toward the people themselves.
Because before there were modern treaties connecting the Azores to America, there were Azoreans crossing the Atlantic.
“The history of our emigration is living proof of our Atlantic vocation,” Lima said, emphasizing that the Azores’ transatlantic relationship did not originate in government offices or contemporary diplomatic agreements. It began, he argued, with the courage and determination of generations of islanders and with the maritime vocation of the Azorean people.
That distinction matters.
Long before politicians began using expressions such as transatlantic partnership, Azorean families were already practicing one. They crossed the ocean toward the United States, Canada, Bermuda and other destinations, building communities while maintaining connections to the islands they had left. Letters crossed in both directions. Money returned home. Families departed and returned. Traditions traveled. Generations were born abroad while retaining emotional and cultural relationships with islands many had never seen.
In that sense, the first Azorean transatlantic infrastructure was not made of concrete, steel or fiber-optic cable. It was made of people. The emigrant preceded the diplomat. The ship preceded the strategic agreement. The family correspondence preceded digital connectivity. And the communities established across North America created a human bridge whose importance cannot be measured merely through military or economic statistics.
What Lima proposed at the conference was essentially an expansion of that historical bridge into the technological realities of the present century.
“In the past, we were the transatlantic bridge through our emigrants,” he said. Today and into the future, he argued, the Azores can become a pillar connecting Europe and the Americas through air and maritime routes, knowledge of the deep ocean, digital connectivity made possible by the Google Nuvem and SOL submarine cable systems, and developments in access to space.
The transformation is remarkable: from sailing ships to aircraft; from handwritten letters crossing the Atlantic over weeks to information crossing beneath the same ocean in fractions of a second; from observing the stars from isolated islands to considering the islands themselves as platforms for access to space.
Yet the underlying geography has never changed. The Azores remain where they have always been—approximately midway across the North Atlantic. What changes is the world’s understanding of what that location can mean.
The ocean itself is acquiring new strategic importance. The seabed matters not only because of marine resources and scientific knowledge, but because critical telecommunications infrastructure runs through it. Space technologies increasingly intersect with communications, observation, climate science and security. Submarine cables have become essential arteries of contemporary economies and societies. And the Atlantic, far from having lost importance in an increasingly digital world, may simply be acquiring new forms of strategic relevance.
Lima therefore challenged the Members of the European Parliament attending the conference to advocate for significant investment in the Azores, particularly in dual-use infrastructure and equipment and within the framework of the European SAFE program. His argument was clear: if the archipelago contributes strategically to European and Atlantic security, connectivity and technological development, recognition of that importance should also be reflected in investment.
There is an old tension familiar to island societies between being strategically important and feeling politically peripheral. The Azores have repeatedly occupied that contradiction. Their geographical position has been valuable to larger powers during decisive historical moments, while islanders have simultaneously struggled to ensure that strategic usefulness translates into lasting benefits for the population and recognition of regional priorities.
Lima’s intervention can therefore be understood as an insistence that the new strategic importance of the Azores should not merely be acknowledged rhetorically. It should be valued. His remarks also arrived as the Region approaches another important historical milestone: 50 years of Azorean Autonomy. Lima concluded by connecting the archipelago’s transatlantic future with the continuing defense of regional self-government, pledging that the Azores would continue, collectively and with determination, to defend “the Region, Autonomy and the voice of the Azores in the European project and in the transatlantic space.”
There is something profoundly symbolic in placing these two ideas beside one another: autonomy and Atlanticism.
One concerns the right of islanders to have a stronger voice in governing their own affairs. The other concerns their place within a geography far larger than themselves. Together, they suggest that being an island does not have to mean being peripheral. Perhaps the history of the Azores has always been telling us precisely that.
The archipelago was once a stopping point for ships crossing an immense ocean. Later, Lajes became a strategic platform for aircraft connecting continents and supporting military operations. Emigration transformed the Azores into a human bridge between Europe and North America. Today, submarine cables carry the digital world beneath Azorean waters while ocean science looks downward into the deep Atlantic and new technologies look upward toward space.
Land. Sea. Air. Deep ocean. Space. Five dimensions for islands whose importance has never been proportional to their physical size. And through all of them runs the same enduring truth: the Azores may appear small on the map, but the map itself changes when the Atlantic is viewed from the Azores.
Based on a press release and a story in Diario Insular. Photo from Government of the Azores.