Marking half a century of Constitutional Autonomy, President of the Azorean Parliament Luís Garcia called for cooperation between Parliament and the Regional Government, urging the islands to turn the achievements of the last five decades into greater opportunity, stronger territorial cohesion, and renewed ambition for generations to come.
Fifty years after Autonomy gave the Azores new political instruments with which to shape their own future, Luís Garcia used the anniversary not simply to celebrate what has been accomplished, but to ask what those institutions must now become. Speaking at the solemn session commemorating the 50th anniversary of Azorean Autonomy, the President of the Legislative Assembly defended a Parliament that remains “plural, demanding and free,” but also capable of contributing to regional stability through what he described as coordination and shared responsibility with the Regional Government. At a moment when the Assembly is preparing to consider the Region’s principal governing instruments for the coming year, Garcia’s message placed political cooperation at the center of governability without diminishing the Parliament’s responsibility to scrutinize and debate.
“There are moments when the Azores need to speak with one voice,” Garcia said, particularly on questions essential to the archipelago’s collective interests. For him, however, Autonomy has never belonged exclusively to politicians or institutions of government. He described it as a collective construction involving the University of the Azores, RTP Açores, municipalities, institutions, businesses, associations, the diaspora and Azoreans themselves. It is an important way of understanding the autonomous project: not simply as power transferred from Lisbon to regional institutions, but as the gradual creation of a civic space in which an island people gained greater capacity to participate in determining its own direction.
Garcia returned to 1976 to measure the distance traveled. The Azores of that period were marked by greater isolation between islands, high levels of illiteracy, limited healthcare and infrastructure, and a scarcity of opportunities that contributed to generations of emigration. “Autonomy was not merely a political change. It was a change in our lives,” he said. Fifty years later, he argued, any serious assessment must remember both the difficult point of departure and the scale of the transformation achieved. He also invoked the resilience demonstrated during crises such as the 1980 earthquake and successive extreme weather events, describing tenacity as an enduring characteristic of Azorean society.
European integration was another decisive part of that transformation. Garcia emphasized the importance of the Azores’ recognition as an Outermost Region and called for continued Azorean participation in European decision-making. Looking toward the next European Union Multiannual Financial Framework, he warned of the need to protect both the resources available to the islands and the Region’s capacity to influence decisions affecting its development.
The relationship with the Portuguese Republic was equally central to the anniversary. Addressing President of the Assembly of the Republic José Pedro Aguiar-Branco, who attended the ceremony, Garcia said his presence represented more than protocol. It was, he argued, an expression of the “mature and loyal cooperation” that should exist between the Republic and its Autonomous Regions. His vision of deeper Autonomy was therefore not one of separation, but of belonging accompanied by responsibility—requiring national decision-makers to understand directly the particular realities of island life.
That argument extended into geopolitics. Garcia described the Azores as Portugal’s greatest geostrategic and geopolitical asset and argued that their Atlantic position must become both a regional and national priority. As Portugal and Europe increase attention to defense and security, he maintained that this should have tangible financial and operational consequences in the archipelago, including additional resources and improved infrastructure. Strategic geography, his argument suggested, cannot be celebrated rhetorically while remaining underfunded in practice.
Yet the most important geography in Garcia’s speech may have been the geography of remaining. Looking toward the next generation, he called for “more freedom, more opportunities, more development, more conditions to choose to stay, more capacity to leave and return.” Education, healthcare, economic development, mobility, housing and the ability to retain young people were among the challenges he identified for the years ahead.
The commemorative session concluded by honoring former Presidents of the Legislative Assembly and Regional Government, as well as Aguiar-Branco and the spouses of deceased former parliamentary presidents, recognizing those who helped construct the institutional history of Autonomy.
But Garcia’s final message resisted allowing commemoration to become nostalgia. “We have achieved much and we should celebrate,” he said. “But tomorrow is already a working day.”
Perhaps that is the appropriate measure of fifty years. Autonomy cannot remain only the memory of what the Azores conquered in 1976. Its meaning must continually be renewed by what it allows the islands to accomplish next. The first fifty years built institutions and transformed lives. The challenge of the next fifty is to ensure that another generation receives not merely the inheritance of Autonomy, but greater freedom to stay, to leave, to return—and to choose its own place within the islands’ unfinished future.
Based on a press release- photos from ALRAA.