As the Azores mark fifty years of constitutional autonomy and prepare to commemorate six centuries of settlement, Américo Natalino Viveiros argues that the decisive test is not found in anniversaries or speeches, but in whether Portugal finally provides its autonomous regions with the financial instruments necessary to confront insularity, protect families and make autonomy work in everyday life.
Anniversaries have a way of turning history into ceremony. The Azores are living through one of those rare moments when several histories seem to converge: fifty years of democratic autonomy, the approaching commemorations of six centuries of settlement, and the preparation of a Regional Budget for 2027 against an international landscape marked by uncertainty. There will be speeches, commemorations and perhaps the return of many descendants of those who once left the islands because poverty offered them little choice. Yet Américo Natalino Viveiros asks, in effect, what all these celebrations mean if autonomy is not accompanied by the resources necessary to make it real.
His reflection comes as the President of the Regional Government consults political parties and organizations representing important sectors of Azorean economic and social life ahead of the next Budget. For Viveiros, however, the debate should reach beyond another annual exercise in balancing revenues and expenditures. The world entering 2027 is unstable, and international crises inevitably reach small economies through energy prices, transportation, food costs and uncertainty. In such circumstances, he argues, political parties must remember the people behind the statistics: Azoreans working every day to support their families, seeking timely healthcare, trying to educate their children and struggling to secure something as elementary as a home.
At the center of his argument stands an old and unresolved dossier: revision of the Finance Law of the Autonomous Regions. The existing framework dates from 2013 and, in Viveiros’s assessment, no longer adequately reflects the realities faced by the Azores and Madeira. His criticism crosses party lines. The law emerged during the government of Pedro Passos Coelho, but successive governments led by António Costa also failed to deliver the structural revision repeatedly demanded by the autonomous regions. More than a partisan grievance, he presents the issue as an institutional failure extending across different political cycles.
The essential argument is straightforward: insularity has a price. Distance is not an abstract constitutional concept. It appears in the cost of moving people and goods, maintaining services across nine islands, providing healthcare and education to dispersed populations, supporting transportation networks and sustaining economies that cannot enjoy the geographic continuity of mainland Portugal. Autonomy may confer political responsibility, but responsibility without adequate financial means risks becoming autonomy in name rather than in substance. For Viveiros, the Azores and Madeira therefore require a financing model capable of recognizing the permanent additional costs created by their archipelagic condition.
His appeal extends particularly to the members of Portugal’s Assembly of the Republic elected from the islands. Whatever their party affiliation, he argues, they have a special obligation to insist that the revision of regional finances not disappear once again into Lisbon’s political calendar. His language is deliberately uncompromising: elected representatives should place the interests of the islands above partisan discipline when fundamental questions of autonomy are at stake. Behind the provocation lies a larger democratic question—whether representation of an autonomous region should mean merely belonging to a national parliamentary group or also carrying the particular geography and needs of that region into the center of national power.
The recent decision by the Government of the Republic to establish a working group to revise the Finance Law is therefore important, but Viveiros regards it with understandable caution. The creation of another mechanism cannot itself substitute for reform, particularly when the process, its progress and the degree of participation afforded to the Azores and Madeira remain unclear. After years of postponement, recognition that the law needs revision is only the beginning. The real measure will be whether that recognition becomes legislation and whether the resulting formula corresponds to the actual responsibilities and structural costs of the autonomous regions.
There is also a deeper contradiction at stake. Portugal readily celebrates the Atlantic dimension given to it by the Azores and Madeira. The islands enlarge the country geographically, culturally and strategically; they connect Portugal to oceans, continents and diasporas created across centuries. Their emigrants and descendants carried the Portuguese language and memory into communities around the world. But Atlantic importance cannot be invoked only when history is being commemorated or flags are being raised. If the islands deepen Portugal’s presence in the Atlantic, then their geographic condition must also have consequences when national resources are distributed.
Fifty years after autonomy ceased to be an aspiration and became a democratic institution, perhaps the time has come to ask what its next half-century requires. The answer cannot consist only of more commemorations. Autonomy must be visible in a family’s ability to remain on an island, in a patient’s access to healthcare, in a student’s opportunity to study, in affordable transportation and housing, and in regional institutions possessing the means to fulfill the responsibilities entrusted to them.
Six centuries of Azorean history have taught the islands how to endure distance. Fifty years of autonomy taught them that distance need not mean political silence.
The unfinished task is to ensure that autonomy possesses not only a voice, but the means to make that voice consequential.
Based on an editorial by Natalino Viveiros, director of the newspaper Correio dos Açores. The photo is from Novidades.