Freguesia (Portugal)

Freguesia
Category	3rd-level administrative division
Location	Portugal
Found in	Municipality
Created	Middle Ages (Ecclesiastic Parish) 1835 (Civil Paróquia) 1916 (Freguesia)
Number	4,259
Government	Junta de Freguesia Assembleia de Freguesia

Freguesia (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˌfɾɛɣɨˈzi.ɐ]) is the Portuguese term for a secondary local administrative unit in Portugal and some of its former colonies, and a former secondary local administrative unit in Macau, roughly equivalent to an administrative parish. A freguesia is a subdivision of a concelho, the Portuguese synonym term for municipality. Most often, a parish takes the name of its seat, which is usually the most important (or the single) human agglomeration within its area; in cases where the seat is itself divided into more than one parish, each one takes the name of a landmark within its area or of the patron saint from the usually coterminous Catholic parish (paróquia in Portuguese).

Each parish is administered by a junta de freguesia ([ˈʒũtɐ ðɨ ˌfɾɛɣɨˈzi.ɐ]), drawn from a publicly elected four-year-term assembleia de freguesia.

Municipalities in Portugal are usually divided into multiple freguesias, but six municipalities are not: Alpiarça, Barrancos, Porto Santo, São Brás de Alportel and São João da Madeira all consist of a single civil parish, and Corvo is a special case of a municipality without civil parishes. Barcelos is the municipality with the most civil parishes: 89.

According to the Portuguese Geographic Institute, there were 4,259 freguesias in Portugal as of 2011.

In Spain a parroquia is similar to a freguesia.

See also

• List of parishes of Portugal (freguesias)
• Municipalities of Macau
• Administrative divisions of Cape Verde
• Bairro