Portugal elects its town halls: the first free local elections, 1976

On the night of 12 December 1976 Alda Santos Victor was at home in Lisbon, in the São Miguel neighbourhood, when her daughter brought the news: she had just been elected mayor of Vagos, a municipality in the district of Aveiro. Alda told her it was nonsense. Then she turned on the television and saw that it was true.1 source1 source

She was a housewife married to a magistrate, and she had never held office. A delegation from the CDS, the Christian democratic party, had travelled down from Vagos to ask whether she would head their list. She agreed, with one warning.1 source1 source

She was one of five women among the 304 mayors chosen that day. Under the Estado Novo, the dictatorship that ruled Portugal from the 1930s until 1974, not a single woman had been mayor. Nor had any man been elected to the job by ordinary voters: for nearly fifty years mayors had been appointed from Lisbon.2 sources2 sources

The 1976 local elections were the last of three national votes that year, after the parliamentary election in April and the presidential election in June. Instead of one ballot there were three, and instead of a handful of national lists there were thousands of local ones. Jorge Miguéis, later a senior official of the Interior Ministry, recalled that they were very difficult to organise because they were the first.3 sources3 sources

Portugal's councils had been elected under the constitutional monarchy and the First Republic, though by a limited electorate and under the eye of a civil governor sent from Lisbon. The military coup of 28 May 1926 ended that. In July 1926 every elected local body in mainland Portugal and the islands was dissolved, and the civil governors sent the Ministry of the Interior names for the administrative commissions that replaced them.2 sources2 sources

The Estado Novo made the arrangement permanent. Its Administrative Code, drafted by Marcelo Caetano, approved in 1936 and revised in 1940, kept the municipalities but put them under the civil governor of each district. Mayors were appointed by the Minister of the Interior on the governor's recommendation, for six years under the 1936 code and eight under the 1940 one.1 source1 source

Councils had almost no money of their own. Their revenue came from a tax on trade and industry and from property taxes based on out-of-date valuations; for the rest they lived on government grants and needed permission for every expense. Most mayors were unpaid, so the post went to local notables who could afford it. In 1964 the civil governor of Faro struggled to find anyone willing to run Vila do Bispo, and one candidate turned the job down because the allowance did not cover his travel.1 source1 source

In the parishes, the smallest unit of local government, the mayor named a regedor with police duties, and the parish council was chosen by a meeting of heads of family. Porto's appointed mayors, a study of the city's leaders concludes, were seen as agents of the government that named them.2 sources2 sources

The Carnation Revolution of 25 April 1974 removed the regime's mayors within weeks. Dismissals began to appear in the official gazette from 2 May. In Lisbon a lieutenant colonel of engineers, João António Lopes da Conceição, was named that day as delegate of the military junta to take over the outgoing mayor's powers.1 source1 source

A decree-law of 3 June 1974 let the Minister of Internal Administration dissolve councils and appoint administrative commissions of independents or of people from groups that backed the programme of the Armed Forces Movement (MFA). They were to govern until the first local elections. Often local committees proposed the names and the ministry confirmed them. By 8 July, 176 of the country's 304 municipalities had a commission.1 source1 source

The commissions reflected the mood of each place. Barreiro, the industrial town across the Tagus from Lisbon, got a president and 18 members, against an average of about five elsewhere. The first women to lead a municipality also came from these commissions: Aldina Graça, a notary, in Arruda dos Vinhos, and Maria Guiomar Romão in Oleiros. Only about 1 per cent of all mayors crossed over from the old regime to the new one.1 source1 source

The Constitution approved on 2 April 1976 gave local government its own section. Its first article on the subject read: “The democratic organisation of the State includes the existence of local authorities” (translated from Portuguese). They were to have their own property and finances, and the law would set their powers on the principle of administrative decentralisation.1 source1 source

The electoral law followed as Decree-Law 701-B/76 of 29 September, and on 1 October the government set the vote for Sunday 12 December. Candidates had until 29 October to file their lists. The campaign ran from 30 November to 10 December, and polling stations opened from 8 in the morning to 7 in the evening.2 sources2 sources

To explain the new system, the authorities printed 500,000 copies of an illustrated leaflet. Each voter, it said, would receive three ballots, one for each body, on paper of a different colour. Only political parties could stand for the câmara and the municipal assembly. For the parish assemblies, groups of citizens could run too, and 466 of them did.2 sources2 sources

Eleven parties and fronts stood. The Communist Party (PCP) ran inside the FEPU, the United People's Electoral Front, an alliance with the smaller MDP/CDE. The CNE later found that most parties could not account properly for their spending, because they were contesting so many bodies at once, for the first time, without local organisations to match.2 sources2 sources

In Vila do Conde, north of Porto, Fernando Gomes, the 30-year-old Socialist who had led the town's commission since 1974, remembered that polling day “went very well”, though helpers had to move between the tables explaining whether people could vote with someone beside them. The results were not known until after one in the morning. In Vila Verde, near Braga, the local weekly reported that the vote went off “in great order”.2 sources2 sources

Not everything was settled that night. Some votes had to be repeated, and some parish assemblies were elected for the first time only much later.1 source1 source

When the counts were in, the Socialists, whose leader Mário Soares had become prime minister that summer, had the most votes: about a third, some 374,000 more than the PPD. Yet the two parties had the same number of mayors, 115 each.4 sources4 sources

The map split almost by region. The FEPU took 12 of the 14 municipalities in the district of Évora, 10 of 13 in Setúbal and 9 of 14 in Beja. The PPD led in most of the north and swept the islands, winning 28 of the 30 councils there. The CDS was strongest in the inland north, taking 8 of the 24 councils in Viseu and 7 of 14 in Guarda. The PS led across much of the centre and south, with 13 of the 14 councils in the district of Lisbon, 12 of 15 in Portalegre and 15 of 16 in the Algarve. The monarchists won one council, Ribeira de Pena.2 sources2 sources

The Socialists won both big cities. In Lisbon their list was led by Aquilino Ribeiro Machado, an engineer; the city's magazine later called his council “the first elected chamber, after an interval of fifty years” (translated from Portuguese). He sat with 16 councillors, the largest council in the country.3 sources3 sources

In Porto the Socialist list was headed by Aureliano Veloso, an engineer born in Gouveia who stood as an independent. He governed from 1977 to 1980. A history of Porto's mayors says he will be remembered, like the men first elected in 1822 and 1834, as the first president elected after a long dictatorship.3 sources3 sources

Almost all the new mayors were new to power. Braga's, the Socialist Francisco Mesquita Machado, was 29. The oldest took office in Albergaria-a-Velha at 73: he had been mayor before 1974 and chaired the town's commission after it, one of the very few men to run a council under appointment, revolution and election.2 sources2 sources

Turnout was the disappointment. About 35 per cent of registered voters stayed at home, against 16.7 per cent at the parliamentary election in April. The figure varied a great deal. In Vila Verde, near Braga, the local weekly counted 15,155 voters out of 23,942, an abstention of 36.7 per cent, and noted that the registers were out of date, with many old and sick people on them.4 sources4 sources

The new councils took office early in 1977 and inherited towns short of almost everything. In Vila Real only about a fifth of homes had piped water, and the mayor elected there in 1976 listed missing roads, paving and electric light. In Évora the informally built districts outside the walls had no electricity, water, sewers or rubbish collection. Vila do Conde, Fernando Gomes said, did not have a single paved street.2 sources2 sources

Parliament then gave them powers and money. A law of 25 October 1977 set out the competences of the councils and assemblies, including their own budgets and municipal master plans. The Local Finance Law of 2 January 1979 replaced the old system of grants with a fixed share of state revenue, distributed by formula and weighted towards poorer municipalities. Évora claims the first municipal master plan in Portugal, drafted over about two years with public consultation.3 sources3 sources

Many of the 1976 mayors did not last. Only 57.7 per cent ran again in 1979, and 40 per cent of those won. At the second local elections, on 16 December 1979, the Socialists fell from 115 mayors to 65, and the Democratic Alliance (AD) of the PSD, the CDS and the monarchists took both Lisbon and Porto. Others stayed for decades: the mayors elected in Braga and Vila Nova de Poiares in 1976 were still in office 37 years later.4 sources4 sources

The rules kept changing. Terms grew from three to four years in 1985. A constitutional revision in 1997 let groups of citizens stand for the câmaras, and in 2001 they did so for the first time: 21 mayors were elected as independents or at the head of citizens' lists. The administrative regions the Constitution had also promised were put to a referendum on 8 November 1998. Fewer than half the electorate voted, too few for the result to be binding, and 63.5 per cent of those who did said no.3 sources3 sources

A 2005 law limited mayors and parish presidents to three consecutive terms. It took full effect in 2013, when 160 mayors and 884 parish presidents could not stand again. That year a reform also merged parishes, cutting their number from 4,260 to 3,092. In 2025 parliament overrode a presidential veto to split 135 of the merged parishes back into 302, ahead of that year's local elections.3 sources3 sources

December 2026 marks fifty years since the first vote. Local elections have been held every three or four years since, and the core of the 1976 design survives: an elected assembly beside an elected council, a mayor who is the first name on the most-voted câmara list, and 16 councillors in Lisbon and 12 in Porto.3 sources3 sources

Turnout recovered at the next two elections, then drifted down. Abstention passed 40 per cent in 2009 and peaked at 47.4 per cent in 2013, before falling back to 40.7 per cent in 2025.1 source1 source

Asked in 2017 what her council had done, Alda Santos Victor, by then in her nineties, began with the basics: Vagos got the sanitation it had never had.1 source1 source