These days mark the 50th anniversary of the moment when the issue of autonomy for the Azores and Madeira was brought before the Constituent Assembly. The constitutional principle by which the two archipelagos would be established as Autonomous Regions—endowed with political-administrative statutes and their own governing bodies—was agreed upon in the very first days of voting and is enshrined in Article 6, paragraph 2 of the current Constitution. Yet it was soon understood that it was necessary to go further and include in the constitutional text additional provisions that would detail the principle of autonomy. To that end, a Commission was created—known as the Eighth Commission—chaired by Deputy Jaime Gama, of which I was a member, alongside Américo Natalino Viveiros and several other Constituent Deputies, among whom I recall Mário Mesquita and a Madeiran deputy who would later become President of the Regional Assembly, though his name escapes me now. There were also members appointed by the Portuguese Communist Party and by the CDS, the latter represented by a woman—one of the few elected to help draft the Constitution of democratic Portugal born out of the April 25 Revolution.

The Commission began its work with the presentation of several draft proposals on the matter. The most ambitious in terms of autonomy was undoubtedly the one prepared, on their own initiative and sole responsibility, by the Azorean deputies of the then still PPD. This draft was later replaced by a more moderate version, developed with the involvement of other leading figures in the party, among whom I recall António Barbosa de Melo, then President of the PPD parliamentary group in the Constituent Assembly.

The work of the Eighth Commission unfolded in two distinct phases. The first concluded with the approval of a text that was wholly unsatisfactory for the aspirations of self-government firmly upheld by the PPD deputies, who were keenly aware of the democratic legitimacy of their electoral mandate. In the Azores, that mandate had given the PPD five seats in the Constituent Assembly, while the Socialist Party (PS) held only one, and the remaining parties none. Having voted against the text, the PPD deputies launched a public awareness campaign among voters and encouraged the submission of motions repudiating what they called the “sham autonomy” the Eighth Commission sought to impose, sending these protests to the Assembly’s leadership. At the time, it was customary for messages from citizens addressed to the Constituent Assembly to be read aloud, and I well remember the impact of these repudiations. They prompted President Henrique de Barros—who was attentively following the readings delivered by First Secretary António Arnaut—to switch on his microphone and ask aloud what this “sham autonomy” of the Eighth Commission was, apparently so contested in the Azores.

In the end, the Eighth Commission reconvened and presented a final draft that was considerably more acceptable. It was this proposal that the Constituent Assembly debated in both general and specific terms over several days. I wrote a rather extensive article about it—though still trimmed to fit predetermined limits—for the Portuguese Journal of Political Science. In preparing it, I had to read all the relevant issues of the Diário das Sessões, which allowed me to revisit many aspects I had already forgotten. It is quite instructive to note that the two largest parties with parliamentary representation, the PS and the PPD, both wanted the text approved quickly and without major changes. Both the Commission’s President and its Rapporteur—if I recall correctly, a PPD deputy from Madeira—appealed for this, citing the quality of the debates held in committee and the mutual concessions made by the various participants.

The Portuguese Communist Party (PCP), however, did not yield to these appeals. Declaring openly that it had nothing to lose electorally in the two archipelagos, it introduced numerous amendments to the text, all aimed at restricting insular autonomy, under the pretext of combating separatism and imperialism, which it claimed went hand in hand. Several of the PCP’s proposals were ultimately approved, worsening what came to be known as the “Autonomy Dispute,” though this would later be gradually resolved through successive constitutional revisions. Further advances in autonomy are still anticipated in future revisions.

At the conclusion of the Constituent Assembly’s work on the provisions proposed by the Eighth Commission, I was able to acknowledge, in the PPD’s statement of vote, that the political autonomy guaranteed to the peoples of the Azores and Madeira was, “even so, broad.” Based on this framework, the Provisional Government then in office drafted the Provisional Statute of the Autonomous Region of the Azores. This, too, faced opposition in politically engaged sectors of regional public opinion and was subsequently amended with the intervention of the Governing Junta.

Finally, on June 27, 1976, the Azorean people elected their own representative Assembly—an unprecedented event in more than half a millennium of our history.

João Bosco Mota Amaral was the first President of the Reginao Government of the Azores.

In Diário dos Açores, Paulo Vivieiros-director