Historian Paulo Miguel Rodrigues argues that fifty years after the establishment of democratic autonomy in the Azores and Madeira, the next stage requires reform of the Regional Finance Law, greater fiscal flexibility, economic diversification, and potentially constitutional revision. His central argument is that autonomy must remain progressive rather than become an institutional arrangement frozen in time.
Fifty years after autonomy, the question confronting the Azores and Madeira is no longer whether self-government transformed the islands. For historian Paulo Miguel Rodrigues, professor and researcher at the University of Madeira, that achievement is evident. The more difficult question is whether the political and financial architecture created and subsequently revised over the last half-century is capable of responding to the islands of the next fifty years. In an interview centered on his essay Regiões Autónomas, Rodrigues argues that the autonomous system should continue to evolve—and that financial autonomy remains one of its most unfinished dimensions. Pasted text His book, published by the Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos in May 2026, examines the political institutions of Madeira and the Azores and their relationship with Portugal, Europe and the Atlantic. Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos
His assessment of the past five decades is broadly positive. Political autonomy, he says, has demonstrably contributed to improved living conditions, although substantial social, demographic and territorial challenges remain. But Rodrigues is considerably more critical of the financial relationship between the autonomous regions and the central state. In his interpretation, Lisbon has historically tended toward a tutelary relationship with the islands regardless of the political system or party in power. Although regional control over locally generated revenues has evolved considerably since 1974–76, he argues that genuine political autonomy cannot be fully realized without corresponding financial capacity. Pasted text The current legal framework does give the autonomous regions their own budgets and financial powers, but within constitutional, national and European fiscal rules. Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos
It is here that Rodrigues makes one of his clearest arguments: the Regional Finance Law needs to be revised. He describes legislation shaped by the fiscal circumstances surrounding Portugal’s financial-assistance period as increasingly inadequate for present realities, calling for clearer state obligations, greater fiscal flexibility, reconsideration of the VAT capitation system, recognition of the additional costs created by insularity, and greater stability in relations between Lisbon and the autonomous governments. He also points to proposals for a social cohesion fund and calls for what he terms “cooperative autonomy”—a relationship based less on recurring institutional confrontation and more on clearly defined responsibilities and good-faith cooperation. Pasted text
Financial autonomy, however, cannot mean dependence upon a single economic sector. Rodrigues considers tourism unavoidable and important but warns that it should have neither a monopoly nor “carte blanche” in determining the islands’ economic future. He identifies digital technologies, artificial intelligence, software, energy and international business activity among areas that could contribute to diversification, while emphasizing that economic choices ultimately have to improve household income, savings, well-being and quality of life. He also expresses concern about any greater centralization of European funds at national level. These are Rodrigues’s policy arguments rather than settled conclusions, but they reflect the larger thesis running through the interview: autonomy needs sufficient economic instruments to translate political decision-making into practical choices. Pasted text
Geography is central to that reasoning. Rodrigues argues that territorial cohesion must include better air and maritime transportation and improved fiscal or other conditions governing connections with continental Europe. He also maintains that the Atlantic position of Madeira and the Azores has value extending far beyond their populations. In his view, the archipelagos contribute substantially to Portugal’s—and, more broadly, Europe’s and NATO’s—Atlantic projection, while the Azores add the particular strategic significance of Lajes and the surrounding maritime space. He therefore argues that this geostrategic contribution should have financial consequences, while cautioning that such claims must be prepared rigorously and pursued prudently. Pasted text
Perhaps the most difficult challenge he identifies, however, cannot be solved simply by rewriting a finance law. Rodrigues describes demographic transition—aging, low birth rates and the departure of younger people—as already troubling, precisely because demographic policy operates on a time scale much longer than electoral politics. What the islands experience today, he observes, partly reflects decisions made or postponed decades ago; measures adopted now may similarly require decades before their full effects become visible. Support for birth rates and parenthood therefore belongs, in his view, among the areas requiring sustained attention rather than short political cycles. Pasted text
His argument ultimately reaches the Constitution itself. Rodrigues contends that autonomy, if it is to remain meaningful, must be progressive and capable of improvement. He favors constitutional revision—including, if necessary, a revision focused specifically on the autonomous regions—and proposes reconsidering such matters as the constitutional understanding of the unitary state, the Representative of the Republic, the status of regional political-administrative statutes and the distribution of legislative powers between the state and the regions. These proposals are his constitutional vision, not changes already adopted within Portugal’s present framework, under which the Azores and Madeira remain autonomous political-administrative regions within a unitary state. Pasted text Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos
There is, then, a revealing tension at the center of Rodrigues’s reflections. Fifty years of autonomy demonstrate how profoundly political institutions can change island societies; the same anniversary also raises the question of whether institutions created for one historical moment can remain adequate without further evolution.
For Rodrigues, the answer lies neither in rejecting what autonomy has achieved nor in treating those achievements as complete. Autonomy, in his reading, is less a monument erected in 1976 than a continuing negotiation between geography and power, responsibility and resources, Lisbon and the islands.
And perhaps that is the most demanding meaning of fifty years of self-government: autonomy must possess not only the freedom to decide, but also the knowledge, resources and responsibility necessary to make those decisions matter.
Based on an interview in Diário Insular-José Lourenço, director. The photos are also from DI.