Freguesia

"Freguesia" (pron. IPA2|fɾɛgɨ'ziɐ) is the Portuguese term for civil parish, a secondary local administrative unit in Portugal and in the former Portuguese Empire, and a former secondary local administrative unit in Macau. A "freguesia" is a subdivision of a "concelho" or "município", the Portuguese synonym terms for municipality. Most often, a civil 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 civil 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 civil parish is administered by a "Junta de Freguesia" (IPA [IPA|'ʒũtɐ dɨ fɾɛgɨ'ziɐ] ), 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 Statistics Bureau, there were 4,261 "freguesias" in Portugal as of 2006.

ee also

* List of Freguesias of Portugal
* Municipalities of Macau
* Bairro