Political status of the Autonomous Region of the Azores

The political status of the Azores is defined by the Political-Administrative Statute of the Autonomous Region of the Azores (Portuguese: Estatuto Político-Administrativo da Região Autónoma dos Açores, EPARAA), which acts as the standard legal constitutional framework for the autonomy of the Portuguese archipelago of the Azores. It defines the scope of the autonomous regional government and the structure and functioning of the region's organs of government within the framework of the 1976 Constitution of Portugal. The autonomous region of Madeira has a similar status.

The Carnation Revolution took place on April 25, 1974, and after an initial period of shock, it became a nucleus for social and political movements. One of the first parties to develop in the Azores was the Popular Democratic Party (Partido Popular Democrata, PPD), led in the Azores by João Bosco Soares de Mota Amaral. The PPD, later known as the Social Democratic Party (Partido Social Democrata, PSD), gained the support of the Catholic Church and positioned itself as the party of the rural-suburban populace and the middle to upper classes. The remaining parties could only get support from the intellectual class and disenfranchised youth, and were not able to gain popularity in the rural communities. An important question after the Revolution was the status of Portugal's colonies. The PPD supported autonomy for the Azores and Madeira as well as decolonization for Portugal's other colonies (there were small communities of Azoreans living in the colonies).

In May 1974, shortly after PPD was formed, it outlined its stance on insular autonomy in its declaration of principles. During a media conference in Ponta Delgada on November 8, 1974, Mota Amaral and the PPD presented the basic ideas of the Political-Administrative Statute of the Autonomous Region of the Azores. In the proposal, the PPD outlined their aspirations for the archipelago to become an autonomous region within the Portuguese Republic, as first defined by the Regional Planning Commission (Comissão de Planeamento Regional) and governed by an elected Regional Assembly. In this initial document, the General Councils (Juntas Gerais) and Executive Commissions formed after the Carnation Revolution would be maintained. The document introduced the idea that the regional capital of the Azores would rotate between the archipelago's three former district capitals: Ponta Delgada, Angra do Heroísmo, and Horta.

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