[2] As a province, Palena is a second-level administrative division, administered by a presidentially appointed governor.

[1] The province comprises three communes, each governed by a municipality, headed by an alcalde: Aisén, Cisnes, and Guaitecas.

During the 1990s, it was suggested that the name might be derived from an 1831 map made by captain Robert Fitz-Roy, who made an expedition to the coast on board the Beagle with Charles Darwin and labeled the area around modern Aisén province with the words "Ice End."

This theory, however, was largely dismissed because the name "Aysen" appears in documents of the explorer Father Garcia, who made an expedition to this region in 1766, more than 60 years prior to the arrival of the Beagle.

The province was recently developed in the early 20th century by Chilean government officials to place thousands of transplanted settlers from the Central Valley.