Metropolitan areas in Portugal

The metropolitan area (Portuguese: área metropolitana) is a type of administrative division in Portugal.

Since the 2013 local government reform, there are two metropolitan areas: Lisbon and Porto.

[1] The metropolitan areas of Lisbon and Porto were created in 1991.

[2] A law passed in 2003 supported the creation of more metropolitan areas, under the conditions that they consisted of at least nine municipalities (concelhos) and had at least 350,000 inhabitants.

[3] Several metropolitan areas were created under this law (Algarve, Aveiro, Coimbra, Minho and Viseu),[2] but a law passed in 2008 abolished these, converting them into intermunicipal communities, whose territories are (roughly) based on the NUTS III statistical regions.