Partido (region)

"[3] The term referred to 18th and 19th-century land regions that consisted of mature dispersed settlements but which had not yet been formally incorporated as hamlets.

Though similar to today's municipality, partidos were under the control of a town or city government whose seat was, at times, a day's walk, or longer, away.

"Partido" was the term used in Spanish colonial times for various scarcely populated regions in Puerto Rico, including Aguada, Ponce, Arecibo, and Coamo.

[5] In the case of Ponce, the region was a partido in 1670, when a chapel was built and nearby neighbors started to build around it, converting the dispersed settlement into a hamlet.

[6][7] However, it continued to depend on the cabildo at the Villa de San Germán for all of its judicial and administrative matters.