Alcoutim, the least populated and the one with the most live shows

Alcoutim, in the Faro district, remains the municipality with the lowest population density in the country, with four residents per square kilometer (km2), while Amadora leads in the opposite direction, Pordata revealed this Friday. However, it is the municipality with the most live performances.

A month before the local elections, Pordata, the statistical database of the Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation, has released a snapshot of Portuguese municipalities, which will be available to the public starting this Friday.

The data that supports the highlights made by Pordata are part of a more comprehensive project that the company is making available on Friday, for each of the 308 Portuguese municipalities, through a new interactive area on its homepage , which will have a set of 41 indicators organized by seven themes.

Demographic analysis shows that the Algarve municipality of Alcoutim has maintained the lowest population density since 2021, in contrast to Amadora, a district of Lisbon, the municipality with the most residents per km2 (7,637 inhabitants).

Between 2021 and 2024, of the country's 308 municipalities, 99 (32%) lost active population (between 15 and 64 years old) and only 120 increased the number of young people, with the municipalities of Odemira (Beja) and Vila de Rei (Castelo Branco) standing out, with increases of over 12%.

Lisbon continues to be the most populous municipality, with 575,739 inhabitants in 2024 , 30,569 more than in 2021, which represents a growth of 5.6% above the national average, followed by Sintra (400,947 residents) and Vila Nova de Gaia (Porto), with 312,984.

In the ranking of relative growth, Óbidos (Leiria) recorded the highest population growth compared to the last municipal cycle (2021), with an increase of 10.5%, rising from 12,410 to 13,720 inhabitants.

Barrancos (Beja) showed the biggest proportional drop, with a 5.5% decrease in population, falling from 1,498 to 1,415 inhabitants.

The demographic portrait also highlights an aging country, with Vinhais (Bragança) being the oldest municipality, with 46.3% of the population aged 65 or over, almost double the national average (24.3%).

Oleiros (Castelo Branco) was the municipality that most reduced its aging rate between 2021 and 2024, although it continues to be among the oldest in the country.

Of the 53 municipalities in which there was a reduction in the aging rate, 25 are in Alentejo.

Conversely, Ribeira Grande, in the Azores, is the youngest municipality, with 143 young people for every 100 elderly people, while Montijo has the greatest demographic vitality, with 85 young people for every 100 elderly people.

In the environmental chapter, Odemira (Beja) is confirmed as the largest Portuguese municipality, with 1,720.6 km2, while São João da Madeira (Aveiro) is the smallest (7.94 km2).

The municipality of Paredes (Porto) leads in the number of fires, with an annual average of 320 occurrences in the last decade.

The Alentejo municipality of Moura (Beja) emerges as a positive example in waste management, doubling selective collection from 12% to 25.2% between 2021 and 2024.

In the Azores, a total of six municipalities — Calheta, Corvo, Horta, Santa Cruz da Graciosa, Velas and Vila do Porto — do not send urban waste to landfill.

According to Pordata data, in 2024, the majority of municipalities in the country practiced selective collection of urban waste in more than 15% of the waste collected (202 of the 308 municipalities), but in 58 municipalities the percentage destined for landfill was less than 50%.

The country's least populated municipality, Alcoutim, in the Algarve, is the one with the most live shows. "Alcoutim is the municipality with the most live shows, relative to its population, with 130 performances," is one of the highlights highlighted by Pordata in the summary sent to editorial offices ahead of the publication of the Portrait of Municipalities this Friday.

Alcoutim is the municipality with the lowest population density, four residents per square kilometer, a figure that remained unchanged in 2024 compared to 2021, and is the sixth municipality with the fewest inhabitants, out of a total of 308, with 2,401 people, according to the study.

According to Pordata, live shows are considered to be performances by artists on a stage, excluding dances, cinema, parades, gastronomic festivals, fairs and pilgrimages and performance workshops, among others.

A highlight on the topic “access to services and culture” indicates that Arruda dos Vinhos, in the district of Lisbon, was the municipality that, in 2023, had the fewest pharmacies per resident: two pharmacies for the 15,322 residents in the municipality, when the national average was one pharmacy for every 3,412 inhabitants.

Along the same lines, Corvo Island in the Azores, the island with the fewest inhabitants in Portugal, has the most ATMs relative to its population: three ATMs for every 437 inhabitants. The national average is one ATM for every 863 inhabitants.

Pordata highlights that Lisbon and Porto account for 14% of all museums in Portugal, 15% of cultural venues and 15% of cinema screens.

In the section dedicated to education, the database highlights that Cascais, in the district of Lisbon, is the municipality with the highest percentage of 1st cycle students in private education (75.6%).

Still on the same topic, Vila Velha de Ródão, in the district of Castelo Branco, is the municipality that registered the greatest growth in the number of students, between 2021 and 2024, going from 240 students to 319.

Also noteworthy is the municipality that lost the most students in percentage terms, Penedono, in the district of Viseu , which went from 1,057 students to 877. More than a third of municipalities lost students between 2021 and 2024, according to Pordata.

In 29 municipalities, more than three-quarters of students in vocational courses attend private educational institutions.

With regard to scientific and humanistic courses, with the exception of Arruda dos Vinhos, in the district of Lisbon, where all secondary education is offered by the private sector, there is no other municipality with such a high proportion of students in private education.

Pordata also has data that supports that, between 2021 and 2024, there was an increase in the number of children attending preschool in 254 of the 308 municipalities.

In five of them (Corvo, Lajes das Flores, Almeida, Penamacor and Constância) the increase was over 50%.

A month before the local elections on October 12, Pordata, the statistical database of the Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation, divides the “comprehensive portrait of Portuguese municipalities” into seven themes: population, education, housing, employment and businesses, access to services and culture, tourism and, finally, territory and environment.