The President of the Government of Madeira, Miguel Albuquerque, said on Tuesday that autonomy “is in a dead end” and the autonomy dispute “is alive”, criticizing Portugal’s “centralist tendency”.
“What we see today is that autonomy is at a dead end, in the constitutional and national framework”, said the chief executive of Madeira (PSD/CDS) at the inauguration of the IDEIA study center — Research and Diffusion of Studies and Information on Autonomy, in Funchal, in the framework of the commemorations of the 46th anniversary of the regional parliament.
The official also stressed that he hopes that the “political will to lead the process of autonomous evolution” is not stagnant.
Given the macrocephaly of Lisbon, we are still adjacent islands, we are not autonomous regions” and “the European Union has implemented Madeira’s autonomy in practice”, he mentioned.
In his opinion, if Madeira “depends on legal instruments so that its political development is foreseen within the constitutional framework”, the Madeirans and the Porto-Santenses”they couldn’t survive“.
For Miguel Albuquerque, “the issue of autonomy litigation is still very much alive.”
The official criticized the “centralist inclination” of Portugal, being a country that “does not trust its citizensit does not decentralize its powers, and that is detrimental in terms of development”.
Continuing this way, Portugal “is on track to be the poorest country in the European Union”he is stressed.
For the president of the Regional Government, the great challenge is to know that the new generations “educated, indoctrinated, who live in Madeira where comfort levels are unquestionably higher than those of grandparents and great-grandparents, are imbued with fighting spirit. , of determination, of courage, in the sense of fighting for the rights of the peoples of the regions”.
Miguel Albuquerque added that it was “essential to have the capacity for sacrifice, physical and mental courage to fight, as in the past, to defend the rights of Madeira”.
We won autonomy not because of the secular macrocephaly of the Portuguese State,” he said, mentioning that the autonomy process began “because independence movements arose, with attacks and violence,” in 1975.
Regarding the inaugurated center, he said that it should be “oriented to studies of the past” but also to encourage the “prospective future”, instilling the defense of the rights of the regions in the new generations.
Source: Observadora
