Municipal councils

The original charter (foral) of the Municipality of Funchal is not in the Council archive, but the first book of council sessions, which dates from 1470, shows that the Senate (senado, the municipal council) was then made up of individuals drawn from the class of good men (homens bons, local notables eligible for municipal office). Besides the councillors (vereadores), there were guild representatives (mesteres), that is, representatives of the manual trades, but these men were viewed with disfavour by the other members of the Senate, who not infrequently mistreated and insulted them. The Senate was presided over by the ordinary judge, and there was a municipal procurator (procurador do concelho) chosen from among the councillors, who collected the municipality’s revenues and paid its expenses, and was also responsible for petitioning on any matter of general interest.

Both the judges and the councillors were elected and took their oath before the captain-donatary (capitão-donatário). The Senate of Funchal appointed the market inspectors (almotacés), the bailiffs, the alcaide (town officer with police and jail duties) of the city, the alcaides of Ribeira Brava, Câmara de Lobos and Caniço, the local petty judges of these last three places and of Calheta, etc.

The regulations (regimento) of 11 February 1505 gave the Funchal Council, in addition to the judge, three councillors, a municipal procurator, a clerk (escrivão) and a treasurer, the last not being one of the councillors. The royal decree (alvará) of 17 August 1508 laid down that from then on only fidalgos (noblemen of the lesser nobility) could be councillors, and that the Council was to be ruled and governed in the manner of that of Lisbon. Under this last enactment, elections were to be held every 3 years, their approval resting with the king.

In the first quarter of the 17th century the councillors still took their oath before the donatary, represented by his ouvidor (judicial officer of the donatary or the Crown), and the citizens who were to hold municipal office were chosen by indirect election. Once the choice had been made, the names of those elected were placed in wax ballot balls (pelouros), which were kept in a chest with three keys, each held by a councillor. A child of 6 or 7 drew the ballot balls from the chest when lots were cast for the citizens who were to serve that year as judges, councillors and treasurer of the Senate.

The Council’s treasurer was as a rule a merchant, but the clerk had to be a fidalgo, and was entitled to ride a mule with a saddle, in accordance with the warrant (provisão) of 1538.

The Municipal Council of Funchal, better known in the past as the Senado da Câmara, always had four councillors (vereadores), one of whom served as municipal procurator (procurador do concelho) until constitutional government was established on this island in 1834. In the 18th century and the early 19th, however, these councillors were appointed by the Desembargo do Paço (the king's supreme court of justice), on the basis of lists of the members of the governing body (governança, the notables eligible for municipal office) drawn up by the corregedor (royal district magistrate) of the judicial district (comarca) or by the juiz de fora (crown-appointed judge from outside the district). The presidency of the Senate (senado, the municipal council), which in Funchal had at first belonged to the ordinary judge, passed from the middle of the 17th century onwards to the juiz de fora, an official appointed by the crown.

The Senate also included four guild representatives (mesteres), elected every year by the House of the Twenty-Four (Casa dos Vinte e Quatro, assembly of the craft guilds).

At the council sessions of old, the juiz de fora sat at one end of the council board (mesa) and the clerk (escrivão) at the other. To the left of the former sat the three councillors, in order of age, and in the last place (lugar) the municipal procurator. These members of the Senate were entitled to high-backed chairs, whereas the four guild representatives sat on low chairs without backs beside the clerk's seat, but set apart from the council board. When members of the nobility happened to attend the sessions, they sat in high-backed chairs to the right of the juiz de fora.

In 1803 there was a rather stormy council session in Funchal because the juiz de fora had allowed the guild representatives to sit at the council board. As a result of this incident, these representatives of the people stayed away from council sessions for a long time.

The royal decree (alvará) of 2 April 1763 granted the council of Funchal the right to walk behind the canopy in the Corpus Christi procession, and both in processions and in churches it was customary for the guild representatives to line up behind the rest of the Senate.

The first municipal elections held in the archipelago after the restoration of liberal government took place on 2 October 1835, in the manner laid down by the decree of 18 July of the same year. On that occasion 7 councillors were elected for the council of Funchal, 3 for that of Porto Santo and 5 for each of the other councils of the province. The elections passed off peacefully everywhere, since the political parties that were later to be so hostile to one another had not yet been organised at that time. The municipality of Funchal was governed by councils of 7 councillors while the administrative codes of 1842 and 1878 were in force, but the code of 1886 raised the number of councillors to 9, and this figure was kept in the codes of 1895 and 1896. Under the law of 7 August 1913 the councils were to consist of 32 councillors in 1st-class municipalities, 25 in 2nd-class and 16 in 3rd-class ones; these numbers were reduced to 24, 16 and 12 respectively by the law of 23 June 1916, now in force. The executive committees of the municipalities consist of 9 councillors in 1st-class municipalities, 7 in 2nd-class and 5 in 3rd-class ones (article 98 of the Law of 7 August 1913).

The former clerks of the councils, who became secretaries of these bodies under the code of 1886, are now called heads of the secretariat. These officials attend the sessions of the executive committees, draw up the minutes and direct the work of their departments, in accordance with the laws and the resolutions of the council.

The present municipal system, organised on the principles of the broadest decentralisation, has restored to the councils the freedoms and prerogatives of which the constitutional governments had stripped them in recent years. The outcry raised on all sides against the tutelage that weighed on the municipal administrations was heeded by the government of the Republic. One of its first acts was to put into effect the Administrative Code of 1878, the code which, through its decentralising provisions, best allowed the people of the municipalities a free existence in fair proportion to their resources.