Speaking to Lusa, Ricardo Rio said that the reorganisation of 2013 "was badly done" and advocated that there are unions of parishes that "inevitably will be undone", giving as an example Real, Dume and Semelhe.

"There are local movements that have been advocating separation since the beginning, because there is a historic rivalry, namely between Real and Dume", he said.

On the other hand, he added that there are others who "will not be interested" in the end of the union.

"There are no ready-made ideas. There may be the division of the parishes that have been joined together, and there may eventually be other aggregations. It is an open process that will be subject to extensive discussion with local actors," he added.

The Braga mayor believes that the administrative reorganisation of the county in 2013 was "badly done" and blames the previous executive, with a socialist majority, for having resigned from scratching the new map, leaving that burden to the "free will" of the commission appointed by the government.

"What ended up happening is that some of the smaller parishes remained 'independent', other large ones were aggregated, still others were aggregated when it was clear from the outset that they had everything to go wrong," criticised Ricardo Rio.

In 2019, a commission had already been constituted to study the new administrative reorganisation of the municipality, but in the meantime "the pandemic entered" and, as the mayor says, "the priorities changed".

In between, there were also two elections, one of which was for the municipal elections, which resulted in "new protagonists" in some parishes.

Braga currently has 37 parishes, of which 19 are unions.

Before the 2013 reform, the number of parishes amounted to 62.