#27 An 800-Year-Old Divide: Why Portugal's North and South Vote Differently
The Reconquista, Land Reform, and Lasting Political Legacies
If you look at an electoral map of Portugal from almost any election since its transition to democracy, you’ll see that the country is neatly split in two. The North consistently lends its support to parties on the right, while the South, particularly the plains of the Alentejo region, has long been a stronghold for the left, most notably the Communist Party.
This isn't a recent phenomenon. It’s possible to trace this divide to roots that stretch back not just decades, but centuries. Because I am a big fan of “deep roots” explanations, here’s an attempt at explaining this using data I have been collecting for a a chapter (preprint available here) in a new edited volume on the far right in Portugal. For this we have to travel back to the very formation of Portugal itself—to the Christian Reconquista in the 13th century.
It All Comes Down to Land
The political divide, at its heart, is a story about land. In a society that was agricultural for most of its history, the way land was owned and distributed shaped everything from social structure to religious belief, and ultimately, to politics. The narrative can begin with the long retreat of the Muslim Kingdoms. The Christian reconquest of what is now Portugal happened in two very different ways.
In the North, the process was slow and gradual. Lands were retaken piece by piece over a long period. This resulted in a fragmented but relatively fair distribution of land. The territory was divided among small farmers who owned the plots they worked. This created a society of small independent landowners—a class that was, by nature, more conservative, traditional, and deeply connected to the Catholic Church.
The story South of the Tagus River was different. The reconquest here was swift and decisive. Vast territories were captured in a short amount of time. To reward the powerful nobles and religious military orders who led the fight, the Crown granted them enormous estates, known as latifúndios. This created a fundamentally unequal society. A small, powerful elite owned nearly all the land, while a huge population of peasants worked the fields with no hope of ownership. On the eve of the 1974 Carnation Revolution, this disparity was still staggering: in the Alentejo, just 2% of landowners held 57% of all land. This system, with deep parallels to Southern Spain, created a social structure ripe for revolutionary ideas.
The Revolution and the Red South
When the dictatorship collapsed and democracy arose in 1974, the question of land reform became a central political battleground. For the landless agricultural workers of the South, it was the single most important issue. The Communist Party, seizing the moment, became the champion of their cause, demanding the redistribution of the great estates. The party successfully built powerful and lasting electoral strongholds across the Alentejo, rooted in this agricultural working class. While its influence has faded in recent decades, the political culture it helped forge remains. Arguably, the Communist party has noticeably eroded, and Chega has become a rising force in the area.
Meanwhile, in the North, the society of small, conservative landowners provided a natural and enduring support base for the parties of the center-right. Their attachment to tradition, property, and the Church translated directly into a different political vision for the country.
Therefore, when analyzing Portuguese election results, it's clear we are looking at more than just contemporary political alignments, but also at the persistent legacy of historical land tenure. The divergent paths set during the 13th-century Reconquista—creating a North of small, conservative landowners and a South of vast estates worked by a landless class—have had a profound and lasting impact, shaping the country's political fault lines to this day.