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DRAFT LAW NO. 686 /X

SOAJO ELEVATION, CONCELHO DE ARCOS DE VALDEVEZ,

CASTLE ' S VIANA DISTRICT, TO THE CATEGORY OF VILLAGE

JUSTIFICATION NOTE

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GEOGRAPHICAL DATA

1-GEOGRAPHICAL SITUATION

Soajo confronts north and potent with the freighter of the Gave, from the concelho of

of Melgsteel; the spring, in part with the same Gave and, still, with the

freguesias of Arches of Valdevez designated by Sistelo, Cabreiro, Cabana

Greater and Ermelo; to the south the Lima River.

2-GEOGRAPHICAL AREA

Soajo's freguesia is about 80 Km2, because, in addition to the more, it covers the

extensive plateau of the Seida and the wide paúl of the Lamas of the Vez, where it has its

nascent the largest tributary of the Lima-the river Vez-, which is, also, the largest

course of water that part of the extensive Soajo sawing. Much of your

surface is included in this serra, where a huge and enigmatic

concentration of granitic blocks that archaeologically witness a

edification of very remote times and which determined, it seems, the

toponym Pedrada, situated in the Outer Major at about 1416 m altitude.

3-GEOGRAPHICAL POSITION

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Soajo's freguesia is situated in a privelyzed area, north of the Lima River,

as significant area is integrated into the National Park, having in the

its breast mountains that reach the highest altitudes of the Viana district of the

Castle. Soajo, with its wide territorial extent, lies on a route

tourist that runs through the country's largest electro-producing centre, on the Soajo-

Lindoso, by Castro Laboreiro and by the Mariano Sanctuary, which out edified

for the cult of Our Lady of the Neves, in the wake of the ermida primitive

built on a remote date in the Peneda valley, on the Soajo ancestor. Incidentally

it must be said that the Soajo is, in the context of the High Minho, a fascinating area,

due to the vigorous relief of its mountains, tailored in its

depths by polychromatic valleys where the vegetable covered and the waters

crystalline from its rivers and riverbanks inebriate at any time of the year.

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BRIEF HISTORICAL CHARACTERIZATION

Soajo will have been one of the first judgements to gain autonomy and identity

own, being outhouses one of the municipalities that already existed at the time of the

countess D. Teresa, mother of D. Afonso Henriques, founder in the Soajo, of the

benedictine monastery of Ermelo. On the aurora of nationality already its judges

were chosen from among the good men of the concelho. It was your area

geographical inhabited in prehistoric times as well attest the many

dolmenic constructions, considered from this 1910, as a monument

national with the designation of "Antas da Serra de Soajo". However the most

old written documents that know each other about the Soajo, report

to the times of the countess Mamadona Dias, founder of the castle of

Guimarães, being one of them from the year 950, attesting that, possessed in the

mountains and rivers of this land: cows, fishmongers, monasteries and orchards.

From the first kings of Portugal that Soajo has been preserved by the royal crown,

for the protection of their mats. It is salient that the identity of the saw was

antiquity, for in 1498, King D. Manuel I, continued to preserve, only,

to the north of the Mondego, the Soajo, as it did with Sintra, Óbidos, Évora and

few more geographical spaces. Various documents from the royal chancelleries

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attest the privileges, freedoms and honours granted to the inhabitants of

Soajo, the ones who well evidenced the existence of your county and judged

from the dawn of nationality. The King D. Manuel I, in the review of the

ancient titles concelhios-letters of forays and forays-, outorgou foral

new in 1514 , statute concelhio this, where they have continued well patents the

privileges, consignments since the first dynasty. The municipal chamber of

Soajo, in 1821, resolved to make a representation, saying that more not

wanted to accept the oppressions of the monsoon-mor that amassed the directions of the

"Royal Montaria of the Soap Village" pursuant to the Provisions and

Regiment of this. In 1852, several riots took place in the village of Soajo,

causing the shutdown of the Court and the City Hall, and obliging the

remain of a Braga Infantry Regiment, for one month, for

that tranquillity and public order and operation were ensured and

regular of public repartitions. With the withdrawal of troops returned to

disturbance of public order, which gave azo to profiteers for

extinguish the concelain of Soajo. In 1853, Queen D. Maria II, ends the

multissecular Julgado de Soajo, where a few decades earlier a celebrated judge

of Soajo, delivered famous sentence that appreciated in the Court of Relation in the

Porto, would give way to yet another scene that the ancestral Portuguese culture

noted for posterity. It was great the heroic participation of the inhabitants

of Soajo in defending the independence of Portugal, as the chronicles prove

military from Spain and other documents from the chancellery of D. Afonso VI.

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DEMOGRAPHIC ASPECTS

The resident population of the Soajo was growing until 1960, notwithstanding whether

find subjected to migratory mobility pressures, not least for

Lisbon and surroundings and, from the beginning of the twentieth century, to the USA. Reached,

in this year of census, 2997 people to reside in the Soajo! Doesn't leave it

be an admirable population poring most of the freguesies of the

sedes concelhias of the district, had quite a lot less population, with

even the set of the two freguesies that integrate the seat of the county of

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Arches of Valdevez, queddled only by 2354 people, and the village of

Bridge of the Lima, owned only 33 more people, given that it had a population

from 3030, notwithstanding being, after Viana, the second cluster

population of the district. In number of fires, in this same year of 1960,

Arcos de Valdevez counted with 633, the Ponte village of the Lima 722, while

the Soajo, featured 852! As of 1960, the fires continued to grow,

but the population reversed the upward dynamics, passing on significant

decline, due to the strong migrations that made themselves felt. Currently, the

number of fireworks exceed 1250, but despite this grandiose

increment with the population to decline, this was only possible, by way of

there are intense and unfusive flows of entry and exit of the natural and their

descendants, themselves of the hodiernal space mobility. Must recognize-

if, today, that the classic concept of resident population finds itself

unadjusted from reality, by being very voluble in its general applicability, the

which is pretty demonstrative, also for the Soajo gents, where

multiplied is the object, of assaz obsolescence! ... The number of

voters of Soajo is in the present 1447. Many families from other areas of the

country, including that of its capital, possess today in the Soajo housing of fim-de-

week and vacation, which, jointly with the tourists, occupy the houses

spoken of tourism, determining another human frame and revitalization,

unthinkable scenario in the first decades of the second half of the century

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IV

SOCIO-ECONOMIC, CULTURAL AND RELIGIOUS SITUATION

If well that they continue to be of importance to the economic activities connected

to agriculture, pastorics and forest exploitation, have emerged bolstered

in the last decades that of trade and services, specifically those linked to

restoration and tourism. In the agricultural area the minifumdios predominated

private, subjected to intensive policulture; considered land

arable of good fertility, it was their explorers bafejed with works

of agricultural hydraulics that have enabled considerable improvement in production

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cerealyphs. The quantity and quality of private spiggers built

in granite, as well as the large amount of mills with the same

nature pétrea, constitute the largest concentrations in one freguish only

in Portugal. These ancestral equipments reveal themselves of great interest

historical and ethnographic, being manifestations of that individualism if

overpujava to collectivism, given the private ownership and use of these

means of production. Animal husbandry centered on the creation of vaccum cattle, ovine and

mackerel benefits from the vast private domains of the freguesia and the baldios

serranos, which in annual permanence allow for the creation of animals that the

stabular and domestic production would deny. Tourism has raised the creation of

a business organisation that functions as a centre of the reserves of

accommodations, being an economic segment that well driven, a lot can

contribute to the development of Soajo. The civil construction occupies, damong

economic activities, place of relief with the production of significant

new dwellings and, with the requalification and reclamation of the park

old housing, one other architectural visual appeared in general

pleasing, leading, recently, a remarkable son of the land, the Bishop

Dom Abílio Ribas, to designate Soajo as granitic village, as it

also the medieval profiling troublemakers meet, such as the

casario, lageates of equal nature. In terms of public transport,

Soajo is served by collective transport of buses and in it are

sedeed car rental (taxis). Has courier service, with the

existence of a CTT post and, daily domiciliary distribution. In the

Soajo, other indicators deserve highlight as they are sanitation,

public lighting with enhanced lamps in the historical area, water to the

household, collection of waste and cleaning of public spaces. Has the

pharmacy freguesia of pharmacy, bank branch, people's house, park

polidsports, social and parochial center, freguish joint headquarters,

modern restaurants, cafés, pastry shops and bakeries, milling units,

mini-markets, talho, fish supply, drugstore, establishment of

construction materials, funerary agency, modist, civil constructors,

barbershop, hair salon. The albufairs of the Soajo-Lindoso dams,

and of Touvedo are deployed in part, too, on Soajo territory.

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In health care has a health extension to provide response

to the needs of the population, as well as a unit for analyses

clinics. In terms of teaching, Soajo, has public preschool education,

about thirty years ago, and the basic education dates back to the time of D. Maria I,

having their remarkable immovable was edited in the 1931, and it came to be

the best of the concelho. Local journalism finds expression through the

monthly publication-Voice of Soajo-, founded in 1975, which displays a

take away from 1800 copies, cultural vehicle that allows you to interconnect the

local community with the soajiers in the diaspora. There are in Soajo a

Cultural and Recreational Association, a Juvenile Association, an Association

Cultural and Sport, the Folklic Ranch of the Village of Soajo, a Club of

Hunting. It has the Soajo of the bicentennial monthly fair where they are traded

natural products and very varied artefacts, as well as livestock goods. In

soil territory of the Soajo is installed a riding school, to which

makes available in rent-seeking scheme, garranos, that percurring rails

defined, makes it possible to achieve with relative ease the areas of high

altitudes of the Soajo sawing. The designated "Port of the Mezio" at the portelle of the

same name, on the limit of the limits of the Soajo, ora in conclusion, will allow

penetrate into the National Park with a greater degree of information and, still, the

previous contact of a theme park will benefit visitors and the

aboriginal populations. In the monumental strand the Soajo possesses: his

vetusto pelourinho, national monument since 1910; the most famous

set of spiggers from Portugal, classified as real estate of interest

public; the modest but ancestral building, full of symbolism, which are the

Painters of the Concelho, inolvidable testimony of the judicial past and forum of the

public administration; the building where the Royal Montaria of Soajo worked,

slab of old-fashioned granitic ash and canastro, where after the extinction

of this one, it worked the last Administration of the Soajo Concelho. Are still

worthy of note, not only for its seniority that appears to be pre-national, the

granite church matrix, main place of religious worship and ex-cemetery

multissecular that, pese though, deep alterations and amplification

subsequent to your primitive construction, welcomed into your breast and around you

successive generations, and still the shifting presbytery to which, some

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disvaris of the deployment of the Portuguese Republic, they put an end. Soajo,

in heraldic terms, it is the holder of a coat of arms, encimed by

four towers, adjusted, therefore, to the category of village, which the official approval

legitimized.

SUMMARY OF FUNDAMENTALS

1-Whereas, for many centuries, Soajo was village or seat of

concelho, seat of judicial trial, village or seat of the comarch of your " Montaria

Real " with special jurisdiction.

2-Considering that Soajo was one of the first municipalities and one of the first

adjudicated, of the Between Douro and Minho, allowing him to have, from the dawn of

Portugal, autonomy and identity of their own, which they have made to the

long gone, had developed a historical role of remarkable

importance.

3-Considering that it is important to assign the category of village to Soajo, given that

is about after all recognizing a statute that has always maintained and amped,

recognition of this one that is of elementary justice.

4-Considering that the general and local interests in question, as well as

the anymic, administrative, economic and financial repercussions of the

intended change, manifestly, thus advises and requires, to

benefit of the Soajo gents.

5-Considering that, at the current time, it satisfies what is stipulated in the Law No.

11 / 82, both in the reasons of historical order (Article 3º (b) of this Law),

as in what is laid out in Article 14º of the same law, where they consider themselves

not only motifs of historical nature, but also of cultural order and

architectural, and, still, because it brings together effective conditions to be asserted

as a village, as it possesses more than half of the requirements explained and

required in article 12º of the said law, concernin to collective equipment,

for it has in its acquis:

a) Post of medical assistance

b) Pharmacy

c) People's House and Cultural and Sports Association

d) Collective Public Transit

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e) Posture of CTT

f) Various commercial establishments, hotel and tourism

g) Establishment of basic education

h) Banking agency

e) Section of Volunteer Firefighters.

6-Considering that geographical, demographic, social, cultural and

economic so they justify it.

7-Considering that the historical legacy of Soajo reveals itself valuable, whether

be considered in its symbolic meaning, either in the archaeological strand

or patrimonial.

Attending to all the motivations and reasons contained in the statement of reasons

exposed, manifold of the current urban and socio-cultural developments-

economic of the Soajo, under the constitutional and regimental provisions

applicable, the undersigned deputies of the Party Parliamentary Group

Socialist present the following draft law:

Single article

It is eleveto the category of Soajo village, situated in the area of the municipality of

Arches of Valdevez, Viana district of the Castle.

Palace of S. Bento, March 12, 2009

The Members,