Santa-Clara-a-Nova: the parish restored in 2025 with the wrong name in the law

Sources:[17][61][1]

Sources:[8][9][5][6][7][16]

Counting the 60 days

Law published

13 March 2025 (not counted)

14 to 31 March

18 days

April

30 days (total 48)

1 to 12 May

12 days (total 60)

Day 60

12 May 2025: Rectification 23-A/2025/1 published, without Almodôvar

From

13 May 2025: any rectification is null

Sources:[4][2][27]

The hyphen spread to four informative documents, none of them binding, including the 2026 State Budget bill, where the parish’s own funding line is misspelled. Every act and register that actually runs the parish ignored it.

Where the error was copied

Where it was ignored

A full-text search of the Diário da República for "Santa-Clara-a-Nova" returns six hits: the law (and its consolidated version) and five local documents from 2001 to 2012. Nothing published after March 2025 uses that spelling. [60][61]

Sources:[49][2][46][44][47]

What the maps say

• To Santa Clara-a-Nova: 103 movable items, about EUR 178 thousand at cost, after removing five duplicated lines. The Santa Clara-a-Nova synthetic football pitch alone is EUR 132,713.76 (29 December 2023). The rest is office and IT equipment, tools, tents, tables and benches.
• To Gomes Aires: 54 items, about EUR 48 thousand, including the Gomes Aires parish council building, the "Casa da Rua do Poço Novo", a Renault Kangoo and a street vacuum of about EUR 19 thousand.
• Staff: one permanent technical assistant and one IEFP job placement for each parish.
• Missing from the maps: the Santa Clara-a-Nova parish council building, the cemetery, cash and bank balances, debts, and four vehicles (two Mitsubishis, a Ford Transit and a mini-loader) whose insurance passes to Santa Clara-a-Nova but which are not listed as its assets. The maps carry no tax-matrix or land-registry numbers.

The money: Parish Financing Fund (FFF)

Together the two parishes receive 2.6 % more in 2026 than the union did in 2025. The Government’s bill prints the parish’s line with the hyphen; the DGAL payment map of 9 January 2026 prints it correctly, with the same amounts. The text of Lei n.º 73-A/2025 published in the Diário da República does not include the per-parish Mapa 13, so it cannot be said that the hyphen entered a second law. [37][35][36][13]

Sources:[21][22][23][24][25]

Citizen card

No need to change it. Birthplace is not one of the card’s visible fields (Lei n.º 7/2007, article 7) and, since Lei n.º 61/2021, the address is no longer on the chip. Neither the 2013 nor the 2025 reform requires a new card. [14]

Birth record

The record keeps the parish name in force when it was drawn up. Lei n.º 11-A/2013 kept earlier records valid (article 6(4)) and promised a rule letting people born before 2013 keep the old name (6(5)); we found no such rule. Lei n.º 25-A/2025 says nothing about the civil registry. [1][15][2]

Electoral roll

For voters only "a designação da freguesia em que se encontra inscrito" (the name of their parish) changed; in the election commission’s words, these are "different names for one and the same reality". Voters are placed by the address on their card, so the restored boundaries sorted them again with nothing to do. There were 412 on election day and 416 on 31 December 2025. [26][29][21]

Church

The Catholic parish was never merged: the Diocese of Beja still lists Santa Clara-a-Nova and Gomes Aires as separate parishes. [62]

Who asked for the merger

The municipality itself, in 2012, and the same municipality voted unanimously to undo it in 2022. [39][41]

The hyphen

Nobody loses a house, a vote or a birth record over the hyphen: the documents that identify people (candidate lists, results, voter rolls, tax records) use "Santa Clara-a-Nova". [21][29][31]

An owner’s tax record (caderneta predial) now says 020213 "Santa Clara-a-Nova". The land-registry description may say the pre-2013 parish or the union, depending on a land-registry (IRN) decision we could not find. And several documents published after the restoration still name the abolished union.

Whether the tax office renumbered the property articles in the 2025 migration is an open question.

What the public documents do not yet answer, in order of importance. If you know the answer, please write to us. contact us

1. The tax identification number (NIPC) of the restored parish council and the name under which it was registered with the national register of legal persons. Other restored parishes received new numbers; the abolished union’s was 510839479. It is the last place where a binding "Santa-Clara-a-Nova" could exist.
2. Where the hyphen first appeared: in the parliamentary working group’s file of December 2024 or only in the drafting of the bill of 8 January 2025.
3. Mapa 13 of Lei n.º 73-A/2025 as enacted, if the Diário da República ever publishes it separately.
4. The exact time of installation of the Santa Clara-a-Nova parish assembly, which fixes the moment the union ceased to exist.
5. The IRN decision that adjusted (or not) the land-registry descriptions after 2013, and any guidance for 2025. And whether the tax office gave the property articles new numbers.
6. The union’s final accounts: the split of the cash, the council building, the cemetery and the vehicles missing from the maps.
7. The boundary redefinition with Gomes Aires reported in April 2026: which boundary is at stake and whether the official map or INE will reflect it.
8. The 2021 and 2022 minutes of the parish and municipal assemblies, and the minutes (not just the notice) of the general count assembly.
9. Whether any member of Parliament asked for a rectification and was too late or refused.
10. Whether there is, in 2026, any parliamentary initiative to correct the names of parishes restored in 2025.