Municipalities of Puerto Rico

The municipalities of Puerto Rico (Spanish: municipios de Puerto Rico) are second-level administrative divisions defined with geographic boundaries and governmental authority in the archipelago and island of Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the U.S. Amounting to 78 incorporated towns and cities equivalent to U.S. counties, two of which are outside the main island, namely the smaller islands of Vieques and Culebra, the municipalities are governed by a popularly elected strong mayor and unicameral legislature. They are subdivided into 902 barrios, third-level divisions controlled by the municipal government.^[1][2] As a jurisdiction under U.S. sovereignty, Puerto Rico does not have first-level administrative units akin to states or provinces.

The municipalities of Puerto Rico operate under the Municipal Code of Puerto Rico (Law No. 107 of 2020), which superseded the Autonomous Municipalities Act of Puerto Rico (Law No. 81 of 1991), as established by the Legislative Assembly of Puerto Rico, the governmental body responsible for their organization under Section 1, Article VI of the Constitution of Puerto Rico.^[3] Electorally, the municipalities are grouped into eight senatorial districts and forty representative districts, representing roughly equal populations in the Legislative Assembly.^[4][5]

The archipelago and island of Puerto Rico is administratively divided into the following 78 municipalities:

The archipelago and island of Puerto Rico is administratively divided into the following 78 municipalities (alphabetically ordered):^[6]

• Municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants
• San Juan, the largest municipality and capital of Puerto Rico.
• Bayamón, the second largest municipality of Puerto Rico, located just west of San Juan.
• Carolina, the third largest municipality of Puerto Rico, located just east of San Juan.
• Ponce, the fourth largest municipality of Puerto Rico and the largest municipality outside the San Juan metropolitan area.
• Caguas, the fifth largest municipality of Puerto Rico.

Since 2020, the municipalities are organized under the Municipal Code of Puerto Rico (Law. No. 107 of 2020).^[3] They were previously governed under by the Law of Autonomous Municipalities of Puerto Rico (Law. No. 81 of 1991), which established that every municipality must have an elected strong mayor with a municipal legislature as the form of government.^[12] Each legislature must be unicameral, with the number of members related to adequate representation of the total population of the municipality. In contrast to other jurisdictions, both the mayors and the municipal legislators are elected on the same date and for the same term of four years in office.

From a political and ekistic perspective, several differences and similarities exist between municipalities of differing population sizes. For instance, municipalities with 50,000 inhabitants or more are considered incorporated cities, while those with fewer than 50,000 are considered incorporated towns.^[13] Size affects the autonomy exercised by the jurisdiction: cities provide and manage their own services, while towns typically depend on nearby cities for certain services. Demographically, municipalities in Puerto Rico are equivalent to counties in the United States, and Puerto Rican municipalities are registered as county subdivisions in the United States census.^[14] Statistically, the municipality with the largest number of inhabitants is San Juan, with 342,259, while Culebra is the smallest, with around 1,792. Arecibo is the largest in terms of geography, with around 125 mi², and Cataño the smallest, with around 4.8 mi².^[8]

Except for San Juan, Ponce, Florida, and Vieques, all municipalities have a barrio equivalent to a downtown area in the U.S. called pueblo, officially known as barrio-pueblo (literally "ward-town"), which typically is the site of the historic Spanish colonial settlement, administrative center, and urban core of the municipality.^[15] However, municipalities with large populations, like Ponce, may have an urban core that consist of several barrios.

In Recent Civic Architecture in Porto Rico by Adrian C. Finlayson, architect for the Insular Department of the Interior Architecture, writing for the publication Architectural Record in 1920, the Puerto Rican municipality is accurately described as:

In 2012, 36 of the 78 municipalities (46%) were experiencing a budget deficit.^[17] In total, the combined debt carried by the municipalities stands at about US$590 million.^[a]

The following is an alphabetical list of the municipalities and their population together with a breakdown of their racial composition.

Multiple times, politicians have discussed and proposed consolidating Puerto Rico's municipalities but so far no proposals has been adopted. In 1902 the Puerto Rico legislature, under pressure from the U.S.-appointed governor of Puerto Rico, passed a law consolidating the then-76 municipalities of Puerto Rico into 46.^[23] The law was repealed three years later.^[24][25] In October 2009, a Puerto Rican legislator proposed a bill that would reduce the current 78 municipalities of Puerto Rico down to 20. The bill called for a referendum to take place on June 13, 2010, which would let the people decide on the matter.^[26] However, the bill never made into law.^[27] With the Puerto Rican government-debt crisis that emerged in the first half of 2010s, a new plan to consolidate municipalities was again circulated in the legislature in 2017 as a way to alleviate the government debt crisis.^[28][29] In March 2019, then Governor Ricardo Rosselló created an initiative that would preserve the existing municipalities but create regional consolidation by sharing service overhead in the form of counties but he resigned prior to anything coming of his proposal.^[30]

• es:Organización territorial de Puerto Rico

• CIA World Factbook - Puerto Rico
• Municipalities on the west coast of Puerto Rico
• Diario de Puerto Rico official website