Seguro Names First Woman Ever as Representative of the Republic for the Azores — and Restores 15 Years of Frozen Succession in Both Atlantic Regions

President António José Seguro has named historian Susana Goulart Costa as the new Representative of the Republic for the Autonomous Region of the Azores and judge Paulo Duarte Barreto Ferreira as Representative for Madeira. The announcement, posted to the Belém presidency website on 15 April, ends a fifteen-year freeze in both offices and marks the first time a woman has held either of the two constitutional posts.

Público reported on 19 April that Seguro built unusual cross-party consensus behind both nominations — including the regional governments in Ponta Delgada and Funchal, both controlled by PSD-led coalitions. It is a quiet but significant opening shot from the new president, four weeks into a five-year term.

Who the Two Nominees Are

Susana Goulart Costa is an associate professor with habilitation at the University of the Azores. Born in Angra do Heroísmo, on the island of Terceira, she directs the Department of History, Philosophy and Arts at the university and serves as deputy director of CHAM — the Centre for the Humanities, a research network spanning the Azores and NOVA University Lisbon. Her academic work focuses on religious history, the early-modern Atlantic and Azorean cultural heritage. She is the first Azorean ever appointed to the role.

Paulo Duarte Barreto Ferreira is a judge from Funchal with a career on the bench since 1987. He served as judge-president of the Madeira court district from 2014 to 2020 and currently sits on the Tribunal da Relação de Lisboa. Like Goulart Costa, he is a regional native — another signal that Seguro is ending the long-criticised practice of parachuting mainlanders into the two Atlantic posts.

Why the Role Matters

The Representative of the Republic is the president’s delegate in each autonomous region. The officeholder signs regional legislation into law, mediates between the national and regional executives, and can send laws to the Constitutional Court. It is a low-visibility post in calm times — and a pivotal one during conflicts between Lisbon and the regional capitals, as both Terceira and the Madeiran politics of the Albuquerque era have demonstrated in recent years.

Goulart Costa and Barreto Ferreira replace Ireneu Barreto in the Azores and Pedro Catarino in Madeira, both of whom had served since 2011. They were originally appointed by former President Cavaco Silva and reappointed by Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, giving each a full fifteen-year tenure — an unusually long run that left both posts feeling politically frozen. The two will continue in office until the new representatives are formally sworn in.

A Consensus Seguro Deliberately Sought

Under the constitution, the president nominates representatives after consulting the government. The regional executives are not formally involved, but in practice no president wants to install a representative whom the regional majority will spend five years resisting. Seguro sent both names through Prime Minister Luís Montenegro’s office and, according to Público, secured explicit agreement from PSD Regional President José Manuel Bolíeiro in Ponta Delgada and from Madeira’s Miguel Albuquerque.

The consensus matters for substance as much as for optics. Both regions have live disputes with central government — Madeira over the social mobility subsidy (where six regional PSD MPs broke with their national party earlier this month to back an opposition expansion bill), and the Azores over ongoing negotiations on the Lajes Base and US military presence on Terceira. The new representatives will be ruling on the constitutional limits of regional decrees that touch both files.

The First-Woman Symbolism

The Representative of the Republic is one of the few senior constitutional posts that a woman has never held since the 1976 autonomy statutes created it. Goulart Costa’s nomination comes just as Seguro’s own cabinet of advisers — drawn heavily from academia and civil society — takes shape at Belém. The signal is that the new presidency is prepared to break with the institutional inertia that defined the final Marcelo years.

Dates for the swearing-in have not yet been published. The handover is expected before the 25 de Abril holiday.