I’ll throw in our draft map here, too. Just want to double-check a few details before including it in our articles.
This map has been created by yours truly, with the following assumptions:
- High/low density areas is determined by population density or GDP per capita at the NUTS 3 level (2013 version)
- The “interior” vs “non-interior” regions are determined by this list of municipalities (concelhos) and parishes (freguesias)
I made the extra effort to include the specific parishes that qualify in the municipalities that other maps often just refer to as “mixed” or “not eligible with exceptions”. Still, I realize the map is not super useful for anyone looking at a specific location/parish in one of these areas, as it can be a bit hard to discern from a map which parishes are included exactly—or even to figure out which parish a given address belongs to.
We’re considering building a simple search tool where you can input any address in Portugal, and it’ll return the status of that specific address (along with information about which parish and municipality it belongs to, if it’s interior or not, etc). Would this be helpful?
EDIT: Here are the regions that the way I read it should qualify as low density currently:
NUTS 3 regions that have lower GDP per capita than 75% (€ 15,523) of the national average (€20,698) (2021 numbers):
- Tâmega e Sousa
- Alto Tâmega
- Beiras e Serra da Estrela
These regions have fewer than 100 residents per km2 (in 2021):
- Alto Tâmega
- Douro
- Terras de Trás-os-Montes
- Viseu Dão Lafões
- Beira Baixa
- MĂ©dio Tejo
- Beiras e Serra da Estrela
- Alentejo Litoral
- Baixo Alentejo
- LezĂria do Tejo
- Alto Alentejo
- Alentejo Central
- Algarve
2023 Update: The 2021 data is the latest available per January 2023, however in general the population density trend all over the country is falling, so it’s unlikely that any of the ones qualifying in based on the 2021 data would have stopped qualifying by now. Places that could soon drop below the 100 residents per km2 threshold include the Azores (101.8 in 2021) and Coimbra (100.8 in 2021) regions. So it might be worth keeping a look out for any new population data coming out of those places if you would like to invest there.