Partido () was a Spanish colonial term that referred to a governed local administrative region, roughly equivalent to today's

municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality'' may also mean the go ...

in terms of rural land areas included, and used in the

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

colonies in

the Americas The Americas, which are sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North America, North and South America. The Americas make up most of the land in Earth's Western Hemisphere and comprise the New World. ...

during the times of the

Spanish Empire The Spanish Empire ( es, link=no, Imperio español), also known as the Hispanic Monarchy ( es, link=no, Monarquía Hispánica) or the Catholic Monarchy ( es, link=no, Monarquía Católica) was a colonial empire governed by Spain and its prede ...

. It was "the territory or district composed of a jurisdiction or administration from a main city." The term referred to 18th and 19th-century land regions that consisted of mature

dispersed settlement A dispersed settlement, also known as a scattered settlement, is one of the main types of settlement patterns used by landscape historians to classify rural settlements found in England and other parts of the world. Typically, there are a numb ...

s but which had not yet been formally incorporated as

hamlet ''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...

s. Though similar to today's municipality, ''partidos'' were under the control of a town or city government whose seat was, at times, a day's walk, or longer, away.

Puerto Rico

"Partido" was the term used in Spanish colonial times for various scarcely populated regions in Puerto Rico, including Aguada, Ponce,

Arecibo Arecibo (; ) is a city and municipality on the northern coast of Puerto Rico, on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, located north of Utuado and Ciales; east of Hatillo; and west of Barceloneta and Florida. It is about west of San Juan, th ...

, and

Coamo Coamo (, ) is a town and municipality founded in 1579 in the south-central region of Puerto Rico, located north of Santa Isabel; south of Orocovis and Barranquitas; east of Villalba and Juana Díaz; and west of Aibonito and Salinas. Coamo ...

. In the case of Ponce, the region was a ''partido'' in 1670, when a chapel was built and nearby neighbors started to build around it, converting the

into a

. However, it continued to depend on the cabildo at the ''Villa de San Germán'' for all of its judicial and administrative matters. Later, once the hamlet had grown it, was allowed to build its own Cabildo and run its own affairs independent from San German. The forming of its own cabildo represented the founding of a municipal corporation, at which point it was no longer referred to as ''partido'' and became a

henceforth.José Leandro Montalvo-Guenard. In, Luis Fortuño Janeiro's ''Album Histórico de Ponce: 1692-1963'' (Section: "Algo Sobre Ponce y su Fundación".) Ponce, Puerto Rico: Imprenta Fortuño, 1963. p. 11.

Puerto Rico

See also

References

Further reading