Municipalities of Puerto Rico

Municipalities of Puerto Rico
Location	Commonwealth of Puerto Rico
Number	78
Populations	From 1,818 pop. in Culebra to 395,326 pop. in San Juan
Areas	From 4.84 square miles (12.5 km2) in Cataño to 125.95 square miles (326.2 km2) in Arecibo
Government	Mayor–council government
Subdivisions	Barrio

The municipalities of Puerto Rico (Spanish: municipios de Puerto Rico) are the second-level administrative divisions in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. There are 78 such administrative divisions covering all 78 incorporated towns and cities. Each municipality is led by a mayor and divided into barrios, third-level administrative divisions, though the latter are not vested with any political authority. Every municipality is governed as stated by the Autonomous Municipalities Act of 1991, which establishes that every municipality must have an elected strong mayor with a municipal legislature as the form of government. 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.^[1] 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.^[2] 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.^[3]

All municipalities have a barrio called pueblo proper, officially called barrio-pueblo (literally "district-town"), which typically is the site of the historic Spanish colonial settlement, administrative center and urban core of the municipality.^[4] However, municipalities with large populations may have an urban core that consist of several barrios.