Administrative divisions of Portugal (on Terceira Island), the historical and cultural capital, is the home of the Azorean judiciary and seat of the Diocese of the Azores. Madeira is an archipelago that includes two principal islands, Madeira and Porto Santo, plus two uninhabited natural group of islands, the Desertas and Savage Islands (). The archipelago is located closer to Africa than Europe, is highly commercial and urbanized; its regional capital (Funchal) is developmentally comparable to urban centers in the Canary or Balearic Islands. The division of the Portuguese territory is established in title eight (Título VIII) of the Portuguese constitution: granting local authority to
Geology of Madeira to the end of the Pleistocene ice ages means that some Quaternary marine terraces are as much as 100 meters above sea level. Groundwater on Madeira is held in fractured volcanic rock aquifers, with widely varying transmissivity and dissolved mineral content. Water is generally slightly acidic to slightly alkaline and cold, although there are small quantities of thermal water near fault zones. Much of the water on the island comes from high-discharge springs. Leptosols, cambisols and andisols are the three main soil types on the island. Madeira has few natural resources and no mining, aside from small-scale extraction of sand