Buying property in Madeira: the national land reserves apply, but only through a transitional regime of 2011

For a buyer, the Madeira question is not whether the Portuguese land reserves exist there. It is which document decides whether a particular plot is inside one — and the answer is two documents, read together, neither of them the national delimitation.

The short answer: Decreto Legislativo Regional 18/2011/M of 11 August 2011 establishes a transitional regime for applying the national Reserva Ecológica Nacional and Reserva Agrícola Nacional to Madeira. During that transitional period, the REN is defined on the basis of the protected-areas regime in force in the region; and for the RAN, the land in question is all soils of good or very good agricultural capability according to the Carta dos Solos da Ilha da Madeira and its complementary instruments, which are also classified in the municipal plan (PDM) as agricultural space. Municipal plans may add specific RAN rules of their own. The transitional period runs until regional decrees adapting the two national statutes enter into force — and on 9 November 2026 we could find no such decree, while the Diário da República record shows the 2011 decree in force and unamended.

Everything below is read from the regional instrument and the gazette record on 9 November 2026. Where our conclusion is a reading rather than something a text states, this page says so.

Why Madeira has a transitional regime instead of the national delimitation

Both national statutes left the islands to themselves. Decreto-Lei 166/2008, the ecological reserve regime, provides in its article 46 for application to the Azores and Madeira "sem prejuízo da respectiva adequação à especificidade regional a introduzir por decreto legislativo regional" — without prejudice to the adaptation to regional specificity to be introduced by regional legislative decree. Decreto-Lei 73/2009, the agricultural reserve regime, adopts a rule of identical content in its article 48.

Madeira's answer, in the preamble to its 2011 decree, is unusually candid. It states that applying the REN and RAN regimes in the region "constitui uma redundância" — constitutes a redundancy — given the island's orographic, urban, demographic and sociological specificities, and all the more so because the purposes to be safeguarded are already dealt with by regional instruments, naming the Plano de Ordenamento do Território da Região Autónoma da Madeira (POTRAM), approved by DLR 12/95/M and amended by DLR 9/97/M, and the classification of parts of the territory as protected areas, natural park and terrestrial and marine reserves — an area in which, the preamble adds, the region was a national pioneer.

Having said that, the decree does not simply disapply the national regimes. It creates a transitional one, in its own words, "por segurança" — for safety, to remove any technical doubt, and to make it possible to create a simplified REN and RAN regime suited to the region later. The instrument is at the Madeira transitional REN and RAN regime.

What counts as RAN land in Madeira: the soil map and the municipal plan, together

This is the operative rule, article 2(2), and both halves matter:

> "para a RAN, são considerados todos os solos de boa ou muito boa capacidade agrícola segundo a Carta dos Solos da Ilha da Madeira e respectivos instrumentos complementares, e classificados no Plano Director Municipal como Espaços Agrícolas"

Two conditions, cumulative on the face of the text: the soil is of good or very good agricultural capability on the Carta dos Solos da Ilha da Madeira and its complementary instruments, and the plot is classified in the Plano Director Municipal as Espaços Agrícolas — agricultural space.

For a buyer that is a different enquiry from the mainland one. On the mainland the question is whether a plot sits inside the published RAN delimitation. In Madeira the question is whether it appears on the island soil map in the top capability classes and carries the agricultural classification in its municipality's plan. Two documents, two authorities, one answer.

Our reading, stated as a reading: we read the two requirements as cumulative because the text joins them with "e" and because the second is a classification rather than a soil quality, so the sentence has no sensible reading in which either alone suffices. The consequence of the opposite reading would be a wider reserve, not a narrower one, so a buyer should treat either condition as a reason to investigate rather than relying on our reading of the conjunction.

What counts as REN land in Madeira: the regional protected-areas regime

The same paragraph deals with the ecological reserve in a single clause: during the transitional period "a REN é definida com base no regime jurídico das áreas protegidas em vigor na Região Autónoma da Madeira" — the REN is defined on the basis of the legal regime of protected areas in force in the region.

So the mainland REN categories, the national delimitation and the national mapping are not where a Madeira answer comes from. The regional protected-areas regime is. This page does not restate that regime, because we have not read it; what the 2011 decree establishes is where to look, and that is what we publish.

Municipal plans may add rules of their own inside the Madeira RAN

Article 2(3) then gives the municipalities a role the mainland regime does not:

> "Desde que não violem os princípios constantes dos instrumentos referidos no número anterior, os Planos Directores Municipais podem estabelecer regras específicas no âmbito da RAN"

Provided they do not violate the principles in the instruments just named, municipal plans may establish specific rules within the RAN. In practice that makes the PDM of the specific municipality — Funchal, Santa Cruz, Calheta, Porto Moniz and the rest — a source of substantive restriction and not merely a map. A general answer about "Madeira" cannot be given for a plot whose municipality has not been read.

What the 2011 decree repealed, and what has happened since

Article 1 repeals article 110(1)(a) and (2)(a), (b) and (c) of DLR 43/2008/M of 23 December 2008, and article 3 repeals DLR 9/90/M of 19 April 1990 outright. The gazette's own modifications record for the 2011 decree lists exactly those two repeals as the changes it produced, and lists no modifications received — nothing has amended it.

That matters because of what article 2(1) makes the transitional period depend on: it runs until the entry into force of the regional legislative decrees approving the adaptation of Decreto-Lei 166/2008 and Decreto-Lei 73/2009 to Madeira. The decree would not need to be amended for that period to end; the adaptation decrees would simply have to exist.

We searched for them on 9 November 2026 and did not find any. What the record does show is that the 2011 decree is listed as in force ("Em vigor") and unamended. So the position we can establish is this: a regime enacted as transitional in 2011 is, in its fifteenth year, still the one a buyer has to read — and anyone acting on it should confirm that no adaptation decree has since been published, because that is exactly the event that would replace it without touching it.

What is national in Madeira and what is not

The reserves are regional in their delimitation. Much of what a buyer actually pays and signs is not.

Soil classification — the rustic-or-urban question that precedes both reserves — is decided in municipal and inter-municipal plans, and nothing in the 2011 decree displaces that. Transfer tax and stamp duty are national: the IMT rates for land, and the 2026 non-resident rate that does not reach it, are in buying land in Portugal. Estate agency is national too: the licence, the compulsory written mediation contract, the nullity the agency cannot invoke and the IMPIC registers are in estate agents in Portugal.

The Azores are the instructive contrast, because they took the other road available under articles 46 and 48: instead of a transitional regime over the national reserves, they legislated a Reserva Agrícola Regional of their own, with its own prohibitions, its own farmer test and a ten-year ban on selling a house built under its exception. That is in buying property in the Azores.

What we could not establish about Madeira land rules

• Any regional decree adapting Decreto-Lei 166/2008 or Decreto-Lei 73/2009 to Madeira. We searched on 9 November 2026 and found none. We do not conclude that none exists; we publish that we could not find one, which is also why this page tells a reader to check.
• The content of Madeira's protected-areas regime, which article 2(2) makes the definition of the REN there. We name it as the place to look rather than summarising a regime we have not read.
• Whether the two RAN conditions are cumulative is our reading of the text's conjunction, not a statement the decree makes in terms.

Frequently asked questions about buying property in Madeira

More on Portuguese property and land

The national framework — rustic soil as the residual classification, the RAN and REN regimes themselves, what the 2024 soil law did and did not open, and the IMT rates on land — is in buying land in Portugal. The other autonomous region took the opposite route and legislated its own reserve: buying property in the Azores. Checking an agent's licence, and why a mediation contract that is not in writing is void, is in estate agents in Portugal. Every instrument named here, with the date we read it, is on the sources page: the regional regime at the Madeira transitional REN and RAN regime, the national agricultural reserve at Decreto-Lei 73/2009 and the ecological reserve at Decreto-Lei 166/2008.