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"Freguesia" (pron. ) is the Portuguese term for civil parish, a secondary local administrative unit in Portugal and in the former Portuguese Empire, and a former secondary local administrative unit in Macau. A "freguesia" is a subdivision of a "concelho" or "município", the Portuguese synonym terms for municipality. Each civil parish takes the name of its seat, which is always the most important (or the single) human agglomeration within its area; in cases where the seat is itself divided into more than one civil parish, each one takes the name of a landmark within its area or of the patron saint from the usually coterminous Catholic parish ("paróquia" in Portuguese).