The municipality of Moita, integral territory of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, is located on the Left Bank of the Tagus Estuary, with a riverfront than 20 km. With the exception of the Valley Mulberry, all other parishes (Lavradio, Low Bath, Gaius / Rosario, Moita and Small Trouble) are in contact with River.
The new centrality and accessibility brought about by the construction of the Vasco da Gama Bridge is an asset in the positioning of this county in the Setúbal region, especially for the exploitation of its natural resources and waterfront and is a magnet for the installation of new equipment, new businesses and new residents. Most are further opportunities for local and regional development, resulting from the effort of the City Council on urban and environmental regeneration.
An interesting property connected to the river, pleasant garden area and the richness of cultural and recreational activity are in the municipality of Moita a must for all visitors who want to learn more about the south bank of the Tagus.
The origins of human settlement in the Municipality of Moita back to the beginnings of the Neolithic and correspond to an occupation of residential character with some six thousand years, as evidenced by archaeological finds of the deposit of Gaius.
However, we do not know a continued occupation of space, in that it is only since the mid-thirteenth century we can point to the existence of a human nucleus into Lavradio, as sure as the oldest known document relating to this locality, which confirms the existence of this place with a chaplain named Jonathan Roberts, dated January 30, 1298.
The settlement of the riverside track, which is part of the territory's current county of Moita, has only occurred in a more or less continuously with the pacification of the whole area, which makes us suppose that it happened just after the final conquest of Alcacer do Sal in 1217.
All this vast region (donated by D. Sancho I, in the year 1186) that stretched from the south bank of the River Tagus to the extreme of the Alentejo was the direct dependence of the Military Order of Santiago. It is in this context that the appointment of Riba Tejo, a term used by the friars of Santiago to qualify for the vast territory between the river and the river Coina of eels and in which they were born and were developing various population groups, attracted by the strength of the estuary.
It is within this organizational structure that emerges from the parish of St. Lawrence Lavradio confirmed documentary by an award dated 5 October 1319. The period between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries is conducive to economic development and population Lavradio, so you see its growing importance in the regional context, to receive the status of towns (1477), the municipal government (1479) and town charter (1514).
But at the end of the century and the beginning of four of five hundred, is assumed to be its golden period, covering an end an extensive territory that included the present counties of Barreiro and Moita, extending from the Ribeira de Coina up Trouble small. Although it would retain a jurisdiction, the former county of Lavradio was in direct dependence of the Military Order of Santiago, his grantee, and it was a commendation from the Bureau of the Order Mestral.
Against this background space-time that arise villages, consisting of little more than a dozen people, demonstrating that the humanization, within the current county Moita was done very slowly, which was due in large part to soil structure, entirely covered by forests and pinewoods.
Given the imperatives of geography, the clusters that were born at term Lavradio grown in close conjunction with work on the river, through an effective network of inland waterway links to the other side, which allowed rapid movement of people and goods. Moreover, the development of Moita is inextricably linked to coastal shipping, an activity which turned it into a land of passage and an important junction between the South and the city of Lisbon.
Thus, as we have witnessed the growth of Moita, culminating in his elevation to the village in 1691, Lavradio is slowly declining, a situation which is reflected in the disintegration of its territory and consequently decrease in the population, so that in the century XVIII, Lavradio had only 124 residents, while Moita already recorded 225 "neighbors" and the place of Trouble Small 55 "neighbors."
In the late seventeenth century, we now have two towns and two counties with their respective constitutional areas, administered individually by two ordinary judges, aldermen, a county attorney, clerk of the Board, a judge of the orphans with their clerk, two notaries, a mayor and a company of ordnance.
In the nineteenth century, in the course of administrative reforms undertaken by the Liberal government, Lavradio has definitely lost its autonomy and was incorporated as a city parish, at first in Barreiro (1855) and, subsequently, in Moita (1861). In the last decade of the century, with the second extinction of the municipality of Moita (1895), the parish of Lavradio again be added, for three more years, Barreiro, to be reinstated again, ultimately, in the municipality of Moita ( 1898).
The municipality of Moita is divided into six parishes, with a population estimated by Statistics (Provisional Estimates of Resident Population) in 71 374 inhabitants.
