Thanks to a post on Reddit/Portugal
There’s this upbeat geographical and occasionally historic look at Portugal.
Was somewhat surprised to see that Sintra was as big as the statistics show.
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That was so CUTE!! Yeah, me, too. Didn’t know Sintra was so big. Thanks a lot for posting that!
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Thanks for the post. Sintra is actually not the second largest city, and it’s not even a cidade (city) at all. Just like Cascais, it’s holding dear to the more marketable title of vila (town) 
The author of the video was probably thinking of Sintra the municipality (concelho, município), not Sintra the town. And of its total population, not its size.
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For some strange reason, I was looking at this today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_Portugal - it makes the distinction you describe, between the town itself and the municipality and region/district.
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This reminds me of something that happened to me recently. I had been contacted via an Expat group on Facebook by an American couple who wanted to meet to talk about the pros and cons of moving to Portugal. We agreed to meet for a coffee in the town of Silves. They were staying in Lagos and inevitably ended up running late causing us to wait for 30 mins. They then sent a text to say they had arrived at Silves and I was expecting to see their car in the next 5 mins (Silves is not a very big place). However, it proved to be another 30 mins wait. It turned out they meant they had entered the Conselho of Silves and not the town itself!
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They might’ve been an American couple, but they were clearly familiar with Portuguese time 
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