PORTUGAL – Travel Facts

Capital and largest city. Lisbon 38°46′N 9°9′W
Official languages. Portuguese; Recognised regional languages. Mirandese spoken in some villages of the municipality of Miranda do Douro, was officially recognized in 1999 awarding it an official right-of-use. Portuguese Sign Language is also recognized.
Ethnic groups (2011) 96.3% Portuguese. 3.7% others
Religion (2011). 81.0% Roman Catholic.  3.3% other Christians, 0.6% other religion. 6.8% no religion, 8.3% undeclared
Formation. Foundation 868; Re-founding 1095; Sovereignty 24 June 1128; Kingdom 26 July 1139; Recognition 5 October 1143; Papal recognition 23 May 1179; Restoration 1 December 1640; Republic 5 October 1910; Democratization 25 April 1974; Present Constitution 25 April 1976; EEC accession 1 January 1986
Area. Total 92,212 km2(35,603 sq mi. (109th); Water (%) 0.5
Population. 2016 estimate 10,309,573 (83rd); 2011 census 10,562,178; Density 115/km2 (297.8/sq mi) (97th)
Per capita income. $30,258 (40th)
GDP (nominal) 2017 estimate Total $211.696 billion (43rd); Per capita $20,575 (36th)
Gini (2016) 33.5 medium
HDI (2015). 0.843 – very high · 41st
Currency. Euro (€) (EUR)
Antipodes. New Zealand and Pacific Ocean
HDI (2015) 0.843 very high · 41st

Portugal is the westernmost country of mainland Europe, being bordered to the west and south by the Atlantic Ocean and to the north and east by Spain. Its territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira, both autonomous regions with their own regional governments. Portugal is the oldest state on the Iberian Peninsula and one of the oldest European nation-states, its territory having been continuously settled, invaded and fought over since prehistoric times.
Portugal as a country was established in the aftermath of the Christian Reconquista against the  Muslim Moors who had invaded the Iberian Peninsula in 711 AD.
In the 15th and 16th centuries, Portugal established the first global empire, becoming one of the world’s major economic, political and military powers. During this period, today referred to as the Age of Discovery, Portuguese explorers pioneered maritime exploration. Under royal patronage of Prince Henry the Navigator and King John II were such notable voyages as Bartolomeu Dias’ sailing beyond the Cape of Good Hope (1488), Vasco da Gama’s discovery of the sea route to India (1497–98) and the European discovery of Brazil (1500). Portugal monopolized the spice trade during this time, and the empire expanded with military campaigns in Asia. However, events such as the destruction of Lisbon in a 1755 earthquake, the country’s occupation during the Napoleonic Wars, and the independence of Brazil (1822), left Portugal crippled from war and diminished in its world power.
After the Carnation Revolution in 1974, ending the Portuguese Colonial War, independence was granted to almost all its overseas territories. The handover of Macau to China in 1999 marked the end of the longest-lived colonial empire. Portugal has left a profound cultural and architectural influence across the globe, a legacy of over 250 million Portuguese speakers.
Portugal has a high-income advanced economy, a developed market, and high living standards. It is ranked highly in terms of environmental performance (7th), LGBTI rights (6th in Europe), press freedom (18th), social progress (20th) and prosperity (25th), and has one of the best road networks in the world. With its political stability and low crime rates, it is ranked as the most peaceful country in the EU and the 3rd in the world.
Although historically a Catholic-majority country, in the last decades Portugal has transformed itself into a secular state with one of the world’s highest rates of moral freedom. It was the first country to abolish life imprisonment and one of the earliest to abolish capital punishment. Practices such as abortion, same-sex marriage and adoption, medically assisted insemination for single women and lesbian couples, and altruistic surrogacy have been legalized. In 2001, Portugal became the first country in the world to decriminalize the possession and consumption of all illicit drugs, focusing on treatment and harm reduction, with dramatic drops seen in problematic drug use, HIV and hepatitis infection rates, overdose deaths, drug-related crime and incarceration rates.

The word Portugal derives from the Roman-Celtic place name Portus Cale. The name Portucale evolved into Portugale during the 7th and 8th centuries, and by the 9th century, that term was used extensively to refer to the region between the rivers Douro and Minho, the Minho flowing along what would become the northern Portugal-Spain border. By the 11th and 12th centuries, Portugale was already referred to as Portugal.

HISTORY
Early history. Pre-Celts and Celts. The early history of Portugal is shared with the rest of the Iberian Peninsula. The region of present-day Portugal was inhabited by Neanderthals and then by Homo sapiens, who roamed the border-less region of the northern Iberian peninsula. These were subsistence societies that, although they did not establish prosperous settlements, did form organized societies. Neolithic Portugal experimented with domestication of herding animals, the raising of some cereal crops and fluvial or marine fishing.
It was believed that early in the first millennium BC, several waves of Celts invaded Portugal from Central Europe and inter-married with the local populations. Chief among these tribes were the Lusitanians in inland central Portugal and the Gallaeci of Northern Portugal, the Celtici of Alentejo, and the Cynetes or Conii of the Algarve.  A few small, semi-permanent, commercial coastal settlements (such as Tavira) were also founded in the Algarve region by Phoenicians-Carthaginians.
Roman Lusitania and Gallaecia. Romans first invaded the Iberian Peninsula in 219 BC. The Carthaginians, Rome’s adversary in the Punic Wars, were expelled from their coastal colonies. During the last days of Julius Caesar, almost the entire peninsula was annexed to the Roman Republic.
The Roman conquest took almost two hundred years. Locals were sentenced to a certain death in the slavery mines or sold as slaves to other parts of the empire. It suffered a severe setback in 150 BC, when a rebellion began in the north. The Lusitanians and other native tribes, under the leadership of Viriathus, wrested control of all of western Iberia. Rome sent numerous legions and its best generals to Lusitania to quell the rebellion, but to no avail—the Lusitanians kept conquering territory. The Roman leaders decided to change their strategy. They bribed Viriathus’s allies to kill him. In 139 BC, Viriathus was assassinated, and Tautalus became leader. Rome installed a colonial regime. The complete Romanization of Lusitania only took place in the Visigothic era.
In 27 BC, Lusitania gained the status of Roman province. Later, a northern province of Lusitania was formed, known as Gallaecia, with capital in Bracara Augusta, today’s Braga. There are still many ruins of castros (hill forts) all over modern Portugal and remains of Castro culture. Numerous Roman sites are scattered around present-day Portugal, some urban remains are quite large, like Conímbriga and Mirobriga. Conimbriga, one of the largest Roman settlements in Portugal lies 16 kilometres from Coimbra (the ancient Aeminium).
Several works of engineering, such as baths, temples, bridges, roads, circus, theatres and layman’s homes are preserved throughout the country.
Germanic kingdoms: Suebi and Visigoths. In the early 5th century, Germanic tribes, namely the Suebi and the Vandals together with their allies, the Sarmatians and Alans invaded the Iberian Peninsula where they would form their kingdom. The Kingdom of the Suebi was in former Roman provinces of Gallaecia-Lusitania. About 410 and during the 6th century it became a formally declared kingdom, where king Hermericmade a peace treaty with the Gallaecians. In 500, the Visigothic Kingdom of Iberia was centered on Toledo. The Visigoths eventually conquered the Suebi and its capital city Bracara (modern day Portugal’s Braga) in 584–585 and it then became the sixth province of the Visigothic Kingdom of Hispania. For the next 300 years, the entire Iberian Peninsula was ruled by the Visigoths. In 711, King Roderic (Rodrigo) was killed while opposing a Moorish invasion from the south.
From the various Germanic groups, the Suebi left the strongest lasting cultural legacy in what is today Portugal, Galicia and Asturias. The Portuguese way of living in regions North of the Tagus is mostly inherited from the Suebi, in which small farms prevail, distinct from the large properties of Southern Portugal. Bracara (Augusta), the modern city of Braga and former capital of Gallaecia, became the capital of the Suebi.
Islamic period and the Reconquista. Modern Portugal, along with most of modern Spain, was part of al-Andalus between 711 AD – 1249 AD, following the Umayyad Caliphate conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in 711 AD. This occupation lasted from some decades in the North to more than five centuries in the South.
After defeating the Visigoths in only a few months, the Umayyad Caliphate started expanding rapidly in the peninsula. The vast Umayyad Caliphate’s empire of Damascus stretched  from the Indus river in the Indian sub-continent up to the South of France, until its collapse in 750. That year the west of the empire gained its independence under Abd-ar-Rahman I with the establishment of the Emirate of Córdoba. After almost two centuries, the Emirate became the Caliphate of Córdoba in 929, until its dissolution a century later in 1031 into no less than 23 small kingdoms, called Taifa kingdoms. The Taifa period ended with the conquest of the Almoravids from Morocco in 1086, followed  a century later in 1147, after the second period of Taifa, by the Almohads, also from Marrakesh. The main cities of the period in Portugal were Beja, Silves, Alcácer do Sal, Santarém and Lisbon.
The Muslim population of the region consisted mainly of native Iberian converts to Islam (the so-called Muwallad or Muladi) and berbers. The Arabs were principally noblemen from Syria and Oman; and though few in numbers, they constituted the elite of the population. The Berbers were originally from the Atlas mountains and Rif mountains of North Africa and were essentially nomads.
The remnant of the Christian Visigothic armies rebelled against the Moors and regrouped in the unconquered Cantabrian Mountains. After defeating the Moors in the Battle of Covadonga in 722 AD, the Christian Kingdom of Asturias was founded starting the war of Christian reconquest known in Portuguese as the Reconquista Cristã.
At the end of the 9th century, the region between the rivers Minho and Douro, was freed or reconquered from the Moors by King Alfonso III of Asturias. The two major cities, Portus Cale on the coast and Braga in the interior and many towns now deserted were repopulated and rebuilt with Portuguese and Galician refugees and other Christians. It was named the County of Portugal after the region’s major port city—Portus Cale’ or modern Porto. One of the first cities founded at this time was Vimaranes, known today as Guimarães—the “birthplace of the Portuguese nation” or the “cradle city”. The region became known as Portucale, Portugale, and simultaneously Portugália—the County of Portugal.
Later the Kingdom of Asturias was divided into a number of Christian Kingdoms in Northern Iberia due to dynastic divisions of inheritance among the king’s offspring. With the forced abdication of Alfonso III by his sons in 910, the Kingdom of Asturias split into three separate kingdoms of León, Galicia and Asturias. The three kingdoms were eventually reunited in 924 under the crown of León.
During the next century of internecine struggles for dominance, the people of County of Portugal found themselves struggling to maintain the autonomy of Galicia with its distinct language and culture (Galician-Portuguese) from the Leonese culture. The County of Portugal separated from the Kingdom of Galicia to establish the Kingdom of Portugal.
In 1093, Alfonso VI of León and Castile bestowed the county to Henry of Burgundy for his role in reconquering the land from Moors. Henry based his newly formed county in Bracara Augusta (modern Braga), capital city of the ancient Roman province, and also the previous capital of several kingdoms over the first millennia.
Independence and Afonsine era. On 24 June 1128, the Battle of São Mamede occurred near Guimarães. Afonso Henriques, Count of Portugal, defeated his mother Countess Teresa and her lover Fernão Peres de Trava, thereby establishing himself as sole leader. Afonso then turned his arms against the Moors in the south.
Afonso’s campaigns were successful and, on 25 July 1139, he obtained an overwhelming victory in the Battle of Ourique, and straight after was unanimously proclaimed King of Portugal by his soldiers. This is traditionally taken as the occasion when the County of Portugal, as a fief of the Kingdom of León, was transformed into the independent Kingdom of Portugal.
Afonso was crowned by the Archbishop of Braga, and was recognized in 1143 by King Alfonso VII of León, and in 1179 by Pope Alexander III.
During the Reconquista period, Christians reconquered the Iberian Peninsula from Moorish domination. Afonso Henriques and his successors, aided by military monastic orders, pushed southward to drive out the Moors. At this time, Portugal covered about half of its present area. In 1249, the Reconquista ended with the capture of the Algarve and complete expulsion of the last Moorish settlements on the southern coast, giving Portugal its present-day borders, with minor exceptions.
The reigns of Dinis I, Afonso IV, and Pedro I for the most part saw peace with the Christian kingdoms of Iberia.
In 1348 and 1349 Portugal, like the rest of Europe, was devastated by the Black Death. In 1373, Portugal made an alliance with England, which is the longest-standing alliance in the world. Over time, this went far beyond geo-political and military cooperation (protecting both nations’ interests in Africa, the Americas and Asia against French, Spanish and Dutch rivals) and maintained strong trade and cultural ties between the two old European allies. Particularly in the Oporto region, there is visible English influence to this day.

Portugal spearheaded European exploration of the world and the Age of Discovery. Prince Henry the Navigator, son of King João I, became the main sponsor and patron of this endeavour. During this period, Portugal explored the Atlantic Ocean, discovering several Atlantic archipelagos like the Azores, Madeira, and Cape Verde, explored the African coast, colonized selected areas of Africa, discovered an eastern route to India via the Cape of Good Hope, discovered Brazil, explored the Indian Ocean, established trading routes throughout most of southern Asia, and sent the first direct European maritime trade and diplomatic missions to China and Japan.
In 1415, Portugal acquired the first of its overseas colonies by conquering Ceuta, the first prosperous Islamic trade centre in North Africa. There followed the first discoveries in the Atlantic: Madeira and the Azores, which led to the first colonization movements.
Throughout the 15th century, Portuguese explorers sailed the coast of Africa, establishing trading posts for several common types of tradable commodities at the time, ranging from gold to slaves, as they looked for a route to India and its spices, which were coveted in Europe.
The Treaty of Tordesillas, intended to resolve the dispute that had been created following the return of Christopher Columbus, was made by Pope Alexander VI, the mediator between Portugal and Spain. It was signed on 7 June 1494, and divided the newly discovered lands outside Europe between the two countries along a meridian 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde islands (off the west coast of Africa).
In 1498, Vasco da Gama reached India and brought economic prosperity to Portugal and its population of 1.7 million residents, helping to start the Portuguese Renaissance. In 1500, the Portuguese explorer Gaspar Corte-Real reached what is now Canada and founded the town of Portugal Cove-St. Philip’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, long before the French and English in the 17th century, and being just one of many Portuguese Colonizations of the Americas.
In 1500, Pedro Álvares Cabral discovered Brazil and claimed it for Portugal. Ten years later, Afonso de Albuquerque conquered Goa in India, Muscat and Ormuz in the Persian Strait, and Malacca, now a state in Malaysia. Thus, the Portuguese empire held dominion over commerce in the Indian Ocean and South Atlantic. Portuguese sailors set out to reach Eastern Asia by sailing eastward from Europe, landing in such places as Taiwan, Japan, the island of Timor, and in the Moluccas.
Although for a long period it was believed the Dutch were the first Europeans to arrive in Australia, there is also some evidence that the Portuguese may have discovered Australia in 1521.
All these factors made Portugal one of the world’s major economic, military, and political powers from the 15th century until the late 16th century.
Iberian Union, Restoration and early Brigantine era. Portugal’s sovereignty was interrupted between 1580 and 1640. This occurred because the last two kings of the House of Aviz – King Sebastian, who died in the battle of Alcácer Quibir in Morocco, and his great-uncle and successor, King Henry of Portugal – both died without heirs, resulting in the Portuguese succession crisis of 1580.
Subsequently, Philip II of Spain claimed the throne and so became Philip I of Portugal. Although Portugal did not lose its formal independence, it was governed by the same monarch who governed the Spanish Empire, briefly forming a union of kingdoms. At this time Spain was a geographic territory. The joining of the two crowns deprived Portugal of an independent foreign policy and led to its involvement in the Eighty Years’ War between Spain and the Netherlands.
War led to a deterioration of the relations with Portugal’s oldest ally, England, and the loss of Hormuz, a strategic trading post located between Iran and Oman. From 1595 to 1663 the Dutch-Portuguese War primarily involved the Dutch companies invading many Portuguese colonies and commercial interests in Brazil, Africa, India and the Far East, resulting in the loss of the Portuguese Indian sea trade monopoly.
In 1640, John IV spearheaded an uprising backed by disgruntled nobles and was proclaimed king. The Portuguese Restoration War between Portugal and the Spanish Empire, in the aftermath of the 1640 revolt, ended the sixty-year period of the Iberian Union under the House of Habsburg. This was the beginning of the House of Braganza, which reigned in Portugal until 1910.
King John IV’s eldest son came to reign as Afonso VI, but had physical and mental disabilities. In a palace coup organized by the King’s wife, Maria Francisca of Savoy, and his brother, Pedro, Duke of Beja, King Afonso VI was declared mentally incompetent and exiled first to the Azores and then to the Royal Palace of Sintra, outside Lisbon. After Afonso’s death, Pedro came to the throne as King Pedro II. Pedro’s reign saw the consolidation of national independence, imperial expansion, and investment in domestic production.
Pedro II’s son, John V, saw a reign characterized by the influx of gold into the coffers of the royal treasury, supplied largely by the royal fifth (a tax on precious metals) that was received from the Portuguese colonies of Brazil and Maranhão. Acting as an absolute monarch, John nearly depleted his country’s tax revenues on ambitious architectural works, most notably Mafra Palace, and on commissions and additions for his sizable art and literary collections.
Official estimates place the number of Portuguese migrants to Colonial Brazil during the gold rush of the 18th century at 600,000. This represented one of the largest movements of European populations to their colonies in the Americas during colonial times.
Pombaline era and Enlightenment (1640–1777). In 1750, Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, 1st Marquis of Pombal, was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs and in 1755, de Melo was made Prime Minister. Impressed by British economic success that he had witnessed from the Ambassador, he successfully implemented similar economic policies in Portugal. He abolished slavery in Portugal and in the Portuguese colonies in India; reorganized the army and the navy; restructured the University of Coimbra, and ended discrimination against different Christian sects in Portugal.
But Sebastião de Melo’s greatest reforms were economic and financial, with the creation of several companies and guilds to regulate every commercial activity. He demarcated the region for production of Port to ensure the wine’s quality, and this was the first attempt to control wine quality and production in Europe. He ruled with a strong hand by imposing strict law upon all classes of Portuguese society from the high nobility to the poorest working class, along with a widespread review of the country’s tax system. These reforms gained him enemies in the upper classes, especially among the high nobility, who despised him as a social upstart.
Disaster fell upon Portugal in the morning of 1 November 1755, when Lisbon was struck by a violent earthquake with an estimated moment magnitude of 8.5–9. The city was razed to the ground by the earthquake and the subsequent tsunami and ensuing fires. Sebastião de Melo survived by a stroke of luck and then immediately embarked on rebuilding the city, with his famous quote: “What now? We bury the dead and take care of the living.”
Despite the calamity and huge death toll, Lisbon suffered no epidemics and within less than one year was already being rebuilt. The new city centre of Lisbon was designed to resist subsequent earthquakes. Architectural models were built for tests, and the effects of an earthquake were simulated by marching troops around the models. The buildings and big squares of the Pombaline City Centre still remain as one of Lisbon’s tourist attractions. Sebastião de Melo also made an important contribution to the study of seismology by designing an inquiry that was sent to every parish in the country.
Following the earthquake, Joseph I gave his Prime Minister even more power, and Sebastião de Melo became a powerful, progressive dictator. As his power grew, his enemies increased in number, and bitter disputes with the high nobility became frequent. In 1758 Joseph I was wounded in an attempted assassination. The Távora family and the Duke of Aveiro were implicated and executed after a quick trial. The Jesuits were expelled from the country and their assets confiscated by the crown. Sebastião de Melo prosecuted every person involved, even women and children. This was the final stroke that broke the power of the aristocracy. Joseph I made his loyal minister Count of Oeiras in 1759.
Following the Távora affair, the new Count of Oeiras knew no opposition. Made “Marquis of Pombal” in 1770, he effectively ruled Portugal until Joseph I’s death in 1779. However, historians also argue that Pombal’s “enlightenment,” while far-reaching, was primarily a mechanism for enhancing autocracy at the expense of individual liberty and especially an apparatus for crushing opposition, suppressing criticism, and furthering colonial economic exploitation as well as intensifying book censorship and consolidating personal control and profit.
Napoleonic era. (1777–1834) The new ruler, Queen Maria I of Portugal, disliked the Marquis because of the power he amassed, and never forgave him for the ruthlessness with which he dispatched the Távora family, and upon her accession to the throne, she withdrew all his political offices. Pombal died in 1782.
In the autumn of 1807, Napoleon moved French troops through Spain to invade Portugal. From 1807 to 1811, British-Portuguese forces would successfully fight against the French invasion of Portugal, while the royal family and the Portuguese nobility, including Maria I, relocated to the Portuguese territory of Brazil, at that time a colony of the Portuguese Empire, in South America. This episode is known as the Transfer of the Portuguese Court to Brazil.
With the occupation by Napoleon, Portugal began a slow but inexorable decline that lasted until the 20th century. This decline was hastened by the independence in 1822 of the country’s largest colonial possession, Brazil. In 1807, as Napoleon’s army closed in on Lisbon, the Prince Regent João VI of Portugal transferred his court to Brazil and established Rio de Janeiro as the capital of the Portuguese Empire. In 1815, Brazil was declared a Kingdom and the Kingdom of Portugal was united with it, forming a pluri-continental State, the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves.
As a result of the change in its status and the arrival of the Portuguese royal family, Brazilian administrative, civic, economical, military, educational, and scientific apparatus were expanded and highly modernized. Portuguese and their allied British troops fought against the French Invasion of Portugal and by 1815 the situation in Europe had cooled down sufficiently that João VI would have been able to return safely to Lisbon. However, the King of Portugal remained in Brazil until the Liberal Revolution of 1820, which started in Porto, demanded his return to Lisbon in 1821.
Thus he returned to Portugal but left his son Pedro in charge of Brazil. When the Portuguese Government attempted the following year to return the Kingdom of Brazil to subordinate status, his son Pedro, with the overwhelming support of the Brazilian elites, declared Brazil’s independence from Portugal. Cisplatina (today’s sovereign state of Uruguay), in the south, was one of the last additions to the territory of Brazil under Portuguese rule.
Brazilian independence was recognized in 1825, whereby Emperor Pedro I granted to his father the titular honour of Emperor of Brazil. John VI’s death in 1826 caused serious questions in his succession. Though Pedro was his heir, and reigned briefly as Pedro IV, his status as a Brazilian monarch was seen as an impediment to holding the Portuguese throne by both nations. Pedro abdicated in favour of his daughter, Maria II. However, Pedro’s brother, Infante Miguel, claimed the throne in protest. After a proposal for Miguel and Maria to marry failed, Miguel seized power as King Miguel I, in 1828. In order to defend his daughter’s rights to the throne, Pedro launched the Liberal Wars to reinstall his daughter and establish a constitutional monarchy in Portugal. The war ended in 1834, with Miguel’s defeat, the promulgation of a constitution, and the reinstatement of Queen Maria II.
Constitutional monarchy. (1834–1910). Queen Maria II and King Ferdinand II’s son, King Pedro V modernized the country during his short reign (1853–1861). Under his reign, roads, telegraphs, and railways were constructed and improvements in public health advanced. His popularity increased when, during the cholera outbreak of 1853–1856, he visited hospitals handing out gifts and comforting the sick. Pedro’s reign was short, as he died of cholera in 1861, after a series of deaths in the royal family, including his two brothers, and his wife. Not having children, his brother, Luís I of Portugal ascended the throne and continued his modernization.
At the height of European colonialism in the 19th century, Portugal had already lost its territory in South America and all but a few bases in Asia. Luanda, Benguela, Bissau, Lourenço Marques, Porto Amboim and the Island of Mozambique were among the oldest Portuguese-founded port cities in its African territories. During this phase, Portuguese colonialism focused on expanding its outposts in Africa into nation-sized territories to compete with other European powers there.
With the Conference of Berlin of 1884, Portuguese Africa territories had their borders formally established on request of Portugal in order to protect the centuries-long Portuguese interests in the continent from rivalries enticed by the Scramble for Africa. Portuguese Africa’s cities and towns like Nova Lisboa, Sá da Bandeira, Silva Porto, Malanje, Tete, Vila Junqueiro, Vila Pery and Vila Cabral were founded or redeveloped inland during this period and beyond. New coastal towns like Beira, Moçâmedes, Lobito, João Belo, Nacala and Porto Amélia were also founded. Even before the turn of the 20th century, railway tracks as the Benguela railway in Angola, and the Beira railway in Mozambique, started to be built to link coastal areas and selected inland regions.
Other episodes during this period of the Portuguese presence in Africa include the 1890 British Ultimatum. This forced the Portuguese military to retreat from the land between the Portuguese colonies of Mozambique and Angola(most of present-day Zimbabwe and Zambia), which had been claimed by Portugal and included in its “Pink Map”, which clashed with British aspirations to create a Cape to Cairo Railway.
The Portuguese territories in Africa were Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe, Portuguese Guinea, Angola, and Mozambique. The tiny fortress of São João Baptista de Ajudá on the coast of Dahomey, was also under Portuguese rule. In addition, Portugal still ruled the Asian territories of Portuguese India, Portuguese Timor and Macau.
On 1 February 1908, the king Dom Carlos I of Portugal and his heir apparent, Prince Royal Dom Luís Filipe, Duke of Braganza, were murdered in Lisbon. Under his rule, Portugal had twice been declared bankrupt – on 14 June 1892, and again on 10 May 1902 – causing social turmoil, economic disturbances, protests, revolts and criticism of the monarchy. Manuel II of Portugal became the new king, but was eventually overthrown by the 5 October 1910 revolution, which abolished the regime and instated republicanism in Portugal.
First Republic and Estado Novo.
Political instability and economic weaknesses were fertile ground for chaos and unrest during the Portuguese First Republic. These conditions would lead to the failed Monarchy of the North, 28 May 1926 coup d’état, and the creation of the National Dictatorship (Ditadura Nacional). This in turn led to the establishment of the right-wing dictatorship of the Estado Novo under António de Oliveira Salazar in 1933.
Portugal was one of only five European countries to remain neutral in World War II. From the 1940s to the 1960s, Portugal was a founding member of NATO, OECD and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). Gradually, new economic development projects and relocation of mainland Portuguese citizens into the overseas provinces in Africa were initiated, with Angola and Mozambique, as the largest and richest overseas territories, being the main targets of those initiatives. These actions were used to affirm Portugal’s status as a transcontinental nation and not as a colonial empire.
After India attained independence in 1947, pro-Indian residents of Dadra and Nagar Haveli, with the support of the Indian government and the help of pro-independence organisations, separated the territories of Dadra and Nagar Haveli from Portuguese rule in 1954. In 1961, São João Baptista de Ajudá’s annexation by the Republic of Dahomey was the start of a process that led to the final dissolution of the centuries-old Portuguese Empire. According to the census of 1921 São João Baptista de Ajudá had 5 inhabitants and, at the moment of the ultimatum by the Dahomey Government, it had only 2 inhabitants representing Portuguese Sovereignty.
Another forcible retreat from overseas territories occurred in December 1961 when Portugal refused to relinquish the territories of Goa, Daman and Diu. As a result, the Portuguese army and navy were involved in armed conflict in its colony of Portuguese India against the Indian Armed Forces.
The operations resulted in the defeat and surrender of the limited Portuguese defensive garrison, which was forced to surrender to a much larger military force. The outcome was the loss of the remaining Portuguese territories in the Indian subcontinent. The Portuguese regime refused to recognize Indian sovereignty over the annexed territories, which continued to be represented in Portugal’s National Assembly until the military coup of 1974.
Also in the early 1960s, independence movements in the Portuguese overseas provinces of Angola, Mozambique and Guinea in Africa, resulted in the Portuguese Colonial War (1961–1974).
Throughout the colonial war period Portugal had to deal with increasing dissent, arms embargoes and other punitive sanctions imposed by most of the international community. However, the authoritarian and conservative Estado Novo regime, first installed and governed by António de Oliveira Salazar and from 1968 onwards led by Marcelo Caetano, tried to preserve a vast centuries-long intercontinental empire with a total area of 2,168,071 km2.
Carnation Revolution and European integration. The Portuguese government and army resisted the decolonization of its overseas territories until April 1974, when a bloodless left-wing military coup in Lisbon, known as the Carnation Revolution, led the way for the independence of the overseas territories in Africa and Asia, as well as for the restoration of democracy after two years of a transitional period known as PREC (Processo Revolucionário Em Curso). This period was characterized by social turmoil and power disputes between left- and right-wing political forces. The retreat from the overseas territories and the acceptance of its independence terms by Portuguese head representatives for overseas negotiations, which would create independent states in 1975, prompted a mass exodus of Portuguese citizens from Portugal’s African territories (mostly from Portuguese Angola and Mozambique).
Over one million Portuguese refugees fled the former Portuguese provinces as white settlers were usually not considered part of the new identities of the former Portuguese colonies in Africa and Asia. Mário Soares and António de Almeida Santos were charged with organising the independence of Portugal’s overseas territories. By 1975, all the Portuguese African territories were independent and Portugal held its first democratic elections in 50 years.
Portugal continued to be governed by a Junta de Salvação Nacional until the Portuguese legislative election of 1976. It was won by the Portuguese Socialist Party (PS) and Mário Soares, its leader, became Prime Minister of the 1st Constitutional Government on 23 July. Mário Soares would be Prime Minister from 1976 to 1978 and again from 1983 to 1985. In this capacity Soares tried to resume the economic growth and development record that had been achieved before the Carnation Revolution, during the last decade of the previous regime. He initiated the process of accession to the European Economic Community (EEC) by starting accession negotiations as early as 1977.
Portugal bounced between socialism and adherence to the neoliberal model. Land reform and nationalizations were enforced; the Portuguese Constitution (approved in 1976) was rewritten in order to accommodate socialist and communist principles. Until the constitutional revisions of 1982 and 1989, the constitution was a highly charged ideological document with numerous references to socialism, the rights of workers, and the desirability of a socialist economy. Portugal’s economic situation after its transition to democracy, obliged the government to pursue International Monetary Fund (IMF)-monitored stabilization programs in 1977–78 and 1983–85.
In 1986, Portugal joined the European Economic Community (EEC) that later became the European Union (EU). In the following years Portugal’s economy progressed considerably as a result of EEC/EU structural and cohesion funds and Portuguese companies’ easier access to foreign markets.

Portugal’s last overseas territory, Macau, was peacefully handed over to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1999, under the 1987 joint declaration that set the terms for Macau’s handover from Portugal to the PRC. In 2002, the independence of East Timor (Asia) was formally recognized by Portugal, after an incomplete decolonization process that was started in 1975 because of the Carnation Revolution, but interrupted by an Indonesian armed invasion and occupation.
On 26 March 1995, Portugal started to implement Schengen Area rules, eliminating border controls with other Schengen members while simultaneously strengthening border controls with non-member states. In 1996 the country was a co-founder of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP) headquartered in Lisbon. Expo ’98 took place in Portugal and in 1999 it was one of the founding countries of the euro and the eurozone. Economic disruption and an unsustainable growth in borrowing costs in the wake of the late-2000s financial crisis led the country to negotiate in 2011 with the IMF and the European Union, through the European Financial Stability Mechanism (EFSM) and the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), a loan to help the country stabilise its finances.

GEOGRAPHY
The territory of Portugal includes an area in the Iberian Peninsula (referred to as the continent by most Portuguese) and two archipelagos in the Atlantic Ocean: the archipelagos of Madeira and the Azores. It lies between latitudes 32° and 43° N, and longitudes 32° and 6° W.
Mainland Portugal is split by its main river, the Tagus, that flows from Spain and disgorges in Tagus Estuary, in Lisbon, before escaping into the Atlantic. The northern landscape is mountainous towards the interior with several plateaus indented by river valleys, whereas the south, including the Algarve and the Alentejo regions, is characterized by rolling plains.
Portugal’s highest peak is the similarly named Mount Pico on the island of Pico in the Azores. This ancient volcano, which measures 2,351 m (7,713 ft) is an iconic symbol of the Azores, while the Serra da Estrela on the mainland (the summit being 1,991 m (6,532 ft) above sea level) is an important seasonal attraction for skiers and winter sports enthusiasts.
The archipelagos of Madeira and the Azores are scattered within the Atlantic Ocean: the Azores straddling the Mid-Atlantic Ridge on a tectonic triple junction, and Madeira along a range formed by in-plate hotspot geology. Geologically, these islands were formed by volcanic and seismic events. The last terrestrial volcanic eruption occurred in 1957–58 (Capelinhos) and minor earthquakes occur sporadically, usually of low intensity.
Portugal’s exclusive economic zone, a sea zone over which the Portuguese have special rights over the exploration and use of marine resources, has 1,727,408 km2. This is the 3rd largest exclusive economic zone of the European Union and the 11th largest in the world.

CLIMATE
Portugal is defined as a Mediterranean climate and is one of the warmest European countries: the annual average temperature in mainland Portugal varies from 8–12 °C (46.4–53.6 °F) in the mountainous interior north to 16–18 °C (60.8–64.4 °F) in the south and on the Guadiana river basin. The Algarve, separated from the Alentejo region by mountains reaching up to 900 metres (3,000 ft) in Alto de Fóia, has a climate similar to that of the southern coastal areas of Spain or Southwest Australia.
Annual average rainfall in the mainland varies from just over 3,200 mm (126.0 in) in the northern mountains to less than 300 mm (11.8 in) in the area of the Massueime River, near Côa, along the Douro river. Mount Pico is recognized as receiving the largest annual rainfall (over 6,250 mm (246.1 in) per year) in Portugal.
In some areas, such as the Guadiana basin, annual average temperatures can be as high as 28 °C (82 °), and summer highest temperatures routinely are over 40 °C (104 °F). The record high of 47.4 °C (117.3 °F) was recorded in Amareleja.
Snowfalls occur regularly in the winter in the interior North and Centre of the country in districts such as Guarda, Bragança, Viseu and Vila Real, particularly on the mountains. In winter temperatures may drop below −10.0 °C (14.0 °F) in particular in Serra da Estrela, Serra do Gerês, Serra do Marão and Serra de Montesinho. In these places snow can fall any time from October to May. In the South of the country snowfalls are rare but still occur in the highest elevations.
Sunshine. Portugal has around 2500 to 3200 hours of sunshine a year, an average of 4–6 h in winter and 10–12 h in the summer, with higher values in the south-east and lower in the north-west.
The sea surface temperature on the west coast of mainland Portugal varies from 13–15 °C in winter to 18–22 °C in the summer while on the south coast it ranges from 15 °C in winter and rises in the summer to about 23 °C occasionally reaching 26 °C (78.8 °F).
Both the archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira have a subtropical climate, although variations between islands exist, making weather predictions very difficult (owing to rough topography). The Madeira and Azorean archipelagos have a narrower temperature range, with annual average temperatures exceeding 20 °C (68 °F) along the coast. Some islands in Azores do have drier months in the summer. Consequently, the island of the Azores have been identified as having a Mediterranean climate, while some islands (such as Flores or Corvo) are classified as Maritime Temperate and Humid subtropical, respectively.
Porto Santo island in Madeira has a semi-arid steppe climate. The Savage Islands, which are part of the regional territory of Madeira and a nature reserve are unique in being classified as a desert climate with an annual average rainfall of approximately 150 mm (5.9 in). The sea surface temperature in the archipelagos varies from 17–18 °C in winter to 24–25 °C in the summer occasionally reaching 25 °C.

BIODIVERSITY
Despite the fact that humans have occupied the territory of Portugal for thousands of years, something still remains of the original vegetation. In Gerês both mature deciduous and coniferous forests can be found, an extremely rare worldwide mature Mediterranean forest remain in some parts of the Arrábida mountain and a subtropical laurissilva forest, dating back to the Tertiary period, covers its largest continuous area in the world in the Madeira main island. Due to the human population decrease and rural exodus, Pyrenean oak and other local native trees are colonizing many abandoned areas.
Boar, Iberian red deer, roe deer, and the Iberian wild goat, are reported to have expanded greatly during recent decades. Boars were found recently roaming at night inside large urban areas, like in Setubal. Protected areas of Portugal include one national park (Peneda-Gerês National Park), 12 natural parks, nine natural reserves, five natural monument, and seven protected landscapes, which include the Parque Nacional da Peneda-Gerês, the Parque Natural da Serra da Estrela and the Paul d’Arzila.
These natural environments are shaped by diverse flora, and include widespread species of pine (especially the, the English oak, the Pyrenean oak, the chestnut, the cork-oak, the holm oak or the Portuguese oak. Due to their economic value, some species of the Eucalyptus genus were introduced and are now common, despite their environmental impact.
Laurisilva is a unique type of subtropical rainforest found in few areas of Europe and the world: in the Azores, and in particular on the island of Madeira, there are large forests of endemic Laurisilva forests (the latter protected as a natural heritage preserve). There are several species of diverse mammalian fauna, including the fox, badger, iberian lynx, iberian wolf, wild goat, wild cat, hare, weasel, polecat, chameleon, mongoose, civet, brown bear, (spotted near Rio Minho, close to Peneda-Gerês) and many others. Portugal is an important stopover for migratory birds, in places such as Cape St. dVincent or the mountains, where thousands of birds cross from Europe to Africa during the autumn or in the spring (return migration).
Most of the avian species congregate along the Iberian Peninsula since it is the closest stopover between Northern Europe and Africa. Six hundred bird species occur in Portugal (either for nesting or during the course of migration), and annually there are new registries of nesting species. The archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira are transient stopover for American, European, and African birds, while continental Portugal mostly encounters European and African bird species.
There are more than 100 freshwater fish species, varying from the giant European catfish (in the Tagus International Natural Park) to some small and endemic species that live only in small lakes (along the western portion of country, for example). Some of these rare and specific species are highly endangered because of habitat loss, pollution and drought. Up-welling along the west coast of Portugal makes the sea extremely rich in nutrients and diverse species of marine fish; the Portuguese marine waters are one of the richest in the world. Marine fish species are more common, and include thousands of species, such as the sardine, tuna and Atlantic mackerel. Bioluminescent species are also well represented (including species in different colour spectrum and forms), like the glowing plankton that are possible to observe in some beaches.
There are many endemic insect species, most only found in certain parts of Portugal, while other species are more widespread like the stag beetled (Lucanus cervus) and the cicada. The Macaronesian islands (Azores and Madeira) have many endemic species (like birds, reptiles, bats, insects, snails and slugs) that evolved independently from other regions of Portugal. In Madeira, for example, it is possible to observe more than 250 species of land gastropods.

GOVERNMENT
Portugal has been a semi-presidential representative democratic republic since the ratification of the Constitution of 1976, with Lisbon, the nation’s largest city, as its capital. The Constitution grants the division or separation of powers among four bodies referred as “organs of Sovereignty”: the President of the Republic, the Government, the Assembly of the Republic and the Courts.
The President, who is elected to a five-year term, has an executive role: the current President is Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. The Assembly of the Republic is a single chamber parliament composed of 230 deputies elected for a four-year term. The Government is headed by the Prime Minister (currently António Costa) and includes Ministers and Secretaries of State. The Courts are organized into several levels, among the judicial, administrative and fiscal branches. The Supreme Courts are institutions of last resort/appeal. A thirteen-member Constitutional Court oversees the constitutionality of the laws.
Portugal operates a multi-party system of competitive legislatures/local administrative governments at the national, regional and local levels. The Assembly of the Republic, Regional Assemblies and local municipalities and parishes, are dominated by two political parties, the Socialist Party and the Social Democratic Party, in addition to the Unitary Democratic Coalition (Portuguese Communist Party and Ecologist Party “The Greens”), the Left Bloc and the Democratic and Social Centre – People’s Party, which garner between 5 and 15% of the vote regularly.
The Assembly of the Republic is a unicameral body composed of up to 230 deputies. Elected by universal suffrage according to a system of proportional representation, deputies serve four-year terms of office, unless the President dissolves the Assembly and calls for new elections.

LAW & DRUG POLICY
The Portuguese legal system is part of the civil law legal system, also called the continental family legal system. Portuguese law applied in the former colonies and territories and continues to be the major influence for those countries.
Portugal was one of the first countries in the world to abolish the death penalty. Maximum jail sentences are limited to 25 years.
Drug laws. Portugal is also known for having decriminalized the usage of all common drugs in 2001, the first country in the world to do so. Portugal decriminalized possession of effectively all drugs that are still illegal in other developed nations including cannabis, cocaine, heroin, and LSD. While possession is legal, trafficking and possession of more than “10 days worth of personal use” are still punishable by jail time and fines. People caught with small amounts of any drug are given the choice to go to a rehab facility, and may refuse treatment without consequences. Despite criticism from other European nations, who stated Portugal’s drug consumption would tremendously increase, overall drug use has declined along with the number of HIV infection cases, which had dropped 50 percent by 2009. Drug use among 16- to 18-year-olds also declined, however the use of marijuana rose only slightly among that age group.
LGBT+ rights in Portugal. LGBT+ rights have increased substantially in the past years. On 31 May 2010, Portugal became the sixth country in Europe and the eighth country in the world to legally recognize same-sex marriage on the national level. The law came into force on 5 June 2010. Same-sex adoption is allowed since 1 March 2016 as is female same-sex couple access to medically assisted reproduction since 13 May 2016. As of January 2017 the New Law of Gender Identity, simplified the process of gender and name change for transgender, making it easier for minors to change their gender identity.
Administrative divisions. Administratively, Portugal is divided into 308 municipalities (municípios or concelhos), which after a reform in 2013 are subdivided into 3,092 civil parishes (freguesia). Operationally, the municipality and civil parish, along with the national government, are the only legally identifiable local administrative units identified by the government of Portugal (for example, cities, towns or villages have no standing in law, although may be used as catchment for the defining services). Continental Portugal is agglomerated into 18 districts, while the archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira are governed as autonomous regions.

FOREIGN RELATIONS
A member state of the United Nations since 1955, Portugal is also a founding member of NATO (1949), OECD (1961) and EFTA (1960); it left the last in 1986 to join the European Economic Community, which became the European Union in 1993. In 1996 it co-founded the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP), which seeks to foster closer economic and cultural ties between the world’s Lusophone nations.
António Guterres, who has served as Prime Minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2002 and UN High Commissioner for Refugees from 2005 to 2015, assumed the post of UN Secretary-General on 1 January 2017; making him the first Secretary-General from Western Europe since Kurt Waldheim of Austria (1972–1981), the first former head of government to become Secretary-General and the first Secretary-General born after the establishment of the United Nations on 26 June 1945.
In addition, Portugal is a full member of the Latin Union (1983) and the Organization of Ibero-American States (1949). It has a friendship alliance and dual citizenship treaty with its former colony, Brazil. Portugal and England (subsequently, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) share the world’s oldest active military accord through their Anglo-Portuguese Alliance (Treaty of Windsor), which was signed in 1373.
There are two international territorial disputes, both with Spain:
Olivenza. Under Portuguese sovereignty since 1297, the municipality of Olivenza was ceded to Spain under the Treaty of Badajoz in 1801, after the War of the Oranges. Portugal claimed it back in 1815 under the Treaty of Vienna. However, since the 19th century, it has been continuously ruled by Spain which considers the territory theirs not only de facto but also de jure.
The Ilhas Selvagens (Savage Islands). The archipelago is under Portuguese domination but is geographically closer to the Canary Islands (165 km) than to Madeira (280 km). Found in 1364 by Italian navigators, the islands belonged to private owners until 1971, when the Portuguese government bought them and established a natural reserve area covering the whole archipelago. The islands have been claimed by Spain since 1911 and the dispute has caused some periods of political tension between the two countries. The main problem is not so much their intrinsic value but the fact that they expand considerably to the south the Exclusive Economic Zone of Portugal.

MILITARY
The armed forces have three branches: Navy, Army and Air Force. They serve primarily as a self-defense force whose mission is to protect the territorial integrity of the country and provide humanitarian assistance and security at home and abroad. As of 2008, the three branches numbered 39,200 active personnel including 7,500 women. Portuguese military expenditure in 2009 was billion, representing 2.1 percent of GDP. Military conscription was abolished in 2004. The minimum age for voluntary recruitment is 18 years.
The Army (21,000 personnel) comprises three brigades and other small units. An infantry brigade (mainly equipped with Pandur II APC), a mechanized brigade (mainly equipped with Leopard 2 A6 tanks and M113 APC) and a Rapid Reaction Brigade (consisting of Paratroopers, commandos and Rangers). The Navy (10,700 personnel, of which 1,580 are marines), the world’s oldest surviving naval force, has five frigates, seven corvettes, two submarines, and 28 patrol and auxiliary vessels. The Air Force (7,500 personnel) has the Lockheed F-16 Fighting Falcon and the Dassault/Dornier Alpha Jet as the main combat aircraft.
In addition to the three branches of the armed forces, there is the National Republican Guard, a security force subject to military law and organization (gendarmerie) comprising 25,000 personnel. It has provided detachments for participation in international operations in Iraq and East Timor.
In the 20th century, Portugal engaged in two major conflicts: World War I and the Portuguese Colonial War (1961–1974). After the end of the Portuguese Empire in 1975, the Portuguese Armed Forces have participated in peacekeeping missions in East Timor, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq (Nasiriyah), Lebanon, Mali, and Central African Republic. Portugal also conducted several independent unilateral military operations abroad, as were the cases of the interventions of the Portuguese Armed Forces in Angola in 1992 and in Guinea-Bissau in 1998 with the main objectives of protecting and withdrawing of Portuguese and foreign citizens threatened by local civil conflicts.

GOVERNMENT FINANCE
The Portuguese government is heavily indebted, and received a 78 billion euro bailout from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund in May 2011. The ratio of Portugal’s debt to its overall economy, was 107 percent when it received the bailout. As part of the deal, the country agreed to cut its budget deficit from 9.8 percent of GDP in 2010 to 5.9 percent in 2011, 4.5 percent in 2012 and 3 percent in 2013.
After the bailout was announced, the Portuguese government managed to implement measures with the intention of improving the state’s financial situation, including tax hikes, a freeze of civil service-related lower-wages and cuts of higher-wages by 14.3%, on top of the government’s spending cuts. In 2012, all public servants had already seen an average wage cut of 20% relative to their 2010 baseline, with cuts reaching 25% for those earning more than 1,500 euro per month.
In September 2013, the Portuguese Government reviewed again the public debt of Portugal for 2013 to 127.8 percent, after a peak of 130.9 percent in that month.
In the period between the Carnation Revolution in 1974 and 2010, the democratic Portuguese Republic governments encouraged over-expenditure and investment bubbles through unclear Public–private partnerships and funding of numerous ineffective and unnecessary external consultancy and advisory of committees and firms. This allowed considerable slippage in state-managed public works and inflated top management and head officer bonuses and wages. Persistent and lasting recruitment policies boosted the number of redundant public servants. Risky credit, public debt creation, and European structural and cohesion funds were mismanaged across almost four decades.
After the financial crisis of 2007–08, it was known in 2008–2009 that two Portuguese banks (Banco Português de Negócios (BPN) and Banco Privado Português (BPP)) had been accumulating losses for years due to bad investments, embezzlement and accounting fraud. The case of BPN was particularly serious because of its size, market share, and the political implications – Portugal’s then President, Cavaco Silva and some of his political allies, maintained personal and business relationships with the bank and its CEO, who was eventually charged and arrested for fraud and other crimes. In the grounds of avoiding a potentially serious financial crisis in the Portuguese economy, the Portuguese government decided to give them a bailout, eventually at a future loss to taxpayers and to the Portuguese people in general.

ECONOMY
Portugal is a developed and a high income country, with its GDP per capita in 2014 being 78% of the EU27 average – increasing from 76% in 2012. By the end of 2016, Portugal’s GDP was $30.612 per capita, according to OECD’s report. The national currency of Portugal is the euro(€), which replaced the Portuguese Escudo, and the country was one of the original member states of the eurozone.
Most industries, businesses and financial institutions are concentrated in the Lisbon and Porto metropolitan areas According to World Travel Awards, Portugal was Europe’s Leading Golf Destination in 2012 and 2013.
Since the 1990s, Portugal’s public consumption-based economic development model has been slowly changing to a system that is focused on exports, private investment and the development of the high-tech sector. Consequently, business services have overtaken more traditional industries such as textiles, clothing, footwear and cork (Portugal is the world’s leading cork producer), wood products and beverages.
In the second decade of the 21st century, the Portuguese economy suffered it’s most severe recession since the 1970s; resulting in the country having to be bailed out by the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). The bailout, agreed to in 2011, required Portugal to enter into a range of austerity measures in exchange for funding support of €78,000,000,000. In May 2014, the country exited the bailout but reaffirmed its commitment to maintaining its reformist momentum. At the time of exiting the bailout, the economy had contracted by 0.7% in the first quarter of 2014, however unemployment, while still high had fallen to 15.3%.
The average salary in Portugal is €910 per month, excluding self-employed individuals and the minimum wage, which is regulated by law, is €530 per month (paid 14 times per annum).
The Global Competitiveness Report for 2014–2015, published by the World Economic Forum, placed Portugal on the 36th position on the economic index. This represents a sharp increase from the 51st position where Portugal appeared in 2013–2014.
The Economist Intelligence Unit’s quality of life index placed Portugal as the country with the 19th-best quality of life in the world for 2005, ahead of other economically and technologically advanced countries like France, Germany, the United Kingdom and South Korea, but 9 places behind it’s sole neighbour, Spain. This is despite the fact that Portugal remains as one of the countries with the lowest per capita GDP in Western Europe.
Portugal has the thirteenth-largest gold reserve in the world.
Major state-owned companies include: Águas de Portugal (water), Caixa Geral de Depósitos (banking), Comboios de Portugal (railways), Companhia das Lezírias (agriculture) and RTP (media). Among former state-owned companies recently privatised are: CTT (postal service), TAP Portugal (airline) and ANA (airports).
Companies listed on Euronext Lisbon stock exchange like EDP, Galp, Jerónimo Martins, Mota-Engil, Novabase, Semapa, Portucel Soporcel, Portugal Telecom and Sonae, are amongst the largest corporations of Portugal by number of employees, net income or international market share.
The International Monetary Fund issued an update report on the economy of Portugal in late-June 2017 with a strong near-term outlook and an increase in investments and exports over previous years. Because of a surplus in 2016, the country was no longer bound by the Excessive Deficit Procedure which had been implemented during an earlier financial crisis. The banking system was more stable, although there were still non-performing loans and corporate debt. The IMF recommended working on solving these problems for Portugal to be able to attract more private investment.
Agriculture is based on small to medium-sized family-owned dispersed units. However, the sector also includes larger scale intensive farming export agrobusinesses. The country produces a wide variety of crops and livestock products, including: tomatoes, citrus, green vegetables, rice, corn, wheat, barley, olives, oilseeds, nuts, cherries, bilberry, table grapes, edible mushrooms, dairy products, poultry and beef.
Forestry has also played an important economic role among the rural communities and industry (namely paper industry, engineered wood and furniture that includes several manufacturing plants in and around Paços de Ferreira, the core of Portugal’s major industrial operations of IKEA). In 2001, the gross agricultural product accounted for 4% of the national GDP.
Fishing. Traditionally a sea-power, Portugal has had a strong tradition in the Portuguese fishing sector and is one of the countries with the highest fish consumption per capita. Portuguese-processed fish products are exported through several companies, under a number of different brands and registered trademarks, such as Ramirez, the world’s oldest active canned fish producer.
Mining. Portugal is a significant European minerals producer and is ranked among Europe’s leading copper producers. The nation is also a notable producer of tin, tungsten and uranium. However, the country lacks the potential to conduct hydrocarbon exploration and aluminium, a limitation that has hindered the development of Portugal’s mining and metallurgy sectors. Although the country has vast iron and coal reserves—mainly in the north—after the 1974 revolution and the consequent economic globalization, low competitiveness forced a decrease in the extraction activity for these minerals.
Tourism. Travel and tourism continue to be extremely important for Portugal. It has been necessary for the country to focus upon it’s niche attractions, such as health, nature and rural tourism, to stay ahead of its competitors.
Portugal is among the top 20 most-visited countries in the world, receiving an average of 13,000,000 foreign tourists each year. In 2014, Portugal was elected The Best European Country by the USA Today.
In 2017, Portugal was elected both Europe’s Leading Destination and World’s Leading Destination. Tourist hotspots in Portugal 2006).are: Lisbon, Cascais, Fatima, Algarve, Madeira, Porto and the city of Coimbra. Lisbon attracts the sixteenth-most tourists among European cities (with seven million tourists occupying the city’s hotels in 2006).
Also, between 5–6 million religious pilgrims visit Fatima each year, where apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary to three shepherd children reportedly took place in 1917. The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima is one of the largest Roman Catholic shrines in the world. The Portuguese government continues to promote and develop new tourist destinations, such as the Douro Valley, the island of Porto Santo, and Alentejo.
The Rooster of Barcelos. The legend of the Rooster of Barcelos tells the story of a dead rooster’s miraculous intervention in proving the innocence of a man who had been falsely accused and sentenced to death. The Rooster of Barcelos is bought by many tourists as a souvenir.
On 30 November 2016, the United Nations added the Portuguese Bisalhães tradition of making black pottery to the UNESCO Heritage Protection List. On 7 December 2017, the United Nations added the Bonecos de Estremoz – Toys of Estremoz tradition as an UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humankind.
Portugal has the largest aquarium in Europe, the Lisbon Oceanarium, and the Portuguese have several other notable organizations focused on science-related exhibits and divulgation, like the state agency Ciência Viva, a programme of the Portuguese Ministry of Science and Technology to the promotion of a scientific and technological culture among the Portuguese population. Companies locate in the Portuguese science parks to take advantage of a variety of services ranging from financial and legal advice through to marketing and technological support.
Egas Moniz, a Portuguese physician who developed the cerebral angiography and leucotomy, received in 1949 the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine – he is the first Portuguese recipient of a Nobel Prize and the only in the sciences.

TRANSPORT
Road. By the early-1970s, Portugal’s fast economic growth with increasing consumption and purchase of new automobiles set the priority for improvements in transportation. Again in the 1990s, after joining the European Economic Community, the country built many new motorways. Today, the country has a 68,732 km (42,708 mi) road network, of which almost 3,000 km (1,864 mi) are part of system of 44 motorways. Opened in 1944, the first motorway (which linked Lisbon to the National Stadium) was an innovative project that made Portugal among one of the first countries in the world to establish a motorway (this roadway eventually became the Lisbon-Cascais highway, or A5).
On many highways, a toll needs to be paid, see Via Verde. Vasco da Gama bridge is the longest bridge in Europe.
Air. Continental Portugal’s is serviced by four international airports located near the principal cities of Lisbon, Porto, Faro and Beja. Lisbon’s geographical position makes it a stopover for many foreign airlines at several airports within the country. The primary flag-carrier is TAP Portugal, although many other domestic airlines provide services within and without the country.
Others include Funchal (Madeira), and Ponta Delgada(Azores) and Aeroporto Internacional das Lajes on the island of Terceira in the Azores (serves as one of two international airports serving countries outside the European Union for all nine islands of the Azores. It also serves as a military air base for the United States Air Force).
Rail. Rail transport of passengers and goods is derived using the 2,791 km (1,734 mi) of railway lines currently in service, of which 1,430 km (889 mi) are electrified and about 900 km (559 mi) allow train speeds greater than 120 km/h (75 mph).
Seaport. The major seaports are located in Sines, Lisbon, Setubal, Averio, Figueira da Foz and Faro.
Metro. The two largest metropolitan areas have subway systems: Lisbon Metro and Metro Sul do Tejo in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area and Porto Metro in the Porto Metropolitan Area, each with more than 35 km (22 mi) of lines. In Porto, a tram network, of which only a tourist line on the shores of the Douro remains, began construction on 12 September 1895 (a first for the Iberian Peninsula). All major cities and towns have their own local urban transport network, as well as taxi services.

ENERGY
Portugal has considerable resources of wind and river power, the two most cost-effective renewable energy sources. Since the turn of the 21st century, there has been a trend towards the development of a renewable resource industry and reduction of both consumption and use of fossil fuels. In 2006, the world’s largest solar power plant at that date, the Moura Photovoltaic Power Station, began operating near Moura, in the south, while the world’s first commercial wave power farm, the Aguçadoura Wave Farm, opened in the Norte region (2008). By the end of 2006, 66% of the country’s electrical production was from coal and fuel power plants, while 29% were derived from hydroelectric dams, and 6% by wind energy. In 2008, renewable energy resources were producing 43% of the nation’s consumption of electricity, even as hydroelectric production decreased with severe droughts. As of June 2010, electricity exports had outnumbered imports. In the period between January and May 2010, 70% of the national production of energy came from renewable sources.
Portugal’s national energy transmission company, Redes Energéticas Nacionais (REN), uses sophisticated modeling to predict weather, especially wind patterns, and computer programs to calculate energy from the various renewable-energy plants. Before the solar/wind revolution, Portugal had generated electricity from hydropower plants on it’s rivers for decades. New programmes combine wind and water: wind-driven turbines pump water uphill at night, the most blustery period; then the water flows downhill by day, generating electricity, when consumer demand is highest. Portugal’s distribution system is also now a two-way street. Instead of just delivering electricity, it draws electricity from even the smallest generators, like rooftop solar panels. The government aggressively encouraged such contributions by setting a premium price for those who buy rooftop-generated solar electricity.

DEMOGRAPHICS
The Statistics Portugal estimates that, according to the 2011 census, the population was 10,562,178 (of which 52% was female, 48% was male). In 2017 and according to more up-to-date figures, the population decreased to 10,294,289. This population has been relatively homogeneous for most of its history: a single religion (Roman Catholicism) and a single language have contributed to this ethnic and national unity, namely after the expulsion of the Moors and Jews. A number of those minorities nevertheless, stayed in Portugal, under the condition that they converted to Catholicism, and afterwards they were known as Mouriscos and Cristãos Novos (New Christians or former Jews). A small number of the former Jews may have continued to observe rabbinic Judaism in secret over many generations, in the case of the secret Jews of Belmonte, a small town in the interior; where now people observe the Jewish faith openly. After 1772 the distinction between Old and New Christians was abolished by decree.
Native Portuguese are an Iberian ethnic group, whose ancestry is very similar to other Western and Southern Europeans and Mediterranean peoples, in particular Spaniards, followed by some regional French and Italians with whom they share a common ancestry, history and cultural proximity.
The most important demographic influence in the modern Portuguese seems to be the oldest one; current interpretation of Y-chromosome and mtDNA data suggests that the Portuguese have their origin in Paleolithic peoples that began arriving to the European continent around 45,000 years ago. All subsequent migrations did leave an impact, genetically and culturally, but the main population source of the Portuguese is still Paleolithic. Genetic studies show Portuguese populations not to be significantly different from other European populations.
The total fertility rate (TFR) as of 2015 was estimated at 1.52 children born/woman, which is below the replacement rate of 2.1. In 2016, 52.8% of births were to unmarried women. Like most Western countries, Portugal has to deal with low fertility levels: the country has experienced a sub-replacement fertility rate since the 1980s.
The structure of Portuguese society is characterized by an increasing inequality which at present (2015) places the country in the lowest third of the Social Justice Index for the European Union.
Immigration. In 2007, Portugal had 10,617,575 inhabitants of whom about 332,137 were legal immigrants. As of 2015, Portugal had 10,341,330 inhabitants of whom about 383,759 were legal migrants, making up 3.7% of the population.
Portugal’s colonial history has long since been a cornerstone of its national identity, as has its geographic position at the south-western corner of Europe, looking out into the Atlantic Ocean. It was one of the last western colonial European powers to give up its overseas territories (among them Angola and Mozambique in 1975), turning over the administration of Macau to the People’s Republic of China at the end of 1999. Consequently, it has both influenced and been influenced by cultures from former colonies or dependencies, resulting in immigration from these former territories for both economic and personal reasons. Portugal, long a country of emigration (the vast majority of Brazilians have Portuguese ancestry) has now become a country of net immigration, and not just from the last Indian (Portuguese until 1961), African (Portuguese until 1975), and Far East Asian (Portuguese until 1999) overseas territories. An estimated 800,000 Portuguese returned to Portugal as the country’s African possessions gained independence in 1975.
Since the 1990s, along with a boom in construction, several new waves of Ukrainian, Brazilian, Lusophone Africans and other Africans have settled in the country. Romanian, Moldovans, Kosovar and Chinese have also migrated to the country. Portugal’s Romani population is estimated to be at about 40,000.
In addition, a number of EU citizens, mostly from the United Kingdom, other northern European or Nordic countries, have become permanent residents in the country (with the British community being mostly composed of retired pensioners and choosing to live in the Algarve and Madeira).
Religion
According to the 2011 Census, 81.0% of the Portuguese population is Roman Catholic. The country has small Protestant, Latter-day Saint, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Eastern Orthodox Church, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Baha’i, Buddhist, Jewish and Spiritist communities. Influences from African Traditional Religion and Chinese Traditional Religion are also felt among many people, particularly in fields related with Traditional Chinese Medicine and African Witch Doctors. Some 6.8% of the population declared themselves to be non-religious, and 8.3% did not give any answer about their religion. The Christ the King Sanctuary and the Shrine of Our Lady of Fátima in Portugal are two of the world’s most visited Catholic pilgrimage sites.
In 2012, a study conducted by the Catholic University revealed 79.5% of the Portuguese considered themselves Catholics, and that 18% attended Mass regularly. These figures represent a drop from 86.9% of Catholics in 2001, while during the same period the number of people stating that they had no religion rose from 8.2% to 14.2%.
Many Portuguese holidays, festivals and traditions have a Christian origin or connotation. Although relations between the Portuguese state and the Roman Catholic Church were generally amiable and stable since the earliest years of the Portuguese nation, their relative power fluctuated. In the 13th and 14th centuries, the church enjoyed both riches and power stemming from its role in the reconquest, its close identification with early Portuguese nationalism and the foundation of the Portuguese educational system, including its first university.
The growth of the Portuguese overseas empire made its missionaries important agents of colonization, with important roles in the education and evangelization of people from all the inhabited continents. The growth of liberal and nascent republican movements during the eras leading to the formation of the First Portuguese Republic (1910–26) changed the role and importance of organized religion.
Portugal is a secular state: church and state were formally separated during the Portuguese First Republic, and later reiterated in the 1976 Portuguese Constitution.
Languages. Portuguese is the world’s 6th most spoken language, with approx. 260 million speakers.
Portuguese is the official language of Portugal. Portuguese is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and Northern Portugal, originating from Galician-Portuguese, which was the common language of the Galician and Portuguese people until the formation of Portugal. Particularly in the North of Portugal, there are still many similarities between the Galician culture and the Portuguese culture. According to the Ethnologue of Languages, Portuguese and Spanish have a lexical similarity of 89% – educated speakers of each language can communicate with one another.
The Portuguese language is derived from the Latin spoken by the romanized Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula around 2000 years ago—particularly the Celts, Tartessians, Lusitanians and Iberians. In the 15th and 16th centuries, the language spread worldwide as Portugal established a colonial and commercial empire between 1415 and 1999. Portuguese is spoken as a native language in five different continents, with Brazil accounting for the largest number of native Portuguese speakers of any country (209,5 million speakers in 2016).
In 2013 the Portuguese language is the official language spoken in Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, and East Timor. These countries, plus Macau Special Administrative Region (People’s Republic of China) where Portuguese is co-official with Cantonese, make up the Lusosphere, a term derived from the ancient Roman province of “Lusitania”, which currently matches the Portuguese territory south of the Douro river.
Mirandese is also recognized as a co-official regional language in some municipalities of North-Eastern Portugal. An estimate of between 6,000 and 7,000 Mirandese speakers has been documented for Portugal
According to International English Proficiency Index, Portugal has a high proficiency level in English, higher than in countries like Italy, France or Spain.

EDUCATION
The total adult literacy rate is 99 percent. Portuguese primary school enrollments are 100 percent.
According to the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015, the average Portuguese 15-year-old student, when rated in terms of reading literacy, mathematics and science knowledge, is placed significantly above the OECD’s average, at a similar level as those students from Norway, Poland, Denmark and Belgium, with 501 points (493 is the average). The PISA results of the Portuguese students have been continuously improving, overcoming a number of other highly developed western countries like the USA, Austria, France and Sweden.
About 40% of college-age citizens (20 years old) attend one of Portugal’s higher education institutions (compared with 50% in the United States and 35% in the OECD countries). In addition to being a destination for international students, Portugal is also among the top places of origin for international students. All higher education students, both domestic and international, totaled 380,937 in 2005.
Portuguese universities have existed since 1290. The oldest Portuguese university was first established in Lisbon before moving to Coimbra. Historically, within the scope of the Portuguese Empire, the Portuguese founded the oldest engineering school of the Americas (the Real Academia de Artilharia, Fortificação e Desenho of Rio de Janeiro) in 1792, as well as the oldest medical college in Asia (the Escola Médico-Cirúrgica of Goa) in 1842. Presently, the largest university in Portugal is the University of Lisbon.
Most student costs are supported with public money. However, with the increasing tuition fees a student has to pay to attend a Portuguese state-run higher education institution and the attraction of new types of students (many as part-time students or in evening classes) like employees, businessmen, parents, and pensioners, many departments make a substantial profit from every additional student enrolled in courses, with benefits for the college or university’s gross tuition revenue and without loss of educational quality (teacher per student, computer per student, classroom size per student, etc.).

HEALTH
According to the latest Human Development Report, the average life expectancy in 2015 was 81.3 years. Portugal ranks 12th in the best public health systems in the world, ahead of high developed countries like the United Kingdom, Germany or Sweden.
The Portuguese health system is characterized by three coexisting systems: the National Health Service (Serviço Nacional de Saúde, SNS), special social health insurance schemes for certain professions (health subsystems) and voluntary private health insurance. The SNS provides universal coverage. In addition, about 25% of the population is covered by the health subsystems, 10% by private insurance schemes and another 7% by mutual funds.
Similar to the other Eur-A countries, most Portuguese die from noncommunicable diseases. Mortality from cardiovascular diseases(CVD) is higher than in the eurozone, but its two main components, ischaemic heart disease and cerebrovascular disease, display inverse trends compared with the Eur-A, with cerebrovascular disease being the single biggest killer in Portugal (17%). Portuguese people die 12% less often from cancer than in the Eur-A, but mortality is not declining as rapidly as in the Eur-A. Cancer is more frequent among children as well as among women younger than 44 years. Although lung cancer (slowly increasing among women) and breast cancer (decreasing rapidly) are scarcer, cancer of the cervix and the prostate are more frequent. Portugal has the highest mortality rate for diabetes in the Eur-A, with a sharp increase since the 1980s.
Portugal’s infant mortality rate has dropped sharply since the late 1970s, when 24 of 1000 newborns died in the first year of life. It is now around 2 deaths per a 1000 newborns. This improvement was mainly due to the decrease in neonatal mortality, from 15.5 to 2.4 per 1000 live births.

CULTURE 
Portugal is home to fifteen UNESCO World Heritage Sites, ranking it 8th in Europe and 17th in the world.
Cuisine. Portuguese cuisine is diverse. The Portuguese consume a lot of dry cod (bacalhau), for which there are hundreds of recipes. There are more than enough bacalhau dishes; over one for each day of the year. Two other popular fish recipes are grilled sardines and caldeirada, a potato-based stew that can be made from several types of fish. Typical Portuguese meat recipes made out of beef, pork, lamb, or chicken include cozido à portuguesa, feijoada, frango de churrasco, leitão (roast suckling pig) and carne de porco à alentejana. A very popular northern dish is the arroz de sarrabulho (rice stewed in pigs blood) or the arroz de cabidela (rice and chickens meat stewed in chickens blood).
Typical fast food dishes include the Francesinha (Frenchie) from Porto, “Tripas à moda do Porto” which is also a tradicional plate from Porto, and bifanas (grilled pork) or prego (grilled beef) sandwiches, which are well known around the country. The Portuguese art of pastry has its origins in the many medieval Catholic monasteries spread widely across the country. These monasteries, using very few ingredients (mostly almonds, flour, eggs and some liquor), managed to create a spectacular wide range of different pastries, of which pastéis de Belém (or pastéis de nata) originally from Lisbon, and ovos moles from Aveiro are examples. Portuguese cuisine is very diverse, with different regions having their own traditional dishes. The Portuguese have a culture of good food, and throughout the country there are myriads of good restaurants and typical small tasquinhas.
Portuguese wines have enjoyed international recognition since the times of the Romans, who associated Portugal with their god Bacchus. Today, the country is known by wine lovers and its wines have won several international prizes. Some of the best Portuguese wines are Vinho Verde, Vinho Alvarinho, Vinho do Douro, Vinho do Alentejo, Vinho do Dão, Vinho da Bairrada and the sweet Port Wine, Madeira Wine, and the Moscatel from Setúbal and Favaios. Port and Madeira are particularly appreciated in a wide range of places around the world.
Music. Portuguese music encompasses a wide variety of genres. The traditional one is the Portuguese folk music which has deep roots in local costumes having as instruments bagpipes, drums, flutes, tambourines, accordions and small guitars (cavaquinho). Apart Portuguese folk music other renowned genre is Fado, a melancholic urban music originated in Lisbon in the 19th Century, probably inside bohemian environments, usually associated with the Portuguese guitar and saudade, or longing.
Portugal has several summer music festivals, such as Festival Sudoeste in Zambujeira do Mar, Festival de Paredes de Coura in Paredes de Coura, Festival Vilar de Mouros near Caminha, Boom Festival in Idanha-a-Nova Municipality, NOS Alive, Sumol Summer Fest in Ericeira, Rock in Rio Lisboa and Super Bock Super Rock in Greater Lisbon. Out of the summer season, Portugal has a large number of festivals, designed more to an urban audience, like Flowfest or Hip Hop Porto. Furthermore, one of the largest international Goa trance festivals takes place in central Portugal every two years, the Boom Festival, that is also the only festival in Portugal to win international awards: European Festival Award 2010 – Green’n’Clean Festival of the Year and the Greener Festival Award Outstanding 2008 and 2010. There is also the student festivals of Queima das Fitas are major events in a number of cities across Portugal.

SPORT
Football is the most popular sport in Portugal. There are several football competitions ranging from local amateur to world-class professional level. The legendary Eusébio is still a major symbol of Portuguese football history. FIFA World Player of the Year winners Luís Figo and Cristiano Ronaldo (ranked as the best football player in the world five times) who won the FIFA Ballon d’Or, are two world-class Portuguese football players.
Other than football, many Portuguese sports clubs, including the “big three”, compete in several other sports events with a varying level of success and popularity, these may include roller hockey, basketball, futsal, handball, and volleyball. Portugal is one of the world’s best golf destinations. It has received several awards by the World Golf Awards. Its weather allows play all year round.