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Portal:Portugal

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Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, overlooking the Tagus river
Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, overlooking the Tagus river

Flag of Portugal
Location of Portugal in Europe

Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic, is a country in the Iberian Peninsula in Southwestern Europe. Featuring the westernmost point in continental Europe, Portugal borders Spain to its north and east, with which it shares the longest uninterrupted border in the European Union; to the south and the west is the North Atlantic Ocean; and to the west and southwest lie the Macaronesian archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira, which are two autonomous regions of Portugal. Lisbon is the capital and largest city, followed by Porto, which is the only other metropolitan area.

The western part of the Iberian Peninsula has been continuously inhabited since prehistoric times, with the earliest signs of settlement dating to 5500 BC. Celtic and Iberian peoples arrived in the first millennium BC. The region came under Roman control in the second century BC, followed by a succession of Germanic peoples and the Alans from the fifth to eighth centuries AD. Muslims conquered Portugal's current mainland in the eighth century, but were gradually expelled by the Christian Reconquista. Modern Portugal began taking shape during this period, initially as a county of the Christian Kingdom of León in 868, officially declared a sovereign Kingdom with the Treaty of Zamora in 1143.

During the Age of Discovery, the Kingdom of Portugal settled Madeira and the Azores, and established itself as a major economic and political power, largely through its maritime empire, which extended mostly along the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean coasts. Portuguese explorers and merchants were instrumental in establishing trading posts and colonies that enabled control over spices and slave trades. While Portugal expanded its influence globally, its political and military power faced internal and external challenges towards the end of the 16th century. The dynastic crisis marked the beginning of the country's political decline that led to the Iberian Union (1580-1640), a period in which Portugal was united under Spanish rule. While maintaining a degree of self-governance, the union strained Portugal’s autonomy and drew it into conflicts with European powers which targeted Portuguese territories and trade routes. Portugal's prior opulence was further diminished by a series of events, such as the Portuguese Restoration War and the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, which destroyed the city and damaged the empire's economy. (Full article...)

The urbanized area of Santa Cruz extending towards University Hill in the old quarter of Coimbra

Santa Cruz is a former civil parish in the municipality of Coimbra, Portugal. In 2013, the parish merged into the new parish Coimbra (Sé Nova, Santa Cruz, Almedina e São Bartolomeu). In 2001, its population was 6866 inhabitants, in an area of 5.56 km2 that parallels the north (right) margin of the Mondego River, extending to the village of Adémia in Trouxemil (its density is approximately 1235 inhabitants per km2). (Full article...)

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The trocaz pigeon, Madeira laurel pigeon or long-toed pigeon (Columba trocaz) is a pigeon which is endemic to the island of Madeira, Portugal. It is a mainly grey bird with a pinkish breast; its silvery neck patch and lack of white wing markings distinguish it from its close relative and probable ancestor, the common wood pigeon. Its call is a characteristic six-note cooing, weaker and lower-pitched than that of the wood pigeon. Despite its bulky, long-tailed appearance, this pigeon has a fast, direct flight.

A scarce resident breeder in laurisilva forests, the trocaz pigeon lays one white egg in a flimsy twig nest. Its numbers fell sharply after human colonisation of the Madeira archipelago, and it vanished altogether from Porto Santo Island. The major cause of its population decline was habitat loss from forest clearance, but hunting and nest predation by introduced rats were also contributory factors. Protection of the laurel forests and a ban on hunting have enabled numbers to increase, so that the species is no longer endangered. (Full article...)

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"Oh salted sea, how much of thy salt are tears of Portugal?"

Ó mar salgado quanto do teu sal são lágrimas de Portugal

Fernando Pessoa, poet

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Saramago in January 2008

José de Sousa Saramago GColSE GColCa (European Portuguese: [ʒuˈzɛ ðɨ ˈsozɐ sɐɾɐˈmaɣu]; 16 November 1922 – 18 June 2010) was a Portuguese writer. He was the recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature for his "parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony [with which he] continually enables us once again to apprehend an elusory reality." His works, some of which can be seen as allegories, commonly present subversive perspectives on historic events, emphasizing the theopoetic human factor. In 2003 Harold Bloom described Saramago as "the most gifted novelist alive in the world today" and in 2010 said he considers Saramago to be "a permanent part of the Western canon", while James Wood praises "the distinctive tone to his fiction because he narrates his novels as if he were someone both wise and ignorant."

More than two million copies of Saramago's books have been sold in Portugal alone and his work has been translated into 25 languages. A proponent of libertarian communism, Saramago criticized institutions such as the Catholic Church, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. An atheist, he defended love as an instrument to improve the human condition. In 1992, the Government of Portugal under Prime Minister Aníbal Cavaco Silva ordered the removal of one of his works, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, from the Aristeion Prize's shortlist, claiming the work was religiously offensive. Disheartened by this political censorship of his work, Saramago went into exile on the Spanish island of Lanzarote, where he lived alongside his Spanish wife Pilar del Río until his death in 2010. (Full article...)

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The Hieronymites Monastery (Mosteiro dos Jerónimos).

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