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 located on the Iberian Peninsula, in Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Macaronesian archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira. It features the westernmost point in continental Europe, its mainland west and south border with the North Atlantic Ocean and in the north and east, the Portugal-Spain border constitutes the longest uninterrupted border-line in the European Union. Its archipelagos form two autonomous regions with their own regional governments. In the mainland, Alentejo region occupies the biggest area but is one of the regions in Europe with a lower population density. Lisbon is the capital and largest city by population, being also the main spot for tourists alongside Porto and Algarve.

One of the oldest countries in Europe, its territory has been continuously settled and fought over since prehistoric times. The territory was inhabited by the Celtic and Iberian peoples, such as the Lusitanians, the Gallaecians, the Celtici, Turduli, and the Conii. These peoples had some commercial and cultural contact with Phoenicians, ancient Greeks and Carthaginians. It was later ruled by the Romans, followed by the invasions of Germanic peoples together with the Alans, and later the Moors, who were eventually expelled during the Reconquista. Founded first as a county within the Kingdom of León in 868, the country officially gained independence as the Kingdom of Portugal with the Treaty of Zamora in 1143.

During the 15th and 16th centuries Portugal led the Age of Discovery and established one of the longest-lived maritime and commercial empires, becoming one of the main economic and political powers of the time. By the early 19th century, events such as the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, the country's occupation during the Napoleonic Wars, and the resulting independence of Brazil in 1822 led to a marked decay of Portugal's prior opulence. This was followed by the civil war between liberal constitutionalists and conservative absolutists over royal succession from 1828 to 1834. The 1910 revolution deposed Portugal's monarchy, and established the democratic but unstable Portuguese First Republic, later superseded by the authoritarian regimes of Ditadura Nacional (National Dictatorship) and Estado Novo (New State). Democracy was restored after the Carnation Revolution (1974), ending the Portuguese Colonial War and eventually losing its remaining colonial possessions. (Full article...)

The Prehistoric Rock-Art Site of Escoural Cave (Portuguese: Estação Arqueológica da Herdade da Sala/Gruta do Escoural) is a structure known for its Paleolithic-era rock-art and funerary burial site, located in the Portuguese municipality of Montemor-o-Novo, in the civil parish of Santiago do Escoural. (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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"Communism fundamentally distinguishes itself from fascism because it was the first."

O comunismo distingue-se fundamentalmente do fascismo porque foi o primeiro.
Vergílio Ferreira, writer

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Vasco da Gama at the opening of the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal in 1895
Vasco da Gama was an ironclad of the Portuguese Navy built in the 1870s by the Thames Iron Works in London. Ordered to strengthen the defenses of the Portuguese capital of Lisbon, Vasco da Gama was launched in 1875 and completed in 1878. She served as the flagship of the Portuguese fleet for the majority of her long and peaceful career. She was rebuilt and heavily modernized between 1901 and 1903. Her crew was involved in revolts in 1913 and 1914; during the latter event, they bombarded Lisbon and killed around one hundred people. Long-since obsolete by the 1930s, Vasco da Gama was finally sold for scrapping in 1935. (Full article...)

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Ferdinand Magellan, in a 16th- or 17th-century anonymous portrait

Ferdinand Magellan (/məˈɡɛlən/ mə-GHEL-ən or /məˈɛlən/ mə-JEL-ən; Portuguese: Fernão de Magalhães, IPA: [fɨɾˈnɐ̃w̃ mɐɡɐˈʎɐ̃j̃ʃ]; Spanish: Fernando de Magallanes, IPA: [feɾˈnando ðe maɣaˈjanes]; c. 1480 – 27 April 1521) was a Portuguese explorer best known for having planned and led the 1519 Spanish expedition to the East Indies across the Pacific Ocean to open a maritime trade route, during which he discovered the interoceanic passage thereafter bearing his name and achieved the first European navigation to Asia via the Pacific. After his death, this expedition was the first to circumnavigate the globe in 1519–22 in the service of Spain.

During this voyage, Magellan was killed in the Battle of Mactan, Mactan Island, now Province of Cebu, Cebu group of islands in 1521 in the present-day Philippines, after running into resistance from the indigenous population led by Lapulapu, who consequently became a Philippine national symbol of resistance to colonialism. After Magellan's death, Juan Sebastián Elcano took the lead of the expedition, and with its few other surviving members in one of the two remaining ships, completed the first circumnavigation of Earth when they returned to Spain in 1522. (Full article...)

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The Hieronymites Monastery (Mosteiro dos Jerónimos).

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