What are some facts about Portugal?

Answer 1

Monarchs governed Portugal until 1910, when the first Portuguese republic was proclaimed. A period of great instability followed. In 1926 a coup d'état installed a Dictatorship that ruled Portugal for nearly five decades. A series of costly colonial wars in Africa beginning in the 1960s drained Portuguese resources and weakened the national economy. Partly as a result of the dictatorship's stubborn prosecution of the wars, a revolution occurred in Portugal in 1974, and a military junta came to power. The following year Portugal granted independence to all of its African colonies. A new constitution in 1976 established a democratic system of government. Since that time, Portugal has forged new ties to Europe and worked to modernize its economy. Portugal joined the European Community (EC, a forerunner of the European Union) in 1986, and in 1999 adopted the euro, the EU's common currency. Macao, the last remnant of Portugal's colonial empire in Asia, was returned to China in 1999.

Portugal has a maritime temperate climate that varies according to elevation and proximity to the ocean. The heaviest precipitation occurs in northern Portugal. The northern coast receives about 152 cm (about 60 in) of rain annually. Rainfall increases with altitude, and the western slopes of the northern mountains receive about 2,300 mm (about 90 in) annually-the heaviest rainfall in Western Europe. Precipitation decreases toward the south, and in the extreme south, in Algarve, rainfall averages only about 38 cm (about 15 in) a year.

In southern Portugal summers are long and hot and winters are moderate. In the northwest summers are shorter and wetter, while winter temperatures are generally mild and moderated by maritime influences. In the northeast summers can be scorching and winters are typically long, cold, and snowy. The mean annual temperature north of the Douro River is about 10°C (about 50°F); between the Tajo and Douro, about 16°C (about 60°F); and in the valley of the Guadiana, about 18°C (about 65°F).

Agriculture, including forestry and fishing, engages 13 percent of the working population and accounts for 3 percent of GDP. Farms range in size from tiny holdings in northern Portugal to huge estates in the south, where wheat is the main crop. Tomatoes, corn, sugar beets, oats, barley, rice, and potatoes are grown in irrigated areas. Groves of olive, orange, apple, and pear trees are widely cultivated. Many varieties of grapes, used mainly for wine, thrive in Portugal's soils. The most important exported wines are port, produced in the region around Porto, from which the wine got its name, and Madeira, from the Madeira Islands. Sheep, goats, hogs, fowl, and cattle, including a special breed of black bulls for bullfighting, are raised.

HISTORY

Portugal developed as a separate state in the 12th century. Until that time, the history of Portugal is inseparable from that of the Iberian Peninsula. Present-day Portugal became a part of the Roman province of Lusitania in the 2nd century bc. The prefix Luso is still used to mean Portuguese and derives its name from the Lusitani, a fierce tribe of the western Iberian Peninsula that resisted Roman rule. The chieftain Viriatus, leader of the Lusitani, is one of the country's earliest national heroes. Christianity was established in the peninsula by the middle of the 4th century ad. Roman occupation ended in the 5th century with the invasions of Germanic tribes. One of these tribes, the Visigoths (see Goths), came to dominate the peninsula for more than 200 years.

In 711 Muslims invaded the Iberian Peninsula from Africa and deposed the Visigothic monarchy. Several small Christian kingdoms in the north of the peninsula, however, resisted Muslim expansion. In 997 the territory between the Douro and Miño rivers (now northern Portugal) was captured from the Muslims by Bermudo II, king of León. By 1064 the Christian struggle to reclaim lands from the Muslims, known as the Christian reconquest, was completed as far south as present-day Coimbra under Ferdinand I, king of Castile and León. The reconquered districts were then organized into a feudal county, composed of fiefs loyal to Spanish kings.

In 1093 Alfonso I, the Christian king of Castile (who also ruled León as Alfonso VI), called on the assistance of a French nobleman, Henry of Burgundy, to help defeat a siege of Muslims at Toledo in what is now central Spain. In gratitude Alfonso named Henry count of Portugal and awarded Henry land on the Atlantic seaboard between the Douro and Miño rivers. This land, named Portus Cale (later called Portucale) after a former Roman settlement on the Douro, became the basis of modern Portugal.

On the death of Alfonso in 1109, Count Henry, and later his widow, Teresa, refused to continue feudal allegiance to Castile and León. Henry invaded the Spanish kingdom and began a series of peninsular wars, but with little success. In 1128 Henry's son, Afonso Henriques, rebelled against Teresa and defeated her in battle. Afonso Henriques declared Portugal independent from Castile and León in 1139 and proclaimed himself Afonso I, the first king of Portugal. Eight years later Afonso, assisted by Christian Crusaders bound for the Holy Land, seized Lisbon from the Muslims (seeCrusades). In 1179 Afonso obtained papal recognition of the title of king, placing the Portuguese kingdom under the protection of the Holy See. Afonso, as founder of the Portuguese monarchy, remains a Portuguese national hero

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