PORTUGAL has been called \u201cthe last old place.\u201d\u00a0 It is the least known corner of Europe\u2014\u201cIberian, but not Spanish; Latin, but not Mediterranean; cosmopolitan, but not crowded.\u201d\u00a0 The people are melancholy, conservative, religious and prudent, but they also have a flair for the exotic and enjoy being different.\u00a0 Portuguese people are passionately\u00a0 proud of their country.\u00a0 Everything about their culture speaks of the nostalgia they feel about their unique place in world history.<\/p>\n
The first world revolution, before the Industrial Revolution of the 19th<\/sup> century and the Information Revolution of the 20th<\/sup>, was the Geographic Revolution of the 15th<\/sup> century.\u00a0 It was begun and lead by the Portuguese.\u00a0 Always a seafaring people, the Portuguese, under the patronage of Prince Henry, began a navigation school.\u00a0 By 1500, Vasco da Gama, Bartolomeu Dias and numerous other Portuguese explorers had reached the coasts of Africa, the Arabian and Malay peninsulas, the East Indies, and the Orient.\u00a0 They had become the most powerful nation of the world.\u00a0 The Portuguese jokingly say, \u201cWe never intended to rule the world, but rather, to buy it cheap and sell it dear.\u201d\u00a0 History has shown that in actuality, the price was very dear and the \u201cselling\u201d very cheap.\u00a0 In 1999, Portugal gave up its last colony, Macao.<\/p>\n Sharing only a fifth of the Iberian Peninsula with Spain, Portugal is a small country\u2014about the size of Indiana.\u00a0 Situated on the west coast of the Peninsula, facing the Atlantic, 350 miles from north to south, Portugal\u2019s topography is as varied as its population.\u00a0 Most of Portugal\u2019s 10 million inhabitants live in rural fishing and farming villages, while Lisbon, the capital, claims a fifth of the population.<\/p>\n Portugal is a matriarchal society, \u201cspoiled\u201d with a lot of personal freedom and not much discipline.\u00a0 Its people favor patience to perseverance, and tolerance is considered the prime virtue.\u00a0 They have grown up with only the vaguest sense of time constraints, and generally with a streak of independence and an unsinkable self-esteem.\u00a0 Nevertheless, friendliness, especially to foreigners, is Portugal\u2019s greatest asset.<\/p>\n The economy of Portugal is still based on the time-honored skills of fishing, farming and hand crafts.\u00a0 Ceramic tiles and pottery, needle work, cork products, wine, olive oil, tomato paste, sardines and cod have long been the staples of trade, but the last decade has seen great growth in the service industries, including tourism.\u00a0 In 1986, Portugal joined the European Community as its poorest member.\u00a0 It is now the fastest growing nation in the European Community and in the summer of 1998, Portugal will host the World\u2019s Fair.<\/p>\n The recorded history of Portugal began 5,000 years ago.\u00a0 Phoenicians, Celts, Greeks and Carthaginians all conquered and settled in Iberia. \u00a0The Romans claimed the peninsula in 201 B.C.\u00a0 and named the Portuguese portion of the empire Lusitania.\u00a0 They built cities and linked them with their system of roads.\u00a0 Latin became the root of both the Portuguese and Spanish languages.<\/p>\n During the A.D. 400\u2019s, Germanic tribes took over until the Muslim armies arrived from North Africa in 711.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 By the mid-1200\u2019s, the Crusaders had driven out the Muslims and Castile (Spain) officially recognized Portugal\u2019s border, the oldest in Europe.<\/p>\n The monarchy was overthrown in 1910 and Portugal became a republic.\u00a0 However, after the instability of 45 different governments, the army overthrew the civilian government sin 1926 and put Oliveira Salazar in control.\u00a0 Within a few years, Salazar became dictator.\u00a0\u00a0 Modern Portugal came into being in 1974, when the military leaders again overthrew the government–this time Salazar\u2019s fascist regime, and returned the country to a republic with a parliament and a president elected by the voters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" PORTUGAL has been called \u201cthe last old place.\u201d\u00a0 It is the least known corner of Europe\u2014\u201cIberian, but not Spanish; Latin, but not Mediterranean; cosmopolitan, but not crowded.\u201d\u00a0 The people are melancholy, conservative, religious and prudent, but they also have a flair for the exotic and enjoy being different.\u00a0 Portuguese people are passionately\u00a0 proud of their […] Read more…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[17],"class_list":["post-752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","tag-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/janicebyrd.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/janicebyrd.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/janicebyrd.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/janicebyrd.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/janicebyrd.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=752"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/janicebyrd.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":873,"href":"http:\/\/janicebyrd.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752\/revisions\/873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/janicebyrd.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/janicebyrd.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/janicebyrd.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}