Portugal

Information about Portugal

• Trip Preparation

  
  Write a contribution
  
  

  Country and People

  
  Write a contribution
  
  

  Getting Around

  
  Write a contribution
  
  

  Discover and Enjoy

  
  Write a contribution
  
  

  For Portugal there are unfortunately no contributions. Tell all the other travellers about your experiences and play the tour guide!

  ---

  Add a contribution

  For Portugal there are unfortunately no contributions. Tell all the other travellers about your experiences and play the tour guide!

  ---

  Add a contribution

  For Portugal there are unfortunately no contributions. Tell all the other travellers about your experiences and play the tour guide!

  ---

  Add a contribution

  For Portugal there are unfortunately no contributions. Tell all the other travellers about your experiences and play the tour guide!

  ---

  Add a contribution

  ---

  

  Portugal
  
  Facing the Atlantic, Portugal listens to the sea as to a long-standing friend in whom we have become accustomed to confiding, one who speaks to us by signs, knowing that these will be readily understood in the unique language understood only by ourselves.
  
  This relationship goes back a long way since the life of Port... Read on

  Portugal
  
  Facing the Atlantic, Portugal listens to the sea as to a long-standing friend in whom we have become accustomed to confiding, one who speaks to us by signs, knowing that these will be readily understood in the unique language understood only by ourselves.
  
  This relationship goes back a long way since the life of Portugal has always revolved around the sea, a fishing people in close contact with the waves, storms and ocean currents. The climate results from sea-bornet winds and the heat which the privileged south enjoys in abundance. An invariably pleasant, Mediterranean atmosphere. The fresh winters are followed by days of alternating sun and rain, prelude to the later, hotter days typical of mid-year. Portugal’s isolation from the rest of Europe has been a constant factor, with the plains of Castile and the Pyrenees constituting virtually insurmountable obstacles in days of yore when neither roads nor means of transport existed.
  
  Lying in south western Europe at the ocean’s edge, Portugal is a land of multiple landscapes, mountains and valleys in the north and centre making way for plains in more southerly latitudes. The entire coast is fringed with a succession of beaches, some small and backed by an amphitheatre of rock, others endless stretches of finest sand seeming to be bleached daily whiter by the transparency of the ocean waters. And, as for the past, memory can barely encompass such a wealth of momentous events. The name Portugal almost certainly arose from that of a city situated on the estuary of the Douro River, a village of streets and houses inhabited by fishermen and life-long merchants. Portus Calle was the name by which it was christened by the Romans, later to become one of the busiest urban centres of the peninsula. This is today’s Oporto, the country’s second city, washed by the weary waters of the river winding between vine-laden hillsides, dwellings perched on the slopes, beneath a vault of unpredictable sky.
  
  The north was likewise the cradle of the country that was created when a Prince of Burgundy was granted the regency of the County of Portucale, an honour upon which he did not hesitate to expand when he was struck by the notion to be king. Portugal — united around the talent and courage of her first king, Dom Afonso Henriques — became independent in 1143, though future events were to prove this triumph to be ephemeral. But, for the time being, Portugal had freed itself from Castile. The situation was reversed in 1580 when the linking of royal blood allowed a Spanish monarch to ascend the Portuguese throne. This monarch was Dom Felipe, first of three of the same name who were to impose their rule on the Portuguese until the mid-XVII century. Independence was won back in 1640, the preceding period constituting but a brief interregnum in national pride but, nonetheless, important enough to be set down in the pages of history and to brand the already sceptical nature of the people. Wherever you go, you encounter sights dating back to distant eras, when the days passed slowly and every season was a cycle in itself.
  
  From time to time, the habitual tranquility is broken by feast days on which large processions devotely follow the statue of the patron saint standing on a flower-decked pedestal, devout festivals where the colours of the procession vie for attention with the hues of local china and regional costumes. On such occasions, the crowds gather to live every moment as though it were the last, knowing that another busy year must pass before the festivities can be repeated.
  The old red of the roof tops stoop before the lofty church towers and the central squares welcome chattering groups as the sun descends in splendour over the horizon. Everywhere there are castles, grey stones methodically chiselled into shape to produce battlemented towers, solid ramparts, fortifications encircling villages which are genuine living museums. These constructions are landmarks on the path followed by the Christian kings in their struggle against the Moors, strategic points resounding with tales of princes and fairies, spots which the modern world has not shorn of their memories of warfare, names and places keeping alive a common geneological tree with roots burying deep into the north of Africa.
  
  But this is not the only mark of courage recorded from the past. There were others in which daring was not the product of the suffering of war but of the pain of separation and distance. They were times of discovery in far seas, first the Atlantic islands of Madeira, the Azores and Cape Verde and, later, other continents. Contacts which were maintained over the centuries, as though the ocean had brought about precocious maritime relationships with ever more distant regions. The ships departing from Lisbon at the end of the XV century knew with certainty only that the sea held secrets to be discovered, that the bad weather waves dredged evil beings up from the depths, that the end of the world lay somewhere beyond the horizon. But the months passed between sea and sky held less terrible surprises for these sailors. Even before the century turned, Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope, allowing the Portuguese to reach the eastern coast of Africa and so on to India.
  
  In 1500 different routes were explored, leading to the discovery of Brazil, yet another continent and, implicitly, a new concept of the Earth, facts recorded by Manueline art in every monument erected during those days and glorified in inspried epic form by Camões in his “Lusiads”, a long poem admirably expressing the saudosismo, the nostalgic yearning, inherent in the Portuguese character, faith as the driving force behind all action, the past excelling over anything the future might hold. And between those early days and the present so much has happened, vicissitudes of feast and famine, joy and sadness, boom and dispair, such as was experienced in Lisbon at the time of the great earthquake in 1755, providing Pombal with the chance to build a new city while saving the country from economic decline. But the country was to be subjected to further suffering, on the dawn of the new century. Portugal was invaded by Napoleon’s armies, occasioning years of profound desperation. The revolution of 1910 made way for the Republic, with the royal family and aristocracy departing for exile in Great Britain.
  
  The following years of unstable government were ended by the dictator’s coup in 1926, allegedly to save the economy and instituting policies which were to isolate Portugal from Europe and the rest of the world. Plural democracy was established by events beginning in April 1974 after decades of obligatory and absurdly proud isolation to which the Portuguese people were forcibly subjected.
  
  Events, every one, to test a nation’s strength of character. But, surprisingly, this political and social diet appears not to have affected the Portuguese nature, one of mingled melancholy and passion, lowered eyes and open heart, tears provoked by the sad plaint of fado song flowing together with tears of joy. As though, when all is said and done, these facets, being the most genuine, were stored in the deepest recesses of the Portuguese soul, out of reach of external reality.
  

  close