Portuguese

Santo António de Lisboa (or Anthony of Padua) (saint)

Fatima vidents (1917 Our Lady aparitions in Fátima)

Rainha Santa Isabel de Portugal (saint)

Navigators, explorers and related

Diogo Cão (15th century explorer of African coast)

Bartolomeu Dias (15th century explorer of African coast)

Vasco da Gama (discoverer of the Sea Route to India in 1498)

Pedro Alvares Cabral (discoverer of Brazil in 1500)

Gaspar Corte-Real (16th century explorer of North America)

Fernão de Magalhães (Ferdinand Magellan, sea explorer)

Afonso de Albuquerque (naval general and vice-king of India)

Fernão Pires de Andrade (merchant)

Gago Coutinho(1869-1959) & Sacadura Cabral(1881-1924) (were the first to cross South Atlantic Ocean by air in 1922)

Popes:

John XXI (13th century pope)

Philosophers:

Uriel Acosta (1585-1640)

Agostinho da Silva (1906-1996)

Musicians:

Duarte Lobo (composer)

Carlos Seixas (composer)

Ignácio Parreiras Neves (composer)(1730-1794)

João Domingos Bomtempo(1775-1842)(composer)

Jerônimo de Souza Lôbo (composer)(? - 1810)

Keil do Amaral (composer of the portuguese anthem)

Francisco de Lacerda(1869-1934)(composer)

Fernando Lopes Graça (composer)

Vianna da Mota (piano player, composer)

José Afonso (also known as Zeca Afonso, composer, player)

Amália Rodrigues(1920-1999) (the most famous fado singer)

Carlos Paredes(1925-) (portuguese guitar player)

Maria João Pires (piano player)

Maria João & Mário Laginha (jazz singer & piano player)

Madredeus (folk group)

Dulce Pontes (singer)

Mísia (fado singer)

Vicente Lusitano (composer)

Poets and writers:

Gil Vicente (dramaturg)

Luis de Camões (poet, author of the Lusíadas)

Almeida Garrett (writer and dramaturg)

Camilo Castelo Branco (writer)

Eça de Queirós (writer)

Fernando Pessoa (poet)

Florbela Espanca (poet)

José Saramago (writer, Literature Nobel Prize 1998)

António Lobo Antunes (writer)

José Cardoso Pires (writer)

Artists:

Vasco Fernandes (Grão Vasco)(15th century painter)

Nuno Gonçalves (15th century painter)

José Malhoa (19th century painter)

Almada Negreiros(1893-1970) (20th century painter)

Maria Helena Vieira da Silva (20th century painter)

Paula Rego (20th century painter)

Scientists:

Garcia da Orta (botanical scientist)

Pedro Nunes (16th century scientist)

Egas Moniz(1854-1955) (neurologist, Medicine Nobel Prize 1949)

António Damásio (brain researcher)

Engineers and architets

Edgar Cardoso (expert in bridge engineering)

Siza Vieira(1933-) (architect)

Tomás Taveira(1938-) (architect)

Movies - Actors and directors:

Manoel de Oliveira(1908-) (director)

Carmen Miranda(1914-1955) (singer and actress)

Beatriz Costa (actress)

António Silva (actor)

Laura Alves (actress)

Joaquim de Almeida (actor)

Maria de Medeiros (actress)

Athletes:

Joaquim Agostinho (cyclist)

Eusébio da Silva Ferreira (1943-) (football player)

Carlos Lopes(1947-) (marathon olympic champion)

Rosa Mota(1958-) (marathon olympic champion)

Paulo Futre (football player)

Paulo Sousa (football player)

Luís Figo (football player)

XX/XXI century politicians:

António Oliveira Salazar (1889-1970) (prime-minister in the dictatorship)

Mário Soares(1924-) (politician and president)

Francisco Sá Carneiro(1934-1980) (politician)

Cavaco Silva (politician and prime-minister)

António Guterres (politician and prime-minister)

José Manuel Durão Barroso (politician and current prime-minister)

Jorge Sampaio (politician and current President of the Republic)

Duarte Pio, Duke of Braganza (claimant to the abolished throne of Portugal)

Emerging from the Reconquista as an independent country in 1143, and with almost always the same main territory border line since the 13th century, Portugal has always been turned to the sea. Since early, fishing and overseas commerce have been main economical activities. Henry the Navigator's interest in exploration together with some technological developments in navigation brought together, gave way to the Portuguese expansion and to great geographical knowledge advancements.

Following its heyday as a world power during the 15th and 16th centuries, Portugal lost much of its wealth and status with the destruction of Lisbon in a 1755 earthquake, occupation during the Napoleonic Wars, and the loss of its Brazilian colony in 1822. A 1910 revolution deposed the Portuguese monarchy starting a period of chaotic republicanism (First Republic); in 1926 a nationalist military coup d'etat began a period of more than five decades of repressive fascist governments.

In 1974, a effectively bloodless left-wing military coup (the Carnation Revolution) installed a government that instituted broad democratic reforms. The following year Portugal granted independence to its colonies in Africa: Mozambique, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe) and lost its colony of East Timor in Asia to an Indonesian invasion. Portugal itself entered the European Union in 1986, whilst another Asian dependency, Macau, reverted to Chinese sovereignty in December 1999.

See also: List of Portuguese monarchs - Kings of Portugal family tree - Timeline of Portuguese history

In the years following the 1974 coup Portugal has progressively done away with undemocratic institutions and established itself as a constitutional democracy. The four main organs of Portuguese politics are the presidency, the prime minister and Council of Ministers (the cabinet), the Assembly of the Republic (the parliament), and the Judicial branch.

The president, elected to a 5-year term by direct, universal suffrage, also is commander in chief of the armed forces. Presidential powers include appointing the prime minister and Council of Ministers, in which the president must be guided by the assembly election results. The Council of State, a presidential advisory body, is composed of six senior civilian officers, any former presidents elected since 1976, five members chosen by the Assembly, and five selected by the president.

The government is headed by the prime minister, who names the Council of Ministers. A new government is required to define the broad outline of its policy in a program and present it to the assembly for a mandatory period of debate. Failure of the assembly to reject the program by a majority of deputies confirms the government in office.

The Assembly of the Republic (Assembleia da República) is a unicameral body composed of up to 230 deputies. Elected by universal suffrage according to a system of proportional representation, deputies serve terms of office of 4 years, unless the president dissolves the assembly and calls for new elections.

Mainland Portugal consists of 18 districts (distritos, singular - distrito):

• Aveiro
• Beja
• Braga
• Bragança
• Castelo Branco
• Coimbra
• Évora
• Faro
• Guarda
• Leiria
• Lisbon (Lisboa)
• Portalegre
• Oporto (Porto)
• Santarém
• Setúbal
• Viana do Castelo
• Vila Real
• Viseu

Continental Portugal is split in two by its main river, the Tagus (Tejo). To the north the landscape is mountainous, though Portugal's highest point is Mount Pico in the Azores at 2,351 m. The south down to the Algarve features mostly rolling plains and the climate here is somewhat warmer and drier than the cooler and rainier north. Other major rivers include the Douro, the Minho and the Guadiana, similar to the Tagus in that all originate in Spain.

Portugal has become a diversified and increasingly service-based economy since joining the European Union in 1986. Over the past decade, successive governments have privatised many state-controlled firms and liberalised key areas of the economy, including the financial and telecommunications sectors. The country qualified for the European Monetary Union (EMU) in 1998 and began circulating its new currency, the euro, on January 1, 2002 along with 11 other EU member economies.

Economic growth has been above the EU average for much of the past decade, but GDP per capita stands at just 75% of that of the leading EU economies. The government has failed to reign in a widening deficit and to advance structural reforms needed to boost Portugal's economic competitiveness. A poor educational system, in particular, has been an obstacle to greater productivity and growth. Portugal has been increasingly overshadowed by lower-cost producers in Central Europe and Asia as a target for foreign direct investment.

Portugal is a fairly homogenous country linguistically, ethnically and religiously; Portuguese is spoken throughout the country, with only the town of Miranda de Douro's Leonese dialect recognised as a locally co-official language as Mirandese, Asturian in Spain is another Leonese dialect but not officially recognized by Spain. Minorities, such as those of African immigrants from the former colonies, number less than 100,000. The majority of the Portuguese population are members of the Roman Catholic Church.

• List of Portuguese people
• Music of Portugal

Miscellaneous topics

• Communications in Portugal
• Transportation in Portugal
• Military of Portugal
• Foreign relations of Portugal

External links

Ela encerra sempre a janela antes de cear (less common Portuguese)

Portuguese speakers are generally able to read Spanish Castilian, and Spanish Castilian speakers are generally able to read Portuguese, even if they can't understand the spoken language. Tourists in Portugal should note that trying to communicate with the locals in Spanish may seem offensive.

Galician can be seen as a somewhat castilianized form of Portuguese. Linguists have always recognized the unity of these linguistic varieties (for instance, Corominas, Lindley Cintra, Coseriu, etc), as they were once just the same language and both are relatively conservative varieties. However, in practice, they are treated sometimes as different languages by both populations mainly due to sociolinguistic issues, with works in Galician being translated into Portuguese and vice versa. The current Galician Autonomous Government backs a standard of Galician which distances it from Portuguese and makes it, graphically, more similar to Castilian Spanish. Nevertheless, there is another standard, used in some political circles and universities that basically treats Galician as a Portuguese dialect with minor differences. During the Middle Ages, Galician and Portuguese were undoubtedly the same language, nowadays known as "Galego-Português", or Galician-Portuguese, a language used for poetic works even in Castille.

Brazilian Portuguese is the same language as in Portugal. However, a few words and expressions are written differently (like 'bus' - "ônibus" (Braz.) = "autocarro" (Port.) ).

In some places, Spanish and Portuguese are spoken almost interchangeably. There is a town on the Brazil/Paraguay border, for example, known in Brazil as Ponta Porã and in Paraguay as Pedro Juan Caballero, where conversations regularly switch back and forth between the two languages. (To add to this rich diversity, many people in the region also speak Guarani.).

Speakers of other Romance languages may find a peculiarity in the conjugating of certain apparently infinite verbs. In particular, when constructing a future tense or conditional tense expression involving an indirect object pronoun, the pronoun is placed between the verb stem and the verb ending. For example, Dupondt said trazer-vos-emos o vosso ceptro. Translating as literally as possible, this is "bring (stem)-to you (formal)-we (future) the your sceptre". In English we would say, "We will bring you your sceptre." The form Nós vos traremos o vosso ceptro. is also correct, although far less common in Portugal, but more common in Brazil.

See Also