PORTUGAL
This western extremity of the Iberian Peninsula has existed within borders virtually unchanged for nearly 800 years. Its ten million people speak their own language, follow their own unique traditions, and have a centuries-old history of proud independence from, and deep distrust of neighbouring Spain.
For a small country the regions of Portugal are immensily varied. The rural Minho and Trás-os-Montes are the most traditional – some would say backward. Over the last few decades many inhabitants of these neglected regions have been forced to emigrate in search of work. The south of the country could not be more different. The Algarve, blessed with beautiful sandy beaches and a warm Mediterranean climate all year round, has been transformed into a holiday playground for North Europeans.
Two great rivers, the Tagus and the Douro, rise in Spain and then flow across Portugal to the Atlantic Ocean. From the wild upper reaches of the Douro valley comes Portugal’s most famous product – port wine, from steeply terraced vineyards hewn out of the mountainsides. The Tagus, by contrast, is wide and languid, often spilling out of the flat, fertile, Ribatejo flood plain where fine horses and fighting bulls graze.
At the mouths of the Tagus and
Douro stand Portugal’s two major cities, Lisbon and Oporto respectively. Lisbon the
capital is a cosmopolitan metropolis with a rich cultural life and many national museums
and art galleries. Oporto is a serious rival to Lisbon, especially in terms of commerce
and industry. Most centres of population are very much smaller: from the fishing
communities on the Atlantic coast to the tiny medieval villages in the vast sunbaked
plains of the Alentejo and the mountain interior of the Beiras.
Far out in the Atlantic Ocean lie two remote archipelagos that are self governing regions of Portuguese state: warm, luxuriant Madeira off the coast of Morocco, and the nine rainy, green, volcano tips that make up the Azores, about one thid of the way across the Atlantic between Lisbon and New York.