49 Fun Facts About Portugal

Portugal shares its only land border with which country?

Spain is Portugal's only neighbour, sharing a roughly 1,200-kilometre border that has barely changed since a treaty of 1297, making it one of Europe's oldest frontiers.

Which Atlantic archipelago, an autonomous region of Portugal, gave its name to a fortified wine?

Madeira's wine was fortified to survive long sea voyages; the heat of the ships' holds turned out to improve it, so makers now warm the casks on purpose.

Where is Mount Pico, Portugal's highest point at 2,351 metres?

The Azores hold Mount Pico, a volcano on Pico Island that beats the mainland's highest summit, Torre in the Serra da Estrela, by more than 350 metres.

Cabo da Roca, near Sintra, holds what geographical distinction?

Cabo da Roca is the westernmost point of mainland Europe, edging out Cape Finisterre in Galicia, the headland whose Latin name means 'end of the earth'.

Lisbon is usually ranked as the second-oldest capital city in Europe, after which city?

Athens is usually placed first and Lisbon second among Europe's oldest capitals; Lisbon was already the Roman municipium Felicitas Julia Olisipo under Julius Caesar, centuries before most European capitals existed.

The 1755 earthquake that destroyed Lisbon struck on the morning of which religious feast?

The quake struck on 1 November 1755, All Saints' Day, while churches were full; shaking lasted up to six minutes and about 40 minutes later a tsunami swept over survivors who had fled to the docks.

Portugal's overthrow of the Estado Novo dictatorship on 25 April 1974 is known by what name?

The Carnation Revolution took its name from the red carnations that restaurant worker Celeste Caeiro handed to soldiers, who slid them into their rifle muzzles during a coup in which almost no shots were fired.

Portugal's 1910 revolution swapped the royal blue-and-white flag for green and which colour?

Red was the colour of the revolutionaries' own flags; paired with green, it replaced the blue and white Portugal's flag had carried since 1830, as the 20-year-old king fled into exile in England.

Which organisation counted Portugal, then a dictatorship, among its founding members?

NATO counted Portugal among its twelve founders in 1949 even though the country was a dictatorship; it joined the EEC only in 1986, twelve years after the regime fell.

The 14th-century pact sealing the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance, the world's oldest still in force, is named after which place?

The Treaty of Windsor was sealed by the marriage of John I of Portugal to Philippa of Lancaster; Britain was still invoking the alliance in 1943, to gain wartime air bases from neutral Portugal.

The Portuguese Empire ended when which territory was handed over in 1999?

Macau was handed to China on 20 December 1999 after 442 years; Portugal had stopped treating it as a colony in the 1970s, calling it Chinese territory under Portuguese administration.

Henry the Navigator's career began with the 1415 capture of which North African city?

Ceuta fell to an army led by his father, King John I, with Henry among the princes who fought there; despite his nickname, he never sailed on a voyage of exploration himself.

Which Portuguese navigator became the first European to round the southern tip of Africa, in 1488?

Bartolomeu Dias rounded the cape far out to sea and first sighted it on the voyage home in May 1488; tradition says he called it the Cape of Storms and that his king renamed it Good Hope.

The first fleet to sail from Europe around Africa to India anchored off which port?

Calicut, now Kozhikode, was the rich spice port of the Malabar Coast; its ruler, the Zamorin, was unimpressed by the cloth, hats and honey the Portuguese offered as royal gifts.

Which Portuguese navigator, spurned at home, led a rival crown's round-the-world voyage?

Ferdinand Magellan took his plan for reaching the Spice Islands to a neighbouring king after his own refused it; he was killed in the Philippines in 1521, but one of his ships completed the circuit.

Which Portuguese fishing town is famous for some of the biggest waves ever surfed?

Nazaré owes its giants to a deep undersea canyon that points Atlantic swells at the beach; in 2020 a German surfer rode a wave measured at 26.2 metres there, a record at the time.

Portugal supplies about half the world's harvest of which natural material?

Cork is the bark of the cork oak, stripped without felling the tree; the bark grows back, so the same oak can be harvested again roughly once a decade.

Which is the only country in Asia with Portuguese as an official language?

East Timor declared independence from Portugal in 1975, only to be invaded by Indonesia days later; it made Portuguese an official language again, beside Tetum, on regaining independence in 2002.

Fado, Portugal's mournful national song style, takes its name from a Latin word meaning what?

Fate, fatum in Latin, suits songs that dwell on loss and resignation; when the great fado singer Amália Rodrigues died in 1999, Portugal declared three days of national mourning.

Which egg-custard tart, devised by Lisbon monks, is Portugal's best-known sweet?

Pastel de nata began with the monks of a Lisbon monastery; when the religious houses were closed in 1834 the recipe passed to a nearby sugar refinery, whose shop has sold the tarts since 1837.

A Portuguese saying claims there are how many ways to cook bacalhau, the salt-cod staple?

365 is the count in one favourite saying, a recipe for every day of the year, though another claims 1,001; either way, the Portuguese call salt cod their 'fiel amigo', the faithful friend.

Port wine is fortified by adding a neutral grape spirit at what point in the process?

Port is made by adding grape spirit partway through fermentation, which kills the yeast while grape sugar remains, so the wine stays sweet as well as strong.

Port wine is named after the city of Porto, but its grapes grow in the valley of which river?

The Douro valley's vineyards boomed after a 1703 treaty cut English duty on Portuguese wine, and in 1756 the valley became one of the world's first wine regions with legally fixed boundaries.

Which fiery chilli, grown by Portuguese settlers in Mozambique and Angola, gives its name to a famous grilled-chicken sauce?

Piri piri is a small African bird's-eye chilli bred from plants the Portuguese carried over from the Americas; the Mozambican-style grilled chicken it flavours inspired the Nando's chain, founded in Johannesburg in 1987.

Portugal won its first major football trophy at Euro 2016 by beating which host nation in the final?

Portugal beat hosts France 1-0 after extra time at the Stade de France; Éder scored in the 109th minute, long after captain Cristiano Ronaldo had gone off injured.

Which Ballon d'Or winner led Portugal to third place at the 1966 World Cup?

Eusébio, the 1965 Ballon d'Or winner, top-scored with nine goals at the 1966 World Cup; four of them came in the quarter-final, as Portugal recovered from 3-0 down against North Korea to win 5-3.

Which Portuguese writer won the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature?

José Saramago won it for novels such as Blindness; earlier in the decade he had moved to the Spanish island of Lanzarote after Portugal's government barred one of his books from a European literary prize.

Which city, Portugal's medieval capital from 1131, houses its oldest university?

Coimbra was the medieval capital long before it kept the university: founded in Lisbon in 1290, the university settled in Coimbra for good only in 1537.

The Jerónimos Monastery in Lisbon exemplifies which ornate style named after a Portuguese king?

Manueline wraps buildings in carved ropes, coral and armillary spheres because sea trade paid for them; the name was coined only in 1842, three centuries after the king it honours.

Whose tomb was installed in Lisbon's Jerónimos church in 1880, alongside that of a celebrated poet?

Vasco da Gama's tomb was placed there in 1880; the monastery had been built near the beach his fleet sailed from, paid for by a tax on the profits of the India trade.

Portugal's Rooster of Barcelos comes from a legend about a dead rooster that did what?

In the legend the roasted rooster crowed and proved a condemned man's innocence: a Galician pilgrim bound for Santiago de Compostela, wrongly accused of theft, was thereby spared the gallows.

The name 'Algarve' for Portugal's southernmost region comes from an Arabic phrase meaning what?

Algarve comes from the Arabic al-Gharb, 'the west', because to the Moors it was the western part of Al-Andalus; the region's capital and main airport are at Faro.

In which Portuguese town did three shepherd children report visions of the Virgin Mary in 1917?

Fátima was a rural parish when the children reported six apparitions between May and October 1917; the small chapel built on the spot has grown into a shrine that draws millions of pilgrims a year.

Sintra, with its Pena Palace and Castle of the Moors, was called a 'glorious Eden' by which English poet?

Lord Byron praised Sintra's 'glorious Eden' in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage after a stay there, decades before a king bought the ruined hilltop monastery and turned it into the Pena Palace.

Lisbon's longest bridge opened in 1998 for Expo 98, a world's fair marking the 500th anniversary of what?

The sea route to India, opened in 1498, was the anniversary Expo 98 marked; the 17-kilometre crossing built for the fair was meant to take traffic off the crowded 25 de Abril Bridge.

Portugal's national day, 10 June, also honours which national poet?

Luís de Camões is honoured on 10 June, the date of his death in 1580; the day's full name is Portugal, Camões and Portuguese Communities Day, and his 1572 epic celebrates the voyages of discovery.

Lisbon's 25 de Abril suspension bridge is often compared to which American landmark?

The Golden Gate Bridge shares its orange-red paint, but the Lisbon bridge was built by the American company behind San Francisco's other great span, the Bay Bridge; it carried Salazar's name until 1974.

Porto's Roman name, which gave the whole country its name, was what?

Portus Cale, the Roman-era port, gave its name first to the county of Portucale and then to Portugal itself; Porto's historic centre has been a World Heritage Site since 1996.

Which Portuguese fortress on the Tagus, a UNESCO site, was the ceremonial gateway for the explorers' ships?

Belém Tower, built in the 1510s to guard the Tagus approach to Lisbon, was listed by UNESCO in 1983; it always stood on a small islet near the bank, not mid-river as legend claims.

Which Lisbon-born saint is named for an Italian city?

Anthony of Padua was born Fernando in Lisbon and died near the Italian city in 1231; at home he is Saint Anthony of Lisbon, the saint people ask to find lost things, with his feast on 13 June.

Which Roman province covered most of what is now Portugal?

Lusitania took in most of modern Portugal, though not its far north, and its capital, Emerita Augusta, stood at Mérida, on the far side of today's border.

Which kingdom gave up its claim to the Algarve in 1267, settling Portugal's southern frontier?

Castile's Alfonso X renounced the Algarve in the 1267 Treaty of Badajoz and accepted the river Guadiana as the border; the Portuguese heir who gained by it, the future King Denis, was his own grandson.

Which Spanish king was acclaimed king of Portugal in 1581, creating the Iberian Union?

Philip II claimed the throne through his mother, Isabella of Portugal, after King Sebastian died in battle in 1578 and the elderly Cardinal Henry died heirless in 1580; the Cortes of Tomar acclaimed him in 1581.

Which ducal house took the Portuguese throne in 1640, ending Habsburg rule?

John, Duke of Braganza, was acclaimed King John IV on 15 December 1640 after nobles overthrew the Habsburg governor in Lisbon on 1 December, a date Portugal marks as Restoration Day.

Which city served as the capital of the Portuguese monarchy from 1808 to 1821?

Rio de Janeiro hosted the court after the royal family fled Junot's French invasion by sea in late 1807; John VI returned to Lisbon only in 1821, leaving his son Pedro in Brazil.

Which king, together with his heir, was assassinated by republicans in 1908?

Carlos I and Crown Prince Luís Filipe were shot dead in their carriage in Lisbon's Terreiro do Paço on 1 February 1908; the younger son survived to reign briefly before the republic.

Which island holds the Azores' largest city, Ponta Delgada?

São Miguel is the most populous of the nine islands; Ponta Delgada houses the regional government's presidency, but the islands' parliament sits in Horta, on the island of Faial.

Which Japanese dish is thought to trace back to the Portuguese who reached Nagasaki in the 16th century?

Tempura very probably grew from the batter-frying the Portuguese brought to Nagasaki in the 16th century, a Western technique that Japanese cooks made their own; it later became a speciality of Edo, now Tokyo.

In 2001 Portugal became notable for decriminalising what?

Portugal decriminalised possession of all drugs for personal use in July 2001, treating it as an administrative matter handled by 'dissuasion commissions' rather than a crime, while trafficking stayed criminal.