Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic, is a sovereign country member of the European Union, constituted as a democratic state of law. Its territory, with capital in Lisbon, is located in southwestern Europe, on the Iberian Peninsula. It limits to the east and the north with Spain, and to the south and west with the Atlantic Ocean. It also includes the autonomous archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira, located in the hemisphere

North of the Atlantic Ocean. The name of Portugal can come from the old name of Oporto through the Latin «Portus-Galliae» -port of Gaul because the French ships frequented this port- or «Portus-Cale» -toponym witnessed in the Chronica of the historian of Fifth century Hidació, by an existing berth in a fortified place called «Cale».

 

Portugal has witnessed a constant flow of different civilizations during the last 3100 years. Tartessians, Celts, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Greeks, Romans, Germans (Swabians and Visigoths), Muslims, Jews and other peoples have left their mark on culture, history, language and ethnicity. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,

Portugal was a world economic, social and cultural power, as well as an empire that extended from Brazil to the East Indies. Later, especially after the Napoleonic Wars and the independence of Brazil between the end of s. XVIII and early s. XIX, Portugal began to experience convulsive periods.

The country lived under a dictatorship between 1933 and 1974, when it fell after a revolt known as the Carnation Revolution.

In 1986 he joined the European Union and, since 2001, is part of the Eurozone.