Portugal

Portugal began as a county of the Kingdom of León around Guimarães and Braga. Afonso Henriques defeated his mother's forces in 1128, called himself king and was recognised by the Pope in 1179. With help from crusaders on their way to the Holy Land, he took Lisbon from its Muslim rulers in 1147. By 1249 the Algarve was conquered, and the border with Castile has barely moved since.

The 1385 victory at Aljubarrota over a Castilian army secured independence under the new Avis dynasty, and the monastery of Batalha was built to give thanks. A treaty with England in 1386 began the world's oldest diplomatic alliance still in force.

The 1755 earthquake, followed by a tsunami and fires, killed tens of thousands and destroyed most of Lisbon. The Marquis of Pombal rebuilt the Baixa as a grid of earthquake-resistant blocks — one of the first examples of modern urban planning. When Napoleon invaded in 1807 the royal court fled to Rio de Janeiro, which briefly became the capital of the empire; Brazil declared independence in 1822.

In the 15th century Prince Henry 'the Navigator' sponsored voyages down the African coast. Madeira was settled from 1420 and the Azores from the 1430s. Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, Vasco da Gama reached India by sea in 1498, and Pedro Álvares Cabral landed in Brazil in 1500. The caravel, a small ship that could sail close to the wind, made it possible.

Within decades Portugal held trading posts from Morocco to Mozambique, Hormuz, Goa, Malacca, Macau and Nagasaki. Pepper and spices, gold from West Africa and later Brazilian sugar and gold made Lisbon rich. The empire also ran one of the largest shares of the Atlantic slave trade, carrying millions of Africans to Brazil — a history Portugal has only begun to confront publicly.

The wealth is visible in Manueline architecture, named after King Manuel I: carved ropes, armillary spheres, coral and sea monsters around doors and windows. Belém's Jerónimos Monastery and Tower, and the Convent of Christ in Tomar, are its masterpieces; Vasco da Gama and the poet Luís de Camões, who wrote the national epic The Lusiads, are buried at Jerónimos.

The monarchy fell in 1910. The First Republic was unstable — dozens of governments in 16 years — and a military coup in 1926 opened the way for António de Oliveira Salazar, an economics professor who became prime minister in 1932. His Estado Novo ('New State') was Catholic, corporatist and anti-communist, with censorship and a political police, the PIDE.

Portugal stayed neutral in the Second World War, and Lisbon became a transit point for refugees. From 1961 the regime fought independence movements in Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique; the wars consumed up to 40% of the budget, and hundreds of thousands of young men emigrated rather than be drafted.

On 25 April 1974 junior officers of the Armed Forces Movement launched a coup, signalled by a song on the radio. Crowds poured into the streets and put carnations in the soldiers' rifles. Democracy followed after a turbulent two years, the African colonies became independent in 1975, and around half a million settlers (retornados) came 'home'. Portugal joined the European Community in 1986.

Saudade is the Portuguese word everyone mentions: a longing for something or someone absent, perhaps never to return, with a sweetness in the sadness. It suits a country of sailors, emigrants and exiles.

Fado grew in Lisbon's poor waterfront districts in the early 19th century — Alfama and Mouraria — sung by one voice with a 12-string Portuguese guitar and a classical guitar. Amália Rodrigues made it world-famous from the 1940s; the Estado Novo used it as a national symbol, which made it suspect after 1974, but a new generation revived it. UNESCO listed fado in 2011. Coimbra has its own fado, sung by men in student capes.

Azulejos — glazed tiles, from the Arabic for 'small polished stone' — cover churches, stations, palaces and ordinary façades. Early patterns came from Moorish Spain; blue-and-white figurative panels became the fashion in the 17th and 18th centuries. Porto's São Bento station and the National Tile Museum in Lisbon show the range. Tile theft from old buildings is a real problem, which is why antique tiles for sale need papers.

Bacalhau — dried, salted cod, soaked for days before cooking — has been a staple since Portuguese fishing fleets worked the Newfoundland banks in the 16th century. Today most of it is imported from Norway, but Portugal eats around a fifth of the world's catch. Pastéis de nata came from the Jerónimos monks, who used egg whites to starch clothes and yolks in sweets; when the monasteries were closed in 1834, the recipe was sold to a sugar refinery in Belém, which still bakes it.

Port wine comes from the Douro, the world's first demarcated wine region (1756). Grapes are grown on terraced slopes, fortified with brandy to stop fermentation, and aged in the lodges of Vila Nova de Gaia across the river from Porto. Vinho verde from the Minho, reds from the Alentejo and Dão, and Madeira wine round out a country that drinks more wine per person than almost anywhere.

Portugal produces about half of the world's cork, harvested by hand from cork oaks every nine years without felling the tree. The montado — open woodland of cork and holm oak grazed by black pigs — defines the Alentejo landscape and gives its porco preto.

After the 2008 financial crisis Portugal took an international bailout (2011–2014), cut wages and pensions, and saw a wave of emigration. Recovery was driven by exports, tourism and tech; Web Summit moved to Lisbon in 2016, and tax regimes for foreign residents and golden visas drew investors, retirees and remote workers.

Success brought strain. Rents in Lisbon and Porto rose far faster than local wages, short-term rentals took over old neighbourhoods, and the government froze new rental licences in city centres and ended the golden visa's property route in 2023. Immigration, mostly from Brazil, India, Nepal and Bangladesh, now makes up a large share of the workforce, and the populist right became the second force in parliament in 2025.

Visitors see both sides: a safe, friendly, affordable-by-European-standards country, and neighbourhoods where more residents are guests than locals. Staying in less central districts, eating in tascas and travelling beyond Lisbon, Porto and the Algarve spreads the money and the load.