CLASSROOM COUNTRY PROFILES (Portugal)

The Portuguese Republic is a country in southwestern Europe, bor- dering as well as the North Atlantic Ocean. Following its heyday as a global maritime power during the 15th and 16th centuries, Portu- gal lost much of its wealth and status with the destruction of in a 1755 earthquake, occupation during the Napoleonic Wars, and the independence of , its wealthiest colony, in 1822. A 1910 revolu- tion deposed the monarch, and after decades of repressive govern- ments, a left-wing military coup installed broad democratic reforms in 1974. Today, Portugal is a semi-presidential republic and has been led by President and his appointed Prime Antonio Luis Santos da Costa since March 2016. On June 10, the Portuguese celebrate their national holiday, .

Portugal has no official religion and freedom of religion is guaranteed under the Portuguese constitution. Although church and state are sep- Population: 10,833,816 (2016) arated, as demanded by the 1976 constitution, the Catholic church still Area: 92,090 sq. km. (slightly smaller than Indi- receives certain benefits and continues to influence Portuguese society ana) and culture. The education and health systems, for example, were un- Capital: Lisbon (552,700) der the control of the church for a long time. Around 81% of Portu- Languages: Portuguese (official), Mirandese guese are Roman Catholics, and another 3.3% are other Christians. GDP Per Capita: $28,500 Moreover, other groups such as Jews and Muslims make up 0.6% and : President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa there are around 7% that have no religious affiliation. Head of Government: Prime Minister Antonio Luis Santos da Costa

The ethnicities represented in Portugal are predominantly of homoge-

Basic education, intended for children aged 6-15, is nous Mediterranean stock. Due to this lack of diversity, Portugal also compulsory and free in Portugal. After compulsory became the first unified nation-state in Western Europe. For centuries, schooling, students have the option to complete ei- Portugal had virtually no ethnic or cultural minorities. While there are ther a standard academic secondary education, a some people of black African decent and East European nowadays, more practical secondary education, or vocational they remain a very small minority. education. Portugal’s death rate significantly outnumbers its birth rate, which has been plummeting in the last years, and only has a slight positive net migration rate as well. Therefore, the population growth rate was virtu- ally stagnant at 0.07% as of 2016. Similar to many European countries, especially because of the low birth rate, Portugal faces an increasingly aging population problem.

Updated: 05/15/17 , Sintra

Since joining the European Community, Portugal has become a diversified and increasingly service-based economy. After succes- sive governments privatized many state-controlled firms and liberal- ized key areas of the economy, including the financial and telecom- munications sectors, the economy grew by more than the EU aver- Split age for much of the 1990s. In the course of the global financial cri- sis, Portugal’s economy struggled heavily and unemployment rose to record heights. The newly-elected center-left government pro- Belém Tower, Lisbon posed different plans to initiate stronger economic recovery in 2016 than the former center-right government, mainly spending cuts as- sociated with austerity measures while remaining within EU fiscal Famous include explorer targets. Vasco da Gama, football superstar Cristiano Ronaldo, football manager José Mourinho, Portugal has been a member state of the since poet Fernando António Nogueira, Nobel January 1986 and has also been a founding member of the euro Prize-winning novelist José Saramago, sing- zone in 1999, making the euro its currency. Moreover, Portugal is a er Carmen Miranda, and composer Pedro member of the border-free Schengen area. It has 21 seats in the Camacho. European Parliament and has held the revolving presidency of the Council of the EU 3 times between 1992 and 2007. Furthermore, Portugal is one of the founding members of the North Atlantic Trea- ty Organization (NATO). Hi ………………………………..………….Olá Bye …………………………..………….Tchau Good morning ……….………….. ….Bom dia Yes ……………………………………...... Sim No ………………………………………….Não Please…………………..……………Faz favor Dom Luís Bridge, Thank you …………………………..Obrigado Porto How are you? ...... Como vai? I do not understand ………...Eu não entendo I understand ...... Compreendo What is your name?...... Qual o seu nome? My name is ………………….. ..Me chamo… Where are you from? ……..De onde voce é? In the late 1800s, large numbers of Portuguese began to immigrate Do you speak English?...... Você fala inglês? to the US, and after the immigration legislation of 1921 put a halt to this, it picked up again in the 1950s, especially from the Portuguese islands such as the Azores, Cape Verde and . Today, ac- cording to the American Community Survey, around 1,370,000 peo- ple in the US claim Portuguese ancestry, with the three biggest Por- tuguese communities being in Providence, RI, Boston, and City.

The flag is composed USEFUL LINKS of two vertical bands of https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/po.html green (two-fifths) and red (three-fifths) with http://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/countries/member-countries/ the national coat of portugal_en arms centered on the dividing line. https://www.ine.pt/xportal/xmain?xpgid=ine_main&xpid=INE&xlang=en