Portuguese history is long, with Portugal being the nation with the oldest borders in Europe. Knowing the most important points in Portuguese history is essential to understand what Portugal is, what unites its inhabitants, and also the differences between them, particularly between the north and the south of Portugal.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TEN KEY PERIODS IN PORTUGUESE HISTORY
We divide Portuguese history into ten key periods, from the time when Portugal did not yet exist, to the present.
1. Portuguese history before Portugal
Portuguese history, or rather the history of the territory that today is Portugal, begins a long time before the birth of Portugal as a nation. The Iberian Peninsula has a human occupation that dates back to the time of nomadic collecting communities and even today it is possible to observe megalithic structures built by sedentary communities of around 6 thousand years ago. The geographical position of the Iberian Peninsula has facilitated the passage and settlement of peoples for thousands of years, with natural resources such as gold, silver, copper and tin attracting people like the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, and the Roman. Today, signs of the Roman presence in portuguese history are the easiest to find, specially in the center and south of Portugal.
1.1. The Roman Empire in Portuguese history
In the pre-Roman Iberian Peninsula, the territory that would be Portugal was dominated by several peoples, among them, the Galatians, the Lusitanians and the Celtics. But it was the invasion of the Romans, and the founding of Hispania, which remained from the beginning of the third century BC until the beginning of the fifth century AD, that left more marks. The territory that would be Portuguese was, once again, divided between north and south, in two Roman provinces, Galecia (north of the Douro River) and Lusitania, to the south. With the invasions of the barbaric peoples of northern Europe, such as the Vandals, Suevos (in Galecia), Alanos (in Lusitania) and later the Visigoths, the Roman empire came to an end, but Christianity remained, since many Barbarian kings were converted.
1.2. The islamic rule in portuguese history
But another religion was on the rise, and in 711, the Iberian Peninsula would be invaded by Islamic peoples from North Africa, and Christian resistance began almost immediately thereafter, originating in Asturias, at the northern end of the peninsula. From that small territory, the Christians of the North and Northwest of the Peninsula gradually formed new kingdoms, which extended to the South. The kingdoms of Castela, Leão (from where the Portucalense County and, subsequently, Portugal originated), Pamplona and Aragon. The total reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula would, however, last throughout the Middle Ages and only ended in the beginning of the Modern Age, in 1492, when Muslims were definitively expelled by the Catholic Kings of Spain. The time was ripe for the beginning of portuguese history.
2. The creation of Portugal and the affirmation of nationality (1139 – 1415)
The construction of what would become Portugal has its origins in Portucale County, when a Galician military chief, Vímara Peres, conquered the city of Porto from the Muslims, in 868. This would later be ended with the kingdom of Leon and Castile, and would give place to Condado Portucalense in 1096. It is there that the first king of Portugal, Afonso Henriques, would be born, and the independence of the Kingdom of Portugal was recognized by the Kingdom of Leon with the signing of the Treaty of Zamora (1143), and officially granted by the Pope Alexandre III in 1179. The next two centuries were the times of conquering the territory in the face of Muslims and the affirmation of the small kingdom in the face of the powerful Spanish neighbor.
3. The Portuguese history golden period (1415 – 1580)
The maritime expansion of Portugal was the golden period of portuguese history and the result of the strategic vision of two generations of rulers, who saw in the distant lands of Africa and Asia a way for Portugal to find a way to grow beyond its small territory. The first step was the taking of Ceuta (1415), in North Africa, and the exploration of the West African coast, but the giant step was the discovery of the sea route to India by Vasco da Gama (1498).
3.1. Portuguese expansion and discovery at land and sea
This key moment in portuguese history was made possible (and even inevitable) after the explorations by land of Pero da Covilhã and Afonso de Paiva (1487-1494), during the reign of D. João II, who arrived in India and Ethiopia and visited the east African coast (until present Mozambique), and the sea expedition by Bartolomeu Dias (1488), who rounded the Cape of Good Hope, at the southern tip of Africa, and found that the unknown coast extended to the northeast.
In addition to the Atlantic archipelagos, Brazil and the African coast, the Portuguese discoveries marked the first presence of Europeans in many Asian locations, as far away as Thailand, Malaysia and Japan, reaching the Pacific, Australia, Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu. The Portuguese first settled in India, but Malacca would be the main center of the Eastern portuguese empire, the gem of the portuguese history golden period.
3.2. The downfall of portuguese eastern empire
Under pressure from the confrontation of economic interests and religious tension, the Portuguese empire in the East was always the target of local armed resistance, and also the focus of the greed of other Western powers, more powerful and with greater economic potential. 150 years after Vasco da Gama’s journey, the successive defeats of the Portuguese vis-à-vis the Dutch Company of the East Indies, made national interests redirect towards Brazil and the west coast of Africa. Although some territory remained Portuguese, such as Goa, Damão and Diu, Portuguese colonies until 1961, the truth is that the Portuguese presence in the Indian Ocean declined dramatically during the 17th century.
4. The loss of independence (1580 – 1640)
The disappearance of King D. Sebastião in Alcácer Quibir Battle in 1478 paved the way for the Iberian Union, leading to a crisis of dynastic succession that interrupted the natural line of the Avis dynasty and, consequently, would lead to the loss of Portugal’s independence, one of the most striking periods in portuguese history. During the Spanish rule, Portugal was confronted in the overseas empire by the enemies of Spain, in particular the British and the Dutch. In Portugal, widespread poverty and the appointment of Spanish viceroys and officials, the abolition of autonomy and constant recruitment, caused the feeling of revolt to become widespread. In 1640, some Portuguese nobles overthrew the representative of Philip III in the country, and restored the independence of Portugal, acclaiming King D. João, Duke of Bragança, then D. João IV, and ending sixty years of Spanish rule, a period that had severe consequences for portuguese history.
5. The old regime (1640 – 1807)
After the golden age of discoveries and territorial expansion, Portugal entered a new period of portuguese history, the absolutist monarchical regime, which still claimed the “divine right”, but where the new bourgeois classes had increasingly influencing governance. Monumentality, a taste for luxury and ostentation, also characterized the Old Portuguese Regime, whose main figure was King D. João V (1703-1750), supported by the gold and diamonds of Brazil, the engine of the country’s economy, impoverished and without fundamental structural reforms.
6. French invasions and liberalism (1807 – 1890)
The Portuguese decline compared with the rest of Europe intensified with the French Revolution and the French invasions of Portugal (1807-1811). Although the French left Portugal defeated (with the help of England), liberal ideas began to expand and, in 1820, the end of the absolutist regime in Porto was declared. The history of Portuguese constitutional parliamentarism, a new period in portuguese history, begins with the 1822 Constitution, approved in the wake of the 1820 Liberal Revolution, but the first phase of monarchical constitutionalism is dominated by the political and social instability resulting from the proclamation of Brazil’s independence by D. Pedro (firstborn son D. João VI) and the ensuing struggles between liberals and absolutists. The confrontation between liberal and conservative ideals would dominate the entire 19th century, and Portugal would continue its decline, failing to keep up with the transformations of the Industrial Revolution. In the middle of the 19th century, Portugal already showed an undeniable delay in relation to the most developed countries in Europe.
7. The Republican Regime in portuguese history (1890 – 1926)
Throughout the 19th century, Portugal hung between democratic liberalism, defender of the extension of the right of suffrage, pure parliamentarism and monocameralism, and conservative liberalism, defender of greater intervention by the King and of parliamentarism mitigated by real power and bicameralism . From the 90s, due to crises and splits in the two major parties of the time, and following the British Ultimatum of 1890 (according to which Portugal was forced to renounce part of its African territory), the Portuguese Republican Party began to stand out , which defended the revolutionary change of the current regime. In the 20th century, Portugal would pass from the monarchy to the republic, but the period of the First Republic was one of extreme political and social instability in portuguese history. The way was open for the establishment of an authoritarian regime, that would shape portuguese history till current times.
8. The New State (1926 – 1974)
In the brief period of the First Republic, there were several attempts at coups d’état against the regime by monarchists and the military. On May 28, 1926, a military uprising took place in Braga, which quickly evolved into a coup d’état that took over the main cities, with the victory march taking place in Lisbon, with many common features with the march on Rome of Mussolini and the rise of fascism in Italy, less than 4 years earlier.
8.1. Fascist rule in portuguese history
The period of portuguese history that followed, called the National Dictatorship (1926-1933), and the regime called the Estado Novo (1933-1974) were, together, the longest authoritarian regime in Western Europe during the 20th century, extending for a period 48 years old, 36 years under the leadership of a single man, António de Oliveira Salazar.
The ideology of the fascist regime was based on a presidential, authoritarian and anti-parliamentary conception of the State, having as fundamental pillars “God, Fatherland and Family”. In this sense, the Estado Novo ended the period of liberalism in Portugal, encompassing not only the First Republic, but also monarchical Constitutionalism.
8.2. The resistance to fascist rule in portuguese history
The authoritarian regime was initially welcomed by the majority of Portuguese, seen as a solution to the chaos and disorder of the First Republic, and demonstrating that it was possible to control public finances. However, violent political repression quickly became the backbone of the regime, with the creation of the “State Surveillance and Defense Police”, construction of concentration camps in the colonies, and murder of political opponents. The only party capable of remaining in hiding and assuming resistance to the regime was the Portuguese Communist Party, with its militants persecuted relentlessly.
Political opposition in this period of portuguese history was thus very difficult, with a major figure being Humberto Delgado, a military man who dared to run for the presidential elections of 1958, against the regime’s candidate. Delgado had an enormous popularity, but ended up losing the elections with only 23% of the votes, which immediately raised the suspicion of widespread electoral fraud. Humberto Delgado was to be killed in Spain by the Portuguese political police in 1965.
9. The April revolution and the construction of democracy (1974 – 1986)
During the Estado Novo, there were many reasons for the Portuguese people’s discontent, the lack of freedom of expression and politics, the murders and political prisons, the poverty brought about by World War II (and neutrality assumed by Salazar), but the final straw. it was the colonial war.
9.1. The colonial war as a mark in portuguese history
Colonial war was fought on three fronts (Guinea-Bissau, Angola and Mozambique), in which Portugal participated for more than 10 years, fighting against the independence and nationalist movements in those countries. Discontent spread among the younger military and, after a failed attempt, the fall of the regime would take place on April 25, 1974, in the so-called “April Revolution” or “Carnation Revolution”, a coup d´état with almost no victims and in which the ruling elite, headed by Marcelo Caetano, sucessor of Salazar, was allowed to flee to Brazil.
9.2. Revolutionary period in portuguese history
A very unstable revolutionary period in portuguese history would follow, named “ongoing revolutionary process” (PREC), with the involvement of the military and the Catholic Church on the political stage, and the political (and almost armed) confrontation between the communist left, the socialist and social-democratic parties and the right-wing parties.
After being close to a civil war at various times, the Portuguese had their first free elections in 1975 and approved a new constitution in 1976. During this period of portuguese history, great progress was made in the construction of a social state (hitherto practically nonexistent), based on the pillars of Education, Health and Justice, and the process of decolonization in Africa (Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe) was carried out, witnessing the return of hundreds of thousands of Portuguese who lived in the colonies.
10. The modern period in portuguese history (since 1986)
In the following years, Portugal experienced very unstable moments and witnessed an intervention by the International Monetary Fund, but in the mid-1980s, the political situation calmed down and reached equilibrium with two key events: the election of Mário Soares, Secretary General of the Socialist Party, for President of the Republic, and election with an absolute majority of a government of the Social Democratic Party, headed by Cavaco Silva, who would stay as Prime-Minister for the following 10 years.
10.1. Entry into the European Community
From 1 January 1986, Portugal became a member of the European Economic Community, predecessor of the European Union, in one of the key moments of portuguese history. In the 1990s, the country’s economy grew a lot, with the help of money from the European institutions, but agriculture and fishing sectors were heavily penalized by the new common European policies. The road network was modernized, and the standard of living in Portugal approached the European average. Two symbolic moments of the recent portuguese history were the EXPO’98, World Exhibition in Lisbon, and the 2004 European Football Championship.
10.2. The fight for sustained development
The second decade of the 21st century brought on a 2010-2011 foreign debt crisis, which led to IMF intervention and austerity measures to reduce public spending. The economy suffered, unemployment and emigration soared, and the recovery would only appear with a strong increase in exports and the growth of tourism, with Lisbon and Porto joining the Algarve as popular tourist destinations at European level. Today, in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war, Portugal has yet again three major challenges to overcome, namely, adapting its economy to new times and demands, revitalizing the national tourism sector and combating growing economic and social inequality.
TWELVE FAMOUS PEOPLE IN PORTUGUESE HISTORY
Over almost 900 years of history, many were the Portuguese who distinguished themselves and who are and will be remembered, not only by their compatriots, but also internationally, standing out in different areas of human activity, such as politics, the arts , literature, or sport.
1. Afonso Henriques (1109? -1185)
Afonso Henriques was the first king of portuguese history and one of the creators of the territory’s borders, fighting the Muslims who occupied the Iberian Peninsula. Son of D. Henrique de Borgonha and D. Teresa, illegitimate daughter of King Afonso VI de Leão and Castile, to whom he donated Portucale County by marriage, Afonso Henriques fought for the recognition of the County as a kingdom, including against his own mother, after the death of the father, in a battle that is considered by many to be the birth of Portugal, the Battle of São Mamede (1128).
In 1139, after the victory in the battle of Ourique against the Muslims, Afonso Henriques proclaimed himself King of the Portuguese, and would go on conquering Lisbon in 1147 with the help of crusaders and, in the following years, expanding Portugal’s borders further south. His military career ended in 1169, when he was wounded in battle, delegating to his sons the regency of the kingdom, the infants Sancho and Teresa de Portugal. His tomb is in the Monastery of Santa Cruz, in Coimbra.
2. Henrique, the Navigator (1394-1460)
Infante D. Henrique was the fifth son of King D. João I of Portugal, founder of the Avis Dynasty, and Dona Filipa de Lencastre, being part of what the poet Camões called “esteemed generation ”, brothers and sisters who stood out at the time for their education, military value, and importance in Portuguese public life. Henrique was the strategist and great driver of the Portuguese Age of Discoveries, and it was in his father’s reign that maritime expansion began with the conquest of Ceuta.
Henrique settled in Lagos, from where he would coordinate the Portuguese territorial expansion effort, with the aim of accessing Africa’s wealth and expanding Christianity. Henrique was, for 40 years, Master of the Order of Christ, a religious and military order that succeeded the Templars in Portugal, and during his life the archipelagos of Madeira, Azores and Cape Verde were discovered and colonized, and the western African coast was explored, till what is now Sierra Leone, starting the export of African slaves by the Portuguese. His remains are buried in the Monastery of Batalha.
3. Vasco da Gama (1469 – 1524)
Vasco da Gama was one of the most celebrated navigators of portuguese history, having been responsible for the expedition that discovered the sea route to India. Departing from Restelo, in Lisbon, on July 8, 1497, Vasco da Gama would resist hostile receptions on the East African coast, and would arrive on the West Indian coast on May 20, 1498, docking near the city of Calicut, present-day Kozhikode, demonstrating also diplomatic qualities in dealing with Indian sovereigns.
However, after his return to Portugal, he was sent to India two more times, showing also to be relentless when necessary, subduing Calicut and founding the Portuguese colony of Cochin. At the end of his life he was briefly Viceroy of India, having died of malaria in Cochin, where he was buried. His remains would eventually be transferred to Portugal, and today they are found in the Jerónimos Monastery, in Lisbon.
4. Fernão Magalhães (1480 – 1521)
Fernão de Magalhães was a tragic figure of portuguese history, having thought and led the maritime expedition, at the service of the Spanish crown, which would carry out the first circumnavigation of the planet. Son of a noble knight from Porto, young Fernão de Magalhães launched himself into adventure and the discovery of new lands. He lived in Goa and Cochin, and participated in the conquest of Malacca, in 1511. He visited the islands of Banda and Ambon, famous for the production of spices, having returned to Lisbon in 1513.
Disgruntled with the Portuguese crown, Fernão de Magalhães began to dream of an ambitious project, travel across the West, in seas outside Portuguese jurisdiction (under the Treaty of Tordesillas), move from the “Mar Oceano” (Atlantic Ocean) to the “Mar do Sul” (Pacific Ocean), and reach the spice islands (Maluku or Moluccas, present-day Indonesia), which could still be in the half the world “belonging” to the Crown of Castile.
The expedition left Spain in September 2019, heading west, bending South America across the (now named) Strait of Magellan, crossing the Pacific Ocean, and reaching the territory of the present Philippines in March 1521. Fernão de Magalhães had fought against winds and unknown currents, dominated revolts on board, overcame deadly lulls in an unknown ocean, but would eventually die in April 1521, in battle against a local chief. Fernão de Magalhães did not reach the spice islands, and did not see the end of his expedition, which would continue towards the west, returning to Spain in September 1522. His remains were never recovered.
5. Luís de Camões (1524 – 1580)
Camões is considered the greatest poet of portuguese history and is the author of one of the most important works of Western civilization, “Os Lusíadas”, where the epic moments of portuguese history are described with poetic grandeur. Not many details are known about the life of Camões. He probably studied at the University of Coimbra, and the countless amorous adventures led him to go into exile in Africa, where he enlisted and lost his right eye in battle. Returning to Portugal, he headed for the East. He passed through India, through Hormuz, and was arrested in Goa. He lived in Macau and, on the return trip, was shipwrecked, saving the manuscript of “Os Lusíadas” from the waters.
After more than 10 years of adventures in the East, he returned to Portugal and finished his greatest work, having presented it in recitation to King D. Sebastião, still a teenager. The Lusíadas would be published in 1572, and Camões would receive a small pension for services rendered in India. After the Portuguese defeat at the Battle of Alcácer-Quibir, where D. Sebastião disappeared, leading Portugal to lose its independence to Spain, Camões fell ill and died on June 10, 1580, being buried in a shallow grave. The remains that were deposited in 1880 at the Jerónimos Monastery are probably from someone else.
6. Fernando Pessoa (1888 – 1935)
Fernando Pessoa is considered the greatest modern writer of portuguese history, endowed with a unique originality and complete command of the Portuguese language (he even wrote “my homeland is the Portuguese language”) and English (he lived his childhood in South Africa). During his life, he worked in Lisbon as a translator for commercial correspondence, and published only four works, only one in Portuguese (The Message).
The excessive consumption of alcohol throughout his life was the cause of his early death. After his death, his vast literary creation was discovered, written by several personalities (heteronyms), such as Ricardo Reis, Álvaro de Campos, Alberto Caeiro and Bernardo Soares, the latter author of the “Livro do Desassossego”, an important literary work of the 20th century . In commemoration of the centenary of his birth, his body was transferred to the Jerónimos Monastery, in Lisbon.
7. António Salazar (1889 – 1970)
Salazar was the statesman who ruled Portugal the longest, leading for decades the fascist regime that succeeded the first Republic. Initially he assumed the portfolio of the Ministry of Finance (1928), and gained status in the domain of public accounts, becoming the President of the Council of Ministers (1933), but the authoritarian and repressive nature of the regime turned Salazar into the political figure most hated in modern Portugal. For health reasons, he was removed from power in 1968, but in the last two years of his life he never came to know that he had been replaced, continuing to believe that he was still the head of the government. He was buried, next to his parents, in Santa Comba Dão cemetery.
8. Amália Rodrigues (1920 – 1999)
Amália was the singer and actress who revitalized and internationalized fado, the typical Portuguese musical style. She performed on all the major world stages, singing the great Portuguese poets, and was the greatest Portuguese artistic figure of portuguese history. The peak of her career was during the Estado Novo, but after the April Revolution she continued to be a national symbol. She is buried in the National Pantheon, in Lisbon.
9. José Saramago (1922 – 2010)
José Saramago was the most important and original Portuguese writer in recent portuguese history. From humble beginnings, Saramago did not attend university and, after the April revolution, he worked as a journalist and deputy director of a newspaper, but in 1975 he was removed for political reasons (Saramago was a member of the Portuguese Communist Party). From then on, he dedicated himself exclusively to writing, creating his own style, with long sentences and paragraphs, using punctuation (or the lack of it) in an unconventional way.
In an initial phase he wrote novels with a historical context, such as the “Memorial do Convento”, created a controversy with the “Gospel according to Jesus Christ” and later dedicated himself to the reflection of the human condition and death, having written “Essay on Blindness”, among others. Several works were adapted to movies and received international recognition with the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998 (Saramago is only the second Portuguese laureate, after the neurosurgeon Egas Moniz in 1949). His body was cremated and the writer’s ashes were deposited at the feet of an olive tree in Lisbon.
10. Mário Soares (1924 – 2017)
Mário Soares was the most important politician in recent portuguese history, playing the role of Prime Minister (1976-1978, 1983-1985) and President of the Republic (1986-1996). Co-founder of the Portuguese Socialist Party, he also stood out in the revolutionary period for the defense of the parliamentary democratic regime against the political model of the Portuguese Communist Party.
In 1999, Soares was the Socialist Party leader in the European elections and ran for president of the European Parliament, having lost the election. At the age of 81 years, he surprised the country by accepting, in 2005, a return to the dispute for the office of President of the Republic, having finished in third place. He was buried in the Cemitério dos Prazeres, in Lisbon.
11. António Guterres (1949)
António Guterres is the Portuguese politician of today with more international prominence. A brilliant student of Electrotechnical Engineering, he soon devoted himself to political action, joining the Socialist Party in 1973, having been elected Secretary-General in 1992. He was Prime Minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2001 (and chaired the Socialist International, between 1995 and 2000), having resigned for poor results in municipal elections. From then on, his international political career skyrocketed. He was United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees between 2005 and 2015, and since 2016, he has been Secretary-General of the United Nations.
12. Cristiano Ronaldo (1985)
ristiano Ronaldo is considered by many to be the best football player of the world (having as main rival the Argentinian Leonel Messi) and one of the best of all times. He was born into a poor family on the island of Madeira and moved to Lisbon as a child to play for Sporting Clube de Portugal. In 2003, at just 18 years old, he was transferred to Manchester United and started his brilliant international career, having also played for Real Madrid, Juventus and, currently, for Manchester United. He was elected the best player in the world by FIFA in 2008, 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2017. He won 5 Champions Leagues for his clubs and was European champion for the Portuguese National Team in 2016.