Portugal is an exciting and vibrant country

Portugal is an exciting and vibrant country.
And this small western European nation definitely had a storied past.
People have inhabited this area since the 6th century BC and maybe even more.
All the history that has taken place between then and now packs quite a punch, so let’s
take a closer look.
Obviously, like everywhere else in Europe it seems, the Romans occupied the area first
but sometime after their demise in the 5th century, 
the Moors invaded history channel full episodes.
 
 
Moors, or Moorish were medieval muslims from the Morocco area of North Africa.
  
They came galavanting in in the year 711 and took the whole Iberian peninsula and then
some.
  
Pockets of Christians in the north remained and pushed back here and there over the next
few hundred years.
 
The leader of one such ‘pocket’ pushed a little harder than most and got the Moors
back south and east and claimed himself the first King of Portugal.
   At the same time the Spanish to the east were
also pushing south and ‘eastwest’ disputes with them started to pop up.
 
Subsequent Afonsos’ followed and kept the march south going south and in 1249, Afonso
III captured Faro, today's capital city of the Algarve.
 
 
They still had the problem though, of keeping Spain’s ‘noses’ out of their new borders.
 
Portugal made friends with England and Spain backed out 
The new allies signed the Treaty of Windsor which is still in effect today and utilized
as recently as the Second World War.
The Portuguese were now free to explore the waters, and explore they did!Setting up colonies
of trade all over the world.
 
The discovery of Brazil in 1500 would prove to be most vital.
  With trading ports in India, China, South
America and Africa, Portugal was an imposing Empire.
 
However, things ‘hit the fan’ in 1578 when King Sebastian was killed in battle without
an heir to his throne.
The great empire was all of a sudden in crisis and Spain's King
Philip II claimed the throne referencing some obscure family lineage.
 
There was some opposition to this so an impatient Philip, took advantage in Portugal’s time
of weakness and invaded in 1580.
Now there were some good and bad things about this merger.
 
Bad being that they now shared enemies including England.
 
And that the Dutch sniffed weakness and started to seize more and more of Brazil.
  But good being that with Spain’s help they
managed to defeat the Dutch and also, life wasn’t so bad under the first two Spanish
Kings, Portugal was still under their own law, government, currency and still retained
some status.
When Philip IV came along however, things got a bit nasty.
 He figured he'd make Portugal
a province of Spain and removed Portuguese nobles from positions of power.
In a twist of fate, Spain was pretty much broke by this time from the Thirty Years War
and sensing good timing, the nobleman nominated John, the Duke of Braganza, to lead the resistance
which came to be known as the Portuguese Restoration War.
The House Braganza still lay claim to the throne today even though the monarch has been
abolished for some time now.
And because Spain helped them retain Brazil, Portugal was able to draw upon its wealth
to help fund the war which would last 28 years.
In 1668 Spain officially recognized Portugal
as independent  
20 years later gold is discovered in Brazil! And boom! Portugal is rich beyond belief!
And good thing too as on the morning of November 1st, 1755, a devastating earthquake struck.
 The quake, the tsunamis and the fires that resulted pretty much annihilated the country
and everything in it, the castles, the treasures, the art, in addition to the heavy loss of
life.
The king at the time was Joseph I and he had appointed, this guy, we’ll call him Sebastian
or better yet, by his title, Marquis of Pombal.
 Is was his swift reaction, his economic
reform policies and financial restructuring that allowed Portugal to rebuild quickly.
 His strong leadership ensured the country would not fall into ruin and hardship and
statues and other tributes to him are everywhere.
His cost control measures were not favoured by the upper crust, nor was he a very nice
guy otherwise so he was exiled.
The years after the rebuild period also saw an invasion by Napoleon, he actually took
Lisbon for a couple of years but Portugal called on their English buddies for help,
Brazil's independence followed in 1822.
Some political jostling and rumblings in the African colonies bring about Britain’s Ultimatum
demanding the retreat of Portuguese troops from the area known as the Pink Map so that
Britain could connect Cairo to Cape Town by rail 
the fallout and the protests from this political 'stiff arm' basically collapsed the Portuguese
monarchy.
This brings us to WWI in which Portugal sides with the allies.
 
But post war turmoil and unrest lead to a coup in May of 1926 which gave power to the
military and eventually saw the rise of Antonio Salazar, and he took Portugal into a tough
period of dictatorship, oppression and media censorship.
 
He also led the country through the second world war in which Portugal was technically
neutral but did supply troops under the British flag but also conducted trade with both sides.
In the late 1960’s Salazar was forced to retire due to a bathtub brain hemorrhage and
turned the reins over to a slightly less radical successor.
 
In 1974 the peaceful Carnation Revolution removed the radicals from power without a
single gunshot.
 This opened the door to bigger and better things but it was really
January 1st, 1986 when Portugal joined the Economic Community now known as the EU, that
things really started to turn around.
 
Funds were made available to build roads, schools, medical facilities and allowed for
foreign investment.
 This is what really led to the Portugal we are able to visit and
enjoy today.
 
So there you have, a brief history of Portugal