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INTRODUCTION
 A nation of explorers that has absorbed habits and traditions from such early civilizations and from the regions that it discovered throughout the world during the Portuguese empire.
History
Portugal traces its emergence as a nation to 24 June 1128, with the Battle of São Mamede by Afonso I. On 5 October 1143 Portugal was formally recognized. Afonso, aided by the Templar Knights, continued to conquer southern lands from the Moors. In 1250 the Portuguese Reconquista ended when it reached the southern coast of Algarve.
In an era of several wars when Portugal and Castile tried to control one another, King Ferdinand was dying with no male heirs. His only child, a single daughter, married King John I of Castile who would therefore be the King of Portugal after Fernando's death. However, the impending loss of independence to Castile was not accepted by the majority of the Portuguese people, which led to the 1383-1385 Crisis. A loyalist faction led by John of Aviz (later John I), with the help of Nuno Álvares Pereira, finally defeated the Castilians in the most historic battle of Portugal, the Battle of Aljubarrota. The victorious John was then acclaimed as king by the people.
In the following decades, Portugal pioneered in the exploration of the world.
Read more about The Discoveries era.
With the death in battle of the heirless King Sebastian, Philip II of Spain, the son of a Portuguese princess, became Philip I of Portugal in 1581. New empires emerged and started to assault the Portuguese Empire. The third Spanish king, Philip III tried to further enforce integration, openly attacking the Portuguese nobility that was not in his favour. But in 1 December 1640, a revolution forced the crown away from Spain and enthroned the Duke of Bragança, of the Portuguese Royal Family, John IV.
The 1755 Lisbon earthquake and tsunami, which killed more than a third of the capital's (Lisbon was at that time one of the largest and most important cities of Europe) population and devastated the Algarve as well, had a profound effect on domestic politics and on European philosophical thought. From 1801, the country was occupied during the Napoleonic Wars. The Portuguese Court fled to Brazil. Shortly after, Brazil proclaimed its independence, under the rule of the Portuguese King Pedro IV (Emperor Pedro I of Brazil), who abdicated from the Portuguese Crown and left his daughter D. Maria II as Queen in a liberal regime.
After the instability that was lived throughout the 19th Century, in 1910 a republican revolution deposed the Portuguese monarchy starting the First Republic. Political chaos, strikes, harsh relations with the Catholic Church, and considerable economic problems aggravated by a disastrous military intervention in the First World War led to a military coup d'état (28th May 1926), that installed the Second Republic that would become the New State in 1933, led by António de Oliveira Salazar, an authoritarian right-wing dictatorship, later evolving into a type of single party corporate regime.
Portugal became a founding member of NATO and EFTA, as well as OECD. India invaded Portuguese India in 1961. Independence movements also became active in Angola, Mozambique and Portuguese Guinea, and a series of colonial wars began.
The burden of the many colonial overseas wars and the lack of political and civil freedoms led to the end of the regime after the Carnation Revolution in April 25 of 1974, an effectively bloodless left-wing military coup, that promised to install a new democratic regime. In 1975, Portugal had its first free multi-party elections since 1926 and granted independence to its colonies in Africa.
In 1976 Indonesia invaded and annexed the Portuguese province of Timor in Asia before legal recognition of its independence by Portugal. In 1999, the Asian dependency of Macau, was returned to Chinese sovereignty, a process considered a success by China and Portugal. After a UN sponsored referendum endorsed by Indonesia and Portugal, in 1999, East Timor voted for independence, which materialised in 2002.
In 1986, Portugal entered the EEC (and left EFTA), which was later transformed into the European Union.
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