Portugal , [ e ] officially the Portuguese Republic , [ f ] is a country in the Iberian Peninsula in Southwestern Europe. Featuring the westernmost point in continental Europe , Portugal borders Spain to its north and east, with which it shares the longest uninterrupted border in the European Union ; to the south and the west is the North Atlantic Ocean ; and to the west and southwest lie the Macaronesian archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira , which are two autonomous regions of Portugal.
Lisbon is the capital and largest city , followed by Porto , which is the only other metropolitan area. The western part of the Iberian Peninsula has been continuously inhabited since prehistoric times , with the earliest signs of settlement dating to BC. The region came under Roman control in the second century BC, followed by a succession of Germanic peoples and the Alans from the fifth to eighth centuries AD. Muslims conquered the mainland of present-day Portugal in the eighth century, but were gradually, and sometimes mercilessly expelled, by the Christian Reconquista culminating with the final capture of Faro , between AD.
As one of the earliest participants in the Age of Discovery , the Kingdom of Portugal settled Madeira and the Azores, and established itself as a major economic and political power, largely through a maritime empire that extended mostly along the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean coasts. A dynastic crisis in the early s resulted in the Iberian Union , which unified Portugal under Spanish rule, [ 19 ] marking its gradual decline as a global power. The Napoleonic Wars drove the Portuguese royal family to relocate to Brazil in and elevate it from colony to kingdom ; this action ultimately culminated in Brazilian independence in , [ 22 ] which in turn triggered a civil war — between liberal constitutionalists and absolutist monarchists.
A phase of unrest ultimately led to the rise of authoritarian regimes of the Ditadura Nacional and the Estado Novo. Portugal's imperial history has left a vast cultural legacy , with around million Portuguese speakers around the world. Today, it is a developed country with an advanced economy relying chiefly upon services, industry, and tourism. Porto stems from the Latin for port , portus ; Cale ' s meaning and origin is unclear.
The mainstream explanation is an ethnonym derived from the Callaeci, also known as the Gallaeci peoples, who occupied the north-west of the Iberian Peninsula.
