Portugal Country Info - Europe

Description and Basic Information

Portugal with its capital Lisbon is located in Europe (Southwestern Europe, bordering the North Atlantic Ocean). It covers some 92,392 square kilometres (slightly smaller than Indiana) with 10,676,000 citizens. Portuguese and are the the languages spoken by people in Portugal. Spain is a bordering country.

Portugalin Southern Europe, shares the Iberian peninsula at the western tip of Europe with Spain. Geographically and culturally somewhat isolated from its neighbor, Portugal has a rich, unique culture, lively cities and beautiful countryside. Portugal is one of the warmest European countries. In mainland Portugal, yearly temperature averages are about 15°C (55°F) in the north and 18°C (64°F) in the south. Surrounded by sea in almost its entirety, the Portuguese beaches are well worth visiting. A lot of activities are offered, from surfing, to kite-surfing, and during the summer months the most frequented beaches offer sand based activities such as aerobics. If you're not the type of breaking into a sweat during holidays, almost every single public beach will have a bar where locals sit. There are several Fairs, specially in the Summer months, particularly in Northern Portugal. During the summer, music festivals are also very common. In the north of the country two of the oldest festivals such as Paredes de Coura and Vilar de Mouros.

Pictures from Capital (Lisbon)

Photos provided by Panoramio are under the copyright of their owners.

About Portugal

The terrain offers mountainous north of the Tagus River, rolling plains in south. The average density of population is about 115 per km². The climate in Portugal can be described as maritime temperate with cool and rainy in north, warmer and drier in south. Possible natural disasters include Azores subject to severe earthquakes.

To reach someone in Portugal dial +351 prior to a number. There are 4,049,000 installed telephones. And there are 15,178,000 registered mobile phones. The cellular networks operate on frequencies of 900, 1800 MHz and 3G. Websites typically end with the top level domain ".pt". If you want to bring electric appliances (e.g. battery charger), keep in mind the local 230V - 50Hz. The following list are the 20 regions/states in Portugal we know off.

Demographic Statistics

In the year 2010, the total Portuguese population grew at a rate of 0.24% (or by 26,195 citizens). With 115,302 deaths and 108,646 babies born, the natural increase rate lies at -0.06%. 32,851 persons more in total immigrated to the country than emmigrated.

An overview of age distribution in Portugal: Each pair of bars represents a single age group (male/female). Each group is spanning 5 years. E.g. 0 to 5 years, 5 to 10 etc. and group "0 to 5" being at the left end and "100 +" at the right end of the chart.

Based on content from wikitravel.org. The original article can be found here based on the work of these users.
Geographic information is based on the data provided by geonames.org, CIA factsbook and Unesco.