pays.culture in six chapters

The six chapters

The same six, in the same order, for every country: you know what you will learn before you open it.

1. History

   • The country that faced the seaThree lessons and their context: how a small kingdom opened the sea route to the Indies, split the world with Spain, then watched its capital fall in a single morning in 1755.4 lessons

2. Legends

   • A rooster, a king and three childrenThree lessons on the stories Portugal tells itself: a rooster that crows, a vanished king people wait for, and three children of Fátima.4 lessons

3. Language

   • A language that went to seaThree lessons on Portuguese: a word people call untranslatable, a language that sailed to four continents, and the poet people still recite.4 lessons

4. At the table

   • Sugar, salt and wineThree lessons on what Portugal puts on the table: a pastry, a salted fish and a wine that comes down a river.4 lessons

5. Land

   • A coast, a river, some islandsThree lessons on the map of Portugal: its regions from north to south, the river of its capital, and nine islands in mid-Atlantic.4 lessons

6. Today

   • Tiles, bark and a voiceThree lessons on what a traveller sees and hears in Portugal today: tiled façades, a bark that gets harvested, a voice that sings.4 lessons

The dossiers of this country

Free to read: a definition, a timeline, the sources.

• The Azores: volcanic archipelago and autonomous regionThe Azores are a Portuguese archipelago of nine volcanic islands and a few islets, far out in the Atlantic, 1,815 kilometres from mainland Portugal. Spread in three groups over about 600 kilometres, they form an autonomous region of the Portuguese Republic, with its own parliament and government. Their name also belongs to the anticyclone that makes the weather over part of Europe.
• Azulejo: what it is, and where the word comes fromAn azulejo is a ceramic tile, usually square, glazed on one face and painted, laid by the hundred to clad a wall, a vault or a façade. In Portugal it became an art of national identity, from the churches of the seventeenth century to the metro stations. The word does not come from azul, blue, but from the Arabic spoken in Spain.
• Luís de Camões: what is known, and what is toldLuís de Camões was a sixteenth-century Portuguese poet, author of Os Lusíadas, the epic printed in Lisbon in 1572 that tells in ten cantos the first voyage of Vasco da Gama to India. A soldier for more than sixteen years in North Africa and Asia, he died in Lisbon on 10 June 1580, a day that became Portugal’s national holiday.
• The Barcelos cockerel: the legend and what is documentedThe Barcelos cockerel is a painted ceramic figure, modelled by the potters of Barcelos, in northern Portugal, and turned in the twentieth century into one of the country’s tourist emblems. Its name comes from a local legend: a pilgrim bound for the gallows is saved when a roast cockerel stands up on the judge’s table and crows.
• Fado: what it is, where it comes from, who sings itFado is a sung genre from Lisbon combining music and poetry: a solo voice, male or female, accompanied by a wire-strung acoustic guitar and the Portuguese guitarra, a twelve-string instrument unique to Portugal. It took shape in the capital in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, and UNESCO inscribed it in 2011 on its list of intangible cultural heritage.
• Fátima: what the sources say about the apparitions of 1917Fátima is a parish in central Portugal where three shepherd children, Lúcia de Jesus and Francisco and Jacinta Marto, said they saw the Virgin Mary six times between 13 May and 13 October 1917. The bishop of Leiria declared those visions worthy of belief on 13 October 1930 and authorised the cult of Our Lady of Fátima. The sanctuary built there receives millions of pilgrims.
• The Lisbon earthquake of 1755: what it changedThe Lisbon earthquake is the quake that struck the Portuguese capital on Saturday 1 November 1755, All Saints’ Day. The sea then came into the lower town, and a fire burned for several days. The death toll and the magnitude are still argued over. The rebuilding that followed drew the Baixa Pombalina, and the disaster crossed European thought, from Voltaire to Kant.
• Pastel de nata: what is in it and where it comes fromThe pastel de nata is a small Portuguese tart: a shell of puff pastry filled with an egg-yolk custard and put through a very hot oven until the top scorches. It is eaten at any hour, sometimes dusted with cinnamon or icing sugar. The name pastel de Belém is not a synonym: it is a registered trade mark belonging to one house in Lisbon alone.
• Sebastian I of Portugal: the king and SebastianismSebastian I, called the Desired, was king of Portugal from 1557 to 1578. The posthumous son of the Infante John, born in Lisbon on 20 January 1554, he was king at three and died at twenty-four at the battle of Alcácer Quibir, in Morocco, on 4 August 1578, without an heir. His death delivered Portugal to Philip II of Spain in 1580 and founded Sebastianism, the waiting for his return.
• Saudade: meaning, etymology and the history of a wordSaudade is a Portuguese word naming at once the happy memory of an absent person, place or time and the pain that absence causes. It comes from the Latin solitas, solitude, and is written soidade as early as the thirteenth century. It is often called untranslatable: the philologist Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcelos judged that claim an illusion as early as 1914.
• Treaty of Tordesillas (1494): what it says, what it is worthThe Treaty of Tordesillas is the agreement signed on 7 June 1494 by the sovereigns of Castile and Aragon, Ferdinand and Isabella, and by John II of Portugal. It divides the ocean from pole to pole by a line drawn 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands: east of it the lands go to Portugal, west of it to Castile. It is where Portuguese Brazil comes from.
• Port wine: what it is and how to read the labelPort is a fortified wine from the demarcated Douro region, in northern Portugal. During fermentation a wine spirit at 77 per cent alcohol is poured in: fermentation stops, part of the grape sugar stays in the wine, and the finished strength falls between 18 and 22 per cent. It is a protected designation of origin.