CAPITAL : Lisbon (Lisboa)
FLAG : The national flag, adopted in 1911, consists of a green field at the hoist and a larger red field. At the junction of the two, in yellow, red, blue, and white, is the national coat of arms.
ANTHEM : A Portuguesa (The Portuguese).
MONETARY UNIT : The escudo ( E ) was replaced by the euro as official currency as of 2002. The euro is divided into 100 cents. There are coins in denominations of 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, and 50 cents and 1 euro and 2 euros. There are notes of 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, and 500 euros. As of May 2003, €1 = $1.0977 (or $1 = €0.911).
WEIGHTS AND MEASURES : The metric system is the legal standard.
HOLIDAYS : New Year's Day, 1 January; Carnival Day, 15 February; Anniversary of the Revolution, 25 April; Labor Day, 1 May; National Day, 10 June; Assumption, 15 August; Republic Day, 5 October; All Saints' Day, 1 November; Independence Day, 1 December; Immaculate Conception, 8 December; Christmas, 25 December. Movable religious holidays include Carnival Day, Good Friday, and Corpus Christi.
TIME : GMT.
Portuguese, the national language, evolved from ancient dialects of Latin; its rules of orthography were reformulated in 1911. Portuguese is also the official language of Brazil and the former African provinces. Spanish, French, and English are the most common second languages.
Portugal is grouped into districts, including 18 on the mainland and the autonomous regions of the Azores and Madeira islands. Each district has a governor, appointed by the minister of the interior, and an assembly. There are more than 300 municipalities, subdivided into parishes.
According to the 2001 census, Portugal had 5,054,922 dwelling units. In May 1993, the government initiated a $2 billion program designed to clear urban slums, which included the construction of 20,000 low-income units in Lisbon by the year 2000.
Anderson, James M. The History of Portugal. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000.
Birmingham, David. A Concise History of Portugal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Bruneau, Thomas C., and Alex Macleod. Politics in Contemporary Portugal: Parties and the Consolidation of Democracy. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1986.
Clarence-Smith, Gervase. The Third Portuguese Empire, 1825–1975. Wolfeboro, N.H.: Longwood, 1985.
Graham, Lawrence F., and Harry M. Makler (eds.). Contemporary Portugal: The Revolution and Its Antecedents. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979.
——. The Portuguese Military and the State: Rethinking Transitions in Europe and Latin America. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1993.
Harvey, Robert. Portugal: Birth of a Democracy. New York: St. Martin's, 1978.
Herr, Richard (ed.). The New Portugal: Democracy and Europe. Berkeley: University of California at Berkeley, 1992.
Hilton, Ronald. A Bibliography of Spain and Portugal. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 1999.
International Smoking Statistics: A Collection of Historical Data from 30 Economically Developed Countries. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Kaplan, Marion. The Portuguese: The Land and its People. London: Viking, 1991.
MacDonald, Scott B. European Destiny, Atlantic Transformations: Portuguese Foreign Policy Under the Second Republic, 1974–1992. New Brunswick, N.J: Transaction Publishers, 1993.
Machado, Diamantino P. The Structure of Portuguese Society: the Failure of Fascism. New York: Praeger, 1991.
Magone, José M. European Portugal: The Difficult Road to Sustainable Democracy. Houndmills, U.K.: Macmillan, 1997.
Manuel, Paul Christopher. The Challenges of Democratic Consolidation in Portugal. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1996.
Nataf, Daniel. Democratization and Social Settlements: The Politics of Change in Contemporary Portugal. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995.
Opello, Walter C. Portugal: From Monarchy to Pluralist Democracy. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1991.
Pitcher, M. Anne. Politics in the Portuguese Empire: The State, Industry, and Cotton, 1926–1974. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Solstein, Eric (ed.). Portugal: A Country Study. 2d ed. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1993.
Syrett, Stephen. Local Development: Restructuring, Locality, and Economic Initiative in Portugal. Aldershot, U.K.: Avebury, 1995.
Wheeler, Douglas L. Historical Dictionary of Portugal. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2002.
Wiarda, Howard J. Politics in Iberia: The Political Systems of Spain and Portugal. New York: Harper Collins, 1993.