Following its heyday as a world power during the 15th and 16th centuries, Portugal lost much of its wealth and status with the destruction of Lisbon in a 1755 earthquake, occupation during the Napoleonic Wars, and the independence in 1822 of Brazil as a colony.
A 1910 revolution deposed the monarchy; for most of the next six decades, repressive governments ran the country.
In 1974, a left-wing military coup installed broad democratic reforms. The following year, Portugal granted independence to all of its African colonies.
Portugal is a founding member of NATO and entered the EC (now the EU) in 1986.
The Portuguese language is an Iberian Romance language, of the Indo-European family. It originated in what is today Galicia (Spain) and northern Portugal.
Portuguese is ranked sixth among the world's languages in number of native speakers, with over 200 million, and first in South America where around 51% of the population speak Portuguese.
It spread worldwide in the 15th and 16th century as Portugal set up a vast colonial and commercial empire spanning from Brazil in the Americas to Macau in China.
