A Brief History of Portugal and the Algarve . . .The Early Years . . .
Several centuries before Christ, the Phoenicians set up trading posts in the Algarve as they had done all along the Mediterranean. They were particularly interested in mining minerals and metals including silver and copper. The Carthaginians took over from the Phoenicians and established an empire of which the Algarve formed the extreme western part.
After the Romans defeated the Carthaginians in the early part of the second century BC they controlled southern Portugal within part of their empire. The Romans established their language, laws and culture here and remained the dominant power throughout Portugal for over 500 years. The main Roman town in the Algarve was named Ossanoba, which was probably on the site of Faro today.
The Romans introduced Christianity which replaced paganism in the Algarve. In the fifth century, Germanic tribes swept through the Roman empire. They fought with each other to maintain power in northern and central Portugal, however they were easily defeated by new invaders from North Africa.
The new occupiers, arriving during the eighth century, were a mixture of Arabs and Berbers known as Moors. They were Islamic and brought with them an entirely different culture. Within a decade of arriving the Moors had conquered almost all of Portugal. They settled throughout most of Portugal but preferred the south where they dominated for over five centuries.
The Moors were very tolerant towards other religions Jews and Christians were allowed freedom to worship. But the growth of Christianity was moving fast across Europe and the Portuguese Christian conquest was moving relentlessly southward. Moorish resistance in Portugal was last seen in the Algarve and the Moors were finally defeated during 1253. The king who achieved the removal of the Moors was Afonso III. Significantly, he was crowned "King of Portugal and the Algarve".
The Birth of a Nation . . .
Prior to the liberation of the Algarve from the Moors, independence for the rest of Portugal had been secured when she separated from the Spanish kingdom of León in 1128. Wars with the Spanish kingdom of Castile continued for a long time in the south and this gave rise in 1373 to an alliance with England, which was strengthened in 1386 by the most enduring of all alliances, the Treaty of Windsor. This treaty, which is still in existence today, was cemented by help from English troops in the vital Battle of Aljubarrota between Portugal and Castile, and solidified by King João I's marriage to John of Gaunt's daughter, Philippa of Lancaster.
João I founded Portugal's most illustrious dynasty, the House of Aviz. It presided over the Age of Discovery, a period of achievement never repeated in Portuguese history. It produced legendary names such as Henry the Navigator, Bartolomeu Dias and Vasco da Gama. The greatest achievements during this period included rounding the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, and forging a sea route to India a decade later together with proclaiming Brazil for the Portuguese crown in 1500.
The Age of Discovery was immediately followed by a "golden age" when Portugal, by now a superpower of the time, was able to cash in on her supremacy at sea, her monopoly in the spice trade, and her control of Europe's first great overseas empire, which stretched from Brazil to China, the Azores and Madeira to India and the Malay peninsula.
Portugal's days of glory and great wealth did not last long. Around 1550, the economy was already in steep decline.
The high cost of maintaining and administrating colonies and running trading posts abroad, could not be met due
to falling prices for oriental commodities and the loss of lucrative monopolies to the French, English and the Dutch.
The Inquisition also brought an end to the years of exploration and expansiveness. The throne was occupied by a "boy king," Sebastião. In 1578, from the Algarve coast, his army set off in a fleet of 500 ships on a crusade to Morocco. King and army were annihilated by the Moroccans. The Portuguese then suffered the humiliation of falling under Spanish rule. It was 60 years before Portugal regained her independence again.
The dynasty of Braganza took power as Portugal recovered her kingdom and some of it's former empire, most notably Brazil. Gold and diamonds from Brazil gave Portugal unprecedented pomp and splendour in the first half of the 18th century.
However, behind a veil of prosperity lay a nation in decay. Then came two devastating events: The Great Earthquake of 1755 and three successive invasions by Napoleon's armies. Portugal was allied with Britain against Napoleon. The Peninsular War ended with Sir Arthur Wellesley, later Duke of Wellington, leading the expulsion of the French from Portugal in 1811.
Meanwhile the French Revolution had given Portuguese dissidents ideas of their own. A democratic movement led a successful Revolution in Oporto during 1820 which soon spread to other parts of the country. As a consequence, the nation's political structure was shattered and this helped lead Brazil to declare its independence. Thereafter for nearly a century there was ongoing periodic upheavals between the Liberal politicians, who supported an English-style democratic constitution, and the Conservatives, who supported royal authority and the establishment.
Founding of a Republic . . .
In 1910, a republican uprising overthrew King Manuel II, whose father and elder brother had been assassinated less than two years previously. Leaders of this republican movement were academics, military officers and professional men whose hope was to stabilise Portugal's worsening economy by suppressing the Monarchy and the Roman Catholic Church. Instead internal turmoil continued before worsening at the outbreak of World War I.
At the beginning of World War I Portugal remained neutral, but Germany declared war in 1916 when the Portuguese confiscated German shipping in the country's ports. The years following the end of the war in 1918 were filled with political demonstrations, strikes, violence, collapsed governments and attempted coups. From this chaos emerged one of Portugal's most famous leaders of all time, Dr. António de Oliveira Salazar. Dr. Salazar was professor of economics at the University of Coimbra, Portugal's oldest university, and was asked to take on the key role of finance minister. He proved to be extraordinarily successful in directing Portugal towards financial recovery. In 1932, he became prime minister and set up the "New State", which had a constitution empowering him with dictatorial powers. The idea of the New State was to bring the decades of political turmoil to an end and create harmony under a one-party, authoritarian regime.
World War II soon erupted. By agreement with her allies, including Britain, Portugal remained neutral. However, from 1943, Portugal allowed British and American forces the use of an island in the Azores as an air base. In 1949, Portugal became one of the founding members of NATO.
While the Second World War had left Portugal unaffected, during the early 1960's Portugal found herself heavily involved in it's own colonial wars which raged on three separate fronts in Africa : Angola, Mozambique and Portuguese Guinea. Portugal increased both manpower and money into combating guerrilla movements fighting for national independence, but all to no avail. After 13 years of fighting Portugal and it's people were drained, peace abroad was to be brought about by insurrection at home.
The Revolution . . .
At 30 minutes after midnight on 25th April 1974, Rádio Renascença, a Lisbon station, played a popular piece of music called Grândola, Vila Morena. To those in the know, it was the prearranged signal to stage a military coup against the right-wing government of Salazar's successor, Marcello Caetano.
Before dawn, all the key buildings in Lisbon and the provinces had been occupied by rebel troops and the international airports of Lisbon, Oporto and Faro had been closed down. There was virtually no resistance and no bloodshed. The "Revolution" had been a well-planned and classically executed coup d'etat led by the younger military captains and majors. It brought the people of Portugal out onto the streets in celebration for they too desperately wanted change after 40 years of dictatorship.
Free speech and party politics returned with a vengeance. Business confidence and investment fled as major industries were nationalised. Many family business's and large country estates were taken over by the workers. Almost a million people arrived in mainland Portugal from the war-torn former Portuguese territories in Africa. The mid 1970's were tumultuous times.
In the immediate post-Revolution years, the Socialist Party of Mário Soares competed with the Communists for control, but by 1979 the Social Democrats were in the ascendancy. Coalition governments were elected one after the other until July 1987 when Anibal Cavaco Silva led the Social Democrats (PSD) to victory with the first overall parliamentary majority since the 1974 Revolution. The PSD were returned again in the general election of 1991. In 1995 the electorate decided on a change and voted in the Socialist Party (PS).
The most far-reaching change to Portugal's position in Europe since the 1974 Revolution was Portugal's admission into the European Community on 1st January 1986.
Today's Portugal and Algarve . . .
Portugal is a little larger than Scotland or the Republic of Ireland. It has a population of approximately 10 million people. The official language is Portuguese, which is also spoken by over 150 million other people around the world, mainly in Brazil and Portugal's former African and Far Eastern territories.
Portugal today is a parliamentary democracy with a President as head-of-state. He is more than a figurehead and holds significant overall powers, but he is not concerned with the day-to-day administration of the country. That is left to the Prime Minister and his government. Economically, the services sector employs the biggest percentage of the workforce and contributes most to the GDP. It is followed by industry, farming and fishing. Almost 70% of Portugal's foreign trade is with other European Union countries. The massive growth in foreign investment over the last decade is a clear indication of confidence in the Portuguese economy.
Although the Algarve is an integral part of Portugal, this southernmost province is geographically distinct in it's character from the rest of the country.
The climate of the Algarve is milder than elsewhere in the country not only because of its southerly position and proximity to Africa, but because it benefits from a protective chain of hills along its northern boundary. In the east, the Algarve's boundary with Spain is marked by the Guadiana River. The southern as well as the western shores are washed by the Atlantic. The climate is Mediterranean typified by long warm summers with most of the rain falling during the mild winters.
The combination of climate and clean beautiful shores, means that the Algarve is tailor-made for tourism. The sunshine and the beaches are the biggest attraction although there has been increased interest in recent years in both cultural and countryside holidays plus the building of a string of superb golf courses has developed tourism into an all-year-round business. There is now a heightened awareness that preservation of the region's environment and ecology are not only compatible with sound, tourism-based economical development, but essential to it. "Quality" is the catchword as strenuous efforts are made throughout the Algarve tourist industry to improve standards of facilities and service, and to give good value for money in a highly competitive business field.
Agriculture is another large industry and the use of modern irrigation methods in the growing of citrus fruits, mainly oranges, is proving far more important than the labour-intensive cultivation of the five traditional crops: grapes, olives, almonds, figs and carobs. The big five are still widely grown and harvested using ancestral methods. Cork oak trees are still cultivated for their bark, but the hillier areas are now heavily forested with fast-growing and commercially profitable pine and eucalyptus trees.
