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Portugal is a fairly homogeneous country linguistically and religiously. Ethnically, the Portuguese people are a combination of several ethnicities: pre-Roman Iberian and Celtic tribes with Romans and Germanic tribes. Moors became a reduced influence, as essentially they were expelled during the Reconquista. Jews comprised 10% of the population in the 16th Century until they were forced to move abroad or convert to Catholicism. Between 1960 and 1970, more than one million Portuguese emigrated, mostly to other European countries, resulting in a negative population growth. Previously, Brazil had been the destination of many, especially since the 18th century. Since mid 1970s major changes started to influence the country's demographics, the life expectancy went up, the infant mortality rate and the fertility rate broadly declined and, with the decolonization, many Portuguese returned from Africa. In the 2001 Census, Portugal had 10,356,117 inhabitants (51.7% female). Currently, there are almost 10.6 million inhabitants. By the end of 2003, legal immigrants represented 4.2% of the population, and the largest communities were: Ukrainians (15%), Brazilians (14.8%), Cape Verdeans (14.4%), and Angolans (7.9%). There are also a significant number of illegal immigrants, the treatment of those being now becoming increasingly problematic. Portugal still has 5 million emigrants abroad. The great majority of the Portuguese population adheres to the Roman Catholic Church. Religious minorities include a little over 300,000 Protestants. There are also about 50,000 Muslims and 10,000 Hindus (most of whom came from Goa, a former Portuguese colony). There are also about 1,000 Jews. There are upwards of 34,000 members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and Atheists and agnostics are increasing in number. Portugal's biggest metropolitan cities are Lisbon, Porto, Braga, Coimbra and Aveiro. The country is characterized by municipal cultural differentiation and there is little to no regional differentiation, unlike what happens in other European countries, resulting from the Roman municipalism, but mainly from the concelho de vizinhos created possibly during the Moorish rule as the lands were freed from the Visigothic nobles, leading the people of a land to organize itself in concelhos. Portuguese is spoken throughout the country, some of Terra de Miranda's Mirandese speaking villages being the only linguistic minority. |
Portugal Information: Inside
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