Some things about Portugal

Portugal!

Nearest country by culture: The nearest country by culture is also the nearest country, which is Spain, specially the region of Galicia.

Language: Portuguese and a dialect called Mirandês existent just in a region called Mirandela.

Norms & values: When you meet or met someone, if you are a man you handshake the hand of the other man or kiss a lady in each side of her face, the same between ladies.

Arts and aesthetics: The most used art in Portugal since its creation until nowadays is the writing.

Most known writers by chronologic order:
•    Luis de Camões
•    Gil Vicente
•    Fernando Pessoa
•    José Saramago (won a Nobel prize)

Religions: Roman Catholic 84.5%, other Christian 2.2%, other 0.3%, unknown 9%, none 3.9% (great part of Portuguese costumes and traditions comes from the religion, Catholic specially)

National holiday: Portugal's Day (Dia de Portugal), 10 June (1580) also called Camões Day, the day that revered national poet Luis de Camões (1524-80) died.

Music:
•    Portugal has a rich traditional folklore (Ranchos Folclóricos), with great regional variety.
•    Fado, a traditional music from Lisbon that spread all over the country.

Important Products in Portuguese culture:
•    Coffee, (café) (in Estonia is usually called espresso coffee) is a very important part of the Portuguese culture, many people appreciate it and drink it quite often.
•    Bacalhau, or in English Cod fish, is used in lots of traditional Portuguese dishes. Its usually fished in Norwegian and Canadian waters by the Portuguese since 1497 after the discovery of this fish. The main fact of this long journey to catch this fish is its capacity to stay long time imperishable and with the same taste because of its high level of salt.
•    Grapes, every region have some kind of wine, the most known of them is Porto wine.
•    Meat, lots of dishes and aperitifs have meat in Portugal, but the most known dish is “Cozido à Portuguesa” (Portuguese boil), made with meat of lots of animals, lots of vegetables and rice.

Canções de intervenção (political songs): played an important part in the protests against the totalitarian regime that ruled Portugal from 1926 up to the 1974 revolution.

Student festivals: Festivals organized by students of several higher education institutions, take place every year across the country, being the one held at Coimbra the oldest and most traditional of all, copied and adapted by other universities. These include the music festivals of Queima das Fitas and Semana Académica (Aveiro, Braga, Coimbra, Covilhã, Faro, Lisbon, Porto, etc.) and Festa das Latas (Coimbra).

Theater: Portugal never developed a great Dramatic theatre tradition due primarily to the fact that the Portuguese were more passionate about lyric or humorous works than dramatic art. Gil Vicente (referred before) is often seen has the father of Portuguese theatre.

Carnival: is widely celebrated in Portugal, some traditional carnivals date back several centuries.

Football: the most popular and practiced sport in Portugal. Football started to become well known in Portugal in the final decades of the 19th century, brought by Portuguese students who returned from England.

Cycling: this sport is also very important in Portugal because of the race “Volta a Portugal” which is a cycling race around Portugal.