Facts and Statistics

Location: Southwestern Europe, bordering the North Atlantic Ocean, west of Spain

Capital: Lisbon

Population: 10,524,145 (July 2004 est.)

Ethnic Make-up: homogeneous Mediterranean stock; citizens of black African descent who immigrated to mainland during decolonization number less than 100,000; since 1990 East Europeans have entered Portugal

Religions: Roman Catholic 94%

The Portuguese Language

The 10-million population of Portugal speaks Portuguese, a Romance language which derived from Vulgar Latin. Galician and Mirandese, which are technically classed as separate languages, are spoken by a few thousand people in the north of the country, along the Spanish border.