Portuguese Republic
República Portuguesa
CAPITAL: Lisbon (Lisboa)
FLAG: The national flag, adopted in 1911, consists of a green field at the hoist and a larger red field. At the junction of the two, in yellow, red, blue, and white, is the national coat of arms.
ANTHEM: A Portuguesa (The Portuguese).
MONETARY UNIT: The escudo (E) was replaced by the euro as official currency as of 2002. The euro is divided into 100 cents. There are coins in denominations of 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, and 50 cents and 1 euro and 2 euros. There are notes of 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, and 500 euros. As of May 2003, €1 = $1.0977 (or $1 = €0.911).
WEIGHTS AND MEASURES: The metric system is the legal standard.
HOLIDAYS: New Year's Day, 1 January; Carnival Day, 15 February; Anniversary of the Revolution, 25 April; Labor Day, 1 May; National Day, 10 June; Assumption, 15 August; Republic Day, 5 October; All Saints' Day, 1 November; Independence Day, 1 December; Immaculate Conception, 8 December; Christmas, 25 December. Movable religious holidays include Carnival Day, Good Friday, and Corpus Christi.
TIME: GMT.
Portuguese, the national language, evolved from ancient dialects of Latin; its rules of orthography were reformulated in 1911. Portuguese is also the official language of Brazil and the former African provinces. Spanish, French, and English are the most common second languages.
Portugal is grouped into districts, including 18 on the mainland and the autonomous regions of the Azores and Madeira islands. Each district has a governor, appointed by the minister of the interior, and an assembly. There are more than 300 municipalities, subdivided into parishes.
According to the 2001 census, Portugal had 5,054,922 dwelling units. In May 1993, the government initiated a $2 billion program designed to clear urban slums, which included the construction of 20,000 low-income units in Lisbon by the year 2000.