Portugal is a country in Southern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe and part of the Mediterranean. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west and south and by Spain to the north and east. Its capital city is Lisbon It has been a member of the European Union since 1986. Portugal was under a dictatorship between 1926 and 1974 called Estado Novo. The dictatorship of Estado Novo was ended by a peaceful revolution called Carnation Revolution. The Portuguese economy has since prospered but was hit hard by the 2007-2008 recession.
Portugal has a football team and won the Eurovision Song Contest 2017 and hosted the event in 2018.
It once had an empire called the Portuguese Empire, and was a powerful maritime nation from 1500s–1800s, the 10th-largest empire with a maximum land area of 10.4 million km² which included Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, East Timore, São Tomé and Príncipe, Portuguese Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and even Macau in China (until 2002).
Portugal is a popular holiday destination but is sometimes overlooked in favour of larger countries like France, Spain and Italy. The Algarve region in the south and capital Lisbon are the most popular.