Where Portugal Sits

Portugal is the western edge of Europe. Keep going west from anywhere on its coast and the next land is an island, then eventually America. That position is the whole reason the country's history happened the way it did.

One land border, and a very long coast

Portugal touches exactly one country. The border with Spain runs a little over twelve hundred kilometers, from the Minho river in the north down to the Guadiana in the south, and it is the border settled in 1297 that has barely moved since.

The other edge is the Atlantic, and there is a great deal of it: roughly eight hundred and fifty kilometers of coast, facing west along most of its length and then turning to face south along the Algarve. Cabo da Roca, a headland west of Lisbon, is the westernmost point of continental Europe. There is nothing beyond it but water.

The Tagus, and the city at its mouth

The Tagus is the longest river on the Iberian peninsula. It rises in Spain, crosses Portugal, and opens into a broad estuary before it reaches the sea. Lisbon sits on that estuary, a little way in from the ocean, which is what made it the harbor it became: sheltered enough to be safe, close enough to the open Atlantic to leave from.

Ships coming home from India or the African coast did not sail straight into Lisbon. They raised the coast west of the city first, then worked their way in through the mouth of the river.

Cascais, which is where the plots are

Cascais sits at the western end of that approach, on the stretch of shore where the coast stops facing the open ocean and turns to face the mouth of the Tagus. A fishing town, later the summer resort of the Portuguese court, and today a half hour by train from central Lisbon along the water the whole way.

It is the piece of coast a returning crew saw first and the last thing they saw going out. That is the reason the plots are there and not somewhere prettier. If you want to see the exact stretch on a map, it has its own page.

The islands

Portugal is not only the part attached to Europe. The Azores sit far out in the Atlantic, nine islands roughly a third of the way to North America. Madeira lies to the southwest, off the coast of Morocco. Both are autonomous regions with their own governments, both were settled during the fifteenth century voyages described on the history page, and a great many Portuguese families in the United States came from the Azores rather than from the European mainland.

Our plots are on the coast at Cascais. That is a decision about one stretch of shore and the ships that used it, and it is not a statement about where anyone's family is from.

How big it is

Small, and smaller than most people picture. The European part of the country is about five hundred and sixty kilometers from north to south and rarely more than two hundred across, which is a long day's drive end to end. Around ten million people live there, with roughly a third of them in and around Lisbon and Porto.

A country that size took ships to places nobody in Europe had charted, which is the fact this whole brand is built on.