Portugal is My Choice of a Dream that is Real
Introduction
Portugal is a dream that is real. The land, the people and the culture draws me like a magnet. It is my first choice as the best place in this world. The landscape is diverse despite the small area of land Portugal covers. There are sandy beaches and golden plains as well as mountains and modern cities vying with millennial heritage sites. You can become one with Mother Nature in Portugal. The climate is the biggest plus point of Portugal. Football is the national passion of Portugal. Here you can indulge in water sports, winter sports and golf while sipping local wine and cuisines.
Destination Point
According to Serra, Correia & Rodrigues (2014), Portugal is the entry point of the Schenegen zone – the regions comprising of 26 countries of Europe that have done away with border control like passports. The visa policy is common. The Schengen region encourages free traffic of goods, money, information and people. Many speak foreign languages especially English. Portugal is geographically placed at a strategic point – here three continents of America, Europe and Africa meet. Across Portugal there are international airports. It takes only two and a half hours to reach Paris or London from Lisbon, the capital of Portugal. The country is linked by modern roads. It takes six hours to drive to Madrid. For nine centuries the boundaries of Portugal have been well defined. It has a democratic stable government. For over 26 years it is a member of the European Union. Portugal ranks high among the developed countries. It enjoys the highest GDP rate of growth for the last.
4 decades among OECD (Organization for Economic and Commercial Development) countries. According to a survey...
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...o Serra, Correia & Rodrigues (2014) most of the Portuguese are Roman Catholics (81.0%). In this tolerant country there are small numbers of Protestants, Mormons, Muslims, Hindus, Orthodox Christians and Jews amongst others. The traditional religions of Africa and China have also had an impact. In a study of 2012 the number of those who did not have any religion increased from 8.2% to 14.2%. Most of the festivals and holidays in Portugal are of Christian origin. Portugal however is a secular
WHY I CHOOSE PORTUGAL AND ITS CULTURE AND WHY IT5
state today.
Conclusion
The gracious Portuguese are friendly and extend their welcome to all without discrimination. People from all corners of the world knock on the doors of Portugal. The unfolding story of Portugal prompts me to join the birds and nest there and investing in property to enjoy a life of permanent holidaying.
Cuba has long since been considered as an island-nation without any necessary affiliation with the Catholic Church. In fact, prior to the 1960s, Cuba was considered the most "secularized" country within Latin America, with only a mere six percent of the population attending church on a regular basis. Instead, the practice of the African based voodoo religion of Santería has prevailed. Experts estimate that 70 percent of the Cuban population practices Santería. This religion was brought to Cuba by African slaves and combined the virtues of Christianity and with their native African beliefs. It is associated with Catholicism because Afro-Cuban deities have been associated with Catholic saints since colonial Cuba. The Afro-Cubans did this in order to evade religious persecution by the Spaniards who considered a...
The French and Spanish were heavily influenced by Catholicism. Both colonies had established missions across the New World in hopes of converting Indians to Catholicism. The Spanish colonists were especially determined to establish missions and convert Indians in their territories as a response to the kingdoms of Aragon and Castile seeking to “transform their own pluralistic societies into a purely Christian kingdom (Butler 28). The Spanish were also heavily influenced by religion due to the Crusades in the Old World as well being motivated by “gold, God, and glory” for voyaging into the New World. The role of religion in Spanish society extended out towards how they governed their colonies as the Catholic populations were under control of both the monarchy and the Vatican. The French Catholics had taken example from the Spanish by establishing multiple missions in the New World in efforts to become trading partners with local Indian tribes. Both New Spain and New France were heavily influenced by Catholicism c...
Portugal and Spain work together to try to stop drug trafficking, they also work together in forest fires. Portugal has such a good relationship that they have agreed to build a high-speed rail link between Lisbon and Madrid. They also agreed to make a joint bid to host the 2018 soccer World Cup.
With the introduction of the Schengen Agreement in 1985, travel and restrictions within Europe drastically changed. For the first time in the world, a large group of countries banded together and abolished any restriction on travel, creating a massive zone of free travel. Anyone who was a citizen of a country within the European union now had access to every other country also within the area, creating essentially a borderless landmass. This agreement had some major positive factors, but also some blaring negative effects. The most blaring negative side effect of the free tra...
years, setting a model for other countries as well. It has been successful in bringing prosperity,
Russell-Wood, A. J. R. Portuguese empire, 1415-1808 a world on the move. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 1998. Print.
Judaism is practiced by about 500,000 Jews in the region. Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil host large communities and are faced with large amounts of anti-semitism leftover from Spanish hatred. The Jewish and Muslims were forced out of Spain, even those who had converted to catholicism, by the Spanish Inquisition. This systemic hatred had taken root in Latin America (Class Notes).
In Puerto Rico, the majority of the population, about two-thirds of the inhabitants, are Roman Catholic. This dates back to when the there were Spanish colonies present during the 15th century who were Catholic. Although Catholics hold the majority, Protestants account for one-fourth of the population. Protestants date back to 1898 when missionaries came from the United States to Puerto Rico. Even though Catholics and Protestants hold the majority of the population, the Constitution guarantees freedom for all faiths. Some people are non-religious (2.3%) or another religion (3%). Some islanders ascribe to espiritismo (spiritualism) and others practice Santeria, an Afro-Caribbean belief system brought to Puerto Rico from Cuba. There is also a small Jewish community.
Kargar, J. (2004, January 1). Amazon.com in 2003. Journal of the International Academy for Case Studies, 33-52. Retrieved February 24, 2012, from ABI/INFORM Global. (Document ID: 1909313031).
Heckmann, C., & Marin, I. (2013). EAG 2013 - Country note, Sweden. Retrieved from http://www.oecd.org/edu/eag.htm
In 1803 Portuguese exports to England were worth more than 10 million escudos, and the average worth of exports per year between 1800 and 1807 was 8 million escudos. Imports were also high, and part of these imports was sold to France and Spain. In 1810 a treaty was signed which opened the ports of Brazil to trade with Britain. Portugal was therefore cut out of the ‘trade triangle’ that it had previously monopolised.
Slay, Ben. "Rapid versus Gradual Economic Transition" Economics. August 1994. United Nations Statistical Yearbook, 39th Edition. 1994.
Shangquan, Gao. “Economic Globalization: Trends, Risks, and Risk Prevention.” Development. United Nations, 2001. Web. 10 Dec. 2013. .
All the data for this report was taken from the leading provider of high quality statistics on Europe - Eurostat. Eurostat is the statistical office of the European Union situated in Luxembourg. Its task is to provide the European Union with statistics at European level that enable comparisons between countries and regions (Eurostat).
So in conclusion Portugal is a small a country with a lot of tradition. But it's also well known that the Portuguese people don't stay in Portugal. In fact there is a Portuguese saying that says, "Where ever there's in the world there's a Portuguese person". This can be proven because after Lisbon, the largest Portuguese community is in Paris, France.