Portugal fined for environmental failings Portugal has been fined 10 million euro’s by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) for failing to comply with the Habitats Directive (adopted in 1992), that aims to protect over a thousand species, including mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish and plants. It also has been ordered to pay […]
Steady increase in the number of wild boars in the country Javali (wild boar, wild swine or wild pig) has become one of the most controversial wild mammals in Portugal. Once mainly restricted in remote forested and mountainous areas, populations have rapidly expanded and are now present across much of the country. The wild boar […]
TO HOLD, TO GIVE, TO RECEIVE is the theme of the Coimbra Biennale ‘26 If you decide to visit the 17th century Monastery of Santa Clara-a-Nova – perched atop a hill in the Portuguese university city, and overlooking the medieval centre of Coimbra from across the Mondego river – do bear in mind that the […]
‘As you are drawing something, it often turns into something else’ (Paula Rego) Story Line is the largest ever exhibition of the drawings of the Portuguese-born artist Paula Rego. Curated by her son, Nick Willing, the exposition features work on paper from the 1950s, right around the time she settled in Britain, to her death […]
Portugal plummets in 2025 Corruption Perception Index, with the worst score ever. The watchdog Transparency International Portugal (TIP) is challenging declarations by the Ministry of Justice on the assessment of anti-corruption policies in Portugal, and rejects claims that the Anti-Corruption Agenda– one of the government’s flagships – contains a clear anti-corruption strategy. Instead, the Ministry’s […]
‘Hormuz’ probably derives from the Persian pronunciation of the principal Zoroastrian god Ahuramazda (also known as Ormazd or Horomazes) The Strait of Hormuz – 34 km wide at its narrowest point between Iran and Oman – is in the news every day. The instability in the Middle East and the American and Israeli aggression against […]
‘I don’t write the books, it’s my own hand working independently’ “A revolutionary in Portuguese literatureA psychiatrist never considering being anything else than a writerA writer marked by the colonial war in AngolaA colonial war that brought ‘ghosts’ and ‘death’ to his workIt wasn’t Lobo Antunes who lost the Nobel Prize, the Nobel Prize lost […]
qahwa -kaffa – kahve –capha- cafeh – caffé – café – koffie – coffy – coffee The origin of the word coffee is probably derived from Kaffa, the name of an Ethiopian kingdom in the 15th century. At that time in Yemen a beverage was prepared from a plant of Ethiopian origin, which proved to […]
‘Zé Povinho looks from one side to the other, and stays – as always – the same’ Zé (abbreviation from José) Povinho (‘little people’) is a caricature of the Portuguese everyman, created by Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro – journalist, socialist, publisher of satirical newspapers, and ceramist – in the second half of the 19th century. The […]