Paula Rego, one of the most famous living artists has said the recent anti-abortion movement criminalizes women and believes recent legislation banning the procedure in some US states is dangerously regressive and will force women into finding potentially deadly ‘backstreet solutions’.
The painter – who was born in Portugal but lives in London – has spent her career focusing on women’s rights and abortion. ‘It seems unbelievable that these battles have to be fought all over again. It is grotesque’, she stated.
Back in 1998, the now 84-year-old artist created a series of paintings – The Abortion Pastels – in response to a referendum to legalize abortion in Portugal. At that time at least 2 women per year died as a result of secretive and often tortuous illegal abortions. The women who survived the severe bleeding and septicaemia risked 3 years in prison.
The referendum was defeated as a result of an intimidating lobby of the ultra-conservative Catholic church and a very low turnout among voters.
It lasted until 2007 before this mistake was corrected and abortion laws in Portugal were liberalized.
In a provocative interview from that time Rego is very clear about the hypocrisy and horror of the rusty abortion policy in her country. And she is proud that her paintings – highlighting the fear and danger of illegal abortion – were useful as propaganda material in the 2007 referendum. ‘It is imperative women have a choice’, she emphasizes.
Rego’s series depicts a theme uncomfortable in Western art – often only concerned with the idealisation of womanhood. Its cruel realism exposes a very real picture for many – especially poor – women in countries beneath the Equator, where every 9 minutes a woman still dies as a result of an illegal abortion. ‘If you are rich it is easier to have an abortion, usually by travelling to another country. Poor women are butchered.’
The exhibition Paula Rego: Obedience and Defiance’ will be the first major retrospective of her work since the 1960s. To support the exhibition – that opens on 15 June at MK Gallery in Milton Keynes, UK – the artist has offered a limited edition print from her celebrated series hoping the etching Untitled Abortion, 2000 will help draw attention to the dangers of making abortion illegal again.
Bom fim de semana Have a nice weekend (pics Womensart/Sapo)
The history of Lisbon and Mouraria – one of the city’s oldest quarters – both originate from the presence of diverse people and cultures. In 1143, Lisbon was conquered from the Moors by King Alfonso Henriques, becoming a Christian city. The birth of Mouraria goes back to the same period, built outside the walls as the only territory where Moors were authorized to reside.
In the 16th century, the first black migrants were forced into slavery in Lisbon, in that era the largest European centre of the flourishing slave trade. The number of slaves present in the capital reached 10% of the total population, that time comprising 100,000 inhabitants.
On 25 April 1974, Portugal became a democracy after 48 years of dictatorship. Between April and November 1975, Portugal took in half a million Portuguese and their descendants from its 
Mouraria is the most multicultural neighbourhood of the capital. Here you find everything from African grocers to Chines tea, Indian clothing, religious talismans, Bengali restaurants, mosques and halal butchers. The percentage of foreign residents (25%) is well above the average for the city (10%) and the nation (less 4%).
In the heart of Mouraria resides the 
Twenty EU states have golden visa or similar programs.
In the past six years – between October 2012 and January 2019 – over 7000 golden visas have been issued by the Portuguese authorities. In particular to Chinese (> 4000), followed by Brazilians, South Africans, Turks and Russians. It yielded the treasury the sweet amount of 4.3 
Just like luxury goods, residence rights are for sale. A multibillion-euro industry but not without risks. Real estate has always and everywhere been attractive to money laundering, corruption and tax evasion.
A special commission of the European Parliament suggested 
The majority in the Portuguese Parliament even wants to go a step further in the residency scheme for wealthy foreigners by introducing ‘
In 1543 a Chinese ship with three Portuguese sailors on board – António da Mota, Francisco Zeimoto and António Peixoto – heading for Macau was swept off course and ended up on the Japanese island of Tanegashima. The Japanese were in the middle of civil war and eventually began trading guns with the Portuguese. This way the first trading post in Japan became a fact.
The Portuguese remained in Japan for nearly a century – until 
Peixinhos da horta was often eaten during Lent – the 40-day period before Easter that in Christianity is devoted to fasting and abstinence – when the church dictated that Catholics were not allowed to eat meat.
Few destinations have witnessed a boom in tourism like Portugal. According to UN World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) the country welcomed nearly 7 million international arrivals in 2010. By 2016 that figure had tripled.
The 10 million visitors to the capital – almost as many as the entire Portuguese population –generated last year almost 
More than
The number of short term rentals –in Portugal registered as alojamento local (AL) – has even overtaken 
Portugal has, in fact, the highest prevalence of stroke in Europe. This is probably due to the high number of people with 
A consequence of the widespread existence of stroke and hypertension is the frequent occurrence of dementia.
Alzheimer is the most common form of dementia in Western Europe. Interesting enough, this is not the case in Portugal. A recent epidemiological study from the University of Porto and 
Portugal’s oldest tree – 3350 years old – can be admired in Mouriscas, the municipality of Abrantes. As one of the oldest trees in the world, it has provided shadow to innumerous people, from Celts to Romans and from Visigoths to Arabs. This monumental olive tree is not only a contemporary from pharaoh Ramses II and Moses (1250 years B.C) but also from you and me.
Another recent breakthrough in the green world has been the unraveling by Portuguese scientists of the 
It was on the 21st of March last year that the 234- year- old cork oak from Águas de Moura, a small village in the district of Palmela, was declared ‘
The Portuguese entry for this year’s event – since 2011 organized by the Environmental Partnership Organisation (EPA) in which 15 European countries participate – is once again an oak. This time the 150- year-old 
Once again 
The next day around 300 black youngsters held a spontaneous demonstration at the prestigious Avenida da Liberdade, chanting ‘Stop racist police brutality’.
Slums proliferated in Portugal from the 1970s onward due to 
This story of police brutality reminds of the well-known case from February 2015, when 17 policemen were accused of a number of crimes against a group of black young people in Lisbon’s quarter 
The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has repeatedly declared being very concerned with racism in Portugal and the lack of measures taken for the benefit of the 
The introduction of sugar cane farming by the Portuguese into Madeira towards the first half of the 15th century – some decades before Columbus discovered America – meant that sugar could be exported, at first through Lisbon and then directly to the ports of Flanders (Antwerp and Bruges). In this way the consumption of the ‘white gold’ spread across the whole of Europe, altering people’s eating habits.
Although the archipelago of Madeira – geographically isolated in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean – had already been shown on earlier maps, it was only in 1418 that the first Portuguese navigators landed on the island of Porto Santo and subsequently discovered the much bigger island, Madeira.
The newly introduced sugar-based economy called for important innovations such as ‘sugar mills’ and ‘grinding stones’, together with the use of special moulds that gave rise to the famous ‘sugarloaves’, the form in which refined sugar was produced and sold until granulated and cube sugars were introduced in the late 19th century. A tall cone with a rounded top was the end-product. The larger the loaf the lower the grade of sugar. A common size that time was 6.4 kg but the finest sugar from Madeira came in small loaves of only 1.4 to 1.8 kg.
From the very beginning of its origins in Madeira, production completely relied on the use of slave labour. Captives were taken along the coast of North and West Africa and brought to work at the sugar mills. When the sugar production in the much vaster territory of Brazil got underway in the 16th century, Madeira lost its privileged position. Sugar from South America was simply cheaper.
Sugarloaf mountain (
January 6. Epiphany – Kings Day – Dia de Reis.
Who were those gift-bearing ‘
According to other sources dating back to medieval times, the visitors were 
Finally, inside a cave on the outskirts of Bethlehem, the star reappears to them as a luminous human child – the Christ child! There, the men kneel down and present the baby Jesus with their three famous gifts – gold, incense, and myrrh. Tradition has it, that in later years they were baptized, became bishops and spent the rest of their lives spreading Christianity in distant lands.