The One Minute Geographer: Portugal — A Few Key Facts
The map above shows Portugal in its correct size and latitude overlaid on the Mid-Atlantic region. If you flew due east from Washington DC, you’d arrive near Lisbon.
Portugal’s area of 35,600 square miles is about the size of Maine or Indiana.
Portugal’s population of 10.2 million people is close to that of Michigan or North Carolina. About a half-million of Portugal’s people live on the Atlantic islands, about evenly divided between Madeira and the Azores (about 250,000 people on each island group).
Lisbon, the capital and largest metropolitan area, has almost 3 million people, about the size of metro Baltimore, Denver or Tampa.
Porto ( or Oporto), the second-largest metro area with 1.7 million people is about the size of metro Providence or Jacksonville.
Check out my previous post about how close the Azores are to the USA:
And here is the first of a series of longer posts about the cultural geography of the Portuguese American community in New England https://jimwfonseca.medium.com/signs-symbols-and-stones-uncovering-the-mysteries-of-an-urban-ethnic-landscape-1-9b71d0a88df2
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