Bad Winds and Bad Marriages: A Brief History of Portuguese Independence

One Peninsula. Two Nations

The beautiful Monument of the Discoveries in Lisbon

“Bad winds and bad marriages!” So jest the Portuguese about Spain, their conjoined Iberian sibling. Although the winds may continue, there have not been any “bad marriages” lately and the economic and cultural bonds between the two nations are cordial and symbiotic. This being said, the détente that has grown over the past century has not completely erased hundreds of years of competition and distrust. That a nation with less than 15% the landmass of Spain and only 25% of the population could offer this competition says much about Portugal as a nation. In fact, the question I want to address today (in a very broad sense) is how it could have survived the past 800+ years as a sovereign nation. 

I will save the saga of how the Visigoths replaced the Romans on the Iberian Peninsula for another post. For today, it suffices to say that the disorganized Visigothic ruling class was easily defeated by the Moors (Muslim North Africans) in the year 711 AD. The Moors would push northward, conquering the entire Iberian Peninsula except for an enclave on the northern coast (in modern-day Asturias). From this enclave would come the first effective organized resistance at the Battle of Covadonga in the year 722. Over the following centuries, a “Reconquista” would take place that would end (at least from a continental perspective) in 1492. These centuries of reconquest are historically confusing at best. Although much of the modern narrative regarding Iberian nationhood on the Peninsula is based on a noble resistance to the Muslim invaders, the truth is much more complicated, with Christians fighting Christians more frequently then they fought Moors. The same can be said for the Muslims who fought against each other in this period and often allied themselves with Christians if the cause promoted their interests. Out of this cauldron of war and intrigue, modern Iberia slowly started to emerge. 

Here we see the three primary Kingdoms of the Peninsula: Portugal, Castile, and Aragon. Navarre would be asorbed into Aragon, while Granada in the south would be definitively absorbed by the joint Kingdom of Castile and Aragon in 1492.

Eventually, three major Christian Kingdoms vied for power: Portugal, Aragon, and Castile. In 1384, the Army of Castile invaded Portugal to impose control. Remarkably, after two years (and with some help from the plague), the outnumbered Portuguese emerged victorious, subsequently signing a treaty with the English to guarantee their independence. This alliance created a pattern of war and antipathy between Spain and England (today Great Britain) that continues in a relative sense through the present day. (Gibraltar is one legacy.) 

The three Iberian Kingdoms referenced above were reduced to two when Isabelle and Ferdinand married and unified the crowns of Aragon and Castile, completing the expulsion of the Moors and essentially creating modern Spain. Both Spain and Portugal would be ruled by Hapsburg (Austrian) monarchs with marriage and blood maintaining a fragile peace. From 1581 to 1640, the two countries were united, under what is referred to as the Iberian Union. The Union was dissolved (with English support) during the 28-year War of Portuguese Restoration. 

In 1807, the Spanish invited Napoleon to cross their territory to challenge British influence in Portugal. Unfortunately for the Spanish, Napoleon decided that while he was there, he would claim sovereignty over the entire Iberian Peninsula. The ensuing Peninsular War would see the British, Portuguese, and Spanish fighting together to defeat the French. Although the remainder of the 19th century saw some continuing conflict between Spain and Portugal, neither country possessed the will or the resources to waste on each other. The 20th century brought curiously similar fates for both nations, with military dictatorships that peacefully melted into modern democracies and integration with the European Union. 

The leitmotif in the narrative above is that Portugal’s independence from its much larger neighbor was never inevitable. Portugal fought hard, built their own empire, played a deft diplomatic hand, and on more than one occasion benefited from a little bit of old fashioned good luck. An even more interesting aspect of this story is how the Portuguese experience set them apart culturally and linguistically. They are not a cultural sub-set of Spain. (And they want you to know that.) I will discuss this further in a future post.