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Portuguese National Character

For the last millennium, the mingling between groups who have inhabited and traded in Portugal - Iberians, Celts, Romans, Germanic tribes, Moors, Jews, and others – combined with the nation’s isolation from Spain and the rest of Europe, resulted in a homogeneous and peculiarly Portuguese population, both ethnically and culturally. Defining a national character is never easy, but one can say that most Lisboetas are hospitable, easy-going and friendly. Although some Portuguese at first sight may seem gloomy and morose to foreigners, they're known to be ready to go out of their way to help. Portuguese anthropologists, like their counterparts in the rest of Europe, devoted a lot of energy to the task of characterizing Portuguese national character.

The Portuguese language is that form which the Romance assumed on the Atlantic seaboard of the Peninsula, and was originally one and the same with the Galician dialect of Spain. It is a sister dialect of the Spanish or Castilian, to which it bears a striking resemblance. Though far more nearly allied to the Castilian dialect than to the Catalonian, it resembles the latter in the remarkable abbreviation of words, both in the grammatical structure and in the pronunciation. Daughters of the same country, but differently educated, they have distinct features, and a different genius, gait, and manner; and yet there is in the features of both that family likeness (ar de familia), which is recognized at the first glance. The Portuguese is softer and more musical than the Spanish, but wants the Spanish strength and majesty. It has discarded the Arabic guttural, but has adopted the equally unmusical nasal of the French.

During the sixty years of her union with Spain, from 1580 to 1640, the Portuguese zealously maintained their particular national character. In the late 16th century, a dynastic crisis starting with the demise of the House of Avis led to imperial decline. The Spanish took advantage of the weakness in the Portuguese crown and invaded Portugal. During this “Spanish captivity“ Portugal saw most of the gains from its empire decline. Because of its inclusion into the Spanish Iberian Union, Portugal was also drawn into Spain’s wars with other European powers. As a result, the Portuguese lost their monopoly in the markets in the Far East.

Some writers embody the myths and beliefs that have given shape to the national character. The greatest poet of Portugal was Luis de Camoens, author of the national epic, "Os Lusiadas," who lived in poverty and wretchedness, died in the Lisbon hospital, and, after death, was surnamed the Great, — a title never given before, save to popes and emperors. The life of no poet is so full of vicissitude and romantic adventure as that of Camoens. He served against the Moors as a volunteer on board the fleet in the Mediterranean, and lost his right eye by a gun-shot wound in a battle off Ceuta; he returned to Lisbon, proud and poor, but found no favor at court, and no means of a livelihood in the city; he abandoned his native land for India. Three ships of the squadron were lost in a storm, he reached Goa safely in the fourth; he fought under the king of Cochin against the king of Pimenta; he fought against the Arabian corsairs in the Red Sea.

He was banished from Goa to the island of Macao, where he became administrator of the effects of deceased persons, and where he wrote the greater part of the "Lusiad"; he was shipwrecked on the coast of Camboya, saving only his life and his poem, the manuscript of which he brought ashore saturated with sea-water; he was accused of malversation in office, and thrown into prison at Goa; after an absence of sixteen years, he returned in abject poverty to Lisbon, then ravaged by the plague; he lived a few years on a wretched pension granted him by King Sebastian when the "Lusiad" was published, and on the alms which a slave he had brought with him from India collected at night in the streets of Lisbon; and finally died in the hospital, exclaiming, "Who could believe that on so small a stage as that of one poor bed Fortune would choose to represent so great a tragedy?"

Luis Vaz de Camoens in his epic poem entitled, “The Lusiads,” speaks of Portuguese “heroes who opened a way to Ceylon. and further, across seas no man had ever sailed before.’ Camoes celebrates the bravery and skills of the Portuguese. particularly its seafaring discoverers. His ten cantos about Vasco de Gama’s discovery of a sea route to India in 1497-98 re?ect Portugal’s ties to the Atlantic.

At the time of the Napoleonic Wars, it was said that the inhabitants of Portugal sensibly exhibited the effects of a warm climate in those points of national character which were usually found to accompany the solar influence. These were warm passions, a strong propensity to revenge, superstition, indolence, joined with abstemiousness, and the habit of submitting contentedly to a very scanty share of the comforts and conveniences of life.

That they were not, however, naturally destitute of spirit and bravery, their history abundantly proved. This little kingdom was once the seat of more enterprise, than existed in any other portion of Europe, and displayed in the recovery and maintenance of her independence the most noble exertions of a warlike spirit. The national character of the Portuguese, upon the whole, had very much in common with that of the Spaniards. The prejudices of the nobility are as common and pernicious with them as with the latter; their veneration for the clergy, their dread of labor, their love of pomp, music, dance, and bull-fights, was very nearly the same.

A distinction must, however, be made between the inhabitants of the northern and southern provinces, the former being more industrious, sincere, and hospitable, the latter more polite, cunning, and indolent. A want was strongly perceived of that general intercourse of all ranks that imparts knowledge and vigor to society. The peasantry remained miserable vassals of the fidalgos, or gentlemen. In general, the Portuguese were said to be an elegant people, with regular features, embrowned by the sun, and dark expressive eyes. Ladies of rank still imitated the industry of their ancestors, by spinning flax from the distaff.

Within a few decades, it appeared to one observer that within a period of twenty years, the manners of the people had been improved, and the national character of the Portuguese had in some respects been changed by frequent communications with foreigners. They were no longer the same people that violated the most sacred moral obligations, and observed punctiliously the ceremonies of religion. The soldiers were no longer like those, who in the war of the Succession, refused to march until St. Anthony, the patron of Lisbon, was appointed their general by Don Pedro, the king.

The Portuguese were still superstitious, but not fanatical. Docile to the voice of their priests, they tolerated the inquisition, but condemned the excesses of that tribunal. The mildness or apathy of the people was apparent even in political commotions; their politeness extended from the highest to the lowest orders of society; unlike the Spaniards, they were kindly disposed towards strangers, nor is it in that respect only they resembled the French, for their vivacity was almost as great. The Portuguese had been accused of indolence and vain-glory; the peasants in Estremadura and Alentejo, were indeed slothful and lazy, but if the people in all the provinces boasted of their nation, it may be attributed to their own ignorance and to the important part which their ancestors acted on the theater of the world.

It had been frequently asserted that the Portuguese were perfidious and vindictive. There was either something worse than exaggeration in the assertion, or the people were much changed. Although it may be just to condemn them for their faults, it was not right to conceal their good qualities; they were for the most part much attached to their native land, disinterested in their friendships, and faithful in their attachments.

The vivacity and warm imagination which distinguished the Portuguese, were probably die causes of their eagerness after pleasure. The theater, music, dancing, processions, bull fights, in short, whatever can gratify the senses, had to them irresistible charms. Their lively music was not unpleasing to strangers; the popular songs, accompanied with the guitar, were light and graceful, but in most of them the words were too licentious. The national dance or the Foffa was so lascivious that every stranger who saw it, must deplore the corruption of the people, and regretted to find such exhibitions permitted not only in the country, but in the heart of towns, and even on the stage.

No nation, as to character, owes less to the opinion of the world, than the Portuguese. They were described in the 19th Century as indolent, dissembling, cowardly, destitute of public spirit, and at the same time fierce and deeply revengeful. In Spain it was said, strip a Spaniard of his virtues, and he becomes a good Portuguese. From a minute inspection, however, the peasantry were pronounced to be a fine people; and, on repeated occasions during the Peninsula war, they displayed energies not unworthy of their ancestors, in an age when their glory resounded throughout both hemispheres. Almost all, however, that floated on the surface is base and degenerate. There cannot be a doubt that this may be greatly ascribed to priestcraft, to the stupefying influence of a sluggish and tyrannical government, and to the general corruption which pervaded all the branches of administration.

In Portuguese political culture, from the middle of the nineteenth century to the 1880s, Iberism was one of the topics that mobilized public debate on the nation — its past, its present and its future. Iberism can be defined as seeking the integration of the Peninsular nations into a broader Iberian-wide political and economic unit. The concepts of Iberian civilization and the Peninsular character referred to the shared cultural and mental traits of the Peninsular peoples, in particular ‘religious fervor’ and heroism. Taken by many to be a threat to the nation-state, Iberism was at the center of a whole reflection on the course of national history, on the ‘character’ of the Portuguese.

In contrast to the case in Spain, Iberism had little public impact in Portugal, even during its heyday, the period of the Regeneration [Regeneração] from 1851 to 1890. The old fear that Spain was intending to invade Portugal frequently gripped public opinion.The hostile public memory of the dynastic union of 1580–1640 — a dark tale prominent in the anti-Iberists from the 1850s to the 1870s — was still alive and well in the field of cultural production, particularly in school books. On a number of occasions rumors spread that a Spanish invasion was imminent, for example in 1862, and again in 1898, 1904, and in 1907–08, reflecting in part fears of Castilian centralism. From the 1890s onwards Iberism lost its influence on the Portuguese side.

Liberal regimes encountered difficulties in the Iberian Peninsula, where the states were weakly established within societies that, from the point of view of their economic and social structures, still belonged to the Old Regime. Leading Integralist writers, perhaps the ideological vanguard of the Traditionalists, viewed Portuguese national character as a major reason why European liberalism was unsuitable in Portugal and the Republican institutions failed.