the salty coast

It's official! Portugal has picked a theme song for the 2010 World Cup - it's Black Eyed Peas "I Gotta Feeling". As a response, the Black Eyed Peas posted a video on YouTube congratulating and backing Portugal to win the World Cup. If only that were enough to win. I gotta feeling we're in for one of those 2002 type world cups...hopefully not...but like I said, it's a feeling:

The big thing of 2007 in Portugal, particularly on the TV channel RTP is the selection of the biggest Portuguese personality of all time of all things. They had a list of more than 100 people on their web site during December and now, in the past 2 days, they've revealed who are the 100 that were most voted on, and the 10 that received the most votes and that will be the 10 from which people will vote to be the top. Here is the link to the 90 most voted - unfortunately, they don't have them in order: http://www.rtp.pt/wportal/sites/tv/grandesportugueses/bio_resultados90.php Here is a link to the top 10: http://www.rtp.pt/wportal/sites/tv/grandesportugueses/finalistas.php Now, this is all voted on on people's own opinions, and that's fine, but me, having lived there for a little while, listened to my family, and just my own personal knowledge of Portuguese culture, I have a few comments of my own.... 1. How is it possible that a politician that ran a fascist government...

The man known as Sá Carneiro (real name: Francisco Manuel Lumbrales de Sá Carneiro) was born July 19, 1934 and died December 4, 1980. He was Prime Minister of Portugal for 11 months in 1980. Short history from Wikipedia : A lawyer by training, he became a member of the puppet National Assembly , where he became one of the leaders of the "Liberal Wing", which attempted to work for the gradual transformation of António de Oliveira Salazar 's dictatorship into a normal Western European democracy. In May 1974 , a month after the Carnation Revolution , Sá Carneiro founded the Popular Democratic Party (PPD), together with Francisco Pinto Balsemão and José Magalhães Mota , and became its secretary-general. The PPD was soon renamed the Social Democratic Party (PSD); despite Sá Carneiro's original claims to be leading a left-of-centre party, he and the party soon drifted to the right. He was minister without portfolio in a number of provisional governments, and was elected...

Christmas is always nice anywhere in the World. In Portugal, Santa is put to work driving the streetcar. Get going Santa! In other important events, December 1st is an important date around the world, but not as important as in Portugal, where in 1640 we regained back Portugal from the Spanish. To mark this holiday, 2 of the biggest soccer teams faced off - Sporting vs. Benfica with Benfica coming out the winner. Then today, Porto won... ..and that's about all the soccer news I can take. In other important events around the country... They've finally decided to hold another vote to decide whether abortion should be legal. Here are some women in parliament pushing their cause... Source Portugal's president has said the country's predominantly Roman Catholic population will vote on whether to legalise abortion on 11 February. Anibal Cavaco Silva said he agreed to the vote because the issue still dominated public debate in Portugal. The country will be asked if they wish t...

The Eurovision contest is coming up in May, and we should be really proud for our entry. Cheesy as ever, these girls are going to represent us with a ABBA-esque song, which, I've had the unfortunate opportunity to hear and sounds just like every other generic pop/dance song on the radio in Europe, so it's got a great chance to win! What else has been going on in Portugal? Lisbon Fashion Week took place, great event, great clothes. Nuno Gomes manages to do some acrobatic work, but still doesn't win it against Naval, almost taking themselves out of contention to win this year's championships, but they did win against Liverpool, and are off to the quarterfinals against Barcelona. Meanwhile, Porto and Sporting are fighting it out for first place in the championship. Go Sporting! The Portuguese national team played a friendly with Saudi Arabia, where they won 3-0. I imagine that Cristiano Ronaldo's perfectly coifed hair must have had something to do with the win. I...

It's a good thing we're not without representation at the 2006 Winter Olympics. The sole athlete there from Portugal is Danny Silva. Visit his web site here . Competing in the 15 km cross country classical, Danny competed yesterday , and made a great showing. Out of 97 athletes, he placed 94th. Be proud! Força Portugal.

Being Portuguese means you will talk about Port wine as often as a Canadian says 'Eh?', which is why I love finding articles in foreign papers about it like this one at The Age. I remember when I was younger living in Portugal going to the "quinta" my family owned and eating the grapes and watching people get ready to make the wine. The vineyard was in the Douro region, and it was beautiful. It really is a great tradition, and it's nice to see other non-Portuguese appreciating the tradition and what it all involves in making such a special wine. A wine of depth, concentration and majestic structure, port is produced from grapes grown on the steep, rocky slopes of northern Portugal's Upper Douro and its tributaries and was discovered during the 17th century when two British traders added brandy to preserve the local wine for an Atlantic sea voyage. The pioneers of the port trade soon found that "fortifying" did far more than just protect the wine, i...