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2/ Of course Portugal consists of more than the Iberian mainland, there are also two archipelagos: the Azores and Madeira (part of the rarely-named Atlantic island region of Macaronesia)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macaronesia

3/ Until 2015 there was a dispute with Spain over the Exclusive Economic Zone around the Savage Islands

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savage_Islands#Disputed_territory

4/ Portugal was once much larger, with colonies around the world. Portuguese prince, Henry the Navigator, is credited with initiating the "Age of Discovery"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Henry_the_Navigator

5/ Indeed, Ferdinand Magellan, leader of the first expedition around the world , was Portuguese (though he was sailing for Spain and died half way through the trip).

The Straight of Magellan in Chile is named after him
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Magellan

As an aside - we highly recommend Stefan Zweig's "Conqueror of the Seas the Story of Magellan"
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7843951-conqueror-of-the-seas-the-story-of-magellan

6/ At various times Portugal was a "pluricontinental" country, and for a while during the 1800s Rio de Janeiro in modern Brazil was capital of the "United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_of_Portugal,_Brazil_and_the_Algarves

7/ Portugal's overseas footprint ended in 1999 when Macau was transferred to China

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfer_of_sovereignty_over_Macau

8/ One legacy of the empire is the "Lusosphere". Portuguese today is the world's 6th most spoken language, and the majority language in Brazil , Angola , and São Tomé and Príncipe , (in addition to Portugal) and widely spoken in several others.

In the NE corner of Portugal though, the minority language Mirandese (spoken by about 15,000 people) is also an official local language.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirandese_language
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lusophone

9/ Portugal has one border dispute, it does not recognise Spanish sovereignty over the territory Olivenza (Olivença in Portuguese)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivenza#Claims_of_sovereignty

10/ Happily the dispute with Spain is more theoretical than a source of stress, and there is no trouble between the two EU countries.

Farther south you can actually cross the border by zipline, as shown here on OpenStreetMap. For details see: https://limitezero.com/en/

11/ To the dismay of programmers everywhere who fall into the mental trap of thinking postcodes are always strings of numbers, Portugal is one of the countries that formats postal codes differently, requiring a dash between 4th and 5th of the 7 digits.

The first two digits specify the region of the country.

12/ We hope you enjoyed our look at the geographic strangeness of the Portugal Thanks for reading (and sharing) .

We have more threads about specific countries, border disputes, geocoding, etc on our blog. Many still on twitter, but over time we are moving them to mastodon. Enjoy.

https://blog.opencagedata.com/geothreads

BTW: if you liked Portugal you are probably going to love our look at Brazil

https://en.osm.town/@opencage/109851103892999726

13/ Bonus #geoweirdness toot: Portugal borders only one country: Spain thus making it an answer in our April 2021 #fridaygeotrivia contest.

See all the other countries that border only one other country here: https://blog.opencagedata.com/post/geotrivia-april2021-countries-that-border-only-one-country

If you like geotrivia every month on final Friday we play #fridaygeotrivia here on Mastodon. Next game is this Friday (31st) at 17:00 Berlin time, 4pm London time, 11am New York time.

Detail on the blog: https://blog.opencagedata.com/post/geotrivia-march-2023

Hope you can join us!