Speaking Portuguese
- Seven former colonies have Portuguese as their official language: Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau, Sao Tome and Principe, East Timor
- It is the sixth most widely spoken language in the world, with roughly 240 million speakers
The Lost Generation
- Youth unemployment in Portugal is 26.8%, with more than 95,000 people jobless between the ages of 16 and 25
- About 6.5% of the country's population of 10 million left the country between 1998 and 2008, according to economist Alvaro Santos Pereira
- About a quarter of the working population are freelance, even if they work full time
- A protest picnic in March which brought 400,000 people on to the streets of Lisbon and Porto, was one of the biggest demonstrations in the country since the 1974 revolution
