Portugal , and officially the Portuguese Republic  , a country located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula . Portugal is the far west of Europe , bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west, south and Spain to the north and east. The archipelago of the Azores and Madeira in the Atlantic Ocean is also part of Portugal.

The land has been continuously settled within present-day Portugal since prehistoric times. In 29 BC the country Galician and Lusitans cotton when it was incorporated into the Roman Empire as the province of Lusitania and part of the province of Galicia . Roman settlers strongly influenced Portuguese culture, especially Portuguese, which derives mostly from Latin . In the fifth century after the fall of the Roman Empire, the area was subject to several Germanic peoples, most notably the Swedes and the Visigoths . In the early 8th century Muslims conquered those Germanic kingdoms and took control of most of the Iberian Peninsula .