Portugal

Portugal
Name	Portuguese Republic
Aliases	Portugal
Location Details
Reality	Earth-616
Galaxy	Milky Way
Star System	Sol
Planet	Earth
Continent	Europe
Creators and Appearances
First	Daring Mystery Comics #1 (October, 1939)
First	Daring Mystery Comics #1 (October, 1939)

History

Overview

Flag of Portugal

Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic, is a country on the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. It's capital city is Lisbon.

Due to Portugal's influence as an international power for centuries, and because many countries were Portuguese colonies and protectorates, the Portuguese language is spoken in many countries, including Brazil, Costa Verde and Estrella in the Americas, and Burunda in Africa.

15th-16th centuries

In 1452, Portuguese explorer Rugato Munoz travelend inland from the Angolan coast and discovered, in the name of Portugal, a territory inhabited by Domi and Sudanese peoples who worshipped the Egyptian gods. Being a territory rich in coffee and coal, Portugal did its best to colonize it, and succeeding in creating the territory of Burunda, an official protectorate, in 1584. In a similar way, in the 16th century, the Portuguese also conquered two other African territories: the Bantu-populated Kenya; and Mbangawi, where the Cushite-speaking locals had built cities to export gold and ivory to Arabia and Persia. Simultaneous to this, in 1500, Portuguese navigator Pedro Álvares Cabral found Brazil in the Americas, and the territory would also became controlled by the Portuguese, who transported African slaves to the Americas, thus helping create a mix of cultures in the area (Portuguese, African and other South American influences). The colony of Santo Marco was founded by the Spanish at the beginning of the 16th century, but Spain eventually lost control of it to Portugal; and in turn the Portuguese lost it to the Dutch.

Between 1586 and 1588, pirate Ben Allardine captured the boat Flying Heart in the Caribbean Sea, torturing and murdering a woman in the process. The victim's father asked Puritan adventurer Solomon Kane to avenge her. During the following two years, Kane tracked Allardine from the Caribbean coasts to Portugal, then to Great Britain, where Kane finally catched Allardine.

In the 1590s, Portugal had commercial relations with Korea. In 1592, Japan conquered Korea to expand its territories and use Korea as a bridgehead in a war against China. Several Portuguese ships in Korean waters were victims of piracy at the hands of a Japanese warlord called Raven. In response to this, Portugal sent Miguel Mondego Tomar, a merchant ship captain with resources and wit, to Korea to investigate. There, Tomar joined Seagull, enemy of Raven and admiral of the Korean Imperial Navy who recruited people who preceded his morals before patriotism. Tomar was the only Westerner in the group, and the most unusual due to this. Tomar joined Korean warriors Kwang-Che Yu and Cho Yun Chinsong in a mission to protect the inventor of the Korean armored warship Kobukson and her plans. The mission was a success, although Tomar lost his boat and Seagull died in combat. Kwang-Che killed Raven before the later could affect the stability of Japan, and Seagull's agents stuck to the strategic plans to defend Korea, even though the war lasted six more years.

17th century

In the 17th century, Portugal founded a new state in Central America, named Santo Rico or sometimes San Rico, because the local hills were thriving with wealth, especially gold. The area was originally inhabited by the Maya people, and eventually it became a Communist country.

19th century

In 1822, Brazil obtained independence from Portugal (thou the Portuguese influence would remain in the local culture), and during that same century, Germany wrested control over the African territory of Mbangawi from Portugal. Portugal kept control over Burunda and took Chinese indentured workers there to work in the local coffee plantations and coal mines during the 19th century.

20th Century

During World War II, in 1939, freight captain Barney Mullen collected a load of gold bullion in Lisbon, to ship to Rotterdam, Netherlands, in a war zone. As the load was small in volume, Mullen filled his hold with sand as ballast; but secretly, suspecting that he may be attacked, he decided to hide the gold in his lifeboat, to ensure that it will reach their destiny. Mullen was spied by an enemy agent in Lisbon, but the spy mistakenly believed that Mullen was transporting grain; still, he ensured that his boat would be attacked in Cape Finisterre. After several troubles, Mullen lost his boat -but not his lifeboats or his gold- just outside Rotterdam.

Also during World War II, circa 1941, American financier Henry Baldwin was kidnapped by Nazis in the United States, and taken to Europe. Captain America and Bucky followed his trail in disguise, going to Lisbon by plane, then taking a train to occupied French territory.

In Sintra, Portugal, a group of Supersoldiers were lead Captain America. An argument ensued in which Maurice "Fauntl'roy" Canfield wounded Isaiah Bradley, killed Sgt. Luke Evans, and was shot to death by Pvt. Phillip Merritt. Bradley recovered in a secret U.S.-controlled hospital and was informed that he alone would have to carry out their mission to destroy a German concentration camp.

Cold War

During the Cold War, British intelligence service MI6 discovered an illegal shipment of weapons from Russia to Portugal, and decided to send a team, made up of James Larner and Leiko Wu, to intercept the boat in the French Riviera under the cover of darkness. The operation was a disaster, with the sailors having been alerted and firing on the agents; Wu was injured and Larner, believing she was dead, left her behind. She was captured by the Russians and Larner's boss Denis Nayland-Smith fired Larner from the agency; MI-6 agent Black Jack Tarr said that they could recover Wu by giving the Russians a ransom of three Portuguese informers that the British had captured. Larner later speculated that another former MI-6 agent who had changed sides, Lancaster Sneed, had been probably involved in the gunrunning to Portugal business.

In the mid-20th century, a fervent nationalist movement in Burunda demanded the country's independence. Portugal initially ignored these separatists, but the situation escalated into an armed conflict, called the War for Freedom, which only ended in 1971, when Portugal granted Burunda independence. Burunda became a republic and the Burundans renamed their capital Freedomtown.

Modern Era

Following a severe storm building up fifteen hundred miles south-west of the Azores in his own experimental eather control craft, London Weather Research Center meteorologist Albert Potter was struck and caught into the full fury of Hurricane Linda, 300 miles from its eye itself but somehow he managed to survive a 4,000-meter fall, and was rescued two days later from spent seas, eventually becoming the villain known as Hurricane.

The sorceress Morgan Le Fay Fay sought to reclaim the lost kingdom of Avalon, part of the pre-cataclysmic continent of Atlantis, which had sunk beneath the waters millennia earlier. As part of her plan, le Fay reincarnated as British oceanographer Vivian Morgan, working in the Azores Islands, under Portuguese control. Working in Furnas and Ponta Delgada, Morgan discovered that the Azores were sinking, and that there were many problems in the Atlantic, caused by a tectonic change in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Morgan tracked down the trouble base to a volcano off the coast of Ireland, and when she got there, Le Fay seized control over her body and used her magic to raise her island, causing earthquakes in the Azores and Atlantis.

When the island of Atlantis emerged to the surface just south of the Azores due to interferences by Le Fay, Nathaniel Richards and others, the Inhuman city of Attilan was transported to this new island, and Le Fay was defeated. Several international conglomerates went to the new island to extract metal, minerals and valuable resources, protected by the Portuguese Army occupying the area. Prince Namor claimed to have sovereignty over the territory, as it was his domain of Atlantis, and warned humans against their interference - but he did not initiate conflict with the Portuguese soldiers. A 1,200-man unit of Portuguese soldiers and former Foreign Legion led by Colonel Edson Jarzinho, purportedly protecting Lexington Mining Corporation's vibranium extraction operations, had links with Russian organized crime and, through these, were involved in an Inhuman conspiracy where Maximus tried to snatch the throne of Attilan from his brother, Black Bolt. The soldiers attacked Attilan, officially as a reprisal for an unprovoked Inhumans attack on an unarmed C409 civilian airbus that caused 39 deaths - but immediately the Portuguese Foreign Secretary dismissed those claims. The Portuguese government tried to distance from the activities of Jarzinho's men, claiming that they were Portuguese citizens acting on their own, and Lexington also insisted that Jarzinho was not following their orders. However, when the Inhumans went to the United Nations to find a diplomatic solution, the politicians only gave them their vocal support, not any help. Eventually, the situation was solved when the tectonically-unstable island again sunk under the ocean; the "independent Portuguese forces" evacuated and the city of Attilan, with some 4,000 Inhumans, was deemed destroyed (The Inhumans secretly were responsible for the earthquakes, and teleported Attilan to a safer location in the Himalayas while humanity believed it had been destroyed). Journalist Dave Jarvis covering the events in situ moved to Portugal to continue his report. The commercial interests found that extracting minerals from the now-submerged terrain was prohibitively expensive and forfeited their operations.

Matt Murdock traveled to Lisbon to find the lawyer he thought was responsible for Foggy Nelson's death to be dead himself; he tangled with Tombstone, whom he thinks has captured Lily Lucca, and followed the pair to Paris, where the mystery surrounding the death of Foggy Nelson only deepened.

The Vanisher hid at a safehouse in Monsanto.

Venus comforted a woman in Oporto, Portugal after the Death of Hercules.

The Vanisher was found and shot by Steven Lang in his Monsanto, Portugal safehouse.

X-Force battled a giant war worm on the streets of Lisbon. Colossus was able to take it down using brute force.

S.H.I.E.L.D hunted for Mister Hyde in an abandoned fortress off the coast of Portugal.

Alternative Realities

Marvel Cinematic Universe (Earth-199999)

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Marvel Adventures Universe (Earth-20051)

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Points of Interest

• Lisbon (Capital)
• Azores
• Monsanto
• Sintra
• Porto

Residents

• Ambassador Catarino
• António Guterres
• Edson Jarzinho
• Man-of-war
• Miguel Mondego Tomar

See Also

• 23 appearance(s) of Portugal
• 2 minor appearance(s) of Portugal
• 14 mention(s) of Portugal
• 1 mention(s) in handbook(s) of Portugal
• 2 image(s) of Portugal
• 7 article(s) related to Portugal

Links and References

• Portugal on Wikipedia.org