# Why is Portugal so tidy and rectangular? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 22, 2018, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-portugal-so-tidy-and-rectangular/821714 "2018-09-22T00:58:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2018, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-portugal-so-tidy-and-rectangular/821714/21 "2018-09-22T19:39:06Z")
Maybe the game wasn’t tic-tac-toe, but rather reversi (Othello). They still lost rather badly. ---
**Author:** ![SpoilerVirgin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4491bb/32.png) [@SpoilerVirgin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpoilerVirgin)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2018, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-portugal-so-tidy-and-rectangular/821714/22 "2018-09-22T21:41:45Z")
I once had someone ask me what is the face on the map of Europe, and I immediately answered Portugal without even having to look. Portugal is a profile with a giant mop of Spanish hair. I would never think of it as a rectangle (there’s a huge nose sticking out). ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2018, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-portugal-so-tidy-and-rectangular/821714/23 "2018-09-22T23:05:59Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > At least it doesn’t look like the double penis and scrotum that Norway, Sweden, and Finland form. Who thought that was a good look for Scandinavia? Finland isn’t part of Scandinavia. ---
**Author:** ![Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulf_the_Unwashed)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2018, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-portugal-so-tidy-and-rectangular/821714/24 "2018-09-23T00:40:20Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > Maybe the game wasn’t tic-tac-toe, but rather reversi (Othello). They still lost rather badly. Good point! It works, too, though we still have to assume some very poor play on the part of Portugal: 1. Spain takes NW corner of the peninsula. 2. Portugal takes the center. 3. S takes NE corner. 4. P slots in below—east central. Bad move, P, because… 5. S takes SE corner, flipping the piece above and giving Spain the entire east column. 6. P takes West Central, or the northern half of the current Portugal. I don’t think much of this move either, but it works out for the moment because instead of replying by taking the SW corner and flipping this piece, Spain’s response is… 7. S takes north central, filling in the top. 8. P takes SW, the better of the two choices, but less than great because 9. S takes south central, the only remaining space, flipping the center square previously belonging to Portugal. I would imagine that Portugal’s disastrous mistake in move 4 has been rehashed by historians as often as other military blunders. But I don’t know what the consensus explanation might be. Momentary lapse in concentration perhaps, or possibly snowblindness. —And I can’t believe I actually worked out a whole game to see if it was possible within the rules. ETA: whoops! Move 5 actually flips both of Portugal’s pieces. The end result is the same though. ---
**Author:** ![yabob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yabob/32/2821_2.png) [@yabob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yabob)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2018, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-portugal-so-tidy-and-rectangular/821714/25 "2018-09-23T01:09:22Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > So where did that award from from, again? > > Stranger Douglas Adams neglected to tell us (“Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” reference). And at least the double phalli are flacid. It isn’t as if Northern Europe is pointing a massive erection at Canada. Then again, we have the open-mouthed Quebec about to eat the Belcher Islands (Sanikiluaq, if you prefer). And Louisiana giving everybody the finger, even if it is presented upside down (the outline of Louisiana, when not drawn with enough detail to show all the individual islands in the Mississippi channel in the Gulf looks to me like a short stubby arm hanging upside down with a bird being flipped at Mexico). ---
**Author:** ![Gorsnak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gorsnak/32/7587_2.png) [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2018, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-portugal-so-tidy-and-rectangular/821714/26 "2018-09-23T02:50:11Z")
Gotta wonder at the nerve of someone from Saskatchewan questioning the border tidiness of another jurisdiction. ---
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2018, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-portugal-so-tidy-and-rectangular/821714/27 "2018-09-23T03:03:13Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > At least it doesn’t look like the double penis and scrotum that Norway, Sweden, and Finland form. Who thought that was a good look for Scandinavia? > > Stranger Wasn’t that Slartibartfast, as I recall? ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2018, 7:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-portugal-so-tidy-and-rectangular/821714/28 "2018-09-23T07:35:16Z")
> [@Sangahyando](#): > > the base thereof being France’s southernmost stretch from the Bay of Biscay at Hendaye, following the Franco-Spanish border to the Mediterranean, thence the Med. coast to Menton and the Italian border – this southernmost limit of the country making a not-particularly-wiggly line, and pleasingly forming a fifth side of five all – roughly – comparable in length. One is apt to assume that French logic-and-order-hyper-consciousness forbade the sensible lumping-together of a “land” stretch the length of the Pyrenees, and a “shore” one the length of the Mediterranean coast, and calling that a “fifth side”. Naah, these clearly are two stretches - the Pyrenees parallels the Belgium-Luxembourg-Rheinland-Pfalz-Saarland border, the Med coast more roughly parallels the Channel coast. It’s not just “logic-and-order”, it’s also rather obvious that there’s a big change in direction when the France-Spain border meets the Med. ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2018, 9:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-portugal-so-tidy-and-rectangular/821714/29 "2018-09-23T09:04:41Z")
I always assumed that it would have been the mice that gave Slartibartfast his award. > [@](#): > > And when Arthur Dent encounters Slartibartfast, the Magrathean coastline designer who won an award for his work on Norway, and learns that the whole history of mankind was run for the benefit of a few white mice anyway, surprise is no longer adequate and he is forced to resort to astonishment. > > Scene 1. Int. Slartibartfast’s Office. Magrathea > > ARTHUR: > Mice? What do you mean mice? I think we must be talking at cross purposes. Mice to me mean the little white furry things with the cheese fixation and women standing screaming on tables in early Sixties sitcoms. > > SLARTIBARTFAST: > Earthman, it is sometimes hard to follow your mode of speech. Remember I have been asleep inside this planet of Magrathea for five-million years and know little of these early Sixties sitcoms of which you speak. These creatures you call mice you see are not quite as they appear, they are merely the protrusions into our dimension of vast, hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings. The business with the cheese and squeaking is just a front. > > ARTHUR: > A front? > > SLARTIBARTFAST: > Oh yes, you see the mice set up the whole Earth business, as an epic experiment in behavioural psychology; a ten-million year program - > > ARTHUR: > No, look, you’ve got it the wrong way round. It was us. We used to do the experiments on them. > > SLARTIBARTFAST: > A ten-million-year program in which your planet Earth and its people formed the matrix of an organic computer. I gather that the mice did arrange for you humans to conduct some primitively staged experiments on them just to check how much you’d really learned, to give you the odd prod in the right direction, you know the sort of thing: suddenly running down the maze the wrong way; eating the wrong bit of cheese; or suddenly dropping dead of myxomatosis. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2018, 9:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-portugal-so-tidy-and-rectangular/821714/30 "2018-09-23T09:50:24Z")
> [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](#): > > Good point! It works, too, though we still have to assume some very poor play on the part of Portugal: > > 1. Spain takes NW corner of the peninsula… BEEEEEP! ERROR! At the time Hispania/Spain was the whole peninsula. There has been no actual nation-state called Spain until 1841+ unless you want to count the Napoleonic invasion, which we don’t. During the 8th century, a handful of different pockets of resistance against the Muslim invasion created different (pseudo)-independent realms\*, none of which happened to be called Spain: they were part of Spain, they were (mainly) in Spain, but none of them was Spain. The part which got the NW corner was initially called the Kingdom of Asturias or Oviedo; they later changed name to Kingdom of Leon when they captured that city and made it their capital (remember I mentioned we were still changing names every time the capital moved?). As **DSYoungEsq** already mentioned (thank you, counselor), the County of Portugal was created as an administrative subdivision of the Kingdom of Leon. - In 1833, an illegal decree defined a nation-state called España by merging the previous ones of Castille and Navarre and removing the Laws of Navarre. You could say Navarre disagreed; eventually, an agreement was reached after 8 years of my foreparents running around the mountains and the guiris running after them 😛 - Whether they were truly independent or happened to be tributaries of someone else, including Charlemange, Venice and Al-Andalus (Muslim Spain), changed a zillion times. ---
**Author:** ![PatrickLondon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/patricklondon/32/4422_2.png) [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2018, 10:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-portugal-so-tidy-and-rectangular/821714/31 "2018-09-23T10:29:55Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > BEEEEEP! ERROR! > > At the time Hispania/Spain was the whole peninsula. There has been no actual nation-state called Spain until 1841+ unless you want to count the Napoleonic invasion, which we don’t. This is perhaps a bit “angels on the head of a pin” as to the distinction between a nation-state and the state(s) controlled by a single monarch - but the rest of Europe had no trouble identifying what they meant by Spain, at least as far back as Charles V’s division of his empire in the mid-16th century. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2018, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-portugal-so-tidy-and-rectangular/821714/32 "2018-09-23T13:16:00Z")
Come to think of it, Lusitania resembled a narrow strip even less, containing most if not all of Extremadura. Though that predates by even more centuries the political entities named after Portugal. ---
**Author:** ![Sangahyando](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f14d63/32.png) [@Sangahyando](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sangahyando)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2018, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-portugal-so-tidy-and-rectangular/821714/33 "2018-09-23T13:48:37Z")
And, no: I hold firmly to my “take” on this business. > [@MrDibble](#): > > Naah, these clearly are two stretches - the Pyrenees parallels the Belgium-Luxembourg-Rheinland-Pfalz-Saarland border… Parallels only roughly: in my perception, more roughly and inexactly, than my “fifth side” Hendaye – Cerbere where Franco-Spanish border meets Med. – Med. coast on to Italy, parallels the Channel coast. (Quote): … the Med coast more roughly parallels the Channel coast.(“Unquote”) I would say (see above): better than “roughly”, and IMO the entire “fifth side” does quite a good paralleling act with the Channel coast. (Quote): It’s not just “logic-and-order”, it’s also rather obvious that there’s a big change in direction when the France-Spain border meets the Med.(“Unquote”) Said “change” is not obvious to me. The Golfe du Lion takes quite a big bite northwards out of the line; aside from that, the change in direction is, overall, only slight. I’m thinking that we’ll need to agree to disagree on this matter… ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2018, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-portugal-so-tidy-and-rectangular/821714/34 "2018-09-23T15:15:24Z")
> [@PatrickLondon](#): > > This is perhaps a bit “angels on the head of a pin” as to the distinction between a nation-state and the state(s) controlled by a single monarch - but the rest of Europe had no trouble identifying what they meant by Spain, at least as far back as Charles V’s division of his empire in the mid-16th century. Thing is, at the time “Spain took over the NW corner of the Iberian Peninsula” (early 8th century) Spain WAS the Peninsula there was more than one Christian realm there and Portugal did not exist yet. Your reference is off by almost 900 years and one whole King (it was Charles V’s son Philip II who was king of Spain and Portugal but did not join the Portuguese crown to the rest in terms of succession). ---
**Author:** ![Bear\_Nenno](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bear_nenno/32/3358_2.png) [@Bear\_Nenno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bear_Nenno)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2018, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-portugal-so-tidy-and-rectangular/821714/35 "2018-09-23T17:47:22Z")
I’m in Portugal right now. I could ask someone for you. ---
**Author:** ![Isilder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/cc9497/32.png) [@Isilder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isilder)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2018, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-portugal-so-tidy-and-rectangular/821714/36 "2018-09-24T12:50:04Z")
> [@Bear\_Nenno](#): > > I’m in Portugal right now. I could ask someone for you. I’m sure their answer will be “well, it fits on the page of the atlas nicely”. The size of the feudal zones, the principalities kingdoms dukedoms provinces, etc, is basically set by N days ride… 2 days ride so the garrison in the middle is a day away from anywhere. Or maybe it its because the map was drawn on stellae. See a portugal area stellae … [![](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tartessian_language#/media/File:Beja48.jpg) ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tartessian_language#/media/File:Beja48.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2018, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-portugal-so-tidy-and-rectangular/821714/37 "2018-09-24T14:30:10Z")
I still can’t figure out how Portugal avoided getting gobbled up into the conglomeration of other Iberian kingdoms that we now call “Spain”. Especially considering that they did get gobbled up. Even if Portugal itself is no prize you could at least steal their colonies. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2018, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-portugal-so-tidy-and-rectangular/821714/38 "2018-09-24T17:35:11Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > I still can’t figure out how Portugal avoided getting gobbled up into the conglomeration of other Iberian kingdoms that we now call “Spain”. Especially considering that they did get gobbled up. Even if Portugal itself is no prize you could at least steal their colonies. Well, as you noted they did get gobbled up after the disaster at [El-Ksar el Kebir](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Alc%C3%A1cer_Quibir) in 1578 made them an easy target. And the resultant involvement in Spain’s wars did indeed end in the loss of their Indian Ocean carrying trade hegemony and quite a few colonial possessions( mostly to the Dutch at that point ). Some of what they successfully clung to in East Africa was subsequently lost to the Omanis in the late 17th century when the monarchy was still in recovery. Before that they sorta got lucky as at [Aljubarrota](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Aljubarrota). They got loose from Spain pretty much only as a result of the Thirty Years War( 1618-1648, to a lesser extent though Rocroi may have been a back breaker in terms of morale if nothing else )and the Eighty Years War( the Dutch independence war, 1568-1648 )basically bankrupting and ruining the Spanish empire. Even then the [Portuguese Restoration War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_Independence_War) itself dragged from 1640-1668. Under normal circumstances Spain still should have prevailed( at least on paper ), but some some poor performance on the battlefield and the aforementioned exhaustion proved too much. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2018, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-portugal-so-tidy-and-rectangular/821714/39 "2018-09-24T18:05:28Z")
> [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](#): > > … > > No, it’s not Wyoming or Saskatchewan, … Look closely at the map of Saskatchewan, and you’ll see spherical geometry at work. The eastern border is an extended series of steps about 40km long as the square township squares are adjusted to fit the globe. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2018, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-portugal-so-tidy-and-rectangular/821714/40 "2018-09-25T04:42:44Z")
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