CALIFORNIA IN EUROPE

We’ll have to deal with the deluge of dictatorship Zero and his minions are inflicting upon us in the HFR tomorrow.  Today, we have to take a break and get outta this place.  How about to one of the world’s most pleasant places, Europe’s California?

Especially since we’re going to have a TTP Retreat there in March.  More about that later.

Both my wife, Rebel, and I grew up in California, so we know it when we see it – and we recognized it right away in Portugal.  The weather, the plants, the ocean, the sunsets in the ocean, the coast – which is more beautiful than Italy’s (okay, except for Amalfi), way more friendly than France’s (surprise), and far less known and populated than Spain’s.

Then of course, there’s the great wine and great food.

Also of course, there are differences.  California, as anyone who grew up there knows, no longer exists – it is Mexifornia, as Victor Davis Hansen terms it, with a Hispanic vise-grip on the government in Sacramento welcoming an illegal alien flood.  The European corollary is Eurabia – the flood of Moslems demographically destroying so many countries like France, where half the schoolchildren in many major cities today are Moslem.

But not in Portugal.  The Moslem population is miniscule.  Make that invisible.  You never see a mosque, you never see a woman in a burka.  The Portuguese are Christian Europeans.  They kicked Moslem invaders from Africa out of their country 764 years ago (in 1249) and are happy to keep it that way.

California’s history is as recent as Portugal’s is ancient.  People have been living there before they were people.  That is, the European version of Homo ergaster – Homo neanderthalensis or Neanderthals – lived along Portugal’s coast for over 100,000 years.  The European version of us (Homo sapiens) – Cro-Magnon man – moved in about 40,000 years ago. 10,000 years later, the Neanderthals were extinct.

Only we were left, and we left our mark.  The World Heritage Site of  Coa Valley Rock Art is in northeast Portugal along a tributary of the famous Douro river, with over 5,000 animal figures carved by Cro-Magnon people into stone some 24,000 years ago.

The Cro-Magon hunter-gatherers survived the last Ice Age and flourished for millennia until Indo-European folks we call Celts showed up some 4,000 years ago.  Tribes emerged, the largest of which the Romans – when they showed up 2,000 years later – called Lusitani.  The most famous chief of the Lusitani was Viriathus, who inflicted defeat after defeat upon the invading Romans until they killed him in 139 BC.

To this day, Viriathus remains Portugal’s national hero.  The Portuguese consider themselves descendants of the Lusitani, and often use the Roman name of Portugal, Lusitania, as an alternate name for their country.

Nonetheless, Portugal is named after a Roman conqueror.  Decimus Junius Brutus Callaicus (180-113 BC) was the general who subjected the Lusitanians and another people to the north, the Callaeci to Roman rule after Viriathus’ death.  In 136, the Roman Senate awarded him the title of “Callaicus” for his victories – and named the town he fortified at the mouth of the Douro river Portus Cale, the Gate of Callaicus, in his honor.

After the Roman Empire’s fall, a Germanic people, the Visigoths, established their rule in the early 400s, and called it Portucale.  The Visigoths became Christians, but were overrun by the Moslem invasion of Iberia (Spain and Portugal) from Africa in 711.  The Iberian Christians fled to a remote mountain region in the northwest known today as Picos de Europa.  From there, they vowed to recapture their land from the Islamic infidels.

The incredible story of how they did so in Spain is told in Reconquista (August 2009).  Yet the Reconquering of Portugal – as Portucale was pronounced in the Middle Ages – was equally heroic.  It began with a nobleman, Afonso Henriques (1109-1185), who waged forty-six years of war against Moslem armies – starting with his victory in the Battle of Ourique in 1139, after which his people declared him King of the Portuguese.

After 40 years of such victories, Pope Alexander III recognized Portugal as a sovereign Christian nation and Afonso the Great as its rightful king.  To this day, the Portuguese call him O Fundador – The Founder who created their nation as a Christian hero defeating Moslems.  Here he is:

The southernmost region of today’s Portugal, the Algarve (from al-Gharb, the West in Arabic) remained in Moslem hands until Afonso’s great-grandson, Afonso III, reconquered it in 1249.  Portugal’s borders have remained what they are today ever since.

In 1386, Portugal established the oldest diplomatic alliance still in effect in the world today, the Treaty of Windsor.  Friendship between the British and the Portuguese is well over 600 years old.

It was in the 1400s that Portugal launched Western Civilization’s Age of Discovery and became a world power.  Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460, son of King John I, signer of the Treaty of Windsor) sponsored Gonçalo Velho Cabral’s discovery of the Azores in 1431, Gil Eames’ of a route past Cape Bojador on the Moroccan coast in 1434, Alvise Cadamosto’s of the Cape Verde Islands in 1456.

Thanks to Henry, Bartolomeu Dias reached the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Agulhas, the southern tips of Africa, in 1488.  Ten years later, the greatest Portuguese explorer of them all, Vasco da Gama, reached India.

By this time, Portugal had become so powerful that it signed the Treaty of Tordesillas with Spain, dividing up the entire “Non-Christian” world between them.

(A funny aside:  the treaty granted Portugal ownership of all land between Portugal’s Cape Verde and Spain’s large islands named by Columbus as Cipangu and Antilla.  They were Cuba and Hispaniola – but by “Cipangu,” Columbus meant Japan, which is where he meant to sail and thought he had reached.  Marco Polo called Japan by its Chinese name Cipan (“where the sun rises”) or Cipan-guo, Cipan-land.  Pronouncing see-pan as chee-pan as the Portuguese and Spanish did, the Brits morphed it into gee-pan and then ja-pan.)

In 1500, Pedro Alvares Cabral discovered Brazil.  By the 1570s, Portugal had an enormous empire over half-way around the world, from Brazil to what is now Indonesia.  It lost the latter to the Dutch in the early 1600s, and much of what it had in India to the Brits later in the 17^th century.  It managed to hold on to its imperial crown jewel, Brazil, until 1822.

Portugal still maintained a large colonial empire until very recently.  It tragically turned Mozambique and Angola over to Communist guerrillas in the 1970s, then Macau to the Chicoms in 1999.  The last remnant was Timor-Leste (East Timor), which became independent in 2002.

All in all, the Portuguese Empire was the first fully global empire in history, the first and longest-lasting of all European empires (from Ceuta on the Moroccan coast in 1415 to Timor-Lest in 2002), and was composed of an astounding 53 current sovereign nations.

Portugal’s most prominent ruler during all these years wasn’t a king, but a guy named Sebastião de Melo (1699-1782).  The leader of the Portuguese Enlightenment, he gained such influence over King Joseph I that he ran the government for him – ending slavery throughout the empire, kicking the Jesuits out of Brazil, ending the Inquisition and discrimination against Jews, moved Portugal towards a pro-capitalist economy, and revolutionized education for everyone.

Then the worst disaster Portugal ever suffered occurred on All Saints Day, at 9:30am Sunday morning on November 1, 1755, with half the population of Lisbon attending church.  A Richter 9.0 earthquake hit the city and 40 minutes later, a tsunami engulfed it.  Some 50,000 people were killed, the city leveled in total ruins.

De Melo took over with his saying, “We bury the dead and feed the living.”  Within a year, Lisbon was cleaned and being rebuilt into one of Europe’s great capitals.  It was one of history’s more exemplary examples of leadership.  In gratitude, the King made de Melo the Marquis of Pombal.  His enemies were legion, as he decimated the power of the aristocracy to achieve what he did.  They ended up ruining him, sending him into exile, and smearing his historical legacy.

Portugal ended up stumbling through the 19^th century.  The Brits had to rescue Portugal from Napoleon.  From 1808 to 1813, British forces led by Lt. Gen. Arthur Wellesley inflicted repeated defeats upon the French.  At the completion of his routing the French armies from all Iberia, Wellesley was bestowed by George IV (as Prince Regent) with the peerage of the Duke of Wellington.

The Portuguese monarchy succumbed to inbreeding, with ineffectual rulers and political turmoil until King Carlos I was assassinated in 1908 and the country flipped from chaos to dictatorship and back until a professor of economics at Coimbra University became Prime Minister  in 1932.

His name was António de Oliveira Salazar (1889-1970).  He ruled Portugal with an iron hand for 36 years.  Salazar is hated by the left for being fiercely Anti-Communist (he hated Stalin and Hitler equally) and Pro-American.  He kept Portugal neutral in World War II while substantially helping the Allies on the sly.  He provided sanctuary to huge numbers of refugees escaping the Nazis, especially Jews.

After the war, Salazar eagerly joined NATO, and saw the economy steadily grow between 7 and 8% annually for 20 years.  Tens of thousands attended his funeral in 1970.  But the left was determined to portray him as evil.  The Soviets financed guerrilla wars in the colonies of Angola and Mozambique, and put a number of Portuguese generals on the Kremlin payroll.

On April 25, 1974 they struck with a military coup.  The coup leaders immediately turned Angola and Mozambique over to the Communist guerrillas with no elections.  Portuguese settlers, many of whose families had lived there for up to 400 years, fled, with some one million destitute refugees pouring into Portugal.

Then the coup leaders tried to impose full socialism upon Portugal.  The Portuguese were happy to get rid of Salazar’s secret police, the PIDE, and his censorship of press and speech.  But they weren’t prepared for sweeping nationalization of business, land expropriation, and crushing of private property.  The economy promptly collapsed – it wouldn’t get back to 1973 levels until 1991.

And it has never come close to the growth of the Salazar post-war years to this day.  The Commie generals gave up their rule in 1976, and there has been a succession of moderate leftie governments since, allowing a resurgence of private enterprise.  Today, however, there is another noose around Portugal’s neck – the EU (European Union) and the euro.

Portugal’s farmers were making a good living exporting their products to the rest of Europe.  With EU rules, Portugal has to import food.  The euro is the world’s most overvalued currency,  There is no way Portugal can pay German prices and export anything hyper-priced in euros.

The Portuguese finally kicked out their leftie leader Jose Socrates in 2011 and elected a pro-capitalist, Pedro Passos Coelho.  He is a good man trying hard playing with a stacked deck against him.  He’s reducing the bureaucracy and spending, and focusing on Portugal’s biggest money-maker – tourism.

It’s booming because Portugal has got everything.  Fabulous climate, beaches, food, wine, history, charm up the yingyang, and the sweetest, nicest people in Europe.  That’s what my wife loves about the place.  Scenery and history is wonderful, but what really counts for her are people.

The Portuguese have a gentle humility that’s captivating – they’re farmers and fishermen and small businessmen.  They love their families – you often see three generations, kids, parents, grandparents, enjoying a day together.  Their kids are amazingly well-behaved and nice.  They are Christians where all people are welcomed.  The churches are astounding – like the World Heritage Sites of Batalha of Alcobaça, of Tomar, and of course, one of Europe’s great pilgrimage sites, the Shrine of Fatima.

For some time now, Rebel and I have been talking about holding a series of International Retreats for TTPers.  There are the Rendezvous, yes.  That’s where up to 100 or more TTPers gather together to enjoy each other’s company and to hear our speakers.  This is different – just a small group of less than a dozen spending a long weekend with me and my better half to discuss the world in depth.

And in a place that’s utterly beautiful and captivating.  Our first choice is the World Heritage Site of Sintra, Portugal.  Right on a gorgeous beach with a fairy tale castle, medieval fortress, and royal palace nearby.  The best time is springtime – and spring comes early in Portugal.  We’re thinking mid-March.  California in Europe!

Let Miko know if you might be interested – [email protected] – if this interests you.  I’ll keep you posted.

Meanwhile, it’s been good to take a break from the Curse of Zero.  The world is full of enchanting places and fascinating history.  It’s important to realize that, and get your mind far away ever so often.  I hope you’ve enjoyed doing so now.

Oh, and that fairy tale castle I mentioned?  It’s Pena Castle:

It’s near this place:

See what I mean about Portugal?