Spain vs Portugal

Why people mix them up

Spain and Portugal share the Iberian Peninsula at the southwest corner of Europe, and Portugal is Spain's only land neighbour on its western side. Their languages are related and partly understandable to each other's speakers, both countries built large overseas empires, and both are EU members that use the euro. On a world map the peninsula can look like one country, so people often ask where Spain ends and Portugal begins, or simply which one is bigger.

How to tell them apart

• Spain is more than five times the size of Portugal, about 506,000 km² against roughly 92,000 km².
• Portugal borders only Spain; Spain also borders France, Andorra and the British territory of Gibraltar.
• Spain's flag is red-yellow-red horizontal with the coat of arms towards the hoist; Portugal's is green and red, split vertically, with an armillary sphere and shield.
• The official languages are Spanish in Spain and Portuguese in Portugal, with regional languages such as Catalan, Galician and Basque also official in parts of Spain.
• The capitals are Madrid (Spain), in the centre of the peninsula, and Lisbon (Portugal), on the Atlantic coast at the mouth of the Tagus.
• Spain's islands are the Balearics and the Canaries; Portugal's are the Azores and Madeira.

Memory hook

Portugal is the Port on the Atlantic: a thin coastal strip facing the ocean. Spain is the big Square behind it.

On the map

Find the large, almost square peninsula south of France. Portugal is the narrow rectangle along its western, Atlantic edge. Everything else, from the Pyrenees in the north to the Strait of Gibraltar in the south and the Mediterranean coast in the east, is Spain. If the country you are tapping has a Mediterranean shore, it is Spain.