THE NEW DEMOCRACIES - Spain and Portugal: A Reference Guide from the Renaissance to the Present - page 63

ocrats, constituting a center-Left coalition that guided the country
into the '90s. The last decade of a century that had seen Portugal
through such profound transformations provided it with a breathing
space. Membership in the European Union secured much needed sup-
port for economic modernization and facilitated both foreign invest-
ment and a profitable growth of tourism. Improved relations with its
often unfriendly neighbor led to collaboration, both within the Euro-
pean Union and on Ibero-American projects. Spain, like Portugal, had
given up most of its remaining colonies in 1975 but had soon launched
a program of cultural and financial outreach. Portugal now followed
this example by forming what amounted to a Lusitanian Common-
wealth that linked it with Brazil and its former dependencies in Africa.
Portugal also gave belated support to the liberation of its abandoned
colony, East Timor, from Indonesian oppression in 1998-99. In the
latter year the Portuguese flag was lowered in the ultimate remnant
of her once globe-girdling empire as Macao was handed over to
China.
Five hundred years after the valor and ambition of Portuguese navi-
gators had carried them to the shores of America in the same grand
sweep of empire building that was mapping the coast of Africa and
opening the trade of Asia, the empire was gone. But the Portugal of
2000 was at least free of the divisive regionalism and on-going terror-
ism that tormented Spain. Moreover Portugal, too, had secured a func-
tioning democracy. Even though her principal political parties were
sometimes on shaky ground and her economy, after the expiration of
European Union subsidies, was not entirely sound, there was every
reason to believe that her best days were not all in the past.
SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE CULTURE IN THE
TWENTIETH CENTURY
For Spain, the 19th century had ended with a conjunction of failures
and frustrations that seemed to go beyond even those experienced dur-
ing the preceding 200 years. Yet the “Generation of '98” would prove
to be remarkably resilient. Rather than continue the familiar lamenta-
tions about lost greatness, Spaniards would henceforth show them-
selves willing to confront a daunting array of challenges, endure the
bitterest sufferings, and persist in reforming their worst shortcomings.
Nowhere was there determination to break free from the preoccupa-
tion with the past more evident than in their cultural achievements of
the 20th century. Indeed, some observers would speak of this century
as representing a new “golden age.”