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( Braga)
Braga (pronounced ['Brag-uh]), a city and municipality in northwestern Portugal, is the capital of the district of Braga, the oldest archdiocese and one of the major cities of the country. With a population of 128,138 in the city proper, Braga is the third largest city in Portugal, after Lisbon (Lisboa), Porto (Oporto). Including the suburban parishes, the municipality has a total of 62 parishes and 175,063 inhabitants (2007). Braga is also the center of the Greater Metropolitan Area of Minho with a population of 826,833 (2007) one of the fastest growing urban areas in the European Union.[citation needed] Under the Roman Empire, as Bracara Augusta, it was capital of the province Gallaecia. The urban area extends from the (river) Cavado to the (river) Este. Braga is serviced by regional and fast trains to Porto and Lisbon. The city of Oporto (Porto) is about 53 km. The present Mayor is Francisco Soares Mesquita Machado, elected from the Socialist Party. The region of Braga has been inhabited since pre-historic times, and in the Iron Age the Bracari people occupied the region and built their characteristic fortified villages (castrum). It was the capital of the Callaici Bracarii, or Bracarenses, a tribe who occupied what is now Galicia and northern Portugal. The Romans began their conquest of the region around 136 BC, and during the times of Emperor Augustus (around the year 20 BC) the city of Bracara Augusta was founded in the context of the administrative needs of the new Roman territory. Bracara was dedicated to the Emperor, hence its name Augusta. . The city of Bracara Augusta developed greatly during the 1st century and reached its maximum extension in the 2nd century. Towards the end of the 3rd century, Emperor Diocletianus promoted the city to the status of capital of the newly-founded province of Gallaecia. During the times of the Germanic Invasions of the Iberian Peninsula, Roman power was dissolved and Bracara Augusta and the whole region of Gallaecia fell into the hands of the Sueves, a Germanic people from Central Europe. In 410, the Sueves established a Kingdom in the Northwest of Iberia and chose Bracara as capital. But about 584 it passed into the hands of the Visigothic conquerors of Hispania, whose renunciation of the Arian and Priscillianist heresies, at two synods held here in the 6th century, marks the origin of its ecclesiastical greatness. The archbishops of Braga retain the title of primate of Portugal, and long claimed supremacy over the Hispanic church also; but their authority was never accepted throughout Hispania.
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