Azinhaga

Azinhaga do Ribatejo or simply Azinhaga () is a village and a civil parish in the municipality of Golegã, Santarém District, Lezíria do Tejo (roughly the same territory of the historical province of Ribatejo), Portugal. The population of Azinhaga civil parish in 2011 was 1,620, in an area of 38.21 km2.

==History== Azinhaga was the birthplace of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature-winning author José Saramago (born in 1922) who in Memories of My Youth (first published in 2006) gave a detailed account in words of Azinhaga in the first half of the 20th century. In 1938, Azinhaga won the title of Ribatejo's Most Portuguese Village, awarded by the Portuguese Secretariat for Propaganda under the Estado Novo regime (at the same government-sponsored competition, Monsanto, in Idanha-a-Nova, won the title of Portugal's Most Portuguese Village). From the mid-1940s to the 1980s, Azinhaga was the site of a nationally renowned tomato paste factory - the Sociedade Industrial de Concentrados (SIC). Like many other previously successful Portuguese exporters (i.e. CUF and others), it didn't survive the far-left politics, labor movement-inspired PREC (1975) and its influence over Portuguese economy, society and government policies. In the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s, Azinhaga benefited from European Union Structural and Cohesion Funds. Several amenities were built, expanded or modernized during this period, from comprehensive asphalt road and sewer system, to new education and sports infrastructure.