River · Portugal
Tagus (Tejo)
The Tagus is the longest river of the Iberian Peninsula and the longest river of Portugal. It crosses the country from east to west and opens into the Atlantic Ocean at Lisbon.
Picture credit: Diliff (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Abel Pardo López (CC BY 2.0) · rheins (CC BY 3.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is the Tagus (Tejo)?
The river starts here: Sierra de Albarracín in eastern Spain.
It ends in the Atlantic Ocean at Lisbon.
Countries on the river: Portugal.
The story behind it
The Tagus is really shared: it rises in the mountains of Spain, where it is called Tajo, then serves as a border for a stretch and only afterwards runs through Portugal, so books give different lengths depending on which part they count. On the dry Spanish plateau the water is often held back in reservoirs, and in hot summers the river can shrink to a thin thread. In Portugal it turns green and wide, flows past Santarém through fields of rice and pasture where black bulls and horses graze. Near Lisbon it widens so much that people call this part the Straw Sea, and long bridges cross it. Flamingos, storks and thousands of wading birds feed on the mud flats, and fishers still bring in eels and shad.
Questions children ask
How long is the Tagus?
About 1 007 km from the Spanish mountains to the Atlantic. Roughly 230 km of that run inside Portugal, which is why sources sometimes give smaller numbers.
Which countries does the Tagus flow through?
The data used here lists Portugal, where the river ends. Its upper course lies in Spain, and for a stretch the Tagus forms the border between the two countries.
Where does the Tagus flow into?
Into the Atlantic Ocean at Lisbon. Just before the coast it widens into a huge basin where ships anchor and flamingos wade in the shallows.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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