evidence: Nuno Melo, Portugal’s new defense minister, has revived an almost forgotten debate. "Olivenza is Portuguese, naturally, and this is not a provocation," said Melo during a visit to the Portuguese town of Estremoz, near the border with Spain, on September 13. The minister was thus claiming sovereignty over a locality of 11,776 residents in the Spanish province of Badajoz, on the border between the two countries, on the basis of the Treaty of Alcañices, which dates back to 1297 and according to which the Portuguese State does not recognize Olivenza as Spanish territory. [...] Spain gained Olivenza after the War of the Oranges against Portugal at the beginning of the 19th century, after returning Campo Maior and Portalegre, which had been conquered by the Spanish during the conflict. This is how the official chronicler of the city of Badajoz, Luis Alfonso Limpo, tells it. Olivenza had been "abandoned by the Portuguese army" and "no one died in its conquest," the chronicler said in an interview on the radio network Cadena SER. Spain did not want to give up this strategic enclave on the left bank of the Guadiana River, whose foreign control could, due to its proximity, represent a danger for the city of Badajoz. King Charles IV’s favorite aide, Manuel Godoy — First Secretary of State of the Kingdom of Spain — guaranteed in the Treaty of Badajoz (1801) that Portugal would recognize Olivenza as Spanish.