LISBON: Dressed in their finest attire, the 450 high-society guests gathered at a seaside casino near the Portuguese capital were not celebrating a wedding or the opening of a new art exhibit — they had gathered to laud the pleasures of cigar smoking.

The party, which attracted celebrities from the world of television and business last June, was the largest in a recent wave of events bringing together Portugal’s growing legion of cigar smokers.

“It is a pleasure which has been increasing,” the director of cigar retailer Cigar World which organised the casino party, Pedro Unha Martins, told AFP.

“It is associated with relaxation, with anti-stress and a certain way of being in life.”

Unlike in neighbouring Spain, where cigar smoking has had a strong tradition ever since the conquistadors brought back tobacco from Cuba and other Spanish colonies in Latin America in the 15th century, the habit never gained a widespread following in Portugal.

But growing commercial ties with Spain, combined with a sharp drop in the tax charged on cigars and media portrayals of smoking as glamorous, have made cigars increasingly fashionable in Portugal.

Just over one million cigars were sold in Portugal in 2002, up from 750,000 in the previous year, according to industry sources.

Many of the sales were to young professional men, who see cigar smoking as a status symbol, although retailers report rising sales to women as well.

Cigar World began offering cigar appreciation courses last year and roughly one-fourth of the students in these classes have been women.

The habit became less expensive in late 2001 after the government slashed the tax it slapped on cigars from 26 to 12 per cent, a move cigar retailers credit with helping fuel sales.

The trend towards rising sales bucks the pattern in most major industrialized nations, where cigar sales peaked with the end of the 1990s high-tech boom.—dpa