Month in Portugal starts: that woman's break (8)
I believe the answer is:
decipher
'break' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'month in portugal starts that woman's' is the wordplay.
'month' becomes 'dec' (Dec is an example**).
'starts' says to take the initial letters.
'that woman's' becomes 'her' (I've seen this before).
The initial letters of 'in portugal' is 'ip'.
'dec'+'ip'+'her'='DECIPHER'
(Other definitions for decipher that I've seen before include "Explain" , "Figure out" , "Work out (text in code)" , "Convert code into normal language" , "Decode, find hidden meaning" .)