Portugal — Foundational understanding for the interested immigrant (Part 3)
Part 3 — A few tips for a pleasant stay
1) If you learn the language, buckle up and enjoy the ride
You will be forgiven if you never learn Portuguese. It is tough to learn, sounds a bit like Russian and your broken Spanish won’t be of much use. Plus, it is easy to get around using English and lots of smiles.
If you do have the time and patience to learn it, you will soon discover the rollercoaster of Portuguese conversations. As far as anthropological observation goes, there are few more entertaining ecosystems. Take a seat at any cafe and open a book, to pretend that you are not listening. You might soon eavesdrop on a ferocious fight about soccer. Deep outrage about some lady at work. Offensive cursing regarding a random comment that the prime minister made. Passionate screaming around the origin of some obscure word. And then, at the end of such intense fighting, when you thought those two friends would never speak to each other again, you may see them hug warmly as they finish their beers and walk away as if nothing had happened.
The level of excitement with which the Portuguese debate a topic, any topic, may give the impression to the untrained foreign eye that there is anger or deep beliefs behind it. That is seldom the case. Opinions abound and are emphatically expressed, but rarely stand the test of time and never stand the test of action. You can be as vocal as you want about your own opinions. Try even taking them up a notch. People may not like them much, but they will have fun debating you and won’t ever get really upset.
2) Embrace the culture, live like a local
The Portuguese like obscure finds, which are the only things that the internet has made harder to find. A place that few know about and has wonders to offer. “I went to this small shop in remote Alentejo where a lady has been smoking meats for fifty years. She didn’t speak a word of English and it took a lot of begging for her to sell me a chouriço, but it was the best I’ve ever had”. “I went to a beach close to Peniche that you can only get to by foot. It took me three hours to get there and it was completely empty and full of baby seagulls”. Just have the pin on google maps ready to share with a friend, while whispering and leaning closer to them as you share your closely-held secrets.
Modern Portuguese adults talk about doing sports in nature. Of course we have to do the sports to be able to talk about them, so there is some doing involved. But the main motivation is the talking. In fact, for each hour of sports that we actually do, we might talk about it for ten or twenty hours, with different people. It can be surfing in Ericeira, riding a bicycle in Arrábida or jogging around Sintra. Any of these are fine. Hopefully something went wrong and you got scared, but it all went well at the end.
The Portuguese complain extensively about the daily consequences of corporate imperfections and human stupidity. EMEL, the company in charge of managing parking in Lisbon, is the preferred target. “I left the car for five minutes with a note on the dashboard and those animals still gave me a ticket”. Utility companies are secondary targets, particularly if you had to call them and it was frustrating. Neighbors are fair-game, if their dog pooped on the sidewalk or they left trash out at the wrong time. Whatever it was, if you want to blend in, just make sure that you talk about it for at least 30 minutes, with some sarcasm and underlying outrage, and only acknowledge listening to statements that confirm and support your story.
3) Making friends and influencing Portuguese
Many people from Lisbon and Porto try to go to college close to where they live and stay at their parents’ home. Save a few bucks, live close to your childhood friends, avoid a painful move and don’t you just love mamma’s cooking? Even after college, most keep on living with their parents, since jobs don’t pay well. In fact, Portugal is the country in the EU where people leave their parents’ home the latest, on average at age 33. By then, Jesus had already changed human spirituality and was about to be crucified. In comparison, the average nest-leaving age is 19 in Sweden and 26 for the whole of the European Union.
Such Portuguese, having lived (and still living) within walking distance from where they were born, have their large families and childhood and college friends nearby, so don’t have a desire to make new friends. Several may also suffer from severe atrophy of the social friendship-building muscles that they haven’t used in years. They may be reserved, shy to start a conversation, reluctant to share too much.
Furthermore, language is a barrier. In Holland, sometimes all it takes is the presence of one foreigner for an entire group of Dutch people to switch the conversation to English. That rarely happens in Portugal. Even though the Portuguese are generally good at English, since TV is never dubbed and most culture is anglophone, they are surprisingly reluctant to switch languages.
If you keep your eyes open and are willing to make the first move, you will eventually find one or two Portuguese that share one of your deep interests or whose soul somehow chemically merges with yours. Join a gym or a sports team. Talk to other parents at school. Strike up a conversation at the park. Friendship will eventually come. It just won’t come easily. Don’t take initial failure personally and most of all try not to get affected by the occasional rudeness. It’s not you, it’s us.
4) Raising a kid
You moved here, so you probably know that Portugal is a safe place, particularly regarding crime (the murder rate in Lisbon is about one tenth that of New York or San Francisco). So Portuguese parents are relaxed in raising their children. People can speak with toddlers on the street without risking a stink-look from the parents. Most folks like kids, so they strike up a harmless conversation. Kids are often left to play alone at a park, with loose nearby supervision. Parents are a lot more concerned about natural hazards (going into the ocean, crossing the road or falling badly at the playground) than about other grownups.
Child-raising tenacity is low. There are very few tiger parents. It is easy to get into almost any school (as long as you can afford it, if it is private) and college admission is based exclusively on high-school grades. While most people like their kids to have good grades, they tend to value their happiness and general wellbeing a lot more. This is great for teenage mental health, while less great for academic and professional performance.
Individual freedom is one of the most respected values in Portugal since the 1974 revolution. Freedom often applies to raising children — nobody wants to be a dictator at home. This relative looseness is reinforced by a broader sense among the international educated left that strict discipline is to be avoided with kids. If you ask the progressive left, Portuguese children look incredibly happy; if you ask the conservative right, they are somewhat out of control.
Overall, if you are raising your children in Portugal, try to be relaxed about it. You can let them take public transportation by themselves as early as nine or ten. So enjoy it. If you want to be intense and nudge them towards excellence and achievement, it won’t be easy — pick their schools very carefully.
5) The million-dollar question: how are we seen, as foreigners?
The Portuguese like foreigners. We are very welcoming. There is no greater statement of appreciation for a country than packing up and moving there. Thank you for feeling that way about Portugal. Thank you for coming here.
You will also hear some noise. The tax system charges some foreigners roughly half of the income tax that it would charge a Portuguese citizen in the same circumstances. There may be some logic behind this, meaning to attract high-income digital nomads, but it is widely seen as unfair. The inflow of high-income foreigners also drives up housing costs and pushes locals farther away from the city. Your willingness to pay more for food and beverages pushes up prices (and quality) of restaurants in Lisbon, forcing locals to eat at home. None of this is different from the gentrification that you see in so many cities around the world, either by nationals or foreigners.
This love-hate also applies to tourism. It now represents more than 15% of GDP and creates employment. This has helped us invest in protecting important parts of our nature and cities. On the other hand, there are entire areas of the country that became “for foreigners” because they are too busy (just try going to Sintra in August) or too expensive for Portuguese tourists.
The Portuguese tend to conceptually resent foreigners as a group, be it tourists or immigrants, while in practice loving foreigners as individuals when they get to know them.
We are proud and happy to have you. We hope you are proud and happy to stay.
That’s it. Now you know the basics. We hope that nothing here was disappointing. That you still want to make this your home.
Let’s wrap up with a few requests for you.
Pay attention to the actions of people. Yes, compliment the food, which is becoming incredible. Enjoy the weather, the beaches and the mountains. But also notice the transition to the blue and green economy. Our intimate and warm mediterranean designers. Our entrepreneurs.
Whatever it is that you do for a living, please try to involve locals. Invest in the country. You have a lot to bring to the world, and we hope that you bring it here first.
And please walk or take the bus.
LAF, Campo de Ourique, September 2023
(Link to Part 1 — A thousand years of brutal, messy history)