Foreigners are a pain, I know all about it. I have been one myself in five of the six countries I have lived in, and somehow even in number six, my homeland. Groups of foreigners tend be loud, rude, disrespectful and make you lose all interest in examining them from up close. Wherever I lived I wanted to be the only foreigner, and this hasn’t changed now that I live in Portugal. There is no better way to take in your new environment than to isolate from fellow foreigners. It helps you learn the language of your host country, appreciate its history, culture, politics, and local ins and outs. You can even make an attempt to understand your new compatriots. That is: if they let you come close enough.
With his opinion piece ‘Vende-se’, João Vieira Pereira struck a chord with me. It pains him to see how his country suffers from an invasion of foreigners – 20 million tourists per year and 1.5 million foreign residents, and how they leave their indelible mark on the country. He mourns not only the skyrocketing real estate prices, but also the fading of old Portugal and its habits in general. Nowhere is this more visible than in Lisbon. The bica, the bitoque and the pastel de nata are on the way out and make place for trendy food or drinks with often fancy English names. Looking at my native Amsterdam these days, I can relate to Vieira Pereira’s feelings. So with his cri du coeur he should be able to count on my support and sympathy. And yet he cannot. Why is that?
The article divides immigrants into two groups. The first type of foreigner is poor, comes from India or the Global South, needs a job and must fully adapt to their environment. The second type are Westerners, millionaires, or at least loaded with cash. These latter foreigners are inclined to ‘suck the quality out of Portuguese life’, ‘make their own rules and have a much bigger capacity for destruction’. And they dictate the menu card, that as well.
Bam! The uppercut landed. Was it because I, or my group of foreigners, was left out? Or was it exactly because I was not left out, and, as I am not a have-not but a Westerner, that I therefore must be one of the villains out there to destroy Portugal? Or was it because the author, carried away by his nostalgic yawp, paints a black-and-white picture, with no room for nuance or proper analysis, let alone self-analysis? In this respect, it is very telling how he puts everyone, tourists and residents alike, digital nomads, expats, students and millionaires all in one bag, labelled ‘rich foreigners’.
All this would not have hit home so hard had the author been just any opinion contributor, had his text carried the usual disclaimer that the views expressed are those of an individual and do not reflect the official position of the publication. But João Vieira Pereira is the editor-in-chief of Expresso, one of Europe’s most respected news magazines. One can only assume that he voices the gut feelings of a sensible segment of society.
Where has the food gone?
To make foreigners fully responsible for the decline in popularity of some Portuguese culinary offerings is quite a stretch. Food and drink habits change, prone as they are to health and fashion trends. It is not an exclusive Portuguese problem. Just look at hotel breakfast buffets that are starting to look the same all over the world. This uniformisation is regrettable if you are used to the Portuguese cuisine.
Meanwhile, the consequences are deeply felt. A week after Vieira Pereira’s piece, Expresso dedicated an article to the struggle for survival of traditional cafés, leitarias and confeitarias in Lisbon. Although I wonder why on earth anyone would call a place Helsinquia, Namur, Biarritz or Roma if they want to stress its Lisboan authenticity, I primarily struggle with another point. Has the tourism industry perhaps acted on wishes and needs that never existed? It seems to me that tourists are more likely to boast about this delicious bolo de arroz they tried the other day rather than talk about how they devoured yet another run-of-the-mill muffin.
If I still needed proof of this, I found it during my recent trips to Belgium and the Czech Republic. There, in the local bakeries of Namur and Prague, I found the pasteís de nata that had seemingly been lost in Lisbon. And they were called pasteís de nata, not tartelettes à la crème, krémové koláčky, or custard pie.
“The biggest drama is that there’s so little we can do”
There is an inconvenient truth the writer leaves out. It may be true that more than one million foreigners have come to live in Portugal in the last decade, but at the same time there has been a veritable exodus of young Portuguese. Of those born in Portugal and today aged between 15 and 39, almost one third, 850.000, live abroad.
They have not left the country because they were chased away by foreigners, they have been lured by better working conditions elsewhere, and along with them went part of the bacalhau, rissois and queques. It is exactly this age group that strongly determines fashion, food and drink patterns. If they were still around, Lisbon would look different today.
Any country that lets its future slip away that easily, cannot just blame others but should exercise some introspection. To wallow in self-pity, generalisations and prejudices is detrimental and flat out dangerous.
I, for example, could have dwelled on my experiences with those few Portuguese who tried to squeeze money out of me, a foreigner – hence rich. Or, when founding a new company here, I could have remained fixated on my encounters with Portuguese authorities moving in ways so mysterious that it would have left Franz Kafka grasping for words. I could have formed my judgment right there and then, and I would not have seen what this country is really about, with helpful and tolerant people, with good education and language skills (Portugal consistently ranks sixth in English proficiency among all non-native English speaking countries) and, yes, with a fine cuisine offering a wide choice of dishes, although it will still take me some time to fully understand the appeal of bacalhau in all its varieties.
The image of the western foreigner is dominated and tarnished by the loudest voices, the ones shouting ‘barato’ from the rooftops of their newly bought houses, by those few digital nomads with bloated speech about unicorns, creatures in the business world almost as rare as their mythological counterparts in reality.
Rest assured: the foreigners who never want to integrate will be the first ones to leave if a new tax haven comes by. Meanwhile, the foreigners quietly adapting to their new home country are not heard, and don’t make headlines. Is it so hard for the Portuguese to believe that a foreigner, an ordinary citizen, perhaps an independent, an artist or a scientist, truly loves this country, and not just because of taxes and beaches?
Painting all foreigners with the same brush cements prejudice and does not help Portugal in any way. Already intimidated by loud assertiveness, the Portuguese risk becoming suspicious of all foreign initiatives. Fatalism looms large and drains society of all its drive. “The biggest drama is that there’s so little we can do”, concludes Vieira Pereira, and he is wrong. There is a lot that can be done.
A long and bumpy trip, but worth it
The problem with Portugal is not what is there, but what is not there. What is there: potential, tourism, foreign residents. What is not there: self-confidence, sound policies and rules, a fertile business climate and, above all, young people.
When The Economist proclaimed Portugal the number 1 economy of 2025, it did so on objective grounds, such as growth, jobs and inflation. What should have been a reason for pride, was greeted in this country with reactions ranging from mockery to skepticism. Though it is plain to see that Portugal will narrow the gap with Northern European countries in the coming years, the lack of belief in its own potential is startling.
Much in matters of economy is perception and psychology. While auto promotion is admittedly one of the plagues of recent years, Portugal could still blow its own trumpet much more. Turning to food, one last time: paella is a worldwide renowned dish, arroz de marisco is not, and why do people think chouriço is a Spanish sausage?
One of the assets Portugal could use to enhance its visibility is language. The writer Ana Bárbara Pedrosa recently made a plea for a linguistic Lusofonia-brand. There is indeed no reason why Lusophony would not be right up there, next to Anglophony, Francophony and Hispanophony.
Her timing could not have been better. In an increasingly multipolar world, the importance of English will dwindle. Portuguese is well-positioned to take its fair share of the world stage. After all, the language stretches across four continents and counts hundreds of millions of native speakers. In this way, it can serve to increase Portugal’s economic and cultural appeal. Portuguese should be promoted as the best starting point for learning Romance languages, being the toughest and most complete of them. Learning Portuguese should become cool. Language is just one example, but it immediately shows how Portugal could tap into its potential. More importantly, it shows that the country should start believing in itself.
Western foreigners apparently make up their own rules. With their innate, large capacity for destruction, they have in first instance targeted the real estate market. Now it is clear that the Portuguese housing market is a reason for major concern. Only recently, Lisbon was crowned Europe’s least affordable rental market, with rents averaging more than 99% of net salaries. In no other EU country, do housing expenses gobble up such a large part of income as in Portugal. But all this because of the rich strangers, really? If they can indeed dictate their own rules, then this is because they operate in a vacuum void of rules, because the country’s housing policy has not respected the most important of all market rules: the balance of supply and demand.
In a thorough analysis, the economist Óscar Afonso points to the decades-long construction shortfall as the main cause of the current housing crisis. This is further aggravated by a too small rental market, too few investments in social housing, an inefficient use of the available housing stock, and an uneven distribution throughout the country. Too little is built, and that little is often built in the wrong place.
Ultimately, the housing crisis is felt so deeply in Portugal, not because of real estate prices – no different from anywhere else in Europe – but because it is rooted in an economy with too little high-value activity, too much concentration in Lisbon, Porto and along some stretches of the coast, and too low salaries. Last year, in an open letter to the government, the Associação Business Roundtable Portugal, along with over a hundred business leaders, claimed that in ten years’ time Portugal could be among the five richest countries in Europe. Wishful thinking? Not if you look at the country’s level of education, its talented people, its location and leading position in the energy transition.
But red tape is a major hurdle. A financial and administrative makeover are long overdue and should lead to a 50% increase in net wages. There would still be one caveat: higher salaries come with greater responsibilities. No longer could employees duck responsibility and initiative under the guise of respect for hierarchy.
What Portugal needs is ambition and self-confidence. What it definitely does not need is the doomed-to-fail attitude, the basking in fatalism, the finger pointing at foreigners as the source of all its woes.
There is no denying it, accomplishing all this is a tall order. The good news is that, once the first signs of progress become visible, the sangria de talento will stop. Young Portuguese emigrants will start to trickle back to their home country. That, in turn, will further accelerate growth. The road ahead will still remain long and bumpy, but the trip is worth it. It’s the ticket to a better future. And who knows, maybe some foreigners will lend a helping hand along the way.
(Artigo publicado originalmente na revista The Critic)
Os textos nesta secção refletem a opinião pessoal dos autores. Não representam a VISÃO nem espelham o seu posicionamento editorial.
