Portugal has recently found itself as the hotbed of "digital nomads" and "expats" coming from USA, Canda and Europe.
This isn't anything that new - as for a long time it's been seen as a place of retirement for particularly British and German old timers, and has long been a "Spain alternative" destination for these folks.
But since 2020, something is changing.
A new cultural trend has emerged. Portugal has become something different.
Living In Lisbon
From 2020-2022, I myself as a British National lived in Portugal. In Lisbon to be precise. So it may be slightly hypocritical for me to take aim at other tourists. But in that time I noticed a cultural shift happening. Something that has only gotten worse to this day.
Myself and the other foreigners living there started to feel hostility from the locals. Locals started rubbing as as being "rude". It's something I talked about with fellow people I had met from the outside living in the country.
The problem at the time, I saw was them. That we were these cool outsiders experiencing their country and that they just didn't get it.
As I started befriending people from there, my perspective changed, something that is far more reinforced to me now in hindsight. They were right. The "expats" and "digital nomads" were surging the price of everything in the centre of Lisbon. The cockroach infested place I had rented in the heart of Lisbon for a cool €850 per month, I now see listed today for €1,175.
The centre of Lisbon in that time become more and more people dressed like a Primark advertisement, shouting to eachother drunk in English.
The "California Of Europe"
Visiting again for the Scotland vs Portugal Euro 2024 match, it hit me. The thing they were complaining would happen had arrived. Portugal felt like Disneyland.
In the centre, everyone spoke English. The cashier, the restaurant. Now people are even expected to tip.
I have always consumed a lot of Portuguese media (mostly to learn the language), and what started to be recommended to me were these idiotic posts of people calling Portugal the "California of Europe". Madeira was the "Hawaii of Europe". All love to the Americans, but it was mostly coming from them. The country has become in the crosshairs of social media's idealism - or a mirage of the country.
Needless to say, Portugal is the Portugal. And it's a country who's identity is in crisis.
The problem lies within a new wave of entitlement. People who don't want to visit a country to learn from it. People who want to visit a country and say "what can you give me", "what can I take from you".
This is reminiscent of what has happened in Mexico, where tourists show up on golf carts and act like a superior class of citizen, as if the locals are there to serve them.
Basic maths that an expected €1,000 salary does not compensate a €1175/month T0 apartment. So as life becomes more and more unaffordable for Portuguese in their own country, we can only pray that right now is terminal velocity of the issue. An increase in foreign interest presents opportunity of an increase in foreign investment. So let's hope the scales start to tip in the favour of Portugal.