For an Irish person, living abroad can be a bittersweet experience.
Maybe it’s at least partly because we’ve been spoiled by the country where we grew up. Because there’s nowhere else with quite the same heights of human connection as you find in Ireland.
I have lived in Portugal for five years now. Every day, I miss Ireland’s world-class personality, energy and humour.
I miss entertaining the reasonable assumption that there is likely to be some connection when two or more people meet, even fleetingly.
‘It’s when you leave Ireland that you fully appreciate how big-hearted and generous in spirit Irish people are’
‘I took to swimming in the morning and writing poetry on a beach towel within a few yards of the Mediterranean’
‘Loving life in the slightly slower lane’: From Donegal to the south of France
‘In New York, everything has to be done yesterday’
It’s easy to become dispirited by the many pressures and irritants one encounters while living in Ireland. But it’s only when you leave that you fully appreciate just how big-hearted and generous in spirit Irish people are.
Life is very different in Porto, where so many Portuguese are on a temperamental scale that oscillates between melancholic, dour and grumpy.
The Porto locals I’ve met have little interest in other countries and cultures. They are reserved, inward-looking and suspicious of outsiders.
In Spain, I chatted with a waiter whose mother is Portuguese and whose father is Spanish. I asked him what he thought were the main differences between the two nationalities. He replied: “The Spanish trust everyone; the Portuguese trust no one”. Then he added: “The Portuguese can’t stop saying ‘no’; the Spanish can’t stop saying ‘yes’.”
Here in Porto, the word Brazilian people use most often to describe the Portuguese is fechado – “closed”.
The Portuguese give the impression of struggling with a brittle self-esteem. Whenever a Portuguese asks me what I think about Portugal’s cuisine, especially seafood, it’s blindingly obvious they’re fishing for compliments.
I mentioned to a Portuguese taxi driver that dishes in Porto restaurants have little or no seasoning and hardly any sauces, and that the food is rather bland.
“We prefer not to interfere with the natural flavours,” was his response.
The Portuguese can be surprisingly touchy, even when only mildly contradicted. If you are frank about any oddity or shortcoming in their culture, you are likely to receive a socially awkward, abrupt, or even gaslighting, response.
Recently, someone in a Facebook discussion group opined that Spanish food is vastly superior to Portuguese food. A Portuguese man bluntly replied: “I feel sorry for you!”
I visited a trendy new wine bar in Porto along with two friends. One of them, a Frenchman, remarked to the young barman that the bar’s high prices suggested it was aimed at tourists and expats as most Portuguese could not afford such prices. The barman aggressively replied that the place had many Portuguese customers. When my friend pressed the point, the barman responded: “Obviously, you don’t know the right people!”
Porto locals tend to reframe a negative as a positive, sometimes with bizarre results. And they wear their gruffness as a badge of authenticity. If you complain about the woeful customer service, as I did recently in a supermarket, expect the stock response: “It’s normal in Porto!” Or, as the final say on the matter, “pois!” – meaning “whatever!”
On the website of the cultural analytics group, Hofstede, there is a feature that enables one to compare the cultural aspects of different countries. I carried out a US-UK-Ireland-Portugal comparison. The results were illuminating.
The Portuguese ranked lowest of the four countries for individualism and ambition. They ranked highest for feeling threatened by ambiguous or unknown situations; and were the most likely to control their desires and behaviour.
Portugal’s sometimes peculiar uniqueness is, however, a lot more understandable when you consider its past and present. It’s the poorest country in western Europe, and its people are among the least educated. Furthermore, the country suffered a stifling dictatorship for 36 years and a staid, centuries-old Catholicism that persists today.
In recent years, Porto has been over-discovered; now digital nomads and retirees, many of them American, British and French, are settling here in their droves.
Landlords in Porto are throwing tenants out to upgrade their properties to hotels, apartments and Airbnbs, or to re-rent or sell the property at inflated prices.
Amid rocketing food prices that target the affluent parallel economy, the Portuguese are financially pressed and increasingly dissatisfied. In March’s general election, the hitherto electorally irrelevant right-wing populist party, Chega, secured an 18 per cent share of the vote. “Chega” translates as “enough!”
For expats like myself, however, Porto still has numerous advantages. Healthcare and transport systems are good. The expat social life is excellent; I am blessed with my girlfriend and friends. There are many wonderful beaches within easy reach. Young people are polite and well-behaved.
As Hofstede noted, the Portuguese control themselves exceptionally well. There’s relatively little aggressive individualism or menacing behaviour. And Portugal is one of the safest countries in the world.
- Edward Lennon is from Carlow, but grew up in Clontarf, Dublin. He left Ireland for Portugal in 2018 (returning to Ireland briefly during the Covid pandemic). He is a writer, journalist, editor and proofreader. His website is Ireland Calling.
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