A Tiny History of Contemporary Portugal

Portugal has to get poorer if it is to survive the crisis, prime-minister Passos Coelho said yesterday (http://aeiou.expresso.pt/passos-coelho-so-vamos-sair-da-crise-empobrecendo-video=f683176 in Portuguese). This is an eloquent example of what we are being subjected to. In the meanwhile, people are slumbering in a mixed state of panic and depression.

This country is now awakening from two decades of daydreaming. I can, from my personal experience, illustrate that very well. When I was a child, I remember that the country lived in the anticipation of its first major international event, the Expo98. A universal exhibition centered on the theme of the oceans, it was meant to be a culminating national celebration. The narrative was indeed uplifting: a small country on the edge of Europe had, in the past, been able to turn its peripheral position into a new world centrality (if you take a look at a world map you’ll notice that Portugal, despite being on a corner of Europe, is right at the center of the world); some five centuries later, the country had finally been able to shake off its burden of obscurantism left by half a century of dictatorship and was then re-emerging as a modern, fully European nation, bound to be (it was just a matter of time, it was believed) as rich and developed as any northern state like, say, Switzerland or Denmark.

It is interesting that we spoke of these places without really knowing them: for our purpose of would-be nouveau-riche our only idea of developed Europe was precisely that: they were rich, and we wanted to be like that also. Of course, we weren’t totally ignorant: we were selectively so. As the typical guy with an inferiority complex, we only saw what we wanted to see. Besides, there were lots of Portuguese emigrants abroad, but far from throwing some light on real differences and similarities, they just played the same game: Portugal was for them just a fading memory of poverty and absurdities, a country where nothing works properly. Even the seventh-hand BMW, which had always worked perfectly in Düsseldorf (as it had spent the whole year in the garage) had capriciously decided to break down as soon as it crossed the border (damn Portuguese roads!).

The result was a general sense of animosity towards emigrants returning on summer holidays which could be fairly summed up as the usual suspicion of the nouveau-riche seeing in each other a reflection of their ill-disguised lack of pedigree.

But back to history. The Expo was great (and quite expensive), but we were suddenly without the prospect of a future party. Then came the Euro 2004. Ten stadia were built, some of them costing tenfold the initial predictions: who cares? But the European championship itself left an ominous taste behind it. The day we lost the final against Greece the country was ungoverned, as our prime-minister had left office to go somewhere to Europe. Since then, we and the Greeks were doomed, and our government was never again to leave that place somewhere in Europe. Eventually we would find that the actual places where our government had made its abode were Berlin (on weekdays) and Paris (on weekends).

And now, after two decades believing ourselves almost rich, we are told that we have to get poorer. In fact, we never were anything else but poor: we just bought our way out of poverty, with the ensuing burden of indebtedness. Well, recognizing that we’re poor has at least some solace in it: we can always get poorer… Or die trying. 

Weather

An acquaintance of mine was asking a few days ago on Facebook whether our climate had somehow decided to follow the path of our economy by becoming more and more similar to that of a third-world country. In fact, things have been wild here, as far as St. Peter’s decisions are concerned (to those not familiar with the catholic cultural framework: St. Peter is supposed to be responsible for the weather). Summer holidays (we still have those, so far…) started with funny temperatures: people here are not used to having to wear warm clothes at night from May to September, but all of a sudden we were discovering the concept of wind-chill in early-August. This added to an atmosphere of general depression: with the prospect of a meager Christmas ahead, people were also being deprived of the summer, with fortnights in the Algarve being ruined in the face of rainy beaches that vaguely remembered those of the British Isles.

Then, I left: I went abroad on a European road-trip. Quite shocked, I realized that northern Italy was getting better climate than Portugal, and that alongside with higher wages. That’s tremendously unfair, I thought. In fact, we have this long-held assumption that good weather and economic success are mutually exclusive. When I returned to Portugal, my sense of misery was confirmed: September started with three rainy days. Through the windows I stared, hopelessly disgruntled, at the green slopes of Minho, then coated in a cold mist. Such a startling and unexpected sense of irishness (except for the economic recovery)!... The impression was everywhere the same: the summer is over, people thought; if we’re lucky we may get a nice Indian summer (we call it St. Martins summer) around November, but that’s rather unlikely: Frau Merkel, as part of her punishment of the lazy southerners, won’t certainly allow it.

And suddenly, there comes the heat. Uninterruptedly. From then until now temperatures have risen, and with them wild fires proliferating and the beaches showing themselves in their full glory again, filled with people and journalists. Yes, journalists: every single piece of news on TV starts with a journalist interviewing somebody on the beach, these days. I guess that’s a habit we got from our historical friends, the British: the weather is certainly a widespread topic of verbal intercourse, here (I wouldn’t call it conversation, really…). We just take it a little further, by making it breaking news. Quite unlike the Brits, however, with their monotonous rain, we do have plenty of reasons to talk about the weather. We’re very concerned, indeed. The most pessimistic look worriedly at the Sahara, fearing it will engulf us; in a fortnight, and with the first chills of winter, they will probably do the same with the Arctic. The most optimistic wonder if we will ride camels, or if codfish will decide to make its abode along our coast. In the meanwhile, and whatever comes, I shall enjoy the 35 degrees Celsius forecast for today.

Welcome

            This is a blog about life in Portugal. I decided to create it for two main reasons. The first one is quite obvious: I’m writing it merely for the sake of writing in English. The second one is rather more complex: I can say that the last definitive impulse to start with this blog came from this unusual spotlight under which my little country, otherwise nearly forgotten, has lately been. It is truly ironic that this small stretch of land that once pioneered the globalization is now, and only now, suffering the full consequences of it...

          To speak of Portugal nowadays is to speak of debt, crisis, disillusionment and European distress. Alongside with Greece, we are everywhere a byword for economic failure. Truly, things are different, in reality. Life is always more complex than a simple label might convey. I hope to show some of that complexity; I want to show how it is to live in Portugal, from an insider’s perspective. That is the starting point... Then (let me apply a common Portuguese truism here) we’ll see.