Portugal’s biggest downsides aren’t the cold ocean or the pickpockets on the 28 tram. They’re an immigration system that can leave you waiting years for a residence card, laws that change while you’re halfway through them, houses that are colder inside than out, local wages that don’t match local rents, and how long it takes to make real friends here.
Nineteen downsides in total. Eleven are serious enough that I’ve watched people leave over them. Eight are the daily irritations you’ll either learn to live with or won’t. I still live here, and I’d still move here. But Portugal isn’t for everyone, and I’d rather you found that out from this page than from your second winter.
Where Do You Want to Start?
📖
The full list
Why this page exists, then all 19 downsides in order of how much they matter.
⚠️
Just show me the serious ones
The 11 downsides that decide whether Portugal works for you at all.
📊
Just show me the summary table
Every downside, who it hits hardest, and whether you can fix it.
Why this list exists
The Honest Version, Not the Brochure
Let me be fair to Portugal first, because the reasons people come here are real.
A lot of the people reading this are leaving somewhere. Some are leaving parts of the US where rent eats half their income, a single bag of groceries costs $70, and parents worry about school shootings. That doesn’t happen here. Portugal is one of the safest countries in the world, placing 7th in the 2025 Global Peace Index. You can live near the Algarve‘s beaches for less than you’d pay to live near almost any beach in the US. And you can actually get in: the D7, the digital nomad visa and the D2 make residency in an EU country realistic for ordinary people, not just the wealthy.
That’s the part everyone sells. I’m not going to balance it out here.
I first wrote this page in 2019 back when “downsides of living in Portugal” was a strange thing for a Portugal website to publish. Since then, dozens of relocation companies, law firms and blogs have written their own version. Most of them look the same, and most of them pad the list with problems that aren’t really problems so they can get back to selling you the move.
✓ The real reasons people come
- Safety, and no worrying about school shootings
- Beaches you can afford to live near
- Visas that ordinary people can actually get
✗ The filler cons you’ll see elsewhere
- The Atlantic is cold.
- There are pickpockets on the 28 tram, which you’ll ride once.
- The wine is so good you’ll never get anything done.
None of those is why anyone leaves.
💡
Why I’d tell you this
I’ve run Portugalist since 2016. In that time I’ve watched a lot of people move here, and a fair number move back. Some left frustrated. Some left angry, because they felt they’d been mis-sold something by people who had a commission riding on their decision. These are the things I’d tell a friend.
The summary
Portugal’s Downsides at a Glance
Click any downside to jump to it.
| Downside | Who it hits hardest | Can you fix it? |
|---|---|---|
| AIMA and residency delays | Non-EU residents, especially Golden Visa investors and anyone renewing | No — you can only plan around it |
| Laws that change mid-journey | Anyone counting on citizenship, tax breaks or a rental license | No |
| Needing a lawyer for everything | Anyone dealing with the state, a landlord or a builder | Partly — with money |
| Cold, damp, badly insulated homes | Renters, and anyone in an older building | Yes, if you buy and renovate |
| Making friends | Singles, remote workers, people without kids in school | Slowly, with fluent Portuguese |
| Local wages | Anyone who might need a Portuguese salary | Only by bringing your income with you |
| Taxes | Higher earners, US retirees on Social Security | Partly — regional and special regimes |
| Rents, house prices and groceries | Everyone in Lisbon, Porto and the Algarve | Partly — by living further out |
| Healthcare waits and insurance costs | Retirees, the Lisbon region | Partly — insurance or a savings fund |
| The language | Anyone who wants to integrate | Yes, with enough hours |
| Being an immigrant | Non-white and Brazilian residents most | No |
| Weather outside the Algarve | Anyone north of Lisbon or inland | Yes — by choosing where you live |
| Noise | Apartment dwellers, rural residents | Partly |
| Renting and customer service | Renters, anyone with a broken appliance | Partly |
| Overtourism | Lisbon, Porto and Algarve residents | By living elsewhere |
| Driving | Everyone | No |
| Sexism and work culture | Women, local employees | No |
| Deliveries and customs | Online shoppers, rural residents | Partly |
| Dog poop | Everyone | Watch your step |
Part 1
The Serious Ones
These are the downsides that change whether Portugal works for you at all.
The serious ones · #1
AIMA: Waiting Years for a Residence Card
The court backlog
133,429 cases against AIMA were pending in the Lisbon Administrative Court in October 2025. About 89,000 were still pending in September 2026.
Everyone warns you about “the bureaucracy.” Most of them mean long lines and too many photocopies. That’s not what I mean.
I mean people waiting six months, a year, two years and sometimes longer for a residence permit they were legally entitled to. I mean Golden Visa investors who put €500,000 into the country and then spent months unsure whether they could leave Portugal to visit a sick parent and get back in. When SEF was replaced by AIMA in 2023, the new agency inherited a backlog of hundreds of thousands of cases, and it has been digging out ever since.
The clearest measure of how bad it got is the court record. When AIMA doesn’t answer, the only real lever is to sue it. By October 2025, the Lisbon Administrative Court had 133,429 pending cases against AIMA, with around 500 new ones arriving every day. A task force of judges has since brought that down to about 89,000 as of September 18, 2026. That’s progress. It’s also 89,000 people who had to take their own immigration agency to court.
Golden Visa investors had it worst, and that was a choice. In October 2025, the minister responsible told parliament that investor files had been left until last, for reasons of “social equity.” I understand the politics. But if you were one of those investors, it meant years in limbo — and, as the next section explains, it also cost many of them their route to citizenship.
⏳
It isn’t only first-time applicants
Right now, the complaint I hear most is about renewals. Many people who qualify for permanent residency, which would give them far more freedom to spend time outside Portugal, can’t get an appointment for it. So they renew their temporary permit instead, and stay tied to its rules on time spent abroad. EU citizens are largely insulated from all of this, though not always.
And then there’s the inconsistency. Different offices ask for different documents. The same office asks for different documents on different days. It’s very much “computer says no” — until, occasionally, it isn’t. Charm the right person, turn up with a small child, get someone to take pity on you, and something that was impossible at 10am gets done by 10:15. That’s not a system you can plan around.
We have been waiting for an appointment for more than 8 months and all the time get told there are no appointments available. This means that our ID is now out of date… we are nervous to fly anywhere or leave Portugal unless it’s by land.
Rowena, a Portugalist reader, writing when AIMA was still SEF
If you do move, assume every timeline you’re quoted is optimistic, and read up before your appointment:
📄
What to bring to AIMA
The documents AIMA asks for, and the ones that trip people up.
🔁
Your renewal appointment
What actually happens when you renew your residence permit.
The serious ones · #2
The Rules Change Underneath You
Portugal changes important laws often, and not always with warning.
Changes that came with a runway
Some changes come with a runway. The end of the Golden Visa real estate route and the end of the NHR tax regime both came with a transition period — confusing, rushed, but survivable.
Short-term rental (alojamento local) rules have been rewritten repeatedly since 2023, which is a problem if your retirement plan was an Airbnb.
Then there’s citizenship
For years, you could apply for Portuguese nationality after five years of legal residence. Plenty of people chose Portugal over Spain for exactly that reason.
The new nationality law (Lei Orgânica 1/2026), in force since May 19, 2026, raised it to ten years for most nationalities, including Americans, Britons and Canadians. Seven for EU and Portuguese-speaking countries.
The Realistic Route to a Portuguese Passport Now
Apply for residency
Your visa, then your first residence permit with AIMA.
Wait for your card
The clock now starts when your residence card is issued, not when you applied.
Ten years of residence
Seven for EU and Portuguese-speaking countries.
Three to four years of processing
The current wait once you apply for citizenship.
Worse, the clock now starts when your residence card is issued, not when you applied. Combine that with section one. Someone who applied for a Golden Visa in 2021, waited three years for AIMA, and was a few months from the old five-year mark is now looking at roughly a decade from the day the card finally arrived. The only people protected are those who had already filed a citizenship application by May 18, 2026.
And applying is only the start. Right now, citizenship applications are taking around three to four years to process. So the realistic route to a Portuguese passport is ten years of residence and then another three or four of waiting. Permanent residency would give you more flexibility to spend time outside the country in the meantime, but, as I said above, a lot of people struggle to get an appointment for it, and many lawyers advise clients to keep living in Portugal while a citizenship application is pending. You have to really want to live here.
⚠️
Why people call it a rug pull
People will tell you citizenship was never guaranteed, and technically they’re right. But the government spent a decade marketing the Golden Visa partly on that five-year route, took the money, delayed the cards, and then moved the finish line without grandfathering anyone who was mid-journey. In June 2026, nine Portuguese law firms filed a complaint with the Ombudsman on behalf of 1,260 Golden Visa clients. A lot of people call it a rug pull. I can see why.
The lesson isn’t that Portugal is uniquely untrustworthy. It’s that you shouldn’t build a plan that only works if today’s rules still apply in five years.
The serious ones · #3
You’ll Need a Lawyer for Things That Shouldn’t Need One
In the US, the UK or Canada, most people file their own taxes, rent an apartment, get their deposit back and deal with the government without ever hiring a lawyer. Here, you’ll probably need one for at least some of those.
⚖️
Sometimes it’s the only way anything moves
Filing a formal complaint, or suing AIMA to force an appointment, is not a fringe tactic in Portugal. For a lot of people, it’s the process.
💸
Good help is expensive, and makes mistakes
Lawyers and accountants are expensive, and they make mistakes, so check their work (which is good practice anywhere, but more so here).
👻
Professionals who simply disappear
Lawyers, builders and contractors also have a habit of simply disappearing. Sometimes they’ve gone out of business. Sometimes they don’t have a good answer for you, so they stop answering.
I’ve had it happen more than once, and it’s one of the most common complaints in my inbox.
In all the countries I’ve lived in, I never needed a lawyer to sort my usually regular stuff like taxes, properties, banks. In Portugal, even if I can’t really afford it, I had to hire them.
KC, a Portugalist reader
And good professional help is its own problem. Budget for professional help as a real line item, not an emergency fund.
The serious ones · #4
Many Houses Are Cold, Damp and Badly Insulated
This is the one that surprises people most, and it’s the one I’d have ranked first if the immigration system worked.
I once spent a winter day in an apartment in Lagos. Outside, it was sunny and 66°F (19°C). Inside, I was sitting in a jacket, gloves and a hat, wearing two pairs of socks. The building was shaded by the ones around it, had no insulation and no central heating — which, for that part of the Algarve, is completely normal. At least in Lagos I could step outside into the sunshine to warm up. In Porto or Braga in January, you don’t have that option.
A lot of Portuguese homes were built for the summer and built cheaply. No insulation, single glazing, no central heating, and electricity that’s expensive enough to make running space heaters all day painful. Damp and black mold are common. Whether a place is livable in winter often comes down to one thing: does it get direct sun? Two identical apartments in the same building can feel like different climates.
Before you sign
What makes the difference in winter
✔ Direct sun during the day
✔ Renovated or new build
✔ Insulation and double glazing
✔ Some form of heating
✖ Shaded by other buildings
✖ Single glazing
✖ No heating at all
✖ Signs of damp or mold
💡
In fairness, this is changing
What’s on the market now is very different from what was on the market ten years ago. A lot of older stock has been renovated, some of it to a high standard, and there are many more new builds. They’re not perfect — I’ve been surprised by how poor the sound insulation is in some of them — but most do solve the cold.
If You Own the Property, You Can Fix It
If you rent, you’re mostly stuck with what you’ve got. More on surviving winter in a Portuguese house.
The serious ones · #5
Making Friends Takes Years
Portugal is an easy place to talk to people. So many people speak English, and they’re friendly and polite. That makes it easy to mistake conversation for connection.
Actual friendship is much slower. Portuguese social life revolves around family and friends from school, and those circles don’t open up easily — even Portuguese people who move from one city to another struggle. I’ve found integration hard in other European countries too, but I think Portugal is especially hard. The result is that many foreigners end up in a bubble of other foreigners, often without meaning to. That can get lonely.
💬
Dating runs into the same wall
There’s less of a dating culture in the American sense and more meeting people through friends and family, which doesn’t help if you don’t have either yet. In Lisbon, the international scene is transient: people arrive, date for six months, and leave.
What Makes It Easier
🗣️
Fluent Portuguese
It gets easier with fluent Portuguese.
🏫
Kids in a local school
School gates are where a lot of friendships start.
💼
A Portuguese workplace
A job in a Portuguese workplace.
⚽
A weekly activity, for years
A regular activity you turn up to every week for years.
Plan for it to take that long.
The serious ones · #6
You Can Get a Local Job, but Not a Local Lifestyle on It
Minimum wage in 2026
€920 (about $1,030) a month, before tax.
Let’s be honest about this one. You can move here from the US or the UK and get a local job. The question is whether you’d want to live on what it pays.
The minimum wage is €920 a month in 2026, before tax, and a lot of jobs open to English speakers — tourism, call centers, English teaching — pay close to it. People talk about living on that as if it’s a lifestyle choice. The people who actually live on it in Portugal mostly aren’t living well.
28.9
The average age young Portuguese leave their parents’ home, according to Eurostat figures reported by idealista. Many people on low wages are still living with their parents.
About 26
The EU average (Eurostat, 2024 data). Many industries also run on who you know, which doesn’t help if you don’t know anyone yet.
So most people here depend on income they bring with them: a pension, remote work, clients abroad or a business. That works until it doesn’t. Remote jobs get cut, clients leave, and working across time zones wears people down. The safety net of “I can always get a job locally” isn’t really there.
🌍
It depends where you’re coming from
If you’re coming from India, Brazil or much of the world, the calculation can be the other way around, and Portugal can be a real step up. More on working remotely from Portugal.
The serious ones · #7
Nordic-Style Tax Rates Without Nordic-Style Services
A common line among Portuguese people is that they pay Scandinavian taxes and get southern European services. I wanted to know if that’s true, so I checked.
Short answer
It’s half true. Overall, Portugal collects less than the Nordics. But income tax bites hard at incomes that would be considered modest in Scandinavia.
| Country | Tax as a share of GDP (2024) |
|---|---|
| Sweden | 42.5% |
| Finland | 42.3% |
| Norway | 40.4% |
| Portugal | 37.1% |
Source: Eurostat.
The top rate of 48% kicks in at €86,634 of taxable income in 2026, plus a solidarity surcharge of 2.5% above €80,000. Salaries are much lower here, so that burden feels heavier, and it’s hard to argue the waiting lists, the court backlog and AIMA represent good value for it.
The serious ones · #8
It Isn’t Cheap Anymore (Depending on Where You’re Coming From)
This didn’t used to be a downside. Now it is — for some people. Here’s what a one-bedroom apartment costs to rent, using median asking rents:
| Place | One-bedroom rent (per month) |
|---|---|
| Lisbon (city) | €1,409 |
| Faro district (Algarve) | €1,171 |
| Porto (city) | €1,003 |
| New York | $4,500 |
| San Francisco | $4,300 |
| Honolulu | $2,290 |
| San Diego | $2,200 |
| Los Angeles | $2,170 |
| US national median | $1,515 |
| Columbus, Ohio | $1,190 |
| Kansas City | $1,160 |
| Oklahoma City | $900 |
Portugal: idealista, April–June 2026. US: Zumper, August 2026.
✓ You’ll get more for your money if you’re coming from…
- New York
- California
- Hawaii
✗ You probably won’t if you’re coming from…
- Ohio or Oklahoma — and you’ll be giving up a lot for it
Measured against local wages, it’s worse: a May 2026 ETUC analysis found Lisbon was one of the EU capitals where average rent is higher than the minimum wage. And plenty of places at these prices are still cold, damp and noisy. What you’re paying for is the lifestyle around the property, not the property.
🛒
Groceries have gone the same way
Supermarket prices now feel similar to the UK’s, and sometimes higher. Fruit and vegetables have also gotten worse: more is imported than used to be, and the local produce that made Portuguese markets special is harder to find in the supermarket. Electricity, fuel, cars, toiletries, and electronics were already expensive.
The fairest way to put it
Portugal is cheap for the lifestyle you get. You can’t live somewhere with this weather, near the ocean, on this budget in California. But California also has San Diego, Los Angeles and the jobs that come with them, and Portugal doesn’t.
See our cost of living breakdown for current figures.
The serious ones · #9
Healthcare: Long Public Waits, and the Cost of Going Private
The good
Let me start with the good. I’ve seen family members go through the public health system (SNS) and get excellent treatment. I’ve been through the emergency room myself and was well looked after. The hospitals can be dated and the system confusing, but I wouldn’t fault the care.
And having a public safety net is a huge thing. It means you can go freelance or start a business on the D2 or the D8 and still have healthcare. Even on the D7, you get access to the public system without paying a separate contribution—something you don’t get on Spain’s non-lucrative visa, where private insurance is a condition of the visa.
Compared with the US
For most Americans, that’s a big step up from never quite knowing whether you’ll get the treatment you need.
It isn’t black and white, though. If you’re working in the US with excellent employer insurance, your out-of-pocket costs may be more than covered by your higher salary, and you won’t necessarily be better off here.
The real problem: access
In May 2026, 1.67 million SNS users had no family doctor. 1.17 million of them were in the Lisbon and Tejo Valley region.
Access is the real problem. In May 2026, 1.67 million SNS users had no family doctor, and 1.17 million of them were in the Lisbon and Tejo Valley region. Specialist waits can be long, and emergency rooms in the Lisbon area can mean many hours in a waiting room.
What Private Insurance Costs at 40 and at 70
So most people I speak to end up taking out private health insurance as well. You can rely only on the public system, but most foreigners don’t, and that’s a cost you have to budget for. In your 30s, 40s and 50s it isn’t expensive. In your 70s it is, and your options narrow. Most senior plans are expensive or heavily restricted, with low coverage limits. MGEN is often the only realistic choice at that age, because it has no age limit and covers pre-existing conditions. Here’s what it quoted me in September 2026 for one person:
| MGEN plan | Hospital cover | Age 40 (per month) | Age 70 (per month) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base | €30,000 | €19.34 | €72.66 |
| Essencial | €60,000 | €72.90 | €177.20 |
| Ideal | €100,000 | €123.71 | €301.39 |
| Total | €500,000 | €231.95 | €621.88 |
So the same Essencial plan that costs about €875 a year at 40 costs about €2,126 at 70, and a couple would pay double. For a retired couple on a D7-level income, that’s a serious line in the budget.
💡
There’s a middle route
If you’re generally healthy, you can skip insurance, pay the private system out of pocket when you need it, and keep a savings fund for it.
The system is also confusing at first: getting your número de utente, working out where to go for what. I find most doctors speak English. A lot of nurses and reception staff don’t. That’s on you to fix by learning Portuguese, but it makes the first year harder.
🩺
Private medical insurance
Plans, prices and what to check before you buy.
The serious ones · #10
The Language Is Harder Than Spanish, and Most People Don’t Put in the Hours
I think Spanish, French and Italian are easier to learn than European Portuguese, and it mostly comes down to listening. Written Portuguese looks a lot like Spanish. Spoken, the vowels disappear and the words blur together. Older people in the countryside can be very hard to understand, even for people with a good level. There’s also much less to learn from. Portugal is a small country with a small film, TV and music industry, and most of what’s online is Brazilian Portuguese.
⏳
It’s the hours, not the language
But it isn’t so hard that you should only have an A2 level after five or ten years here. That comes down to hours, and a lot of people in the English-speaking bubble never put them in. Because integrating is so hard (see number five), the social payoff also comes slowly, which makes it easy to stop.
The good news is that learning it has gotten much easier. I’ve reviewed most of the European Portuguese courses, and the good ones make a real difference. It’s still a case of putting in the work.
🎧
The courses I’ve reviewed
Which European Portuguese courses are worth paying for.
The serious ones · #11
You’ll Be an Immigrant, and Attitudes Are Shifting
Years ago, people used to describe Portugal as a kind of utopia where there was no racism. That was never true. Brazilians and people from Portugal’s former African colonies have long faced prejudice here. I’ve had a lot of Brazilian friends, and I’ve always heard comments about Brazilians that wouldn’t be considered acceptable in many other countries.
To be fair, Portugal isn’t unusual in this. I grew up in Ireland as more and more people started arriving from Poland, Eastern Europe and African countries, and I heard plenty of the same kind of thing there.
What has changed
Those views now have a party to vote for. Chega won 60 seats and 22.8% of the vote in May 2025.
What has changed is that those views now have a party to vote for, and they’re said more openly. Chega, the anti-immigration party founded in 2019, won 60 seats and 22.8% of the vote in May 2025, becoming the second-largest party in parliament. In 2024 it was the most voted party in the Faro district — the Algarve, where many foreigners live. It’s now normal to hear foreigners blamed for rents, and neighborhoods described as “no longer Portuguese.”
⚖️
Keeping it in proportion
I want to keep this in proportion. Most people moving from the US, UK or Canada won’t experience hostility on a day-to-day basis, and the same shift is happening almost everywhere: Reform UK, the National Rally in France, the AfD in Germany, and of course the US itself. But you will be an immigrant here, and the political mood toward immigrants has changed. If you’re Black, Brazilian or South Asian, your experience is likely to be different from that of a white American retiree.
As a white American it doesn’t appear racist here… but I know from Brazilians there is racism here.
Brian, a Portugalist reader
Part 2
The Daily Irritations
None of these alone is a reason not to move. Together, they’re the texture of daily life.
The daily irritations · #12
The Weather Is Only Great in Some Places
The weather is good overall. But “great year-round weather” usually means the Algarve, and maybe Madeira. The rest of the country is more complicated.
🌧️
The north
The north has long, wet, gray winters. Porto gets more rain in a year than Seattle does.
Personally, I’d happily live in Porto: cozy winters indoors, then warm summers. But that’s a different proposition from the one on the brochure.
☀️
The Algarve
The Algarve’s mild winters are wonderful and make up for the hot summers, but the summers are getting hotter.
🔥
Inland
Inland, parts of the Alentejo regularly pass 104°F (40°C). And summer now means wildfire season.
The 2017 Pedrógão Grande fire killed 66 people, and big fires return most summers.
⚠️
Buying in the countryside?
Look at the tree cover around the house before you look at the kitchen.
Choose where you live with the whole year in mind, not the week you visited. Here’s how the regions compare in our guide to the best places to live in Portugal.
The daily irritations · #13
Noise Travels
The same lack of insulation that makes homes cold makes them loud.
💡
In fairness
Street noise in Lisbon’s nightlife areas — Santos, Cais do Sodré, Bairro Alto — is what you’d get living above the Grassmarket in Edinburgh or in any big city’s bar district. I’d no more live above a bar there than here. See our list of Lisbon’s noisiest neighborhoods before signing anything.
The daily irritations · #14
Renting, Customer Service, and Nobody Volunteering Bad News
Record complaints
Portal da Queixa, Portugal’s biggest consumer complaints site, logged 238,698 complaints in 2025.
Whether it’s a phone company, an electronics store or a landlord, you’ll often find yourself in a battle of wills to get something fixed. Portugal’s biggest consumer complaints site, Portal da Queixa, logged a record 238,698 complaints in 2025, with Worten, CTT Expresso, MEO and NOS at the top of the list. In practice, a formal complaint is often what finally gets a problem fixed.
Renting Is Where This Hurts Most
✅
There is a plus side
Once you have a proper contract, you’re well protected against rent increases. A few years ago, when renting without a contract was more common, I saw people’s rent double or even triple in a year as landlords found higher-paying tenants, often from the US. More on renting in Portugal.
Getting a Straight Answer
The harder thing to adjust to is getting a straight answer. People here will almost always answer honestly if you ask the right question. They just won’t tell you things up front. And if the news is bad and you’re not standing in front of them, they tend to go quiet. The builder who can’t come doesn’t call to say so. He just doesn’t come. Also expect things to slow down in August and over Christmas, when the one person who can fix your problem is on holiday.
When you do complain, there is more often than not a lengthy explanation about how it is not their fault but everyone else’s.
Ava, a Portugalist reader
The daily irritations · #15
Overtourism Has Changed Lisbon, and Not Only Lisbon
Tourism brought Airbnbs, but the effects go deeper. The center of Lisbon has changed almost completely. When I lived there, I used to have the main meal of the day at a tasca for about €7, including dessert and coffee. Those days are long gone, and so are many of the tascas and family businesses, replaced by brunch spots and cafés you could find in any city in the world. There are still plenty of Portuguese businesses, but you have to look harder for them, and the economy leans heavily on tourism.
It’s the same in Porto and the Algarve, and increasingly in smaller cities like Coimbra. Praia da Marinha regularly appears on “world’s best beaches” lists, and in summer you can’t get near it for parking. Whenever you find somewhere good, there’s a decent chance it’ll end up on Instagram or YouTube and be mobbed the next year.
Even the smaller cities outside of Lisboa feature the ubiquitous ‘Instagram tourist spots.’
Mike, a Portugalist reader
🌍
None of this is unique to Portugal
Vigo, just over the border in Spain, has the same problem. When I lived in Edinburgh, the tiny streets around the castle were permanently crowded, and the Fringe made every August a nightmare. Living near Times Square or in the trendy parts of Brooklyn can’t be much different. What’s frustrating here is how much of the economy and the policy focus is on tourism. That’s the reality of living in southern Europe.
The daily irritations · #16
The Driving
Portuguese driving is fast, impatient and unpredictable, and the country’s road death rate has long been above the EU average.
🚦
On the road
Nobody indicates, including bus drivers. People tailgate and flash their lights to make you move over on the highway. When it rains, the number of accidents climbs.
🍷
Drunk driving
Drunk driving is more common than you’d expect, especially in rural areas. I’ve known Portuguese friends who’ll drink quite a bit and then drive home “slowly.”
There are police campaigns to clamp down, particularly around Christmas, but they’re announced on the news beforehand, so everyone knows when they’re coming.
🅿️
Parking is its own sport
Cars straddle two or three spaces, park on roundabouts, park on sidewalks and triple-park with their hazard lights on while they “just run in” somewhere, blocking an entire one-way street while everyone behind them leans on the horn.
It’s part of the culture, and you have to accept it, but it comes from a basic lack of consideration that I don’t think is a good thing. I have several near-misses a week.
Bringing a license from home?
Read up on exchanging your driving license early — it’s another process with a backlog.
The daily irritations · #17
Sexism and Workplace Culture
Sexism is still more visible here than many Americans, Britons and Canadians are used to, from casual comments to expectations about who does what at home. Workplace culture can also be hierarchical, with long hours and a reluctance to challenge the boss. This is often why, when you’re on the customer side, the person you’re speaking to doesn’t seem capable of doing anything. Well, they can’t. A lot of employees aren’t given a lot of autonomy or don’t feel that they have that autonomy.
✓ If you’re self-employed or working remotely
- You’ll mostly avoid the office side of this.
✗ If you’re looking for a local job
- You won’t.
The daily irritations · #18
Deliveries, Customs, and Shopping in Person Again
I used to do almost all my shopping on Amazon. In a long work week, that saved me hours. You can shop online here too, but you can rely on it much less, and it depends a lot on where you live.
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Shopping in person again
So you end up doing a lot more shopping in person, which takes much longer. There’s no Walmart where you can find everything in one trip; it’s a few different smaller shops. You adjust, but it eats time.
Ordering from Amazon in Portugal
Our guide explains how to make it hurt less.
The daily irritations · #19
Dog Poop on the Sidewalk
A small one, but it’s daily. Portugal has beautiful tiled sidewalks, and you’ll rarely get to admire them, because you’ll be scanning them for what someone’s dog left behind. It’s worst in parks, which is exactly where you’d like to stop looking at the ground. Portuguese people complain about it too.
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It’s not just Portugal
I’ve watched my step in Edinburgh, in Spain, and in France, where the buildings are beautiful and you can’t look at them either. This is one thing the US gets right: people there are strict about cleaning up after their dogs.
The verdict
So, Should You Still Move to Portugal?
For a lot of people, yes. I did. For all the bad things on this list, Portugal gets you into an EU country, which matters a great deal for Americans and, since Brexit, for Britons too. You can have a very good quality of life here, and outside Lisbon and the Algarve the cost of living is much lower.
But go in knowing that the biggest risks are the ones you can’t control: how long AIMA takes, and whether the rules you moved under still apply by the time they matter to you.
Who stays
The people who stay tend to…
✔ Not need a local job
✔ Not need citizenship on a fixed timeline
✔ Budget for private healthcare and professional help
✔ Visit in winter before committing
✔ Rent before they buy
If You’ve Decided Portugal Is Still Probably Right for You
Visit in winter
Visit in January or February, not just in summer. Here’s how to plan a scouting trip.
Choose the right visa
The D7 for passive income, the digital nomad visa for remote workers, or the D2 if you’re starting a business.
If This List Has Put You Off
That’s a good result too. Compare the alternatives, and read why other people have left:
Common questions
Downsides of Living in Portugal: FAQ
The immigration agency (AIMA) and its backlogs, laws that change mid-journey (especially citizenship), cold and damp housing, how long it takes to make real friends, and local wages that don’t match local rents. The cold Atlantic isn’t one of them. See the serious ones.
Ten years of legal residence for most nationalities, including Americans, Britons and Canadians (seven for EU and Portuguese-speaking countries), counted from when your first residence card is issued. Processing currently takes around three to four more years. See the rules change underneath you.
Cheap for the lifestyle you get, but not cheap in absolute terms anymore. A one-bedroom in Lisbon rents for a median of €1,409 a month. That’s far less than New York or San Francisco, but more than much of the US Midwest. See it isn’t cheap anymore.
You don’t have to have it, but most foreigners take it out because of public waiting lists and the shortage of family doctors. It’s inexpensive in your 30s to 50s and much more expensive in your 70s. See healthcare.
Talking to people is easy. Real friendship takes years, because Portuguese social life revolves around family and friends from school. Fluent Portuguese, kids in a local school or a regular weekly activity all help. See making friends.
Yes. For all the downsides, it gets you into an EU country and a very good quality of life. But go in knowing the biggest risks are the ones you can’t control. See should you still move.
Thinking about Moving to Portugal?