11 Reasons you shouldn’t move to Portugal:

10 min readSep 4, 2022

I have owned a house in Portugal since 2018. I spend summers there and have been thinking I’d eventually retire. Americans are bum-rushing the Lisbon airport, many of them having NEVER stepped foot in the country before. Let’s not even talk about the fact that they don’t know the language. I think too many Americans are moving over. We’ve done a VERY bad job of keeping Portugal a secret, and it’s starting to really piss off the locals. You’ll see your fellow Americans taking pics of all of their luggage, in the airport while they loudly talk about how “cheap” it is, in front of the people they are displacing.

Sure, Portugal is great, but should you rush out and move there? Maybe not. At the least, get some perspective on the downsides. Perhaps this article will discourage some people from moving.

Here are my reasons why you should NOT move to Portugal:

1) The first and most important reason is that THEY DON’T WANT YOU THERE. I’m not joking. When I first came here the Portuguese people were almost in awe of Americans. It was like we were all movie stars. They’d say things to me like: “Do you know Tom Cruise?” (I don’t.) But anti-American sentiment is growing faster than you can say: “McDonald’s has a gluten-free menu in Portugal, why can’t they do that here?” I guess having to get a roomate at the age of 45 because Americans are buying up all the real estate stock is less fun than it sounds. Click on the last word for the beginning of the end. Sure, it’s not terrible now. They are still largely welcoming us, but what will it be like in 4 years?

2) They don’t have good tacos….anywhere. It sucks. I tried to order a chicken fajita this summer, and some “Mexican arroz,” (rice.) The “fajita” was a burned flour tortilla covered with smashed up avocado, some lettuce, some bad chicken pieces and a chunky white substance that I assumed was a crema of some sort. Nope. Not crema. MAYONNAISE. Fucking gross. The Mexican rice was edible but had a banana on it. A BANANA!! Of course we need to embrance the new country, etc, blah, blah, blah. But, sometimes you want a margarita with some chips and salsa. You ain’t gettin’ it. Same goes for maple syrup on your waffles. Get ready for Nutella for the rest of your life. Maybe you don’t care because you are ready to become Portuguese in every way? Ok! (Yes, I’m sure that some of you will find these items SOMEWHERE, but it’s a big change.) You know who has GREAT tacos? Mexico! If you can avoid getting murdered by a big drug cartel guy, they would LIKE to have you!

3) Bureaucracy- This is a massive problem. It’s really hard to get shit done. Not only is there bureaucracy, but there’s a sense of: “We don’t do things this way,” that can be annoying to Americans. It’s very different than our “constant-innovation that has to happen or they let us die on the side of the road” attitude. I am a little used to this because I’m from New Orleans. We have a lot of this in my hometown, too. So, like a “Hey, we’ve never done that before and don’t want to NOW!” Here’s an example: In the town I stay in, there was an empty pool. The British ex-pats thought it’d be cool to fill it for swimming. The locals did NOT think it would be cool. They went on and on about how it was used for irrigation and was NOT a pool! (I mean, what do I know but it looked exactly like a swimming pool? It wasn’t being used…) So, the eager Brit went to a ton of trouble to get it up and running. Once up and running, it was then used by the locals and ex-pats. Victory, right? No. Then the Brit wanted to put picnic tables out there to sit. Another huge argument ensued. Votes on where to put the tables, etc. Brit put the tables out by the pool so that you weren’t just sitting on the ground. Locals moved said tables out to the lot next door. So, you are back to sitting on the ground by the pool. Brit got frustrated and quit handling the pool. Flash forward to the next summer: pool stayed empty until another eager Brit decided to fill it. Locals used it.

4) It’s on FIRE!!- Literally. I was there this summer and, on any given day, there might be 20 wildfires. I’m not exaggerating. One fire started less than 1/2 mile from my village. Our house is on a river, BUT there’s only one way up and down the mountain. I’m a hurricane Katrina victim so natural disasters hit me in the squishy spots. I was terrified to get stuck in a fire. Adding to my terror was the fact that, in 2017, 66 people died in our area trying to drive away from the forest. They got stuck on the road. Portugal grows a LOT of eucalyptus. It’s used for paper production. It grows quickly, hence the attraction. Know what else it does quickly? Burn. It’s full of, wait for it……..eucalyptus oil. That makes it highly flammable. So fires start fast and spread fast and are SCARY. My sweet neighbors all told me not to worry, that I could just jump in the river to survive. When I asked about smoke, they said it was no problem! “Just take your shirt off and cover your face to breathe.” Hey, I can agree that this might keep you alive, but it doesn’t sound like fun to me at all. The river is about 60 degrees. I have 3 kids. Sitting in a freezing river with my kids, topless, sounded horrible. So, I went to the beach. I had that option because I am American and had more money than my neighbors. They don’t have that option or desire, (I did invite one of them whom I thought might get stuck.) I spent my summer running from constant fires. The beaches don’t really burn and there was less smoke so it worked out. But, I spent a lot more money than I’d planned. It’s made me think that we should live at the beach, at least until that big glacier melts and floods us all…

The point is, Portugal is NOT a climate-change friendly destination. These fires will not be going away any time soon. Maybe try Bosnia?

5) There is no water!!!- You know how all of the Californians are rushing to Portugal? (Well, they are.) Part of that is because California has no water. Well, Portugal is also without a stable water supply. Do you think that they want YOU using it all for your long-ass showers? The municipalities are starting to discuss limiting water to certain hours and limiting showers. That WILL affect you. Out of the frying pan and into the fire…

6) They speak Portuguese and you don’t- seriously. They speak Portuguese. Sure, lots of them speak English but you will NEVER know what they are saying about you behind your back if you don’t learn and it’s HARD. It’s a challenging language for us. It’s nothing like our Anglo-Saxon language. It’s like if French and Spanish had a baby that said: “Shh” or “Jzzh” all the time. When I first started visiting there in 2017, I couldn’t understand a word that they said. There are less consonants, so I couldn’t tell where words started or ended. Why are you moving to a country where you don’t know the language? When I first got to Portugal I thought all of my neighbors were so nice. I mean, they WERE. But what I thought was them being so sweet, I now know was them nodding their heads, smiling and speaking to me saying things like: “Hahaha, we have NO idea what you are saying!! Yep, still no clue! Hey, she’s American! Any idea what she’s saying??” They were basically making fun of me. Do I care? Not really, but it’s not what I thought was going on. Now that I speak some Portuguese, they constantly correct my pronunciation. They are trying to be nice, and I get it, but it gets embarrassing and frustrating. At one point, a bunch of them got together to decide that they would no longer speak any English to me so that it would force me to learn the language. (I am taking lessons.) The language is going to be an issue.

7) There are different prices for foreigners than for locals- this happens a lot. In my experience, it doesn’t matter if they are someone whom you consider to be a friend. There will be nothing you can do about it except to be frustrated that you are being charged way more than locals. They don’t care. The Portuguese people think you are rich. I mean, compared to them, you are. But does that mean that you want to pay double the price for a car, or a plumber, or a nanny? This has happened to me more times than I can count where I feel like something isn’t right in the pricing. I’ll give a few of the most egregious examples:

a) A few summers ago I asked a lady whom I knew from my town to babysit my children. She wanted to charge me 20 euro an hour. Doesn’t sound too bad, right? I’m used to paying $15/hr for my babysitter. Is that a bargain in the states? Maybe, but I only make $17/hr so it’s hard to pay that. So, the Portuguese lady says 20 euro. Let’s do the comparison: at that time the minimum wage was about 600 euro. That’s for a MONTH. It’s now a bit higher but that was the wage at the time. We can all agree that’s too little but that’s what it was. The euro at that time was at $1.20. So she was really asking me to pay her $24/hr. So, at that time, the minimum hourly wage was 3.75 euro. So, $4.50 in dollars. So, I was being asked to pay 5.3 times the minimum wage. It’s like if an American asked you to pay $38.42 an hour to babysit your kid. Did I pay her? I did! Was it “cheap”? Nope. Would she have charged a Portuguese the same price? No.

b) When I first bought in Portugal my attorney offered to pay my bills, out of my account, for 30 euro an hour. This seemed reasonable to me and I liked the idea that nothing would fall through the cracks, like taxes. Last year, I started receiving huge bills from the firm. When I asked about it, I was treated poorly. Only when I threated to take my business elsewhere did they tell me that they’d made a mistake and were “accidentally” charging me 150 euro an hour to pay my bills. Was it an accident? Who knows. But it’s a big mistake.

c) Just this summer, I planned an event in Portugal. The hotel made me wire money to hold the rooms, (I’d never heard of this.) I did, but we agreed that if I had cancellations with sufficient notice, I’d be reimbursed. I was told I’d be reimbursed upon check-out. The hotel ended up owing me about 1600 euro. They did not pay me at check-out. Then, they proceeded to tell me 8 documented lies about WHY they couldn’t pay me. One of which is that they HAD to pay my Portuguese account, (despite the $ coming from an American account.) They insisted that I drive to Coimbra to get physical paperwork. That involved me driving through terrible smoke that day because of a local forest fire. Ultimately, they paid me, over 2 months later. (They reimbursed the American account, by the way.)

Now, maybe you are Richie Rich and you just LOVE overpaying for your goods and services! Great. Do you also love never knowing WHAT you should pay or what the real price actually IS? This is a huge deal if you plan on doing any business in Portugal. Not knowing Portuguese, obviously, makes this much harder.

8) No sidewalks- living in Portugal is much safer in that you are less likely to get shot in the head at your local Kroger. However, sending your kids to walk around isn’t exactly safe. Cars speed and there are typically no sidewalks or very tiny sidewalks. Europe!

9) They generally treat animals differently than we do. This is very frustrating to Americans who like puppies and kitties. There is a fair amount of animal abuse and neglect. Be prepared to see that. People might leave their animals out all day, or not feed them, etc. Are there agencies you can call? Yes, but animal welfare is lower on the list of priorities. Portugal is a very poor country. Poverty begets other problems.

10) “They are so polite” Know why?-because they had a dictator!!!- The Portuguese people are well-known for being polite. This is true. They can be shy, quiet, and reserved too. Wanna know why? They had a dictator up until 1970, (look it up!) Speaking up wasn’t rewarded and sometimes it landed you in their concentration camps. So, it’s not necessarily that they just like you so much. They have been conditioned to not speak up or fight. They’ll talk about what an asshole you are when they get home, or maybe in front of you if they know you don’t speak Portuguese.

11) The golden visa sucks now. It used to be great but now they’ve taken away buying in Lisbon or Porto, and on the coasts. I mean, I get it. We are all trying to escape the USA. But is it really worth paying 500,000 euro for a house in the interior of Portugal? Not if you like to get returns on your investments, it isn’t. You will also very likely be in an area that puts you in the path of fire, so be ready for that. Greece has a real estate investment GV for 250,000 euro, plus baklava! Maybe consider that place?

So, there it is! My 11 reasons not to move to Portugal! The fire/water/them hating us seem like good enough reasons. I love Portugal, myself. But I think that Americans moving there, sight unseen, and expecting everyone to speak English to them is a disaster waiting to happen. I think Americans moving in droves from San Fransisco because it’s “just so CHEAP” is a disaster. The red carpet is being quickly rolled up by the Portuguese people. Yes, publications like “International Living” are trying to get you to move to Portugal. Know why? Because they can SELL things associated with you moving: deals on a condo in the Algarve, workshops telling you HOW to move, etc. Know what you are getting into before you go. Visit, learn the language, and realize that you are an immigrant in their country. Also, pack a bottle of maple syrup.

11 Reasons you shouldn’t move to Portugal:

Written by Yvonne Landry