25/05/2026
Two weeks ago, I watched Lisbon break my client's heart a little.
Skye had visited the capital more than twenty years ago. What had stayed with her was the architecture, the quietness, that "old world vibe." We spent a day and a half crossing some of the city's most beautiful neighbourhoods, and the whole time Portuguese was just a murmur under a roar of foreign languages and selfie sticks.
I went back last weekend with my daughter for our first girls' weekend. Shopping, terrible decisions at the pastry counter, and international food (what is up with Japanese restaurants on every street corner?). She was buzzing with the city's energy, which is real and infectious.
But something was nagging at me.
When I first visited Portugal over a decade ago, Porto stole my heart immediately and still has it. But Lisbon had this quality I adored: a capital that felt like a village. Quiet energy. A city that had not yet decided to perform for anyone.
Unfortunately, that is no longer the case.
I have been an expat for over twenty years. London, Beijing, Switzerland, Morocco, and now Portugal.
Long enough to know that the idea of "integrating" into a culture so radically different from your own is more complicated than a language class and a loyalty card at the local supermarket.
But also long enough to watch what happens when a community of newcomers stops trying.
Walking through Lisbon, I started thinking about the unspoken contract of immigration.
As someone who analyses property markets for a living, I looked at the numbers first. Foreign transactions represent roughly ten percent of purchases nationally, rising to around thirty-five percent in Lisbon, Porto, and the Algarve. Significant in concentrated pockets, certainly, but not enough on its own to explain the transformation I was witnessing.
Which tells you something important: the shift is not purely transactional. There is something more insidious at work than volume alone.
We leave our countries because something is not working for us. And then, consciously or not, we start recreating exactly what we left behind. I do not want to find a coffee shop in Lisbon offering milk in four varieties with a hundred syrup options. If I want that, I know exactly which city to fly to. And yet, here we are. Is this good commercial sense or simply nonsense?
I want to be careful because this is not exclusively an American phenomenon. I once overheard a French couple in Olhão complaining that the menus were not available in French and that there was not enough French food in town. The lack of self-awareness was genuinely breathtaking. Truly, a masterclass. (No need to tell you what my brain was screaming.)
The frustration I hear most from the Portuguese is that foreigners do not bother to learn the language. That matters. But I think the deeper issue is not fluency. It is alignment. Understanding why you came, what you were actually looking for, and whether your daily choices honour that or quietly erode it.
You do not have to disappear into a culture to respect it. But you do have to show up for it.
I help people make the move to Portugal for a living. I take that responsibility seriously.
And so I come back to this question regularly, not only for my clients but for myself: am I being a good guest?
I do not have a clear answer. But perhaps asking the question is the beginning.
