When Alex Holder arrived in Portugal in 2019, with his companion and his son, then 3 years old, foreigners living in the country were around 450,000. Today, this number has tripled, and they represent more than 15 % of the population. “I came to improve my lifestyle: the sun, beaches and photogenic cafes, confides this Briton in The Guardian On his life as a digital nomadic and that of others. What nobody says explicitly is that we come for tax relief. ”
Introduced in 2009 following the financial crisis, this tax provision enabled thousands of independents and other digital nomads to take advantage of the sweetness of life at low cost. In 2023, “An awareness of the fact that the richest residents are often those who contribute least” pushed the government to remove this exemption which caused more than 1.5 billion euros per year to the public treasury.
For Alex Holder, who occupies, like his foreign neighbors, a very comfortable apartment in the very chic Lapa district, “There are thousands of people who live in Lisbon and earn money from another place. US dollars, British books, Angolan Kwanzas, even euros from places like Amsterdam or Paris, where rates are higher.”
Aware of her privileges, she takes stock of these six years far from London greyness and analyzes that“There are two communities that share the same streets, but certainly not the same coffees. These people who work at a distance and bring money from abroad live between them and create a partitioned economy.”
Part of the problem?
With her companion, she decided to set up an English -speaking bookstore and today employs five employees, two of whom are Portuguese. Gentrification and surcourism in Lisbon are such that the town hall has decided to ban the tuk-tuks, a symbol of a two-speed country, where the Portuguese are starting to have trouble living in the city center. Alex Holder cannot help wondering:
“Who goes to pilates lessons at 35 euros in a country where 60 % of taxpayers earn less than 1,000 euros per month?”
Interrogation that continues when, chatting with one of his neighbors, she tells him “That there is arrogance in the way in which [les expatriés] move in the city ”. The impression of no longer feeling at home could in particular explain the breakthrough of the extreme right in the legislative elections of last May, according to the British.
So much so that Alex holder is thinking of bending baggage with his family, well aware that “The lack of integration, due to the autonomy required by the visa, makes that[elle] it is [doit] not be the only teleworker [se] feel at the drift ”.
