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Manu joined We Hate Tourism a\u00a0decade later, arriving through Lisbon\u2019s skateboarding and street-art scene. He possesses the unnerving ability to answer almost any question about modern Portugal by beginning somewhere entirely different. Ask him about Airbnb and he\u2019ll start with the dictatorship. Ask about house prices and he\u2019ll talk about Angola. Mention digital nomads and, before long, you\u2019re discussing the 1998<\/span> World Expo. Which, according to Manu, was Portugal\u2019s moon landing. \u200b\u201c<\/span>I was 16<\/span>,\u201d he tells me. \u200b\u201c<\/span>I remember thinking: \u200b\u2018<\/span>We\u2019ve made\u00a0it.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n For a\u00a0country that had spent much of the 20<\/span>th<\/sup> century looking inward under Salazar\u2019s dictatorship, Expo \u200b\u2019<\/span>98<\/span> was meant to announce Portugal\u2019s arrival as a\u00a0modern European nation. The derelict eastern docks became the gleaming Parque das Na\u00e7\u00f5es. The metro expanded. New bridges and stations appeared.\u00a0For a\u00a0while it felt as though the future had arrived all at\u00a0once.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The feeling didn\u2019t last. Portugal has a\u00a0habit, Manu says with a\u00a0shrug, of arriving just as the party is ending.<\/span><\/p>\n The 2008<\/span> financial crash hit particularly hard. Portugal needed an international bailout. Public spending collapsed and wages stagnated. And then, in a\u00a0move so unbelievable that I\u00a0<\/span>had to find the tape on YouTube<\/span><\/a>, the Portuguese prime minister, pressed on what young Portuguese should do if there was no work at home, suggested they leave and make use of free movement within the European Union.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Today, a\u00a0country of around 10<\/span> million people has another 2<\/span>.6<\/span> million citizens living abroad. Decades of emigration, much of it by younger, highly educated Portuguese, have altered the country\u2019s demographic and political balance.\u00a0Portugal is older than it might otherwise have been, and the frustrations that remained behind are varied: low wages, expensive housing, weak public services and a\u00a0sense that the country\u2019s brightest prospects are\u00a0elsewhere. Average <\/span>gross monthly pay<\/span><\/a> is roughly \u20ac1<\/span>,550<\/span>\u00a0in Portugal, compared with \u20ac2<\/span>,450<\/span> next door in\u00a0Spain.<\/span><\/p>\n Into that discontent has stepped the far-right party Chega. For decades, Portugal appeared largely immune to the populist right advancing elsewhere in Europe. Then in 2024<\/span>, exactly 50<\/span>\u00a0years after the Carnation Revolution ended the dictatorship, Chega won 50<\/span> seats in parliament. A\u00a0year later <\/span>it won 60<\/span><\/span><\/a>, overtook the Socialists and became the country\u2019s official opposition.<\/span><\/p>\n You see their posters around all over the place \u2013 its leader and frontman Andr\u00e9 Ventura gazing handsomely off into the middle distance, with a\u00a0caps lock call to arms: SALVAR<\/span> PORTUGAL<\/span>. More often than not, somebody has already added a\u00a0small moustache in Sharpie.<\/span><\/p>\n Bruno often says that We Hate Tourism was founded by \u200b\u201c<\/span>the sons of the crisis\u201d. Manu has another word for them:\u00a0<\/span>Malamados<\/i>. The unloved. A\u00a0generation who did everything they had been asked to do, only to discover their reward was an EasyJet flight out of the country.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201c<\/span>The talent left,\u201d Bruno says simply. \u200b\u201c<\/span>We were just the fools and the artists who stayed.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n And just as Portugal was telling its brightest young people to leave, the rest of the world suddenly decided it wanted to\u00a0come.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n