Lisbon is Booming

I was lucky to live in Lisbon for a couple of months some years ago thanks to a job assignment. I liked the city a lot, and I've gone back as a tourist a couple of times since then, the last time just a few weeks ago. My first time there I enjoyed the city a lot, but I would not have put it in my cities top, at that time I had a sort of obsession with Eastern Europe, and I think Lisbon, while very beautiful, did not feel exotic enough to an Asturian . It's interesting that years later, with the personal evolution brought up by having travelled quite a bit more, having lived for quite a while in another country and just by the passage of time... I've come to consider Lisbon fascinating and a real top city.

It's clear that I'm not the only one, cause the city is booming. When I was there in 2008, just before the start of the crisis, the city center was littered with abandoned buildings and others that while still inhabited where in a total state of disrepair. Now many of those buildings have been totally refurnished (almost rebuilt in many cases) and many more are being rehabilitated (when you enjoy the views from any of the nice viewpoints you'll see construction cranes everywhere due to these intensive rehabilitations). Most of these works are being done by international real state firms targeting foreign customers (the advertisements are mainly in English), so seems like many foreigners are buying, either because they are moving there themselves (living, second residence?) or for renting to others that will move. The city is succeeding in atracting start-ups and creative minds, transforming abandoned factories into incubators, coworking space and so on (the very popular LX factory seems to have been just the beginning

I'll share my reflections about why I think so many people want to live (full or partial time) in the city now. Of course the availability of space in those previously abandoned factories is essential for those wanting to start a business, but there are many formerly industrial cities that have now this kind of availability (to a greater or lesser extent), so which are the other factors that make Lisbon more attractive? Bear also in mind that while I guess that rentals for these work spaces will be cheap, this is not the same for (either for buying or for renting) apartments. What I saw in the window of some real state agency quite shocked me, prices seemed more expensive than France (excluding Paris, of course)

As I said before, the city is very beautiful and charming, but hopefully this is common to so many European cities. There's an essential factor in putting one city out of the rank of "nice to live" places. I explained it here. I'll repeat again how totally absurd (to the point of offensive) it felt to me when time ago I watched a program on TV saying that Warsaw planned to rival Berlin in attracting "creative guys". I think a free and open society is essential for a creative and open mind to consider to join that society, and Eastern Europe is, in general terms, too conservative, religious, nationalistic and xenophobic to be considered attractive. Whatever beautiful the city center of Warsaw (with its cute rebuilt and the new, nearby and shiny skyscrappers), Bratislava, Budapest (and its decadent charm)... could be, when you see bastards attacking the gay pride parade, or demonstrating against any kind of (non-white, blond and blue eyed) immigration... one feels more like putting them out of the European Union than like moving there... Portugal is a normal Western country, some people are more progressive, some are more conservative, but the overall feeling is good (indeed it shares with Spain the honour of not having any Far-Right political party with any significant strenght). So if other conditions are met (and I think they are), it could rival Berlin.

With Eastern Europe (and maybe the Baltic countries also) totally out of the equation. Let's think about other pros on the Lisbon side when compared to other big European cities:

Urban Architecture (from before the 40's) Lisbon architecture is quite unique, with all those buildings with facades covered in tiles. For sure you can not compare it to the wonders of French architecture, so let's say it's on pair with the architecture you'll find in Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Danmark... but while you can draw more or less similarities between the constructions in these countries, those of Lisbon are totally specific to Portugal. On the bad side, most modern architecture in the city is of no particular interest (and you even have some ridiculously ugly things like the Amoreiras Towers).

Life cost is particularly important if you're planning to move somewhere with a start-up, to work from home, to retire or to live part-time. In those cases your salary is probably not adapted to the place where you are going to live, so you'll like to find a place where these costs are not higher than in your home country. This means that if you don't have a Parisian salary, moving to Paris (the most beautiful city in the world) can be very painful. Same applies to Copenhagen, Amsterdamn... As I've said the high prices of flats in Lisbon quite surprised me, but food, public transport... are in the normal to low spectrum.

Weather. For sure the weather in Lisbon is nice. Sunny and warm most of the year, it rains enough to have a "sufficiently green" landscape for most of the time (so this beats any place in the Spanish Mediterranean). I guess I would miss to go below cero a couple of days per year, but not big trouble. By the way, you have way too many kilometers of beach a step away from the city, and related to this, did you know that there's a good deal of Brazilian immigration in Lisbon? This has to mean that you'll find Brazilian girls on the beach!!! Other than that, if you're into surfing, you have plenty of good spots also.

Diverse life quality factors: Lisbon is a "multiracial" city. You'll have black people from the former colonies, an East-Asian community... Not such a mixed society like other parts of Europe, but for sure much more than Northern Spain. Public transport is good and the airport has cheap flights to almost any other corner of Europe (and though the Metro system covers only some parts of the city, one line will take you to the airport in no time for less than 2 euros!) The city core (the 1/2 million people part) is relatively dense and compact, so no crazy distances between the most interesting areas. Portuguese sweets are pretty good, and coffee is absolutely delicious and cheap. Lisbon also spots some amazing museums. One drawback is that due to it's hilly nature the city is quite bike unfriendly.

These factors explained, there's one city that I love and that indeed reminds of Lisbon in several ways, Marseille. Marseille is amazing, probably one of the most underrated cities that I can think of. The geographical frame of the city is fascinating (better than Lisbon maybe), there's amazing architecture, both old and new, the weather is nice, the beachs are nice and you are 3 hours far by train from Paris. For being France it's a cheap city (flats are cheaper than in Toulouse of Bordeaux), and being France you live in an open and mixed society. Indeed, during my third visit to Marseille it struck me that it could turn into the Mediterranean Berlin, but it seems it's not going to be like that. So why?

Well, the huge advantage of Lisbon over Marseille is not specific to Marseille (and the particularities of its bad reputation), it applies to basically any Western European city/country (save for Portugal, most of Spain and to a lesser extent Italy and Greece). So here it goes, the part that will make this post worth reading if you have managed to get until here... There are no Muslims!!! I mean, the Muslim population is minimal. I did not see any veiled woman in the whole weekend. I did not see any motherfucker with the salafist dress code. I did not see Maghrebian teenagers with their fucking "racaille uniform" comitting petty crimes while waiting to be radicalised. I did not see new mosques sprouting on every corner like poisonous mushrooms (I just remember having seen a big, "historic" one back in 2008. I did not see any fucking poster or sticker against "Islamophobia"...

For sure there are Muslims in Portugal (you even have them in my isolated Asturies...), but the fewer they are the more likely it is that they will try to integrate rather than creating a separate community intending to live by medieval rules and intendending to impose them on others... I have Muslim friends that I really appreciate, but the existence of "nice ones" (even very nice ones) that enrich our societies, can not be a distraction that prevents us from seeing the dangers of the "not good ones" (that as years go by are becoming the norm) and the "very bad ones".

Right now the Muslim problem in France, Belgium, Germany, Sweeden... is still not so dramatic like for forcing you out of the country (unless that you are Jewish) because Muslims are not so many, but you know that they tend to have many kids and that new ones continue to come... so it's clear that in 20 or 30 years they will be the majority in some cities, and some countries will be in the verge of religious war (because I'm pretty sure that many of them won't want to integrate at all). It's already been some time that when I read about one city one of the first things that I do is checking the percentage of Muslim population, to get an idea of to what extent it can be a good place to live. I think more and more people will begin to look into this kind of statistics very seriously, to prepare the scape for when the situation in their cities goes out of control. Lisbon looks like a really good refuge.

Few days after coming back from Lisbon a report showed up in the news with some terrifying (but totally in line with what I expected) predictions about the number of Muslims in Europe by 2050. There are 3 different scenarios depending on the strength of the migration trends, but the worst (and most likely to me) is just devastating. Well, at least France will no longer be the most islamised country in Europe, it will be surpassed by Sweeden (that will "enjoy" of a 30% of Muslims!!!) and Germany. Also the situation in Spain will not be too bad (and I'm completely sure that in Asturies the percentage will continue to be very low).

I had just read some summaries and had not checked the original full report until now. It's amazing to see how correct my "street feeling" was, Portugal is now by far the country in Europe (excluding Eastern/Baltic countries) with the lowest percentage of Muslims, only a 0.4%!!!, and the prediction for 2050 (even in the worst case scenario) is only 2.5%. We've talked a lot about refugees in the last years (war refugees, economical refugees, climate refugees in the future...), n a few years probably we'll have to add a new group to the list, atheist/Christian Europeans becoming "religious refugees", moving from their Islamised cities to the last remaining "normal" countries/regions in "non-conservative" Europe (Portugal, Northern Spain...)