For some context and clarity: I'm a 25-year-old Portuguese guy, I work as a software engineer, and I'm trying to launch my own business part-time. I love Portugal. I like the weather, the food, the people, and that ease we have of turning a five-minute coffee into a two-hour conversation. I have no desire to swap the country I grew up in for another one just because it can offer better living conditions.
But there's one thing I find harder and harder to understand: how can a country with so many qualities waste so much of its potential?
We have talented people, good universities, a privileged location and a quality of life that many countries envy. We have Portuguese people building companies, developing technology and standing out abroad.
And yet, we keep driving with the handbrake on.
The problem isn't just a lack of money, investment or ambition. It's a country that seems to have developed an extraordinary talent for making life difficult for anyone who wants to get something done.
Portugal doesn't need to be saved. It needs to stop sabotaging itself.
A State Without Consequences
There are few things that irritate me as much as Portuguese bureaucracy. And one of the reasons it exists and persists is how part of the Public Administration works.
We all know stories of offices where nobody answers the phone, cases that sit for months without a reply, and people being passed from one desk to another without anyone solving the problem. These aren't just inconveniences. They're hours of lost work, wasted opportunities, and money leaving the pockets of taxpayers to fund these services.
And then there's a reality that is rarely talked about openly: there are public servants who work seriously, carry entire services on their backs and do everything they can to solve problems. But there are also those who do the bare minimum, those who spend the day pushing cases onto someone else, and those who seem to have vanished from the workplace without any consequences.
The problem is that the system doesn't always tell them apart.
In the private sector, those who don't deliver, don't produce results or repeatedly fail in their responsibilities risk losing their jobs. It doesn't always happen, and not every dismissal is fair, but there is a real consequence for failing to do the job.
In the Public Administration, job stability and accountability mechanisms make removal for poor performance more complex. These legal protections exist for legitimate reasons, but when holding someone accountable becomes so difficult that, in practice, underperformance can drag on for years, something is wrong.
Job stability should protect those who work, not serve as a shield for those who don't want to.
If someone realises they can spend years doing the bare minimum, delaying cases and leaving their colleagues to solve the problems for them, without facing proportionate consequences, what incentive do they have to change?
And who ends up paying the bill? The citizens who need the services, and the public servants who do their jobs, often forced to make up for their colleagues' lack of effort.
It's an injustice to both sides.
I'm not defending arbitrary dismissals or evaluations done at the whim of each manager. I'm defending clear goals, serious evaluation, accountability, and consequences when someone repeatedly fails in their duties.
If the State demands punctuality, deadlines and tax payments from citizens, it must be able to demand the same rigour from those who work for it.
We can't keep accepting that citizens must comply with everything on time, while the service they receive isn't subject to an equivalent level of demand.
Starting a Business Shouldn't Be an Act of Endurance
We like to say we need more companies, more investment, more innovation and better salaries. But we rarely talk about what happens to those who try to build a company in Portugal.
Imagine you have a good idea and decide to go for it. You have to incorporate the company, handle the accounting, meet tax and administrative obligations, hire people, find customers, and raise enough money to keep the business alive until it starts delivering results.
All of this costs money and time, even before you know whether the business will work.
A large company can spread these costs across hundreds of employees and millions of euros in revenue. A small company can't. The founder often ends up acting as manager, salesperson, makeshift accountant and in charge of everything they can't yet afford to hire someone for.
Bureaucracy doesn't weigh the same on every company. An administrative obligation that represents just a few hours for a large organisation can mean a full day of work for a team of three. And those hours are taken away from developing the product, finding customers or trying to sell more.
Then come the costs of hiring. The salary the company pays isn't the salary the employee receives. Between contributions, taxes and other charges, the cost to the company is higher than the amount that reaches the employee's account.
That doesn't mean every tax is unjustified or that we don't need social protection. It means there's a gap between what the company pays and what the employee receives, and that gap influences hiring decisions.
If hiring someone is expensive and revenue is still uncertain, a small company thinks twice. If demand grows, it may prefer to work longer hours instead of hiring. If it needs someone highly qualified, it competes with foreign companies that can offer far higher salaries.
And then we wonder why so many Portuguese companies don't grow.
The problem isn't just starting a company. It's being able to make it grow without every new step becoming a disproportionate risk.
Growing means hiring, taking on more responsibilities, financing more expenses and dealing with new obligations. If the company doesn't have access to enough capital, if processes are unpredictable and if profit margins are small, growth can increase risk faster than it increases profitability.
There comes a point where the entrepreneur runs the numbers and concludes that hiring one more person, opening a new location or investing in a bigger project simply isn't worth it. Not because they don't want to grow, but because the expected return doesn't justify the risk.
In other cases, the problem is even simpler: there's no money to finance growth. Banks tend to demand guarantees, venture capital is limited, and not every business has a model that attracts investors. A company can have customers and potential, but not enough capital to seize the opportunity.
The result is an economy full of small companies, with little capacity to invest in technology, training and better salaries.
And this creates a cycle that's hard to break. Companies don't grow because they can't invest. They don't invest because they have little margin and limited access to capital. And they keep having little margin because productivity doesn't increase enough to support higher salaries.
We can't expect companies to pay international salaries if the conditions they operate in don't allow them to generate enough value to do so.
Nor can we expect every founder to accept working more, earning less and taking on more risk indefinitely just because they believe in the country.
Some do. Some manage. But a country can't depend on the personal sacrifice of those who try to build something.
Building Homes Has Become Too Hard
Housing is perhaps the clearest example of our ability to turn a relatively simple problem into an endless debate.
We have a shortage of homes, prices are too high for the incomes of much of the population, and young people find it harder and harder to get a home of their own. We talk about the problem constantly, but building more is still an expensive, slow and uncertain process.
And it's worth understanding why.
It all starts with the land. Not all land can be used for construction, and zoning rules and municipal plans determine where and what can be built. In areas with high demand, the supply of land actually available to build on can be limited, which pushes its price up.
Then comes the project. You need to comply with urban planning rules, prepare technical documentation, obtain opinions and go through the applicable licensing procedures. Depending on the municipality and the project, several entities may be involved, each with different requirements.
The problem isn't demanding safety, quality or respect for land-use planning. The problem is the complexity of the processes, the lack of predictability and the time they can take.
According to the OECD, in 2023 the time needed to obtain a building permit ranged from 272 days in Funchal to 548 days in Coimbra. Lisbon also exceeded 500 days. These are huge differences within the same country, with real consequences for anyone who wants to invest.
And time costs money.
While waiting for approvals, the developer may have capital tied up in the land, pay interest, bear project costs and face rising prices for materials and labour. By the time construction finally starts, the budget may no longer be the one the investment decision was based on.
On top of these come the shortage of skilled workers, construction costs and the sector's relatively low productivity.
This is where economic logic comes in. A developer doesn't build a home just because someone needs it. They build if they believe they can complete the project, sell or rent the property, and earn a return that justifies the capital and risk involved.
If the land is expensive, costs rise, licensing drags on and there's a limit to the final price buyers can afford, the numbers can simply stop making sense.
In that situation, the project is postponed, scaled down or abandoned.
A home that isn't worth building is a home that never reaches the market.
And when this happens repeatedly, supply doesn't keep up with demand. Prices rise, those who already own property benefit from the increase in value, and those who need to buy or rent get further and further from managing it.
It's true that housing doesn't depend only on new construction. There are vacant homes, buildings in need of renovation, tax issues, difficulties in the rental market and problems related to how the existing housing stock is used.
But none of these issues changes a basic reality: we need to make it easier to increase supply where people want to live.
It's not enough to announce measures to speed up licensing. We need to make sure deadlines are met, that municipalities have the capacity to handle the cases, and that the rules are clear enough for investors to know what to expect.
If we want more affordable homes, we have to stop seeing those who build as part of the problem by definition. Profit is not, in itself, a sign of abuse. It's also the incentive that leads someone to take the risk of building.
The real challenge is to create the conditions to build more, with competition, clear rules and enough supply to ease the pressure on prices.
Talent Has No Obligation to Stay
Some people treat emigration as a kind of betrayal of the country. As if the Portuguese who leave had a moral obligation to stay, even when they find better opportunities elsewhere.
That's absurd.
People spend years studying, develop skills, work and try to build a better life. If another country offers them better salaries, career progression and the conditions to achieve their goals, why should they stay?
Out of patriotism? Patriotism doesn't pay the rent.
I don't blame those who leave. I blame a country that keeps training people only to offer them so few reasons to stay.
And it isn't only about money. It's about being able to progress without depending on connections, finding companies where merit is valued, having access to ambitious opportunities, and feeling that effort counts for something.
The most frustrating part is that we keep treating this brain drain as if it were inevitable. We speak proudly of successful Portuguese people abroad, but we rarely ask the more uncomfortable question: why did they have to leave to get where they got?
We can't want to attract international talent while accepting that our own talent has to emigrate to thrive.
If we want people to stay, we have to give them reasons to stay. Everything else is just talk.
The Problem Is Also Our Mindset
It's easy to blame the Government. And the Government deserves to be held accountable for the policies it creates, the reforms it postpones and the problems it prefers to push on to the next term.
But we also have to look at the culture we tolerate.
In Portugal, there seems to be an almost automatic distrust of anyone who wants more. If someone earns well, they must have been lucky or know the right people. If they want to build a company, they're obsessed with money. If they demand more from a service, it's because they think they're superior. If they have ambition, they need to learn to be humble.
Then we admire the very same behaviours when they happen abroad.
We celebrate the desenrascanço (the knack for improvising your way out of trouble) as if it were a competitive advantage, when often it's just the ability to survive systems that don't work. We take pride in being able to fix everything at the last minute, instead of asking why everything has to be fixed at the last minute.
And we complain constantly, but how often do we truly demand change? How often do we accept absurd answers because complaining is hard work? How often do we settle for the bare minimum because we believe it's not worth expecting more?
We're not all like that. Plenty of people are working seriously to improve the country. But there's also a culture of conformism that we can't keep mistaking for humility or adaptability.
Improvising is a skill. Needing it constantly is a sign that something is deeply wrong.
I love Portugal. That's precisely why it irritates me to see it waste so many opportunities.
We have the capacity to do better. What I find hard to accept is that we keep creating obstacles for those who try, and treating those obstacles as an inevitable part of living in this country.
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