It is an urban myth to imagine one can easily move to the interior and then, by means of instantaneous willpower, cope with the most ruthless solitude. I've heard my share of stories about city people moving to the countryside to start living off their organic orchard. But when we stop dreaming and look around, people who were born there are going away or dying of old age in ever smaller villages. Alentejo still has the highest suicide rate.
I work in Alentejo as a farmer, and I recently moved from Lisbon to Beja. Beja is the capital of Portugal's largest district. Before I came here, I knew beforehand the kind of obstacles my family would face.
Close to where I work, less than 10 miles from Beja, the local school was converted to a multi-purpose building, because there are not enough children living there.
Infrastructure is still bad: on the farm, on windy days I have poor to no reception on the best available operator, and the Internet connection quality drops considerably around 5 pm; power shortages are frequent, which is a major problem for those with irrigation needs; the roads are in miserable condition; fuel is also more expensive; the central hospital still does not have an MRI machine.
And I say this having in mind all of those that, each day, fight for bringing to south Alentejo the investment it desperately needs. I fight for that too. In terms of agriculture there have been major changes, but there is still a lot to do.
Meanwhile, across the country, postal services, banks and public schools are shutting down.
In the past, several ideas have been put forth to combat abandonment, but I don't think any of those ideas are working. The abandonment of old villages is not fought by artificially populating them with people coming from large urban areas. Until proven wrong, I still believe that investment in fundamental infrastructure is what attracts people: energy, water, transportation and communications.
Selling whole villages to the rich as a solution for this problem is a gimmick, and an insult in my opinion.
Urban myth, sure, but to me that sounds like heaven.
As a portuguese I can tell you that Portugal is an amazing place to live if you have an above the average income.
Good luck getting hired for remote work in Spain, though.
Edit for the guys below: obviously I meant working for a Spanish company.
It is a 350-500k EUR investment. If you rent the property out you should be able to cover the debt service. (Obviously it exposes you to Portuguese RE risk, as well as EUR currency risk, and requires good credit, but a 500k piece of property is a lower bar than, say, a 150k fee, and a Portuguese passport is a whole lot better than most citizenship by investment programs.)
I’d probably spend 2-3 months/yr in Portugal if I had a nice small house or apartment somewhere. It is a good country.
Does that mean you are planning to get a loan to finance the purchase of the property?
Also what is the 150K fee alternative you mentioned?
The Portugal program is "Golden Visa". https://www.google.com/search?q=portugese+golden+visa&oq=por...
I'd rather do the Euro 250k to the arts thing if I were just looking for a single fee to pay, but I think the RE model works better. There's also an investor into companies model, but I don't know the startup market there.
Option C is a rural property and finding a long term farmer. Maybe find someone who is already farming his own land, buy it and lease back at the long term rate. Need to own the property for at least 5-7 years, but I wouldn’t be against owning Ag land indefinitely.
(Ironically, I did some remote work for a Spanish company when I was living in the UK)
https://www.azoresproperties.com/urban-renovation-tax-breaks...
Could you elaborate on this? Is there a name for this program? Might you have a link or some further reading?
https://www.henleyglobal.com/residence-portugal-golden-resid...