‘There’s an arrogance to the way they move around the city’: is it time for digital nomads like me to leave Lisbon?
Like so many others, I moved from London to Portugal’s capital for the sun, lifestyle – and the tax break. But as tensions rise with struggling locals, many of us are beginning to wonder whether we’re doing more harm than good …
F or the past five years, I’ve lived in a flat in a four-storey apartment building standing atop a hill in the pastel-hued district of Lapa, Lisbon. I work from my desk at home, with a view of palm fronds outside the window as I dial into Zooms with London advertising agencies, for which I’m paid in pounds into a UK bank account. Upstairs, one of my neighbours makes money from France, and downstairs another offers financial coaching to a range of international clients.
In the flat just across the hallway, three Scandinavian digital creatives work remotely for clients in their own home countries. All the school-age children attend international private schools. The building, clad in weathered Portuguese tiles, is owned by a single Portuguese family. The remote workers live among four siblings, aged 60-plus, who each live on one of the floors. The building tells a typical story of the demographic of the local area: Portuguese who have benefited from inherited wealth and foreigners earning foreign incomes.
I’m British, and moved here from London – not for work or family, but because I could. I guess, in truth, I came for lifestyle optimisation: the sun, the beaches, the photogenic cafes. The Americans I know cite politics; the northern Europeans talk about slowing down. Andrew Steele, an ex-Olympic athlete running a health-tech firm out of the primary-coloured co-working space Lacs, talks of “less ultra-processed food” and a life lived outside. He lives by Monsanto, a forest park bordering Lisbon that is often likened to Hampstead Heath. His daughter attends an idyllic-sounding Montessori forest school.
