Dear friends and family,
I hope you enjoyed a lovely Easter weekend. We had stunning weather over the weekend and Spring has definitely shown itself. Tourists were everywhere here, enjoying Spring break and sunny weather.
I've mentioned a group we belong to called Internations previously. As the name implies, members are from all over the world. While some members, like us, live here in Porto, you will often find people in attendance who are members from other countries and happen to be in town as tourists. When we arrived at the March event we ran into a Russian friend, Madina, whom we met back when we were first visiting Porto on our scouting trip in March, 2022. As we were chatting with her, we realized that it was exactly four years ago that we met her in a restaurant here in Porto, making hers our first and longest friendship here. Madina immigrated to the U.S. over 30 years ago and still works in there full-time, however, she has a Portuguese visa and maintains an apartment in Porto. Since we've known her she's been trying to get her own textile business up and running so that she can move to Porto full-time, which now looks to be later this year. At this event in March, she introduced us to a few of her Russian friends who were also in attendance that evening. The conversation turned to restaurants here in Porto that specialize in Georgian food, which is apparently different from Russian cuisine. It certainly had them all excited, so we're looking forward to dining with Madina soon at one of these restaurants to see what we think.
Since I wrote my last email, the little excursion in Iran is now a full on war. Well done, MAGA voters. Of course, we attended our third "No Kings" rally here on March 28th and I'm sure many of you did the same in the states, given the reported size of the event worldwide. While the rally here was certainly small by comparison, the energy was passionate. There were even some tourists with signs in attendance. It was amazing to see how many cities across the EU and the world staged these events. He's universally hated. More and more people, not just Americans, are seeking to move here. Sadly, I'm hearing that some areas of the Algarve are starting to show some anti-American sentiment, which can hardly be surprising. Neither of us has encountered anything like that here thus far. Our Portuguese neighbors are very supportive, not only of our being here, but also of our political views and protests.
According to a survey by Portugalist.com, about half the Americans either currently living in Portugal, actively planning to move here, or considering moving here are also now considering renouncing their American citizenship after securing their Portuguese citizenship. Of those surveyed, 81% cited political reasons while 38% cited the complexity of the US global tax filling system (to which I will attest). Additionally, of those who are already living in Portugal, just over 44% do not intend to return to the U.S. It's been four years since we made the decision to move here and, of all the Americans we've met along the way, renouncing citizenship never even came up in conversation. Everyone wanted and looked forward to obtaining dual citizenship. But here we are, just one year into this disastrous presidency and people are thinking differently. And yes, this is a small sampling but think about the fact that approximately 1.5 million Americans currently live throughout Europe, not even counting those who moved to Mexico and parts of South America. Is a sampling from Portugal just an anomaly? I doubt it. And, the recent reduction in the cost of renouncing American citizenship was reduced dramatically thanks to a number of lawsuits. Time will tell but the America we grew up in has gone so far right and been taken over by evangelicals and billionaires, that it's not recognizable anymore.
March also was busy collecting tax data for our U.S. accountant so we could get those taxes filed before working on our Portuguese taxes. Just the preparation for the Portuguese return is rather time-consuming but I hope to finish up my spreadsheets for our accountant later today. Once those are done, we will be starting our travel. First up is Nice, France and the Côte d' Azur. Stay tuned for my next update!
Adeus, abraços e beijos, MaryLou