Portugal for Bloody Foreigners
Carlos Alberto Páscoa Machado
Short Autobiography
Over my vast lifespan – 74 years so far, as of May 2023 – I had the luck of spending quite some time abroad, on different occasions, mostly as a student and academic, but also as a genuine traveller – 6 years in Germany (Neuβ/Düsseldorf, Münster/Bochum), 6 months in Brazil (from Rio de Janeiro to Belém do Pará and the island of Marajó, by the Amazon river mouth in the North, and on a later occasion from São Paulo to Itajaí and Joinville in the South), 2 years in France (Paris), and 1 year as a scholar on sabbatical in the U.K. (Sanderstead/Croydon/London). Of course, many conferences and other events led me to short stays in many other spots: Canada (Banff), the USA (East, West Coast and 4 main Hawaiian islands) and Mexico (Cuernavaca and Acapulco), Norway (Bergen), Italy (Rome/Urbino/Sardinia), Greece (Crete), France (Aix-en-Provence), Bulgaria and Hungary (Budapest).
I probably forgot some locations, but you get my point: I had the opportunity to be confronted with many views and opinions about my own country, maybe this is where I thought of writing Portugal for bloody foreigners. I was born and raised in Viseu (Center/North) and spent 1 year in Mozambique (Portuguese East Africa), during my last year of high school, before heading to Germany to start studying towards a degree in social sciences, with a specialization in economics at Ruhr University, after completing the equivalent to Germany’s Abitur in Münster.
My family roots spread from the North to the South of Portugal, about 70 years before thinking about writing Portugal for bloody foreigners. My father, Armindo, was born in Oporto. His roots were in Pedraça (Cabeceiras de Basto, Braga, Minho, North), and life shaped by various Bazares do Porto, small toy shops run by different family members (Figueira da Foz and Coimbra), and himself (Viseu), military service (Beja and Cape Verde), and teaching accounting (Viseu and Campo de Besteiros). My mother, Tereza Maria, was from Beja (Baixo Alentejo, South), one of 9 children of a bankrupt small landowner.
After graduation in Social Sciences and post-graduate study in Regional Economics, I returned to Portugal soon after the 1974 Carnation Revolution, which put an end to the authoritarian regime of the Estado Novo there. I started teaching at the Institute of Social and Political Sciences in Lisbon.
There I was briefly in charge of the class Imperialism and Dependence, me that was a convinced liberal in the European sense of the word. Counter-revolution under the leadership of the so-called Socialist Party started soon after, and the institute was closed down a couple of years after.
I was able to move into the still somewhat revolutionary Institute of Economics and Business till my contract was cancelled together with my colleague, with whom I shared an office, apparently for both having reactionary convictions. After a couple of months of unemployment, I was hired by the University of Minho through the kind suggestion of my brother, Virgílio Azuil, who taught there.
Maybe the idea of writing Portugal for bloody foreigners started here. I started teaching Economic Anthropology and soon veered towards International Economics and Business, and related subjects, like International Finance, International Political Economics, and Multinational Firms, for the next 35 years, as you can confirm in my somewhat dated 2009 academic cv.
In 1993 I got my Ph.D. in Economics there and benefited from the inbreeding system, still in practice by Portuguese universities, till my retirement in 2012.
Soon after I started slowly to delve in matters related to Portugal and its international connections, till I came up with a way to spread the word in the shape of this website/blog as an up-to-date way to publish my notes and try to benefit from the inputs of my potential readers, Portugal for bloody foreigners. Around the late eighties Isabel Sardinha agreed to marry me, and soon after Leonor was born.
Both have stayed firm by me, and I must thank them for many positive experiences I went through. Portugal for bloody foreigners, as you would expect, I was able to dedicate most of my time to writing this book only after retirement. In this process I was able to rely on the quite efficient library services of both municipalities: Oeiras – the most user friendly – and Lisbon – perhaps the most complete.
You may ask why Portugal for Bloody Foreigners. First, Portugal could be considered as the most important context that shaped my life, both in a positive and perhaps also negative way, the country where I spent by far most of my life, even if considering my long stays abroad.
For Foreigners, because this was the intended target audience, even if I believe many of my fellow countrymen and women will also read and hopefully also profit from it. For Bloody Foreigners, because the title should be somewhat provocative, and I was comforted in this title choice when I came across Robert Winder’s book of the same title (“Bloody Foreigners”).
Soon I started to think about the publishing process, and it crossed my mind how uncomfortable I would be going through that quagmire. Why not just put it online? And benefit from the interactions with eventual readers like in a blog? And being able to add as many pictures, songs, and slides, as I feel appropriate? And keep updating the whole creature as time goes by? There you have “Portugal for Bloody Foreigners” in the shape of https://portugalforbloodyforeigners.net. Hope you enjoy it and give me your feedback from reading these ‘book’ chapters.
It’s with this in mind that the chapters have been originally written in English, and in this respect, please pardon my…English, when it does not fit your standards.
You may also check out some more information about me, my previous work and my daily life in following websites:
http://carlosapmachado.wix.com/carlos-ap-machado
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Carlos_Machado16