An uncomfortable portrait of Porto: from fado to frustration

It had been many years since I’d felt so discriminated against and so mistreated on a trip. Not even back when I still “bit my rebozo”… The most painful part is that it happened precisely in a country I held in great affection: Portugal. A country I’d always admired, especially because I know many Portuguese people in Luxembourg whom I see as an example of resilience, hard work and humility.

Travelling, I’ve always believed, teaches you to adapt, to open your mind, to look at the world with fresh eyes. It makes you more tolerant and more aware of differences. But growing older also teaches you not to stay silent, to dare to say what you think without being disrespectful, even if it makes others uncomfortable. This text comes from there: from the need to speak about what I experienced.

My journey began in Luxembourg and my final destination was Galicia. It wasn’t a short or simple route: I took a flight from Luxembourg to Lisbon, another from Lisbon to Porto, and from there an overnight coach to Santiago de Compostela, then on to Lugo. It was, all things considered, the most practical option. However, the journey turned out exhausting, full of obstacles and experiences I’d never have imagined, especially on the Portuguese leg.

It wasn’t the first time I’d visited Portugal; in fact, it was the fourth. I’ve been to different cities and always kept good memories. I love its culture, its food, its music, its crafts and the architectural gems I’ve had the chance to discover. But this time was different. From the moment I arrived in Porto I felt something strange, a kind of misery in the air. I don’t mean material poverty — which is also visible — but a deeper, inner poverty. You can see it in the streets, in people’s faces, in their attitude. There is weariness, frustration and a hardness that contrasts with the gentle, wistful image I used to associate with the Portuguese people.

Portugal has always been a country marked by isolation: surrounded by Spain and the sea, it built its identity looking out to the Atlantic. It was a maritime empire, a nation of explorers, but also of nostalgias and colonial wounds. That past, which could be a source of pride and openness, now seems to have turned into a shell. There’s an excess of inwardness, a gaze that can’t quite look beyond itself.

What worried me most during this trip was the way many Portuguese men treated me simply for being a Latin, Mexican woman. It was machismo. I lived it up close: an open lack of respect, a disdain they didn’t bother to hide. They addressed me with “tú” when they addressed others with “usted”. And yes, that small gesture, in that context, was a form of contempt. It wasn’t an isolated incident but a constant sequence: the border guard at Porto airport who, among a huge group of passengers, chose to stop only me because of how I looked; taxi drivers who replied impatiently and without a shred of respect; the hotel receptionist, curt and scornful; waiters who seemed irritated at having to serve me; and coach drivers, some of whom went as far as outright mistreatment. In all those encounters there was a pattern: a resistance to treating me with dignity, a blend of coldness, mistrust and superiority that couldn’t be accidental. As on many other occasions, “the audio didn’t match the video”.

I felt the weight of a kind of masked, inverted colonialism: the descendants of an empire that once dominated half the world now seem to despise those who come from those former colonies, as if they needed to reaffirm their lost power by humiliating the other. In my case, the other was me: a woman, a foreigner, a Latina. Machismo, prejudice and social frustration converged in their gestures. When the guard, after checking my luggage, saw the Luxembourg tags and simply let me through without a word, I realised his attitude had nothing to do with security: it was pure show. It was a brutal reminder that sometimes history isn’t overcome; it merely changes direction.

I live in Luxembourg, where between 14% and 16% of the population is Portuguese. I know what they’re like: hard-working, resilient, family-minded. But I also know that, outside their country, many Portuguese people are treated as “second-class”, because they do the jobs others don’t want to do. I don’t agree with that, and I respect them deeply, because I know what it is to come from the bottom — I’m Mexican, and I’ve seen the same with my people in the United States. But in Portugal, those who stay seem to live closed off, unexposed to other ways of thinking. And that, I fear, is turning into a blind nationalism, a wounded pride that translates into hostility.

During my stay in Porto, that hostility was evident. Want is felt not only in people’s pockets, but in the way they treat you. There’s a lack of interest in culture, in detail, in empathy. In services, many workers seem uncomfortable with their jobs, as if serving a tourist were a humiliating obligation. And yet Porto is a deeply touristic city. It receives thousands of visitors every day, but people seem unable to bear it. You can see the annoyance, the irritation. It’s as if they feel tourism invades their lives, drives up prices, disrupts their routines. I understand that to a point, but it’s a bitter contradiction: they live off tourism, yet they detest it. That mix of dependence and discomfort turns into a constant tension.

In my head I couldn’t help comparing Porto with my home city, Puerto Vallarta, in Mexico. Both are port cities, both live off tourism. But in Vallarta, people smile. There is warmth, there is service, there is humanity. Some might call it servility, but I prefer that to the coldness I found in Porto. There you’re greeted with a smile; here, they rip it from your face.

The hardest episode, the one that really marked me, happened during the coach journey between Porto and Galicia. On the outward trip, the coach broke down in the middle of the night, on the motorway right on the border between Portugal and Spain, still on the Lusophone side. We waited for hours, I missed the connection, and when we got to the terminal I was refused a refund. But the worst came on the way back. The driver openly discriminated against me. He refused to help with my suitcase, shouted at me, humiliated me in front of all the passengers and refused to hand over the luggage at the correct stop. He did this while treating the others kindly, most of them blond and English-speaking. At me he shouted in my face. Once at the hotel, I cried. I cried out of helplessness, anger, sadness. Every step I took in that country felt like walking through a minefield. In that moment I understood it wasn’t just a bad experience: it was discrimination.

I don’t like to generalise, and I don’t intend to. I know there are wonderful Portuguese people, I know there are kind and sensitive people. I know some of them. But something is happening in that country. There is a collective sadness, a bottled-up anger, a poverty — economic and emotional — that is eating away at its essence.

I’m not writing this to attack anyone, but to open a conversation. To ask myself, and to ask: what is happening to Portugal? Why does a country with so much history, so much beauty and so much soul seem to have turned hostile towards itself and towards others?