Brexit pushes Portugal’s Brits to sever ties with home
‘I’d rather cut my arm off’ than go back.
By PAUL AMES 2/2/19, 9:00 AM CET Updated 2/5/19, 5:05
AM CET
Sophia Mars, 51, teaches English classes online from her
home in Penamacor, Portugal | Gerardo Santos/Global Imagens
PENAMACOR, Portugal — For Simon the saxophone player, Brexit
means it’s finally time to cut ties with the old country.
“I thought I could keep one foot in and one foot out, but
then Brexit came along,” said Simon Lawton, a Birmingham-born street musician
who has lived for 12 years in Portugal. “I decided my home is here, and I
wouldn’t want to be tied to the United Kingdom anymore.”
Lawton is part of a fast-expanding community of Britons and
other foreigners who have made a home in this remote, but ruggedly beautiful
corner of eastern Portugal.
Portuguese media have linked an influx of newcomers over the
past two years to Britain’s vote in June 2016 to leave the European Union.
“Fugitives from Brexit are invading the most elderly
municipality in Portugal,” was a recent front-page story for Lisbon daily
Diário de Notícias. It suggested many are hoping to secure a place in the
European sun before Brexit complicates Brits’ plans to decamp to the Continent.
If Britain crashes out on March 29 without a Brexit deal,
only those already resident will have a guaranteed right to stay.
Foreigners, with Britons in the majority, make up almost 10
percent of the population of around 4,000 in Penamacor and its surrounding
villages.
“We’ve got about 400 registered here, but there are more
arriving every day,” said António Luís Beites Soares, mayor of the hilltop town
which looks across a boulder-strewn plain toward the Spanish border.
“Lots of them started coming over the past couple of years,
but it’s hard to say to what extent this is directly linked to Brexit,” said
Beites Soares. “It’s not just British who are coming, but Irish, Dutch,
Germans, many nationalities.”
Brexit didn’t push Lawton, 48, to quit the U.K. He left in
his teens and lived 16 years in Spain before moving to Portugal. However, the
referendum raised concerns his right to stay could be jeopardized.
Simon Lawton is a Birmingham-born street musician who has
lived for 12 years in Portugal | Paul Ames for POLITICO
“I needed to get my permanent residency,” he explained over
a glass of Super Bock stout on the terrace of a village café. “I’d rather be a
foreigner or a Portuguese resident than be stuck with the U.K. I can’t imagine
going back now.”
That decision was partly gut reaction to British politicians
who have made their country “a laughing stock” through the “farce” of Brexit,
he said.
It was also a hard-headed choice to secure the right to stay
in a country where he divides his time between busking along the coast and
tending rye and barley on a Penamacor smallholding.
“Brexit could make things difficult. When I first went to
the south of Spain, before European rules, you’d have the police, the Guardia
Civil, extraditing people,” Lawton said. “I had German and British friends who
were extradited.”
Portuguese authorities are hoping it won’t come to that.
“We want them to stay in Portugal,” Interior Minister
Eduardo Cabrita told reporters in Lisbon this month. “The U.K.’s exit from the
European Union doesn’t affect, in any way, our willingness to have them
continue to participate in Portuguese society.”
However, Brits hoping to stay post Brexit must sign up for a
temporary “registration certificate” or a permanent residence card once they’ve
lived in Portugal more than five years.
If Britain crashes out on March 29 without a Brexit deal,
only those already resident will have a guaranteed right to stay, a government
pamphlet explains.
Still, some are reluctant. Unlike larger British communities
in Lisbon or the sun-drenched Algarve coast, many of those scattered around
Portugal’s sparsely populated interior are New Agers following alternative
lifestyles away from the trappings of modern life. They can be averse to
confronting bureaucratic demands imposed by Brexit.
“People don’t want to deal with those issues,” said Chris,
from Kent, preparing to plant potatoes on his Penamacor farm. “When you’re in
the café and conversation turns to Brexit, people just laugh it off.”
Peter and Dawn moved to Penamacor in July. He is a computer
engineer, teaching at Middlesbrough University. She had a lengthy career as a
mental health nurse | Gerardo Santos/Global Imagens
Others have more specific reasons for not wanting to sever
ties with Britain. Sallie Bent, a Sheffield native, said she’d “rather cut my
arm off” than move back, but she and her husband have delayed seeking
Portuguese residency for fear it could limit access to specialist health care
treatment in Britain.
Rather than Brexit, cheap land and warm weather are the
reasons most Brits give for moving to Penamacor. But whatever the motivation,
the arrival of so many foreigners is breathing new life into an area where the
population has halved since the 1980s and the percentage of over-65s is almost
double the national average.
“They have a significant commercial and economic impact,”
Mayor Beites Soares said during an interview in the town hall. “They are buying
up empty housing. They use the local shops. They are younger, economically
active people. This can only be an advantage for our town.”
The mayor hopes Brexit won’t slow the flow of Brits seeking
a new life in the granite-hewn cottages surrounding the town. “Nobody here
wishes that to happen,” he said. “But I don’t think anybody anywhere knows how
this Brexit will turn out.”
This article is part of POLITICO’s premium Brexit service
for professionals: Brexit Pro. To test our our expert policy coverage of the
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