@Story Hunters Tv meets, at Marina de Albufeira, Silvio, an Italian pensioner who moved to Portugal just over a year ago after a life spent making cheese all over the world.
The first thing that will strike you about Silvio will be the empathetic sympathy of his communication, and as you watch the interview, you will be taken aback by the interest in the person, the life story, the vast and widespread experience and the information he provides without seeming to do so.
The meeting with Silvio was one of those that turn out to be very pleasant and full of surprises. We knew that he had ended his career managing a company in Wisconsin, USA, but not that it had all started as a boy milking cows in Holland. A man formed between university studies and an interest in agriculture and, we might say, a passion for 'the barn' and the art of cheese-making. He studied in France and then his passion and profession took him around the world, from Iran to Canada. Two children, a widower, in 2015, together with his current partner, he decided to move overseas and conclude his career in the United States. Having completed this last stage, Silvio, together with Anita, decided to spend their retirement and rest time in Portugal and more precisely in that coastal strip facing the Atlantic Ocean looking south, called Algarve and which many, not wrongly, define as the European Florida. The first impression proved to be a convincing one: to both of them Portugal immediately seemed a 'quiet place' and, quite apart from the tax opportunities that counted for their choice, this quiet character of life in this country in the far west of Europe, which for many decades of recent history has remained quietly on the fringes, meant that their choice was quick and without second thoughts.
Seeing them strolling around Marina de Albufeira one would definitely say that their choice was a happy one.
On 28 May 1926 Portugal suffered a military coup led by General António Óscar Carmona, following which an authoritarian regime, known as the "Estado Novo", was formed under the leadership of an economist, university professor and former finance minister, António de Oliveira Salazar, who was called to power by the military in 1932 and remained in power until 1968, when he fell from a chair and became an invalid. Forced from power, Salazar died in 1970. In 1974 his successor, Marcelo Caetano, was removed from power in another military coup, this time with the full support of the Portuguese population, which went down in history as the Carnation Revolution, after a flower girl in a Lisbon pizza offered carnations to the soldiers. The first legislative elections were held in 1976 and were won by the Socialist Party of Mário Soares, who became prime minister of the first constitutional government on 23 July of that year.
As I write this text on 18 February 2022, general elections were held on 30 January in which António Costa's Socialists, already leading the country, won an absolute majority of seats. Portugal emerged from the 2008 crisis ahead of the Troika's targets, making an astonishing economic recovery. Unlike Greece, where austerity caused the damage we have seen in the past few years, Portugal managed to restore public finances and reverse the negative trend with incredible successes that have become a model for the whole of Europe. Unemployment has fallen steadily, GDP has grown uninterruptedly for 25 quarters, and this now allows the country, which was the "Cinderella of Europe", to guarantee its citizens and expatriates who decide to move there solutions of public efficiency at the highest level of European standards, to pick up on the impression of calm expressed in the interview by my friend Silvio, it must be said that the Costa government has become a unique case in Europe because, in a historical period characterised by the rise of populist movements and the affirmation of extreme right-wing parties, here the traditional left has managed to remain at the helm of the country and social tensions have been reduced to a minimum.
The impression of living in a peaceful place is, in fact, a reality of this country and its recent history.
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