The Paradox of Paradise: Why Black People Are Choosing to Move to Portugal
Reconciling beauty, history and belonging in a country that once led the slave trade
There’s something quietly radical about choosing to build a life in the country that started it all.
Portugal wasn’t just complicit in the transatlantic slave trade. It invented it. In 1444, Portuguese traders brought 235 enslaved Africans to Lagos, Portugal, marking the beginning of the European slave trade with Africa. By 1526, Portuguese mariners completed the first transatlantic slave voyage to Brazil, launching the triangular trade that would devastate millions for centuries. Portugal and its colonies would go on to transport over 5 million enslaved Africans across the Atlantic, accounting for nearly half of all Africans forcibly taken to the Americas. The very cobblestones of Lisbon’s waterfront, where tourists now sip espresso and watch the sunset, once witnessed the forced baptism of newly arrived Africans at Igreja de São Domingos before they were sold at market.
And yet, today, Black Americans are moving to Portugal. Brazilians of African descent continue arriving in large numbers. Cape Verdeans, Angolans, Mozambicans, and Guineans have made it home for generations. Portugal now has one of the higher percentages of Black populations in Europe at around 4 to 5%, though exact numbers remain contested because Portugal has historically avoided collecting racial data.
How do we reconcile this? How does anyone walk through Rossio Square, a gathering place for Black Lisboetas for centuries, and not feel the weight of every ancestor who stood there in chains?
The answer isn’t simple, and maybe it shouldn’t be.
Before the Ships: When Moors Transformed Portugal
Before Portugal became Europe’s gateway for African enslavement, the Iberian Peninsula itself was shaped by centuries of Moorish rule. In 711 CE, North African Muslims led by the Berber general Tariq ibn-Ziyad captured the Iberian Peninsula. Many of these Moors were North African Berbers and Black Africans who brought advanced mathematics, architecture, medicine, agriculture and poetry. They transformed Portuguese cities like Évora and Lisbon with innovations that still define the landscape today. This Islamic civilization flourished until 1492 when the last Muslim enclave of Granada fell to Christian rulers.
That dual history, of innovation and oppression, of shared culture and later violence, still lingers. The Moorish influence remains in Portuguese tiles, music, language and food. This history complicates easy narratives. Portugal’s relationship with Africa and African people has always been layered, sometimes brutal, sometimes intertwined, never simple. It is part of what makes moving to Portugal as a Black person such an emotional journey.
Living the Contradiction Today
Today, that complexity plays out in lived experience. A 2023 survey by Statistics Portugal found that more than 1.2 million people, 16% of the population, reported experiencing discrimination, particularly those who identified as Romani, Black, or mixed-race. The stories vary sharply by origin and accent.
In 2022, Brazilian nationality was the most common reason cited in discrimination complaints in Portugal, representing more than 34% of all complaints. Brazilians and Africans frequently report facing housing discrimination and experiencing what researchers call “accentism,” where the way someone speaks Portuguese triggers prejudice. Studies show that Brazilian women in Portugal “experience particularly aggressive forms of accent-activated stigmatisation, and specifically, sexualisation” in the workplace.
But here’s where it gets interesting. Black Americans often report a different experience. Once locals hear an American accent, treatment shifts. The privilege of Americanness, even for Black Americans fleeing systemic racism at home, creates a buffer that their Brazilian and African brothers and sisters don’t have.
Why Black People Are Still Choosing Portugal
The draw to Portugal makes practical sense for many. Brazilians arrive with Portuguese language skills that, while different from European Portuguese, provide a foundation for faster adaptation and learning. African immigrants from former colonies bring similar linguistic bridges and cultural familiarity. For years, Portugal was one of Europe’s most affordable options, though rising housing costs are changing that reality. The weather is gentle. The pace is slower. There’s a sizeable African diaspora community, particularly in neighborhoods like Lisbon’s bairro das novas nações, where streets are named after former colonies and community organizations like Batoto Yetu work to preserve African heritage among young people.
UN experts have noted Portugal’s emerging discourse on systemic racism and its roots in historical processes, particularly the government’s National Plan to Combat Racism and Discrimination 2021 to 2025. The country is, however awkwardly, beginning to reckon with its past. In 2024, Lisbon erected more than 20 historical street markers near sites where enslaved Africans once disembarked and were sold. In Lagos, a small museum now occupies the site of the first slave market. These are small gestures, but they matter.
Still, challenges persist. UN experts noted with concern the prevalence of systemic racism, racially motivated violence, racial profiling, and police brutality toward people of African descent. Far-right movements have gained traction, and hate speech targeting migrants, Black people and Roma communities has increased. The cultural reckoning is uneven, contested and far from complete.
What Does the Path Forward Look Like?
Maybe it looks like choosing complexity over purity. Like acknowledging that Portugal was the architect of a system that destroyed countless lives while also recognizing that present-day Portugal is trying, however imperfectly, to face that truth. Like understanding that for many Black people, especially those from former Portuguese colonies, this complicated country still feels more like home than anywhere else.
Maybe it looks like what Toby Thompkins, a Black American now living in Lisbon, described as reconciliation. An openness to dialogue. A sense of infinite possibilities. A willingness to confront rather than erase. A belief that despite everything, or maybe because of everything, something new can be built here.
Living in a country that pioneered slavery means living with ghosts. But it also means being part of a story that’s still being written. The Black Brazilians advocating for better treatment in workplaces, the African community organizers preserving cultural heritage for the next generation, the Black Americans finding respite from a different kind of racism, the Portuguese government slowly acknowledging what happened on its shores. All of it is part of the same ongoing negotiation between past and present.
Many Black visitors start their Portugal journey by connecting with its past. The African Lisbon Tour with Naky G (africanlisbontour.com) offers first-time visitors a guided exploration of Black history and culture in the city. Meanwhile, the Black in Portugal Facebook Group and app have built a thriving community of thousands of users who share experiences, advice, and support for navigating life in Portugal as a Black person.
The Most Radical Act
This isn’t about forgiveness or forgetting. It’s about Black people around the world deciding for themselves what home means, what peace looks like and whether healing can happen in the very place where the wound was inflicted. Some days the answer is yes. Some days it’s harder. But the fact that the conversation is happening at all, that Black people are choosing Portugal despite everything and demanding it be better, that might be the most radical act of all.
People are here. Building lives. Insisting on being seen as fully human in a place that once said they weren’t. And maybe that’s what reconciliation actually looks like: not perfect harmony, but the messy, necessary work of making space for everyone’s humanity, even when history says we shouldn’t be able to stand in the same room together.
Yet here we are, standing.