Meet the Tugas

Discovering Portugal through time and place: a love letter to a country and its people.

Arriving alongside hundreds of thousands of other – what we referred to ourselves as – “expats”, I realised that had I considered Portugal a decade or so earlier, I would’ve regarded this country (…) to be somewhere in Latin America. Rather than a nation whose history extended back a thousand years, and a people even further. But after three years of travelling from each corner, coastline, island volcano, vineyard, village and city of this country, I came to understand the essence of its grandeur, its pride, the reason why it was able to chip away at the statue of the world, and the world at it. Discovering the reason why my rent had skyrocketed, and what was pulling people from all parts of the world to make their lives here.

This is a journey across a sun-kissed, battle-scarred, boat launch, wine-soaked nation through the eyes of a traveller seeking to understand its heart and soul. To discover the glory, tragedy, pitfalls and triumphs that are etched, sometimes secretly, into the land, its buildings and people.