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I am portuguese, even though I am currently living in the UK, and as much as Lisbon has a sentimental value to me, afterall I lived there for the first 18 years of my life, I can’t help but wish my family and I had been born somewhere else. People always talk about how communism hindered the development of Eastern Europe, but nobody ever brings up the devastating effects 20th century fascist dictatorships had on southernwestern european nations - namely Portugal, Italy and Spain.

Anyone in my family either supports downright communism or has very far-left ideals, mainly because of what my grandparents went through when our country was ruled by fascism. My grandma was even incarcerated and tortured for being part of an underground socialist association. Her father, my great-grandpa, also had affiliations to various resistance movements and at one point he was imprisoned as well. However those are not her most painful memories of that time. She was born in a small poor village in the 1940s and suffered through and witnessed a lot of famine and poverty. Stallinist architecture gets a lot of hate, by contrast in Portugal people just lived in shacks. Of course there were also some rich folks, the 10 billionaires who owned major petrol companies all of which substained on the oil extracted from our former colonies. Not only were africans enslaved and had their natural resources robbed, but most of the extracted Wolfram was sold to both the Nazis and the Allies during WWII, which is morally questionable to say the least. Neither in Portugal nor in Angola or Mozambique was there any form of decent education or healthcare. A family member of mine was forced to fly to London to get an emergency medical exam. Not that many citizens had any basic reading skills, they had mostly severely underpaid strongly physical jobs either at factories or in agriculture, child labour was also encouraged.

Eventually Fascism did not resist the 1974 Revolution and democracy was established. However our country was a mess. Unlike former URSS nations that were highly efficient economies where most had qualified jobs and decent housing when communism was lifted, Portugal and Spain were in terrible conditions. Schools, hospitals and universities were reformed, a lot of people had to be reallocated to social housing appartment buildings, there was a huge investment in rehabilitation treatments as drug abuse levels were astronomical and overall an entire nation had to be built from scratch. As you can imagine that took a huge financial strain, in the 80s/90s as most european countries were now having their first encounter with revolutionary technological developments we were still making sure people didn’t live in shanty towns. Unfortunately as of right now slums are still a thing here, because of the mass immigration from Africa and Brazil we experienced over the past few decades. We hindered the development of their countries and destroyed their nature due to heavy mineral exploration yet when they come here they’re met with racism, we have literal paid organized touristic expeditions to their decrepit neighborhoods, travel agencies literally explore and shame these people for money. Who am I to judge we’ve been bankrupt since literally ever, after those post-fascism investments we were left high and dry. 20% of the portuguese earn minimum wage which is literally a minimal 10k€ /year, we are one of the poorest and most unequal countries in the world. We have a huge public debt that we’re literally never gonna pay, especially because tax evasion is prevalent to say the least. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, particularly now due to covid taking a toll on our fragile economy. Overall we’re fucked in every way.

Seriously if you dont live in a post-fascist country, consider yourself lucky.