The New York Times' Raphael Minder writes about the return of the Azorean diaspora, as tourists, to their homeland. This is something I see first-hand: the quoted former parliamentarian used to represent my neighbourhood.

Before a recent religious procession here, a wooden statue of the Holy Christ of Miracles was draped in a new cape, but with a ( Read more... )

I've noted in the past that the Portuguese economy, at best stagnant, depended heavily on the income earned by Portuguese migrants in oil-rich Angola. Now that the Angolan economic boom has ended, Henrique Almeida and Joao Lima write for Bloomberg about the Portuguese now left with no options.

If there’s one thing Paulo Goncalves has learned about ( Read more... )

Frank Jacobs of Strange Maps has an enlightening post looking at Macaronesia, the collection of North Atlantic islands off the European and African coasts that includes the Portuguese Azores and Madeira, the Spanish Canaries, and the independent and ex-Portuguese Cape Verde islands. I wrote about this 2005, there noting how despite its independence ( Read more... )

I have a post up at Demography Matters where I suggest that the cat island can point us towards the future rewilding of the depopulating rural world.

Outlook India's Vivek Menezes writes about how the Indian state of Goa, once a Portuguese enclave, has flirted with the idea of being a Singapore-like city-state.

At that very beginning of decolonisation in Asia, the Portuguese dictator Salazar found a lot to like in what was happening in the British-ruled port city - its new Legislative Council ( Read more... )

• Al Jazeera notes that Tunisia is still on the brink, looks at the good relations between Indians and Pakistanis outside of South Asia, suspects that a largely Armenian-populated area in Georgia might erupt, and reports on satellite imagery of Boko Haram's devastation in Nigeria.
• Bloomberg notes that a North Korean camp survivor caught in lies might ( Read more... )

I've a post up noting how people immigrate to Africa these days.

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I'm exceptionally unsympathetic to the arguments made by tourist-skeptical people in Henrique Almeida's Bloomberg article, not least because I've heard them on Prince Edward Island. Places which have freely staked their economic futures on their successful globalization really have no justification to criticize outsider's curiosities. What are the ( Read more... )