Two weeks ago, a traditional merchant celebrated 55 years of work in a store of a large Lisbon Avenue. He started a boy, just 12 years old, when he left his home village to settle in the capital, living at the home of the “boss”, born in a nearby village, and learning a craft. The hesitant father only let him go after hearing his son’s cry, determined to leave the village, and the boss’s promise that the boy would make the 4th class.
This small individual story that was told by myself is, after all, the story of many Portuguese. Generations who started working too early, often away from family and for those who school was a luxury. Portugal from the 1960s and early 1970s was a poor, unequal country, with high illiteracy rates and weak perspectives of social mobility.
But Portugal has changed. It changed a lot and changed for the better. Democracy, won in April 1974, was the engine of this transformation. In five decades, the illiteracy rate fell from about 25.7% in 1970 to just over 3% in 2021. Compulsory education went from 4th class to 12 years of education and the number of students in higher education rose from about 80,000 in the early 1970s to over 448,000 in 2025.
In health, the creation of the National Universal Health Service meant a revolution in the average life expectancy, which went from values near the 78 years in 1974 to about 85 years today. Infant mortality, which was around 38 children for a thousand births in 1974, continuously descended in the following decades and is currently located in about 2 per thousand, one of the best indicators in the world and unmistakable sign of social progress achieved.
Also in the economy the jump was remarkable. The GDP per capita, which in 1974 it represented only about 50–56% of the European average, is around 80% today. European integration brought structural funds, modernized infrastructure, opened the market and internationalized Portuguese companies. The country that exported mainly wine, cork and textiles is also today a reference in renewable energy, digital technologies and global tourism.
The life of this merchant is a living testimony of this change. If in a child he left the village at age 12 to work and the maximum he could do was the 4th class, his grandchildren can today conclude higher studies. If it grew up at a time when disease was always present and unanswered, they were born with access to universal health care. If he lived under censorship and surveillance, they were born free, with guaranteed rights and opportunities that was 50 years ago.
It is true that we face serious problems such as low wages, labor precariousness, desertification of the interior, difficulties in retaining youth talent, access to housing or management of health service. And this dissatisfaction feeds a growing disappointment with the political system and the democratic institutions. But we cannot ignore the extraordinary distance traveled in just half a century. In fifty years, we have passed from a rural and closed society to a modern European democracy, open to the world and plural.
Yes. Portugal changed. It changed a lot and changed for the better. And it is the memory of these lives that tells us that democracy is daily conquest, made of citizenship, participation and responsibility. Celebrating the 51 years of democracy is also to celebrate these individual stories of those who, with effort and hope, helped build the country we have today. We now have to participate, vote, debate, associate us and demand to reinforce what goes well and correct what we need to do. Only then will we honor the past and ensure that the life of the new generations is better than the generations that preceded them. And only then will we preserve the best that democracy in the last half centuries has given us.
IEP/UCP and NSL/Unl Professor IEP/UCP