The economy of Portugal half a century after the “Carnation Revolution”. An experience of conceptual interpretation)

The Portuguese economy approached the 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution (25 April 2024) in relatively good shape. According to international analysts, the country has ceased to be the “sick man” of Europe, as it was called at the turn of the first and second decades of the 21st century, and is experiencing a “golden period” of its economic history, in particular, thanks to factors such as structural modernization, growing exports and increasing inflows of foreign tourists. But the normalization of the country’s economic situation was based on tough measures within the framework of the policy of “fiscal asceticism” carried out after the crisis of 2008-2009, and these measures cost dearly to millions of Portuguese, whose financial situation has significantly worsened and remains unstable to this day. The country also paid an expensive social price for financial and economic stabilization in the form of emigrants, whose number by 2020 exceeded two million people (about 20% of the population). Moreover, unlike previous waves of emigration, when unskilled workers left, now the bulk of those leaving the country are educated specialists. But this is just one of the new challenges to which Portugal will have to find an answer in the context of geo-economic upheavals occurring in Europe and the world.