What do you think about portugal or lisbon?

Books could be written about that, so it's not reasonable to expect a complete unbiased answer of any kind. Most of them will tell you it's the best country in the world, everyone's so hospitable, there's sun all year round, endless kilometres of beaches and so forth. So, let's start with Lisbon... It is an interesting city, somewhere near what a Mediterranean city would be like but not quite yet. It has some great monuments and enough things you can do. Still, Lisbon has centralized everything in Portugal (when corporations don't simply move to Madrid, in Spain!), hence empoverishing the rest of the country. The Liss don't seem to care much about that situation, which may be only natural, they seem to believe that's the normal course of things but it's not. It's political and highly destructive of the Portuguese economy. Plus, in Lisbon, sorry for the stereotype, people earn more but really tend to make less (that is, even when they pretend they're running). Finally, Lisbon is a relatively dangerous and uncomfortable city these days. I know Liss will crucify me for speaking out these facts, but I suppose that's how the entire rest of the country feels, so it must mean something in the end. Portugal is bigger than that. Once, not so long ago, you had a country where typical things could still be found along with very varied and rather nice landscapes. Unfortunately, most of what you can see now is dreadful housing, bad roads and highways and "high technology" windmills (sorry if that's not how they're called really) supposed to help provide a cleaner energy but that have really covered and destroyed the entire land while providing very little energy at a relative high cost. Portuguese banks, of whom most Portuguese depend, pay much less taxes than any company or citizen, exploit their workers and when faceed with relatively low interest rates have decided to compensate it by charging the highest spreads in the EU. A large number of companies can only survive because they're subsidized by the state, even though their contribution really amounts to less than nothing. The number of poor people is algo growing, but they're made to live in an artificial limbo by receiving subsidies too. Of course, in the end it is commonly said that civil servants of all sorts (including very specialized trades such as teachers or medical doctors) are to blame for the current state of the Portuguese finances. But who should be btringing money to Portugal if not the private companies? In fact, there's almost no industry, almost no agriculture, almost no fishing (very often due to political interests too), but only services which aren't even that good or competitive and the tourism industry can't really expand much more the way they've turned Portugal into. And building a tourism industry mostly based in the Algarve and golf fields is simply absurd! All this is the obvious recipe to disaster. The vanishing middle-cl will pay as always, starting with the ever.criticized, ever-sacrificed civil servants. The rich will remain quite happy. And corrupted, if that is the case. The poor will remain happily sedated. The country will continue to lose its identity. The people wil get angrier and turn against each other just in any way they're subtly (or not so subtly) commanded to by those in power. Apart from that, there is a good cuisine, loads of medieval castles, a few other important monuments and regions one should visit because they still somehwo exist, namely the protected area of the Ger�s mountains and the Alentejo region, which is near if one visits Lisbon. I'll add that I'll have said will remain invisible to the tourist's eye, so if you're planning on coming to visit, please do, I'm sure you'll have a great time. There you go... As I said, I could write entire books on Portugal and focus on many different aspects, but this is what worries me now, so this is what I've said. :)