Racism in Portugal has a long history, including the early modern persecution of Muslims and Jews and Portugal's involvement in the trade in enslaved people from West Africa.
Today in Portugal, the number of attacks against Afro-Portuguese people and Romani people from one year to the next is uneven and those attacks are not always promptly reported on the media and investigated by the police. Those two groups of people have also had a disproportionate representation in annual arrests, incarceration numbers and police reports across the country and throughout time.Criminalidade, Etnicidade e Desigualdades O crime nos reclusos dos PALOP, Leste Europeu e de etnia cigana e as percepções dos guardas prisionais e dos elementos da direcção acerca deles (Minho University) https://repositorium.sdum.uminho.pt/bitstream/1822/17004/1/Relat%C3%B3rio%20Criminalidade%20Etnicidade%20e%20Desigualdades.pdf
There are several anti-racism organizations in the country supporting victims of racism and raising awareness about racism and ethnic discrimination issues. Social integration-focused organizations and programs targeting ethnic minorities or groups within some ethnic minorities with a track record of social issues including crime, poverty and youth delinquency, are also pervasive in Portugal. An anti-discrimination law was published on 28 August 1999. It prohibits discriminatory practices based on race, skin colour, nationality and ethnic origin. According to the Portuguese Constitution, further discriminatory practices based on sex, race, language, origin territory, religion, political and ideological convictions, instruction level, economic situation, social condition or sexual orientation are also prohibited.
History
In the 8th century, Muslim armies sailed from North Africa and took control of Iberia. Known in Arabic as al-Andalus, the region joined the expanding Umayyad Empire and prospered under Muslim rule. However, dhimmi status led to continuing discrimination against Christians in those places.
Some Muslim Moors, mainly Arab and Berber people in origin, as well as Jews and Christian Mozarabs, were expelled out of the continent or fled from the reconquered territory, during the Catholic Reconquista and the expansion of the newly founded Kingdom of Portugal in the 12th and 13th centuries, after the conquest of the southern lands, including Lisbon, the Alentejo, and the Algarve. However, many adapted to the new Catholic rulers, often due to the coercive power of the ruling authority, and remained in the country mixing with the general population in every aspect of their lives. In Algarve and Lisbon, large swathes of Muslims of Arabic and Berber origin were assimilated into the general population of the Kingdom of Portugal during the process of Reconquista or in a few decades after its end. In several Portuguese regions such as Cova da Beira and Trás-os-Montes, Jews escaped the Portuguese Inquisition formally established in Portugal in 1536 and prospered as marranos and conversos, but many others across Portugal were persecuted, killed or forced to escape out of the Kingdom of Portugal.
The Atlantic slave trade started in 1444, when 235 people from the newly-discovered coast of West Africa where the Islamic slave trade had been established a long time ago were put up for sale in Lagos, currently a Portuguese beach resort on Europe's southwestern tip in Portugal's Algarve. Slavery would be abolished in Portugal in 1761 by the Marquês de Pombal. However, slavery within the African Portuguese colonies would only be fully abolished in 1869 due to that colonies' deep connections with the Brazilian slave trade.
In the second half of the 16th century, at the end of the Portuguese Age of Discovery and close to the apogee of the transcontinental Portuguese Empire, Lisbon was full of black people of African extraction who lived freely and naturally among the white locals of European ancestry. There were also black servants and black slaves as well as black slave traders established in the Portuguese city."A presença africana é a mais importante que temos" (Diário de Notícias) https://www.dn.pt/sociedade/a-presenca-africana-e-a-mais-importante-que-temos-5336490.html
In the 20th century, the Portuguese authorities would formally develop and promote the concept of Lusotropicalism. In light of this theory and official policy, Portugal's most notable sports star (Eusébio da Silva Ferreira) and the most decorated military officer of the Portuguese Armed Forces (Marcelino da Mata) under the Estado Novo regime (1933-1974) designed and led by António de Oliveira Salazar, were both black Portuguese citizens born and raised in Portugal's African territories. A large number of Portuguese military personnel employed during the Portuguese Colonial War (1961-1974) were also black African people.
Like the other countries of the Mediterranean, Portugal has witnessed a new phenomenon since the 1974 Carnation Revolution and the end of the Portuguese overseas empire: beyond the condition of country of emigration, it became at the same time a country of immigration. There was a very large flow of African immigrants, particularly coming from the former Portuguese colonies in Africa (collectively known as PALOP countries).
Immigration to Portugal before 1980 usually involved different groups (mainly Europeans and South Americans, in particular Brazilian immigrants), and a different socio-economic integration, than later immigrants.
The 1980s also saw racist attacks against certain immigrants by skinheads and the far-right National Action Movement, a fringe movement.European Monitioring Centre om Racism and Xenophobia report on Portugal
Since the 1990s, along with a boom in construction, several new waves of Brazilians, Romanians, and Moldovans have immigrated to Portugal. A number of British and Spanish people have also immigrated to Portugal, with the British community being mostly composed of retired pensioners and the Spaniards composed of professionals (medical doctors, business managers, businesspersons, nurses, etc.). Racism is usually related with ethnicity rather than nationality, with black people being the most common target, after Ciganos.
National and ethnic groups
Romani The Ciganos were the object of fierce discrimination and persecution.Joel Serrão, Ciganos, in Dicionário de História de Portugal, Lisboa, 2006. The number of Ciganos in Portugal is about 40,000 to 50,000 spread all over the country. The majority of the Ciganos concentrate themselves in urban centers, where from the late 1990s to the 2000s, major public housing (bairros sociais) policies were targeted at them in order to promote social integration. However, this population is still characterised by very low levels of educational qualification, high unemployment, and crime rates. The Ciganos are the ethnic group that the Portuguese most reject and discriminate against, and are also targets for discriminatory practices from the State administration, namely at a local level, finding persistent difficulties in the access to job placement, housing and social services, as well as in the relation to police forces.ECRI (2002), Relatório da Comissão Europeia contra o Racismo e a Intolerância – Segundo Relatório sobre Portugal, Estrasburgo, pp. 23–25. ; See also: European Commission against Racism and Intolerance, Third report on Portugal, 2006. There are also reports on discrimination of Ciganos by owners of small shops in many parts of the country, including businesses run by other ethnic minorities, such as the Chinese.
Starting in the late 2010s, the agenda of CHEGA party and its founder André Ventura, which is heavily focused on criminality, support for the police forces, and the misuse of public money in terms of corruption at the top, overstaffing in the civil service at the middle or undeserving welfare recipients at the bottom, includes extensive references to the Portuguese Gypsies which are often explicitly targeted by the party and its founderMANUEL LUÍS GOUCHA: «O ANDRÉ VENTURA TEM QUASE UMA CIGANOFOBIA» (TVI) https://tvi.iol.pt/goucha/videos/manuel-luis-goucha-o-andre-ventura-tem-quase-uma-ciganofobia/5ff737920cf27e103fc93ae1 in such a manner that a number of fines and admonitions have been issued to them by the Commission for Equality and Against Racial Discrimination (CICDR).André Ventura fined for discriminating against gypsies (The Portugal News) https://www.theportugalnews.com/news/2020-11-28/andre-ventura-fined-for-discriminating-against-gypsies/56948 André Ventura has defended himself explaining that he isn't racist but against subsidy dependence and criminality. He said about the topic that "structural racism is a ghost that does not exist in Portugal, a ghost that they want to bring into the discussion of issues or to hide others, as was the case of Novo Banco, as was the case of several cases of corruption that we have learned about in recent weeks".André Ventura diz que racismo "fantasma que não existe" usado para esconder casos (Observador) https://observador.pt/2020/06/08/andre-ventura-diz-que-racismo-fantasma-que-nao-existe-usado-para-esconder-casos/
Muslims There has also been incidents of minor discrimination towards Muslims due to the history of modern Islamic terrorism in the Western World and some practices considered illiberal or grotesque by locals such as female genital mutilation.FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION IS A REALITY IN PORTUGAL (algarvedailynews.com) https://algarvedailynews.com/news/12617-female-genital-mutilation-is-a-reality-in-portugal
Brazilians
The largest number of complaints about discrimination in Portugal come from Brazilians.Brasileiros lideram queixas em Portugal (in Portuguese). According to a 2009 survey, 44% of the 64,000 Brazilians who were legally residing in Portugal had experienced some form of discrimination in the previous 12 months.Estudo mostra discriminação contra brasileiros em Portugal (in Portuguese)."Brasileiros e pretos deviam morrer": Alunos da Universidade de Coimbra fazem campanha contra xenofobia (in Portuguese).
According to a 2007 survey, 71.9% of Brazilians living in Portugal reported having witnessed prejudice against Brazilians in the country. 45.3% said there was "a lot" of prejudice against Brazilians, and 26.6% said there was "some". Only 19.3% stated that there was "none". 34.5% of the Brazilian respondents said that they themselves were victims of prejudice by the Portuguese, and 65.3% said they never were. Among those who suffered prejudice, there were reports of greater difficulties in buying or renting a property, insults in the workplace, and differential treatment when they begin to speak and have their Brazilian accent noticed.Imigrantes denunciam racismo para arranjar casa (in Portuguese). Brazilian women are the ones who complain the most about prejudice in Portugal, as there is an association between Brazilian women and prostitution in the country.Manifesto em repúdio ao preconceito contra as mulheres brasileiras em Portugal (in Portuguese).Preconceito na TV contra brasileiras provoca protesto em Portugal (in Portuguese).O combate ao preconceito contra as brasileiras em Portugal (in Portuguese). According to a study, there has been a process of "racialization" of Brazilian women in Portugal, in which biological (exuberant body, beauty) and behavioral (lack of modesty, sexual availability) stereotypes are attributed to them.RACISMO CONTRA AS MULHERES BRASILEIRAS EM PORTUGAL? ALGUMAS REFLEXÕES. (in Portuguese).