Resultado da conversa com Peter Wise, do Financial Times: “People who remember how poor Portugal was before we joined are not going to say bad things about Europe,” says José Adelino Maltez, a political scientist at Lisbon’s Technical University. In terms of development, he says, Portugal has moved in a short period from a country comparable with Morocco to “somewhere near the suburbs of Madrid”. “We, the passive majority of the Portuguese, have seen our lifestyles improve over the past two decades, mainly for electoral reasons, without the same sense of sacrifice as some central European countries,” says Prof Maltez. “But we haven’t achieved the same levels of education or professional training.” “The political parties that formed in Portugal after the return of democracy in 1974 are all based on German models,” says Prof Maltez. “Many of our leading politicians were educated in German institutes. “Portuguese democracy is European from the inside out.”

A síntese da síntese não tem que ser a bipolarização do optimismo contra o pessimismo. Vale mais falar na esperança dos desesperados. Contudo, sempre me citam: “quem se lembra de como Portugal era pobre antes da adesão não dirá nada de negativo sobre a Europa”