My Love Affair With Portuguese Bureaucracy

Boys,

You’ve heard me say that love takes many forms — sometimes it’s deep, sometimes it’s complicated, and sometimes it’s utterly absurd. Today, I’d like to tell you about one of my most passionate long-term relationships: my love affair with Portuguese bureaucracy.

It’s not the kind of love story you find in movies.

There’s no music swelling in the background, only the faint buzz of fluorescent lights in an office where the “system” is always down and no one knows why.

I used to think bureaucracy was a matter of patience. But after years of living here, I’ve learned it’s not patience — it’s performance art. Take, for example, one of my favorite chapters in this love story: the Comporta traffic light incident.

It was summer — the kind where the roads are so full that the drive from the beach feels longer than winter itself. Out of nowhere, one traffic light appeared at the exit of Comporta, and chaos was born.

Kilometers of cars lined up all the way to Tróia. It was as if someone had decided that the best way to test the resilience of humankind was through a single, mistimed traffic signal.

I decided to do the unthinkable: to find out who was responsible.
So I wrote a polite, civic-minded letter — first to the local town hall, then to the surrounding municipalities, the police department, and even the district office. Eventually, one of them replied: “It’s not our responsibility. It falls under Infraestruturas de Portugal.”

Fair enough, I thought. I wrote to them too, copying everyone, as one does in Portugal when things get serious. A few days later, Infraestruturas replied — graciously — that it wasn’t their responsibility after all. No, no, they said, it actually belonged to the same town hall that had just sent me to them.

So I thanked them for their time and replied (again with everyone CC’d) that I appreciated the clarification and would therefore reach out once more to the town hall of Alcácer do Sal.

And that’s when the magic happened.

They all started replying to each other — everyone in CC, my inbox turning into an unexpected spectator sport. Bureaucrats debating jurisdiction while I sat quietly, coffee in hand, watching the show. It was like Big Brother: Civil Service Edition.

Then one day, as suddenly as it began, I drove past the traffic light… and it was off. No notice, no message, no grand resolution — just quiet efficiency disguised as chaos.

And that, boys, is bureaucracy in its purest form. It may not move in straight lines, but somehow, eventually, it works.
If there’s a lesson here, it’s this: sometimes change doesn’t happen because you shout louder, but because you CC the right people and let them argue amongst themselves.

So remember — when you face your own versions of the traffic light in life, don’t lose your humor.
Smile, stay persistent, and always keep everyone in the loop.

P.S. The lights are still off, by the way.

Love,
Dad