LA Magazine says California Dreaming is in Portugal

The new California dream is now in Portugal according to US magazine Los Angeles Magazine.

Portugal has become a vital destination for Californians in search of reinvention and rejuvenation. It is apparently the “new chic spot to grow a startup, forge an international team, buy an apartment or truly live”.
The magazine points out that the cost of living is less than half that of California, dinner for two runs about $25, good ‘vinho de supermercado’ is “cheaper than our state’s bottled water”, and referring to the pandemic and Portugal’s highly successful vaccination campaign “the work-force malaise and politicization of the pandemic that have gripped the Golden State and the nation are refreshingly absent”.
The magazine quotes a joke from a former development executive with Paramount Studios in LA, Fernanda Carapinha, who is now the founder and CEO of WE Global Studios and leads its expansion into Lisbon. “They often joke that Portugal and California were one, and they split. The climate is the same, the plants are the same, it’s pretty wild”.
As California struggles to recover from its “existential crisis as a state that many of its own residents believe is in decline”, the magazine trumpets Portugal as offering a second chance to live the California good life of yore. “So expect to see thousands more seeking culture, waves, and tech opportunity to fetch up in Lisbon and Porto”.
The article recalls how in the 2007-2008 global financial crisis the embryonic Beta-i-Lisbon accelerator made a whistle-stop tour of California’s Silicon Valley in 2011 to “look at the different things that are happening and collect what would work for Lisbon” which resulted in 10 prominent California technologists attending the Silicon Valley Comes to Lisbon conference which became a catalyst for innovation.
But of course more recently, which the magazine didn’t pick up on, was a visit by 10 California State elected officials who were in Portugal for 12 days in October to understand why Portugal is such a success story in terms of climate change and renewables and look at ways in which the Portuguese Republic and its businesses in the area and the US State can cooperate on current and future projects from renewable energy to healthcare.
“On so many levels, the country can seem like California’s European twin, albeit without the apocalyptic wildfires and lingering droughts (actually we’ve had our fair share of wildfires)”.
Lisbon, it says, especially “teases Californians with echoes of San Francisco”, the “red-painted suspension bridge, this one straddling the Tagus River instead the Golden Gate (built by the same engineer who built the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge), seven steep hills, and iconic, many-hued cable cars. World-class surfing can be had 30 minutes away in Ericeira, and Nazaré”.