The Delivery Man Is Not the Problem: Portugal’s Hypocritical Blind Spot

Last weekend, like almost every other, thousands of Lisbon residents picked up their phones, tapped on Uber Eats, and had their dinners delivered—often by men from Bangladesh, Nepal, or Pakistan, navigating precarious jobs on bicycles through the city’s gentrified streets.

And yet, in conversations around cafés, online forums, and tabloid headlines, one hears a familiar complaint: “Too many immigrants.”
For many, the problem is the brown-skinned delivery man, not the system that exploits him.

Meanwhile, in the real estate offices of Lisbon and Cascais, the elite play a very different game. A recent news piece reveals that Nilsen Arias, an Equatorial Guinean linked to the ruling regime, has spent the last six years quietly buying up 13 apartments, a commercial property in Lisbon, and a luxury villa in Cascais.
The Public Prosecutor is finally investigating, but the timing feels symbolic: the damage is already done.

This is not just about one man. It’s about a pattern.

Luxury Laundering

Lisbon’s property market has become a laundromat for global wealth—some of it legal, much of it suspicious. From Angolan oligarchs to Brazilian elites escaping Lava Jato, from crypto-speculators to oil cronies from Equatorial Guinea, the Portuguese real estate market has become an international parking lot for dirty money.

These buyers don’t just purchase homes—they purchase silence, status, and legal protection. All while ordinary Portuguese residents are pushed out of neighborhoods they’ve lived in for generations, priced out by speculative investments and "golden visa" schemes.

Who Do We Blame?

But the public debate in Portugal rarely targets these systemic issues. Instead, it often settles into a familiar scapegoating ritual: blaming immigrants for everything from rising rents to cultural change.

It’s easier to get angry at the Bangladeshi delivery driver on your doorstep than to question the luxury real estate developers or the politicians who open the floodgates to laundered wealth.

It’s easier to resent the worker surviving on €3 per delivery than the millionaire buying up half of Avenida da Liberdade.

And it’s certainly easier to look down than to look up.

The Convenient Amnesia of Post-Colonial Portugal

Portugal likes to think of itself as a hospitable country, with open arms and an open mind. But the darker truth is that the country has become a gateway for post-colonial extraction in reverse.

Instead of colonial powers taking wealth from Africa, now African oligarchs—propped up by exploitative regimes—bring their wealth to Europe. They buy apartments, shop in Avenida da Liberdade, and send their children to private universities. Portugal smiles and calls it "investment."

All while workers from the Global South—often from the same exploited regions—are kept at the margins, cleaning houses, delivering food, or building the very condos they’ll never afford.

It’s Time to Refocus the Lens

Portugal does not have an immigration problem. It has a corruption problem, a money laundering problem, and a housing justice problem.

Blaming migrant workers is not just lazy—it’s dangerous. It distracts from the real culprits: the political and financial elites who have turned Lisbon into a playground for the global rich.

The person bringing your Uber Eats dinner is not the reason you can’t afford rent.
The real estate oligarch, the politician on a donor’s payroll, the banker facilitating offshore transactions—these are the people you should be angry at.

And until Portugal faces that truth, the cycle will continue: gentrification for the rich, precarity for the rest, and a public discourse that always punches down.