Is Portugal a tolerant society?

To start, I think the Portuguese society is quite tolerant, because it allows the immigrants to work or live in our country, but some people don’t accept that someone can be from other ethnic group.
In the first place, Portugal has many immigrants working here and most of the people respect them and their cultures. For instance, in Portugal there are churches for other religions.
Furthermore, it is important to the Portuguese society to know different cultures, to know that theirs is not the only one and some people from different cultures and countries fall in love with each other.
However, many people from other countries or other ethnic groups are much discriminated. Such as black people, namely from Africa, or Asian people, namely from China and India.
To sum up, I think that the Portuguese society should think twice before rejecting someone for being black, white or yellow. All of these are people just like anybody else and they don’t deserve to be judge like that. The Portuguese society should be more tolerant, respect the others and themselves, yes, because discriminating someone is an act of pure wickedness and a lack of human character.

Joaquim Santos, Class 2, Year 9


This text is related to Portugal’s tolerance. In my opinion, Portugal is a tolerant society.
In the first place, Portugal allows immigration. For example, people from different ethnic groups have come to Portugal for a long time.
In the second place, the Portuguese government builds social shanty tows for other ethnic groups. For example, in Lisbon there are many social shanty tows.
All things considered, Portugal has many different people and religions too.
Sandra Ferreira, Class 2, Year 9


People from other countries come to Portugal every day and I think the Portuguese people don’t like it.
Black people come to Portugal searching for a better life and that harms the Portuguese people. For example, a black person comes to Portugal to work here and steals Portuguese jobs in that way.
To sum up, I think that immigrants should go back to their countries, but I can’t change the world.
Pedro Fernandes, Class 3, Year 9

I believe that Portugal is partially a tolerant society. In the first place, the Portuguese government says that Portugal is a country with open arms to immigrants, but in reality this isn’t true.
On the other hand, the Portuguese population does not like to socialize with black people and, for example, with drug addicts. The Portuguese population isn’t prepared to receive other people who are very different when compared to native Portuguese people.
All things considered, until Portuguese people accept other races in their country there is much work to do.Portugal is not a tolerant society.
Rosaria Araújo, Class 3, Year 9

First, I will talk about the tolerance of the Portuguese society. In my opinion, Portuguese society is tolerant but still it is not tolerant enough to understand certain ways of thinking and acting of people from other cultures, religions and countries.
People in a society are not tolerant of people from other countries, because they think these people are violent, aggressive, bad-tempered, cold and distant. The Portuguese society is not tolerant to people in their every day lives, because people are of other religions, cultures, countries and other colours.
To sum up, the Portuguese society is tolerant, but not 100% tolerant.
Cláudia Azevedo Ferreira, Class 3, Year 9