Portugal has been receiving thousands of foreigners as new residents in the last years. Recently, Lisbon has welcomed Éric Cantona, the former international football player for the French national team, who has played for several years for Manchester United.

Many French people are buying real estate in Portugal, not only from an investing perspective but also from a residential perspective. According to this post (it´s in Portuguese), in the last years, 8 000 non-Portuguese people asked for the Portugal’s non-regular resident status. The majority of those 8000 people come from France. As it is stated above, one of them is Eric Cantona, that said to the Guardian that he feels alive in Lisbon.

There are several advantages with this status, but the most important are the tax benefits this status offers. Here´s all information from the Portuguese government in English and in French.

“I feel alive here”, Eric Cantona to the Guardian

In my opinion, there are several factors that make Portugal the best country to live in the World (I acknowledge I may have a biased opinion!):

Safety

With the increasing number of terror attacks in Europe, safety is Portugal´s main strength. Portugal has never had any terror attack and it has no economic impact to be considered a potential target. That´s the main advantage of having a slow economy: nobody cares about Portugal. Actually, 60% of Americans even think Portugal is a province of Spain. Therefore, I really think what makes Portugal safe is the fact that most people do not know anything about Portugal, including terrorists!

Food

Portugal has amazing food. Portugal gastronomy has a very long list of traditional dishes – here´s short guide made by CNN.