Attorney João Verdades Santos, 46, born in Portimão, is the new advisor for the Portuguese Communities in Luxembourg.
According to «Contacto» newspaper, published in Portuguese in Luxembourg, that country “was reduced to a councilor”, since Custódio Portásio, who returned to Portugal, was removed from office, by order of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, signed in December.
His replacement by the Algarvean João Verdades Santos became official last week, with the publication on the Government portal and on the MNE website.
The newspaper "Contacto" adds that João Verdades "was part of the single list presented in September 2015, in the last elections for the Council of Portuguese Communities (CCP), a consultative body of the Portuguese Government on immigration issues."
The civic participation of immigrants in that country, housing difficulties, access to justice and trade between Portugal and Luxembourg are some of the issues that the new councilor considers to be priorities in his term of office. João Verdades highlighted that he wants to be “a point of listening to the concerns of the Portuguese community”.
In statements to the Sul Informação, João Verdades Santos said that he went to live and work for the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg a decade ago…after having found work through the computer game, which is also a social network, Second Life. An original story, which even gave rise to news in the newspapers.
resorting to a avatar (animated figure representing the person who commands it through the computer), and at a time when the crisis was beginning to tighten in Portugal, João exchanged information in real time with employees of several companies that had virtual pavilions in the virtual job fair of Second Life, the social network and game that simulates real life.
Three months later, he received an email from Vistra asking if he was still available. “I said yes and asked them to pay me a plane ticket with a company lowcost and staying in a cheap hotel. They accepted, I took a plane in Porto and, arriving in Luxembourg, I was subjected to a three-hour interview», he said.
That's how João joined Vistra – a company in the area of international tax planning and company formation, which provides services to multinationals, investors and entrepreneurs –, starting to work in its offices in Luxembourg.
But the crisis also knocked on the door of the Grand Duchy and his job was extinguished a year later. João Verdades then turned to another social network, LinkedIn, the business network created in December 2002 that has more than 30 million registered users.
“I knew I was going to be out of a job on a Monday. On Thursday, I updated my LinkedIn profile and, that same afternoon, I started getting contacts from talent scouts: from a company in Dublin, another in London and one in Luxembourg». He ended up choosing the latter country, where he remains, practicing his profession as a lawyer and legal adviser.
In the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, with its 590 inhabitants, around 100 are Portuguese emigrants, who thus represent around one sixth of the Luxembourg population, according to data from the Emigration Observatory. The Portuguese community increases even more in importance if, to the emigrants, the Portuguese descendants are added.
Therefore, Portuguese is the fourth most spoken language in the country (after Luxembourgish, German and French, which are official languages), representing about 15,7% of speakers, according to a 2013 publication on the Portuguese portal. Official statistics from Luxembourg.
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