u/txbxddah

After a pretty rough 2 hour delay entering Lisbon on Monday due to none of their egates being open / very few staff working at border control, I decided to arrive 3 and a half hours early for my early morning flight despite my airline saying 3 hours was enough time. I can safely say it was the right move. Once again, egates are completely closed and when manual border control finally opened, only one border control agent was on shift for a line that started stretching out into the duty free food court within 30 minutes. Even though I was near the front of the queue, it took me an hour and a half to get through the airport to my gate (without checked luggage). People at the back of the line were even coming forward worried about missing their flight and they were immediately sent to the back of the queue again.

If you’re leaving Lisbon today (or any day for that matter), particularly around peak times, I would recommend giving yourself 3.5 hours breathing room to get through the airport. You might not need it I but i’m so relieved I didn’t take the risk. Better safe than sorry!

I’ve just gotten home from a trip to Alicante, Spain. I (27f) was with a small group of my closest friends from my university days for the weekend and we decided to have a beach day (for context, there were 5 of us - 4 of us being women, but I was the only black person in the group). We found a quieter beach a few miles out from the main strip and had a really time, but as my friends were walking out of the beach, a guy within a large group of young local men shouted “Shut up, n***er” at me.

I’ve travelled to Spain (and to mainland Europe in general multiple times) and while I’m not naive enough to think racism isn’t prevalent out there (and have dealt with my fair share of ignorance/microagressions), I’ve never experienced anything this brazen on holiday before, and I just completely froze. While my friends did their best to support me, it would’ve been unsafe to confront such a large group of men and we weren’t sure if the police would understand (or care) so we just left. While I tried to let it go and enjoy the rest of the trip, I couldn’t help but feel quite powerless and paranoid for the rest of my time there. Even now I feel pretty upset about it and how much it impacted what was supposed to be a fun experience .

Has anyone else faced anything like this before, and if so, do you have any advice for how to handle it or move forward from it? Maybe I do just need to suck it up but the experience has rattled me a lot more than I expected to, and left me feeling a bit anxious about my future travel plans in general (including a solo trip I have planned to Portugal soon). I’ve always loved travelling up until this point, which I think is why this situation bothers me so much. The rise of the far right feels so universal right now, it upsets and angers me that people can feel so emboldened to behave this way and get away with it.

Edit: Thank you so much to everyone that’s left me an encouraging or kind word and thoughtful advice, I’m feeling a lot calmer about the situation today and a lot more prepared / resilient for any incidents like this when travelling in the future.

(Also for context, I’m Black British and have been to Spain multiple times before without an incident like this, which I think definitely lulled me into a false sense of security on this particular trip. I am aware that Spain and Europe in general has an extremely colonial history and that I live in that history every day. I’ll definitely be more vigilant of that fact moving forwards 👍🏾 ).