Now, if I know my audience, and I think I do, you all read yesterday’s post, 1 Day of Summer, and immediately circled 31 July next year as the day for your nuptials. Even those of you who are not yet in a long term relationship have signed up for Tinder in the hope of getting a bride/groom lined up in the next 11 months and 28 days. You impetuous fools!
But wait, is it actually safe to get married in Portugal? A meme has resurfaced recently on the Twitter*, purporting to show that fully 94% of Portuguese marriages end in divorce. The sort of people who believe everything they read on the Internet have been lamenting this sad state of affairs as they awaited the Pope’s visit. But it’s bollocks of course. The BBC’s More or Less programme did a short piece about the factoid and tried to get to the bottom of it.
The basic gist is that the account that published it couldn’t back up the numbers. The closest available figure the BBC could find was 91% but that was comparing divorces and marriages in the same year and that year was… Ahem… 2020 when all the churches were closed and nobody was getting married. The real rate is pretty low: lower than the EU average.
So, don’t worry, you can still get married in the 31st of July 2024 in the Douro Valley with Quim Barreiros officiating, but don’t forget to invite me.
*Or “X” as we are now meant to call it… It works well for portuguese learners since the letter is pronounced “sheesh!” and that’s exactly what I say whenever I see the bloody thing.
Luso 
I’ve just seen someone else post this graphic and they seemed very concerned about it. Nonsense on the Internet is almost as hard to get rid of as bedbugs.
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