The consulate of Portugal in São Paulo announced on Thursday (18th) it was temporarily suspending to receive new applications for Portuguese citizenship in São Paulo and Santos, saying that the high volume of requests created an overload in their offices.

"We are having an increasing number of service requests in this consulate, especially of citizenship and visa applications," says a statement posted on its website.

"This rising demand is delaying processing, review, and conclusion of all new applications."

The measure "is aimed at avoiding an even greater delay on the pending requests."

The consulate also states that on January 2nd, 2019 there will be new information on the applications.
After a period of migratory decline in the early 2010s, which coincided with Portugal's recession and austerity measures, Brazilian's interest in the country increased again.

After six years in a descending trend, the number of Brazilians with permanent residence visas in Portugal increased again. They are once again the biggest foreign community in Portugal, with 85,426 citizens.

Although the official data shows an increase of 5.1% of the total of Brazilians living in Portugal, the numbers are underestimated.

It doesn't include people with double citizenship (Portuguese or other EU country), which points to the real amount of Brazilians in Portuguese territory to be even greater.

The Portuguese government report has other numbers that indicate this underestimation. One of them shows that the number of Italians living in Portugal increased 50% in the last year. Of those, 17% are Brazilian nationals.

^{Translated by NATASHA MADOV}
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