Golden visas besides driving significant demand in real estate sectors, also triggered more demand in another sector, thats Portuguguese language learning schools. Over the years large number of chinese, turks, and russians invested in golden visa scheme in Portugal.
The director of the Instituto Português do Oriente (IPOR) told Lusa news agency that the number of Portuguese tutorials almost doubled this year, largely due to ‘gold visas’ and Chinese investment in Lusophone countries.
In 2015 there were only 23 hours of tutorials, in 2018 there were 289, compared to 520 this year. The institute noted that why learn portuguese in the application forms, many candidates indicated they are entrepreneurs/investors willing to invest in Portugal.
IPOR has 27 full-time employees who, with the support of some collaborations, seek to ensure the priority vocation of promoting the teaching of the Portuguese language, with a complementary aspect focused on cultural action.
Founded on September 19, 1989 by the Orient Foundation and the Camões-Institute for Cooperation and Language, IPOR is active in Macao, in countries such as Vietnam, Thailand and Australia. Beijing and Chengdu (China) and New Delhi (India).
The knowledge Portuguese language is also one of the pre-conditions for citizenship, where investors are given a path to citizenship under ordinary naturalization after atleast five years of living in Portugal. A person aged 18 or over may be naturalised as a Portuguese citizen after 5 years legal residence. There is a requirement to have sufficient knowledge of the Portuguese language and effective links to the national community.
The following are some of the popular language learning schools in Lisbon among foreigners
- Faculdade de Letras. School.
- Portuguese Connection. School.
- CIAL Centro de Linguas. School.
- Lisbon Language School. School.
- Português Et Cetera. School.
- SPEAK. School.
- Margarida’s School. School.
- Lisbon Language Café Market.
