Apart from its beaches, Portugal is perhaps best known in the English-speaking world for fado, a national folk-singing genre that translates as “fate.” Fado traditionally retells stories of the aching soul, lost love, longing, and bad fortune. During the dictatorship, when jingoistic rhetoric was daily pumped out by the state’s propaganda offices, fado became the anthem of Portuguese identity. It portrayed the nation as a dignified old empire, small but great — humble before the great Anglophone hegemon, but still vigorous enough to keep half a dozen colonies in Africa and Asia.

While Portugal’s remaining colonies were recognized as independent after the Carnation Revolution in 1974, this idea that we are “small but great” persevered in the minds of many Portuguese people — as well as in the policies of multiple governments. One of the final bastions of this ideology was, undoubtedly, the immigration ministry. Laws on who can and cannot be given Portuguese citizenship have been largely punitive to the migrant communities living in Portugal, often descended from the populations of former colonies.

In this vein, one of the most heated debates in last year’s general election concerned the question of whether citizenship should embrace all children born in Portugal, a principle also known as “jus soli.” This proposal would be controversial even simply on the grounds of breaking with the European Union convention of “jus sanguinis,” according to which citizenship is handed down by descent. But it was especially disputed because it would extend citizenship to the children of millions of black and brown migrants from the former colonies — anathema for the chauvinist Portuguese psyche.