Portugal face Spain in the World Cup round of 16 tonight at the Dallas Stadium in Arlington, Texas, with the winner facing either the USA or Belgium in the quarter-finals in Los Angeles on Friday 10 July. It's a rematch of last year's Nations League final, which Portugal won on penalties against the European champions - but the balance of power looks different now. Spain arrive unbeaten and yet to concede a goal at this World Cup, having topped their group before storming past Austria 3-0 in the round of 32, and they're unbeaten in their last 34 matches, one short of their all-time record. Opta's supercomputer gives Spain a 49.2 percent chance of winning in normal time against Portugal's 25.6 percent, with a quarter of simulations going to extra time. Portugal, by contrast, have stuttered their way here. They're unbeaten and have conceded only twice in four games, but looked short of fluency in a 1-1 draw with DR Congo and a 0-0 stalemate with Colombia, and they needed high drama to survive the last 32. Croatia thought they'd forced extra time through Josko Gvardiol, only for ball-sensor technology to confirm a touch from an offside Croatian and rule out the last-gasp equaliser, sealing a 2-1 win. There was history in the group stage too: Portugal won a World Cup match after trailing for the first time since 1966. But the last 16 has been a graveyard for them. Their World Cup runs in 2010 and 2018 both ended at this stage. Roberto Martínez has no fresh injury concerns, and he's not expected to drop Ronaldo from the starting XI despite substituting the 41-year-old against Croatia. Which brings us to the story within the story: the generational duel. Ronaldo, the second-oldest player at the tournament, faces 18-year-old prodigy Lamine Yamal, and while the Portuguese captain has deflected questions about his future, his sister has said he'll retire from international duty when this World Cup ends. Ronaldo has three goals in the tournament and pedigree in this fixture - the sides' most recent World Cup meeting, in 2018, ended 3-3 with a Ronaldo hat-trick - but Spain's danger man has been Mikel Oyarzabal, who has directly contributed to five of Spain's eight goals at this tournament.

I was looking at some data from the United States Social Security Administration about recipients of benefits outside of the United States, and I found something interesting. In December, 2025, there were 12,185 people receiving retirement benefits from the [U.S.] Social Security Administration in Portugal.. This was an increase of 7.27% from December, 2024 and was the highest rate of increase since the pandemic. The countries in Europe with more people receiving Social Security retirement benefits are the United Kingdom (28,027), Germany (23,769), Poland (20,655), Italy (15,506), France (13,254) and Greece (13,093). I'm taking a deeper dive into the data to see if I can get some more insights.

From Paul Rees on Facebook: The government released this week the map of the Renewable Energy Acceleration Zones (ZAER). This document is a passport to the ill-designated green energy industry, occupying 7% of the national territory. This project is particularly injurious to the district of Castelo Branco where an area of approximately 100 thousand hectares is planned to be occupied. Three councils of the Pinhal zone (Sertã, Proença-Nova and Oleiros) are the most affected since the plan provides for the occupation of their territories by more than 35%. The impact of all this is terrifying, visually we are going to have a painted landscape of black and environmentally it is a catastrophe since the destruction of around 100 thousand hectares of vegetation (only in the Casetlo Branco district) implies the death of a huge number of birds and animals wilds contributing in this way to accelerate climate change. According to experts, the destruction of such a natural area will cause an increase in temperature, the rapid runoff of rainwater causing increased floods and not allowing underground aquifers to supply, decrease in oxygen percentage and consequently air quality, sterilisation of water soles for long years and a huge accumulation of scrap caused by the end of the life of the equipment used. Coming to fruition, this is one of the darkest plans Portugal has ever had, and before this the questions arise: is it necessary? Portugal really needs this? The answer is: No. According to it was released in September last year by Goldenergy citing data from Eurostat, Portugal already produces by the renewable system more than 86% of the energy it consumes, however, energy consumption in Portugal and the developed world is increasing alarmingly because of Data centers, Artificial Intelligence, etc. and our country is being targeted by the great multinationals of the energy sector to be sacrificed for the gross profits this industry will generate.

Renewable sources generated 45.5% of all electricity produced in the European Union during the first quarter of this year, up from 42.7% a year earlier. This shifting energy mix is transforming Europe's grid, strengthening energy security, and reducing dependence on fossil fuel imports 👉 https://euperspectives.eu/2026/07/europe-saved-e29bn-thanks-to-renewables-now-they-power-nearly-half-the-grid/

Olá bom dia, alegria! Tudo bem? Thanks to @Abdul Alim for the reminder about Portugal’s pioneering open-source AI model for European Portuguese - AMALIA (of course!). AMALIA, in this instance, stands for Assistente Multimodal Automático de Linguagem com Inteligência Artificial and is the first large language model (LLM) specifically developed for European Portuguese. This fully open-source project brings together around 60 researchers from institutions like NOVA FCT, Instituto Superior Técnico and others. Its goals include promoting linguistic accuracy in public administration and business, preserving cultural elements such as proverbs and national heritage, ensuring data sovereignty (keeping sensitive information within Portugal), and boosting national AI research and innovation. Find out more here. (It’s still largely an academic/specialist tool rather than a simple “search box” resource.) When thinking about Portugal’s AI efforts, I was reminded of a more everyday tool: Evaristo.ai - a Portuguese chatbot designed to help citizens navigate digital public services, among other things. It was developed by the University of Lisbon’s Faculty of Sciences in partnership with ARTE. Try it here. And finally, for the AI sceptics and haters (I used to be one!), here’s a reminder that it’s just a tool or a toy. It can be genuinely helpful, but also indulgent and tacky. My own defensive use case is a diagnostic tool I created for www.vamosbem.pt. It helps with that overwhelming feeling we can get when thinking about the things we might prefer to avoid - “How ready are you for a medical emergency?” (Answer 10 quick questions and get a personal action plan for living and aging well in Portugal). Try it for yourself HERE - bearing in mind it’s a beta prototype, not for commercial release.