The Fado Rebel Who Slept on London Cardboard

Paulo Bragança is a Portuguese fado singer who, according to Diário de Notícias in January 2019, was then 47 and about to release an album called Exílio in April. He had performed at many festivals and had taken on a project with the metal band Moonspell.

In 2006 he left Portugal, going first to London, which he told the press he did not like, and then to Dublin. He spent eleven years outside the country, and for six of those years he did not come home or stay in touch with anyone. The headline of his 2019 interview with Diário de Notícias carries his own account of that time: he had been homeless in London and was beaten for having a better piece of cardboard to sleep on. The interview text was not available to read in full, so the length of that stay is not known.

In another interview, published by 24notícias, he spoke of how isolating the years abroad were. He said he came to forget his own name, and that he felt like an inanimate body in a crowd. In Dublin he booked a hostel for 62 pounds and found himself in a dormitory with eighteen bunks. He was robbed soon after he arrived, and the first period was hard. Music in the streets and bars helped him, and he sang at open-mic nights in pubs.

Later he lived for about a year and seven months in a castle near Dublin, mostly alone. He moved back to Portugal in April 2017. He credits Fernando Ribeiro of Moonspell with encouraging him, and he is performing again.

His story is that of a fado singer who spent more than a decade away, some of it in hardship and silence, and who found his way back to the stage and to recording.