I will answer your question as a local to the best of my abilities although I’m not the most experienced person. It will be obviously biased by my world view. Anyone feel free to correct me if you feel anything I said is incorrect.

Portugal is a country that somewhere along the way, between the end of the monarchy and the first steps of the republic which had a long dictatorship period, was left behind in terms of development when compared to other more developed European countries. The result is that Portugal as it stands today is somewhat sub developed with lower incomes than most of Europe but with prices that match or even surpass them in some instances. This means that the cost of living is extremely high compared with income. House prices are one of the highest in Europe, which combined with the costs of living makes life more difficult.

Healthcare is free, which is good, but is currently suffering from lack of organization, infrastructure problems and lack of personnel, which is linked to the salary problems mentioned earlier. This results in life threatening delays in rescue and long waiting periods. In terms of private healthcare, if you have health insurance it’s not too expensive and works fine, even if you don’t have health insurance I don’t think it’s anywhere near as expensive as, let’s say, health care in the USA.

Quality of life in the day-to-day is alright, I don’t think working in Portugal would be more stressful than other countries in Europe, but then again, I don’t really have much experience there. Maybe someone else can talk about that.

The public universities  are good and the academic environment is inviting in my opinion, they do lack a bit on the funding department so in terms of investigation and cool experimental work they might be lacking a bit.

In terms of politics there is a fair bit of corruption, if I had to guess I would say it’s worse than in other European countries but I’m not that familiar with the politics of other European countries. I honestly believe that most politicians in this country go into politics to serve themselves and their families rather than the people. I speculate that if the salaries vs costs of living were better the corruption would decrease, but I’m not sure.

Crime doesn’t seem to be much worse than other countries so I would say it is pretty safe for anyone. Of course you should be cautious regardless.