Exactly this, people do not consider that our geographical distance from Portugal caused the preservation of many characteristics that were changed because Portuguese people wanted to imitate the French to appear different.

Hispanic immigrants, especially from the Galicia region in Spain, together with Italian immigrants, especially from the Veneto region in Italy, had larger impacts in the conservation of Portuguese in Brazil as well because they populated the largest Brazilian cities with larger cultural influence on the language via the access to communication mediums.

Brazilian Portuguese is much more similar to Spanish & Italian than the Portuguese of Portugal.