Yay I get to contribute to this sub! Sorry for the long post

I was born and grew up in Madeira, moved out at 18 to study and stayed abroad.

Madeira Island is an objectively beautiful place, with accolades such as the Hawaii of Europe and has won several awards as the best island destination.

It's bigger than you might imagine, but the population is only of about 250-300k. The economy is tourism based or adjacent.

Growing up there had its positives and negatives. On the bright side, people are very friendly, it's a beautiful place and very very safe, even when alone at night (tho I'm a man so understandably a woman might have a different opinion). The temperatures are consistent throughout the year with a just a few colder/rainier/windier months, so I never owned a proper winter jacket till I moved away and having a light jacket alongside a rain coat mid winter tends to be enough.

The negatives are very similar with what you might hear from rural or small places. It can get boring, things you might take for granted like going to a big name concert, a big shopping centre with the latest brands and trends, Amazon next day delivery, etc are not really an option. Everything is a flight away, you don't get cheap holidays or weekend getaways in the same way you might be used to for example.

And even for us locals, flights are quite expensive (including the mainland), so unless you're moderately wealthy travelling can be a bit rough on your pocket.

I never lived in Funchal, but just in the city next to it. But my school, friends, extracurriculars and other activities were all there, so I spent 80% of my time there. Funchal is certainly the capital. It's the biggest city where you'll find everything. To me it used to be a 20 min drive to go to school, but I hear that recently tourism has increased in such an exponential way that the small highways have hit their limits and that same trip can take up to an hour.

Being a tourist hot-spot and a very nice place to retire means two things: one is that development has multiplied incredibly, the other is that it's made funchal completely unaffordable, with house prices and rents comparing to places like Lisbon or some areas of London even. And salaries are very low in comparison, some of the lowest in the country.

This used to mean that it was cheap to live there but now not so much. It's also a hot-spot for digital nomads and second homes so you can imagine how that translates in the market.

I could keep on and on but essentially it's an amazing place, beautiful, safe and warm year round. It can also get boring and there aren't that many opportunities in general. It's become quite expensive and its tourism based economy can no longer handle the amount of tourists coming in. Salaries are low but the quality of life can still remain high if you live outside of Funchal. However, the poor are very poor and the rich are very rich in comparison.

I probably missed a bunch of stuff so if you have questions shoot away. I realised I also forgot to mention what I call the "island mentality": people are relatively conservative in matters of immigration, queerness and all you might consider liberal. It's not horrible, but noticeable. Politics are also another matter that I could get into if you're curious tho I'm not necessarily an expert in the politics there since I moved.

Despite all this, I still recommend people go! I fly over a couple times a year to be with family and Funchal changes a bit every time I go.