We began the journey as we do every year for WordCamp, but this time one of the gang was unable to attend (Jorge González); the rest of us—Juan Hernando and Carlos Longarela—started the route as usual, sharing food and beginning our pilgrimage to the wonderful Portuguese lands.
Day 1: The Preliminaries
We started the day we arrived in Portugal with a dinner hosted by Marco Almeida, the person behind the great plugin company Naked Cat Plugins. We were invited to a wonderful place to enjoy food and drink with lovely people we meet several times a year.
I am very grateful to Marco for this invitation because it serves as a warm-up for the following day of an event you are very excited about, allowing you to start talking with people in a more relaxed atmosphere.
I met new people I hadn’t had the chance to speak with before, such as Manuela van Prooijen (from the Netherlands); I laughed a lot with Manuela. Familiar faces that I love being able to see in calmer, smaller conversation spaces, such as: Wendie Huis in ‘t Veld, Uros Tasic, Steve Mosby, Jorge Calle, Ivelina Dimova, Milana Cap, Raitis Sevelis, and Anne-Mieke Bovelett, who gave us a very interesting accessibility talk.
And many members of the organization who give me a boost of energy when I spend time with them, such as: Alice Castelejo (the most affectionate and kind person in the WordPress community), Carlos Moreira, Carolina Osório (a joy to see her pregnant ❤️ and in that leadership role), Marco Pereirinha, José Freitas, Toze Vasconcelos, António Carreira, Álvaro Góis, and Gabriela Aragón Zamorano, a Mexican woman I hadn’t met before who is lovely; I really enjoyed talking with her and her husband, whom we are sure to see in Galicia soon. Hacer Yilmaz and Rúben Martins, who had the patience to manage the speakers’ section and, therefore, put up with my presentation involving “strange things” 😉
You can have very interesting conversations about everything: from work, families, and languages to children; in short, anything that allows us to deepen human relationships, which is ultimately the primary goal of these types of gatherings.
Day 2: Community Day
The next day we went to the first day of the WordCamp, the contributor day, called “Día da comunidade.” In Portugal, this takes on a completely different dimension compared to what you might know elsewhere.
If I had to define what the ideal WP group would be like and what we should use as a reference, it is undoubtedly the Portuguese WordPress community.
The WordPress community in Portugal, having different meetup groups (Porto, Faro, Lisbon), has managed to organize its events by alternating cities, and although they were previously named after the city hosting the WC (Lisbon, Porto), in this edition they are already calling it regionally as WordCamp Portugal.
But it’s not just Lisbon, Faro, and Portugal. There are also other communities and cities that are part of this highly unified core of people who share the values of collaboration and open source of the WordPress community. People who live in cities without meetups but come to share knowledge and help the ecosystem.
They have a shared website and promote each other’s events, helping like little ants, which to me makes perfect sense. We have so much to learn from the communities in Portugal!
Their event begins with the contributor day, which, in addition to having the usual tables for different work teams, establishes conversations between them on security, freelance work, SEO, and AI, among many other topics of interest to them.
It just makes perfect sense!
It is an annual meeting where all the people who can participate in the WordPress community from across the territory come together, and in some way, it helps them coordinate and help each other; truly, it is a beautiful example of how to function well. 🙏
Additionally, they have talks that day which serve as a preview of what we will have the following day.
In this case, from:
- “The Power of Open: What WordPress Offers Beyond Development” with the great Nilo Vélez, one of the most important figures in the international WP community.
- “WP Agentic Admin” with the great Marcel Schmitz, one of the most impressive developers I know. His talks leave you speechless, and he is also a very kind person who is approachable to everyone. I really enjoyed the conversations with Marcel.
- “My Agentic WordPress Workflow” by Tiago Santos from the organizing team.
- And a panel on the impact of AI on the WP Community.
That day we ended with the social dinner for sponsors, volunteers, and the organization. A delicious dinner, as you can see in the photos. A real treat, because in Portugal, the food is always good.
Day 3: The Day of Talks
For me, in a way, the Portugal WC is the closest thing to a small-scale WCEU.
Because they also have wonderful language skills—they are able to speak to you in Spanish, English, or Portuguese with such total fluency and naturalness that it is a pleasure to be among them. They deserve credit for not even being offended by my strange mix of Galician and Latin American Spanish.
Over the years and all the events we have attended in both Portugal and those they have come to in Spain, in addition to the WCEUs, we have been creating bonds, friendships, and a sense of affection.
It is one of the WordPress events I am most fond of and enjoy the most when I attend.
Therefore, the fact that they chose my proposal for a talk this year filled me with great pride because I know perfectly well how difficult it is to choose from all the submissions sent.
Furthermore, their programs are very well prepared; they have a very high level of talks that even commanded my respect and a bit of fear about whether I could measure up to what I knew would be an impressive program of speakers of the highest quality.
So I am very grateful to the organization for having trusted me for that time in which I was sharing knowledge with them ❤️
As always, I am leaving the video of the talk where I wanted to give them a bit of affection and a nod to the world of fado. If you know me, you know that I usually create metaphors, storytelling, and relate topics that seemingly are disparate but are actually more related than they appear.
And in this specific case, it was about the fado genre, the evolution that SEO has been undergoing in recent years, and where we are headed in terms of the impact that AI and LLMs have had within the technological ecosystem.
NOTE: Thank you for the lovely gift. A very cool backpack that I was very excited about.
I attended many talks in this edition. We started on the right foot with José Freitas giving a face to AI. A method (FACE) to give authority to content in WP. Excellent advice and resources that are worth reviewing calmly and carefully to improve our web content.
Our great friend Gustavo Galati, who gave us an inspirational talk on design trends in 2026 and how to apply them. Very good advice and reflections. With Gustavo, besides the talk, it is wonderful to talk about his journey, experience, and life. Always a joy to have him around.
After my talk, I stayed to see our colleague Juanma Rodríguez from Siteground talking about how AI is forcing changes in agency business models.
By the way, as we can see, more than 80% of the program had something related to AI. It is an impressive paradigm shift that is currently being achieved from every point of view.
Group photo, food, good conversations with our dear friends from Desafío Digital, Julio and Fernando, who as always cheer us up with their technological gadgets or their excellent reflections on business, web development, padel, sports, or whatever comes up 😉
In the afternoon block, although I wanted to see Pedro Fonseca with his interesting talk on preparing WooCommerce for AI agents, I went to the block of talks in English with: Imran Sayed talking about building blocks with AI.
One of my favorites was the one by Slobodan Manic titled: “Your Website Is Not Just Your Website Anymore, Now What?“, which discussed how AI is changing the landscape of website crawling and analysis. Fundamental aspects for improving the architecture, semantics, and optimization of our sites.
Slobodan is an author with extensive experience, a WordPress core contributor, and CTO at Search Engine Journal, one of the most important international SEO media outlets. A privilege to have been able to learn from him.
And to end the day, I finished with the one by Marcel Schmitz: “A Nova Era do WordPress: From Developer to Architect with Agentic Engineering.” A gem that demonstrates the privileged mind of this man, who besides being highly skilled, is very engaging to follow.
We ended with a good party, eating well, toasting, and meeting many people who were attending a WordCamp for the first time.
As always, I try as much as possible to remember everyone, but this part always has its challenges. So if I haven’t mentioned you, I am very sorry for the oversight:
Artur Azevedo (how difficult it is to be a vegetarian in Galicia!), Paula Carmona, the Double AA ;-), Sandro Nunes, a Portuguese developer I was delighted to meet, Nizar Ashqar and his interesting project: Staq, the great Marco Berrocal, whom it is a pleasure to talk to (and hear his stories) when he crosses the pond from Costa Rica. George Mamadashvili, Gemny Andreina, among many other people whose names my memory does not allow me to include in this review.
Crossing borders is always a wonderful learning experience. It allows us to stop being self-centered and realize that in other latitudes and other languages, there are wonderful people doing incredible things.
We can learn from them to be better, to continue supporting them every time they do something, just as they do with us. To generate bonds that go far beyond WordPress; it’s about people connecting with people (PHP = People Helping People, as John Maeda says).
And the care they put into organizing their events is noticeable from the moment you arrive.
I hope our local groups in Galicia and the rest of Spain learn a lot from this great Portuguese community and that we can recreate their excellent initiatives; two very simple ones come to mind:
- Improving our WordCamp programs
- Improving communication and support between groups
Thank you, Portugal, for some wonderful days.
We returned as usual the following day, making a brief stop at Pingo Doce where I bought many of their wonderful products: Queijos amanteigados da Serra da Estrela, top-quality coffees, vinho verde that I adore, or their desserts (moist pão de ló, Brigadeiro cake) which are irresistible.
Thanks to my wonderful travel companions who allow me to laugh and recharge my energy to continue with our remote but connected lives. I’m glad Juan held onto the keys without leaving Carlos and me behind, and he must be proud that we entered all the expenses with icons in the app 😉
See you in two weeks at WordCamp Europe, this time in Krakow, Poland, our big annual WP party.
Long life and prosperity to WordPress!
Thanks to Nilo Vélez for the wonderful family photo that accompanies the featured image of this post.
