In 2015, Valor Local heard from several young people between the ages of 17 and 35 from the region about the state of the labor market, youth unemployment, unpaid internships and their ambitions. Eleven years later, the newspaper contacted the same young people again to find out what happened in their lives.
Sandro Peixe, from Glória do Ribatejo, was 19 years old in 2015 and his dream was a career in motorcycling. He achieved it: he won two national championships in 2015, represented the national team and became champion again in 2020. An injury in 2018 led him to drop out of his Business Management degree. In 2021, he joined as a project manager at Polisport, the company that sponsored him, and moved to Mealhada. He married his girlfriend from 2013 and they had a daughter in 2022. The effort to juggle work, family and competition led him to quit racing, planning to return now in 2026 just for leisure.
Carolina Simões and Diogo Martins, from Cartaxo, were also 19 years old in 2015. Carolina finished Political Science in 2017, worked at CGD in Lisbon and returned to Cartaxo in 2020. Diogo completed Law, did internships in banking and insurance, became a legal technician in Santarém and completed the internship at the Bar Association. They married in 2025 and became parents of a boy in 2026. They participated in the local elections, with Diogo on the Municipal Assembly, in opposition, emphasizing that they want to contribute constructively, without greater political ambitions.
Jéssica Pereira, from Azambuja, was only 17 years old in 2015 and dreamed of working behind the scenes of bullfights. She completely changed direction: she finished Agronomic Engineering in 2020 at the Instituto Superior de Agronomia, specializing in plants and moving away from bullfighting. She emigrated to the United Kingdom in 2020, where she worked in pharmacy, precision agriculture and in an insect start-up. She returned to Portugal in August 2026, planning to travel through Asia for three and a half months before looking for work in the field in Portugal, getting married, buying a house and having children.
