Unlike Spain and Ireland, debt-ridden Portugal has to tighten its belt without having the benefit of a period of growth
The office workers making their way through the gleaming glass-and-steel buildings beside the Parque das Nações in the morning did not look hungover, but they were fully aware their country was about to pay for a decade in which it got drunk on borrowing.
"We are all to blame. We have been living above our means and must all take our share of responsibility," said IT consultant Ricardo Suiero, 30, as he headed to work in one of the buildings left over from the 1998 Expo fair. "We will just have to live with a bailout."
The buildings on the River Tagus, in Lisbon, with their views of the elegant 10-mile long Vasco de Gama bridge, and the road signs pointing drivers towards the smart new stadiums of football clubs Sporting and Benfica – built for the 2004 European championships – are a reminder of how Portugal spent its EU funds.
Economists have criticised that spending as a waste, with EU money frittered away on infrastructure white elephants that brought few long-term benefits.
The spending left the Parque das Nações with a vast stadium for concerts and a massive exhibition centre, but across the other side of the river bulldozers have now stopped working on what would be a new airport for Lisbon, as money has run out because of the debt crisis.
"This crisis comes from way back," said Eduardo Ramos, 49, a middle manager at a state-owned public works company. "We didn't have any other option but to ask for the bailout."
"Things are going to be hard, perhaps for 10 years, but we have got out of situations like this before" he said. "I have a 12-year-old son and I can already see that if he does not find work here he will have to go abroad. Already we are seeing some of the Brazilians who work with us going home, because things are booming there."
"It is the middle classes who will lose," said computer technician Paulo Soares, 45, who has been watching business drop off at the car showroom network that he works for. "My eldest child is 14 and I do not know what future awaits him."
University graduates were either finding it impossible to find work in a country with 11% unemployment, or were having to settle for wages as low as €500 (£440) a month, Soares said.
He was not pinning his hopes on the 5 June elections, where he saw neither the socialists of caretaker prime minister José Sócrates nor the centre-right social democrats emerging as clear winners. "What we need now is for the parties to work together in a coalition, but the elections will give us minority government – just like this last one."
In the meantime, though, everyone was preparing to tighten their belt – and anger is growing at exactly who will end up paying for the mistakes of the past.
"I don't see why it is the weak who have to pay," said Joaquin Lopes, brandishing a copy of a free newspaper that claimed there would be a €3m cut in the health ministry's drugs budget. "Portugal has been losing social rights for years.We did not have to have this bailout," he added. "Our politicians are hopeless. They just look after their own interests."
Foreign investors agreed that the future looked glum for the Portuguese.
"The sad thing for the Portuguese is that, although Ireland and Spain are also suffering debt hangovers, they did at least have parties with a lot of growth over the previous decade," said one foreign real estate investor, pointing to spectacular growth rates over the past decade. "Portugal has the hangover, but it did not have the party first."