Consumers in Portugal returned to the shops during April and May this year, pushing up retail sales by 0.7% and 0.2% respectively.
While earlier months of 2015 saw sales falling, the good news for retailers is that every month so far of this year has been considerably better than the same month in 2014.
The annual result for May was an increase of 1.8% over last May. From January through April, the upsurges were even higher.
For the euro area, retail sales increased by an average of 2.4%. Eurostat says this was due to rises of 3.4% in non-food products, 1.7% for food, drinks and tobacco, and 0.7% on petrol.
Estonia and Ireland led the euro-nation pack with the largest annual rises in sales. In fact, consumers in most EU countries pushed up sales, with the exceptions of Belgium, Denmark and Luxembourg.
May figures for the Netherlands Italy, Cyprus and Greece were not yet recorded, but all were showing positive sales in April with the exception, of course, of Greece.
