Credit and interest

The thirty-eighth entry is executar a garantia, the one phrase on this list that an English reader can render word for word and still get backwards. In English legal usage, to « execute » a document is to complete it: a deed is executed once it has been signed and delivered, and the « executor » of a will is the person who carries out what it says. All of that belongs to the beginning of a transaction, and none of it involves force. Executar in a Portuguese credit file belongs to the end, and force is the whole of it. It is what the bank does once the instalments have stopped: Depois de meses sem pagamento, o banco executou a garantia says the security has been realised — the flat sold, the account seized, the court asked to step in. The English for that is « to enforce » or « to realise » the security, or, where a mortgage is involved, « to foreclose ». A Portuguese sentence in which something is executado is therefore not saying that the parties signed. It may well be saying that somebody did not pay.