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Desenrascanço (impossible translation into English) is a Portuguese word used in certain specific contexts and situations. It is used to express an ability to solve a problem without the adequate tools or proper technique to do so, and by use of sometimes imaginative resourcefulness when facing new situations. Achieved when resulting in a hypothetical good-enough solution. When that good solution escapes us we get a failure. Most Portuguese people strongly believe it to be one of their most valued virtues and a living part of their culture.
However, some critics disagree with the association of the concept of desenrascanço with the mainstream Portuguese culture. They argue that desenrascanço is just a minor feature of some portuguese subcultures confined to some non-representative groups and to the end of the 20th century. Critics point out that in the last 30 years the education and culture of the portuguese people improved considerably and that the importance of desenrascanço is declining. Sometimes, the concept is related by some to the discoveries period or to student activities in the 15th century. But sceptics doubt there is any substantial prove of that relation. Critics also argue that there are other sub-cultures in other countries with equivalent concepts and that desenrascanço is not an exclusive of the Portuguese culture. In the 16th and 17th centuries it was very common for other exploring nations, such as the Dutch, to bring a Portuguese national along during the voyages, because the Portuguese were allegedly the most skilled and knowledgeable in the proper handling of the occasional emergency aboard the ship when the control of the vessel was given to them (what is known among the Portuguese as 'desenrascanço').
Desenrascanço is in fact the opposite of planning: it's managing that any problem does not get completely out of hand and beyond solution."