J.K. Rowling taught English as a foreign language in Porto, Portugal.
Rowling moved to Porto in 1990 and worked there as an English teacher. She married Portuguese television journalist Jorge Arantes in 1992, and their daughter Jessica was born in 1993. Rowling left Portugal in 1993 and moved to Edinburgh, where she continued developing the Harry Potter story.
Porto is Portugal’s second-largest city and is located in the country’s north, along the Douro River. It is distinct from Lisbon, the national capital, and from Coimbra, another major university city. Those locations are plausible substitutions in a general biography but do not answer the specific question about Rowling’s teaching job.
Her Portuguese period is also relevant to the chronology of the series. Rowling had begun thinking about Harry Potter before moving to Portugal, but she wrote parts of the manuscript during the years surrounding her move to Edinburgh. Personal changes, including motherhood and relocation, formed the background to the novel’s eventual completion and publication.