I have just come back from Brazil where I had the opportunity to use portugnol for a TV programme on energy issues.
The interviewer said I did not have to worry about the fact that I do not speak much Portuguese because all I had to do was use portugnol. I have heard about it and I just presume it means using the Portuguese words and phonology you know and mix it in with Spanish (no diphthongs, ll ->ch, pl->pr, cion ->cao). Is that it? If you speak slowly and use that methodology, will Brazilians honestly be able to understand what I said? Cringing watching it.
Portunhol is basically Portuguese with a few Spanish words sprinkled here and there. 
Although it usually involves plentiful use of false cognates and just plain wrong verb conjugation. You can just speak Spanish to Brazilians and you’ll be fine, they’ll understand enough, I believe. I have personally never studied Spanish, and I have no problem understanding it, although other Portuguese speakers will probably be different.
When I was in SP, my team had 2 colleagues coming from Argentina. They both had to use Portuguese to communicate with the Brazilians. One guy had worked in Portugal for a year, so his Portuguese was ok. The other guy’s Portuguese was terrible. I could tell because my Brazilians colleagues laughed at him all the time. Sometimes they just couldn’t understand him. He would utter a word, the other guys had to guess what he was trying to say, and it often took them a few times to guess it right. I think my Argentinian colleague was speaking real Portugnol.
foreign people that speak spanish and go to Brazil, ever They use portugnol in first period. Portugnol is portuguese with a few spanish or spanish with a few portuguese, like said Elric.