Portugal protests: police clear tent camps in Lisbon and Porto squares

Portuguese police have cleared protesters’ tent camps from squares in Lisbon and Porto. According to the head of the security forces, 55 people were detained in the capital after refusing to leave. The protests are continuing, Reuters reports.

Activists pitched about 200 tents in Lisbon’s Rossio Square and had been living there since Saturday. In Porto’s Praça Dom João I, several hundred people had been protesting for about ten days. The camps echoed the affordable-housing protests in neighbouring Spain and coincided with unrest over the rising cost of living and a lack of funding for schools in France, Belgium and Italy, where demonstrations with thousands of participants turned into vandalism and looting.

The operations in Lisbon and Porto passed without serious violence. In Porto, activists folded up their tents themselves, while in the capital police cleared the camp and the army removed the tents.

The protests are not over

Carla Valadau, a spokesperson for the camp in the capital, called the police action “very aggressive” and said the protests would continue at 7 p.m. local time. Some of the demonstrators moved from Rossio to Praça da Figueira. More than a hundred people sang “Grândola, Vila Morena”, the anthem of the 25 April 1974 revolution that brought democracy back to Portugal, and threatened to occupy the prime minister’s residence of Luís Montenegro.

Security forces commander Sérgio Soares rejected the complaint: in his words, the clearance was carried out “calmly, proportionately and appropriately”.

Portugal is going through one of the most severe housing affordability crises in Europe. Purchase prices have more than doubled since 2017, and rents on new contracts have almost doubled. The problem is especially acute in large cities, where discontent is also growing over overtourism and the influx of so-called digital nomads.

The protesters demand that the centre-right government withdraw a bill that makes it easier to evict tenants and abolishes the rent cap on new contracts. It has already passed its first reading in parliament, with the far-right Chega party abstaining in the vote.

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Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz