Portugal: Tens of thousands march in Lisbon against housing shortage and rising prices
The CGTP union spoke of “many tens of thousands.” House prices have more than doubled since 2017. The government says it will not give in to the “cries of the street.”
Archive image · Photo: Pedro Ribeiro Simões from Lisboa, Portugal / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0 (cropped and resized)
In Lisbon, “many tens of thousands” of people demonstrated on Saturday against the rising cost of living and the housing crisis, according to the largest union, CGTP. They filled one of the capital’s main avenues; police did not give a figure for participants. The march increases pressure on the center-right government. Reuters and Al Jazeera did not report riots like those in France, Belgium or Italy. In the days before, housing activists had set up a tent camp in Porto, which police cleared before dawn on Monday.
According to Reuters, the backdrop is sharply higher costs: inflation was 3.6 percent in September, driven by food and fuel, which became 15 percent more expensive within a year. House prices have more than doubled since 2017, and rents on new contracts almost as much. A 26-year-old doctoral student with a stipend of about €1,300 told Reuters that her rent of €716 could rise to more than €1,200 when renewed. A 62-year-old teacher called the country’s leadership “out of touch with reality.”
Parliamentary Affairs Minister Carlos Abreu Amorim said on Friday that the government would not give in to the “cries of the street.” He pointed out that concrete measures to address the problems were already being implemented.