Thousands of people marched in Lisbon and Porto on Saturday under the slogan Não dá mais para viver assim, or “We can’t go on living like this”. Portuguese media cited police figures putting the Porto march at about 1,500, and more than 50 people remained camped in a central Porto square on Sunday. The platform groups about 40 civil society organisations and also called protests in Aveiro, Braga and Funchal.
Housing Drives the Protest
Eurostat data published on 1 October show Portugal had the EU’s fastest house price rise in the second quarter, at 16.5 per cent over the year, against 4.7 per cent for the EU as a whole. After inflation of 3.6 per cent, real growth was still 12.1 per cent, according to IndexBox. The platform says rent eats half of a salary and the other half goes on essentials, Euronews reported.
Protesters also demanded better pay, price controls on essentials and fuel, and some in Porto stayed on in a camp inspired in part by Spain’s recent housing protests. Those protests pushed Spain’s prime minister to call an early election, which shows how fast this anger can reach the ballot box. A 16.5 per cent rise in prices is hard for most wage growth to match.
September Broke the Heat Record
IPMA, the national weather institute, reported that September was the hottest in Portugal since records began in 1931, with a mean of 23.41C, 2.91C above normal. A heatwave from 18 to 27 September covered 72 per cent of weather stations, and Lisbon’s Tapada da Ajuda station reached 41.7C, a September record. Rain totalled 12.7 millimetres, about 30 per cent of normal.
Heat does not explain the housing shortage, but it raises household costs for cooling, water and power. The EU’s Joint Research Centre found that in 2023, 49.4 per cent of Portugal’s lowest-income households struggled to keep their homes cool, against 26.0 per cent in the highest-income fifth. Poorer renters often cannot insulate or install cooling in a home the landlord owns, so the same heatwave costs them more.
Affordability Now Includes the Thermometer
These were not climate marches, and organisers cited housing, fuel and wages. Yet a platform that wants price controls on essentials will soon be asked about the cost of staying cool. A national strategy published in 2024 aims to cut the share of people in homes that are not cool in summer to 20 per cent by 2030, according to Sul Informação.
The thermometer and the rent bill measure different problems, but they land on the same household. Record heat turned a cost-of-living argument into one about who can afford a liveable home. A government that treats them separately will keep hearing the same slogan in the streets.
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