Thousands March in Lisbon and Porto Over Living Costs and Housing: 'You Can't Live Like This Anymore'
LISBON — Thousands of protesters took to the streets of Lisbon and Porto on Saturday, October 10, over rising living costs and housing prices, with further demonstrations planned in Aveiro, Braga and Funchal. The protests were organised by a platform named 'You can't live like this anymore' (Não se vive assim).
Demonstrators chanted about wages and held signs reading 'this salary isn't enough to live on' and 'I want to move out of my parents' house before I'm 50'. Teresa Fonseca, attending the Lisbon march, told the Lusa news agency she had taken inspiration from similar recent protests in Spain: she saw the protest announced on Instagram and decided to come, saying the country was getting worse and people needed to take to the streets to make their voices heard, as the Spanish had.
An Instagram post promoting the demonstrations said people had 'been squeezed by rising house prices and the cost of living' for years: 'We spend our lives working and exhausting ourselves just to make our wages last until the end of the month, to cope with rising fuel prices and basic living costs, and to avoid losing our homes.'
Housing is one of Portugal's sharpest social issues: the National Institute of Statistics put the year-on-year rise in house prices at 17.8 percent in the first quarter of 2026. Two days earlier, on October 8, the government had submitted its 2027 budget to parliament with some €2 billion for affordable housing — the budget debate over the coming weeks will run alongside the pressure from the streets.
Sources: Compiled from Time Bulletin (October 11, citing Lusa) and INE house-price data.
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：里斯本住房与生活成本抗议人群及标语。摄影：BlitzkriegBoop，CC BY-SA 4.0，来源：Wikimedia Commons
