Follow-Up: Portuguese Police Clear Housing Protest Camps in Lisbon and Porto Before Dawn: 55 Arrested, Activists Vow to Return
Portuguese police cleared housing protest camps in Lisbon and Porto before dawn on Tuesday, October 20, arresting 55 people who had occupied two central squares to protest the country's worsening housing crisis, Reuters reported. Activists had pitched around 200 tents in Lisbon's Rossio square since Saturday, while the camp in Porto's Praça D. João I had stood for about 10 days.
Shortly before 6 a.m., after warning that the camps were illegal, police launched coordinated operations in both cities. In Lisbon, protesters linked arms in a human chain and some threw objects at officers; in Porto, demonstrators dismantled their own tents in the face of a threatened police intervention. Carla Valadao, a spokesperson for the Lisbon camp, described the operation as "very aggressive" and vowed to resume the protest at 7 p.m. Public Security Police (PSP) superintendent Sergio Soares later told reporters the eviction had been "calm, proportionate and appropriate, with no police charge," saying the 55 were detained for refusing to leave voluntarily and that two minor injuries had been promptly treated; Lisbon municipal police seized 228 camp structures. Protesters said around 30 demonstrators were injured, and AFP and Euronews reported that officers used batons during the clearance.
Portugal is grappling with one of Europe's worst housing affordability crises: purchase prices have more than doubled since 2017 and rents on new leases have nearly doubled, with the squeeze most acute in the big cities, where there is also opposition to mass tourism and an influx of digital nomads. Protesters are demanding that the centre-right government withdraw a bill, already passed at a first parliamentary reading, that would make evictions easier and end rent caps on new leases. Porto mayor Pedro Duarte said housing concerns would continue to be heard as long as demonstrations remained peaceful and legal.
The camps mirrored housing protests in neighbouring Spain and form part of a wider wave of cost-of-living protests across France, Belgium and Italy that GSM reported on October 19, when tent camps had already appeared in Portugal; Tuesday's clearance is the latest development in that line. (GSM, based on Reuters reporting)
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图片：里斯本 Praça D. Pedro IV（Rossio）资料图（Anton Zelenov / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0）
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