Portuguese police clear Lisbon housing protest camp, arresting 25

Lisbon, Portugal. Police wielding batons dispersed demonstrators and removed a housing protest camp in central Lisbon early on Sunday, arresting 25 people. The encampment reflected protests over Portugal’s worsening housing affordability crisis.

Encampments removed in Lisbon and Porto

Dozens of police officers arrived at Rossio Square just after 2 a.m. (0200 GMT), with dogs accompanying some of them. Protesters had previously been warned that police would dismantle any tents they failed to remove and that resistance could lead to charges of disobedience.

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The camp consisted of more than 100 tents erected following a march on Saturday, when thousands of people demonstrated along a major Lisbon avenue.

Police described their intervention as proportionate. They said the 25 people detained on disobedience charges had subsequently been freed and were scheduled to appear before a court on Monday.

In Porto, officers also removed an encampment of roughly 50 tents at Praca D. Joao I and arrested six people.

Conflicting accounts of injuries

Police reported that seven people, including officers and protesters, suffered minor injuries across the two operations.

The activist organisation Casa para Viver (Homes to Live) put the number of injured at 60 and urged people to join another demonstration outside parliament on Tuesday.

Housing pressures drive demonstrations

Portugal faces a housing affordability crisis that ranks among Europe’s most severe. Home prices have risen to more than twice their 2017 level, while rents under new tenancy agreements have climbed to nearly twice their previous level. Young people have been particularly affected.

Vitor Gomes, a 21-year-old multimedia communications student who joined the march, said people had a duty to defend their beliefs. He said property speculation, the concentration of wealth and increasing inequality left him pessimistic about what lay ahead.

The Portuguese demonstrations mirror recent protests in Spain about insufficient housing and rapidly increasing rents. Other cities have also seen demonstrations, including Paris, where initially small student protests about conditions in schools developed into broader opposition to the government’s economic policies.