You're spending €486 more per year at the supermarket. It's about to get worse.

Good morning, Lisbon. It's Thursday, 14 May. Twenty degrees, sunny. The jacarandas on Rua da Escola Politécnica are already in bloom. GoGo Penguin plays Teatro Tivoli BBVA tonight. And your grocery bill just got harder to ignore.

🌬️ AIR QUALITY: 22 (Good).

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PORTUGUESE FAMILIES ARE SPENDING €486 MORE PER YEAR AT THE SUPERMARKET THAN IN 2019. IT'S ABOUT TO GET WORSE.

The number is specific enough to feel personal: €486 more per year. That is how much more the average Portuguese household is spending at the supermarket compared to 2019, according to consumer spending analysis published this week. Roughly €40 more per month. If it doesn't sound like much, look at it next to everything else that has gone up since then: rent, fuel, energy, insurance, childcare. The supermarket bill is just the one you see every week.

The food basket tracked by DECO, the Portuguese consumer protection association, hit €254.12 in March, an all-time high. That is up €12.30, or more than 5%, since the start of 2026 alone. Since DECO began tracking in early 2022, the basket has risen €66.42, or over 35%. Unprocessed food prices jumped 6.4% year-on-year in March. In April, preliminary data from INE showed the picture worsening: fresh food inflation accelerated to 7.45% and overall inflation surged to 3.36%, a two-and-a-half-year high, up from 2.7% in March. Energy inflation hit 11.69%.

The causes are layered. The Iran war and the Strait of Hormuz blockade are pushing up fuel and energy costs, which feed directly into transport, refrigeration, and packaging along the entire food chain. Portugal imports nearly all of its fossil fuels. Fertiliser prices are under renewed pressure from the same energy disruption. The January storms damaged agricultural land in the central region. And the structural issue underneath all of it: food prices in Portugal rose faster than the Eurozone average during the 2022-2023 inflation spike, and never fully came back down. When prices go up, they rarely come back.

DECO's spokesperson told Euronews in March that the current rises cannot be attributed solely to the Middle East conflict. "We've already had peaks of comparable increases during our monitoring," he said. The pattern is broader: food inflation in Portugal has been running above general inflation for over a year, and the gap is widening rather than closing.

The government has not announced targeted food price interventions. The approach has centred on income supports: raising the minimum wage, indexing pensions, and increasing social benefits. The temporary zero VAT on essential food items, introduced in 2023, was not renewed. Whether that stance shifts depends on whether the €254 basket keeps climbing, and whether the April inflation figure (3.36%) becomes a trend rather than a spike.

For anyone living in Lisbon and watching their weekly shop get more expensive without anything obvious changing in the trolley, the data confirms what you already felt. It is not your imagination. It is 35% more than four years ago, and the pressure is not letting up.

Bottom line: You are spending €486 more per year at the supermarket than in 2019 which may or may not seem like that long ago. April's inflation data suggests the number is still climbing. The government is supporting incomes rather than intervening on prices. Your weekly shop is absorbing the cost of a war, a storm season, and a structural food price problem that predates both.

⚡ QUICK HITS

Rally de Portugal starts next week. The 59th edition runs from Tuesday 19 May, with WRC stages across northern and central Portugal, primarily around Matosinhos, Lousada, Amarante, and Fafe. Many spectator viewpoints are free. The legendary Fafe jump is the one most people come to see. It's a Porto/North trip, not a Lisbon day trip, but worth the drive if you have never experienced it.

April inflation hit 3.36%, a two-and-a-half-year high. Energy inflation nearly doubled to 11.69% from 5.74% in March. Fresh food hit 7.45%. The core rate (excluding energy and food) edged to 2.21%. The Hormuz blockade is now feeding through to headline prices at a pace the government can no longer frame as temporary.

🍽️ SPOT OF THE DAY

PENSÃO AMOR (CAIS DO SODRÉ)

Until the 1990s, the building at Rua do Alecrim 19 was a working brothel. Sailors from across the world would disembark at Cais do Sodré, walk up the hill, and rent a room by the hour. The neighbourhood was Lisbon's red light district: bars named after European capitals, fado singers, spies, writers, and prostitutes sharing the same streets. When the district declined, the building sat empty for years. In 2011, it reopened as Pensão Amor, and the neighbourhood began its transformation into what it is today.

The owners kept everything. The red velvet. The mirrored ceilings. The painted frescoes. The original room layout, including what were once the working bedrooms. The erotic artwork stayed on the walls. The pole dancing room became a performance space. What could have been a tasteless gimmick became, instead, one of the most atmospheric bars in Lisbon, because the building's history is treated with genuine respect rather than irony.

The bar spans five floors. The front lounge on the ground floor is the main room: red and gold furnishings, upholstered armchairs, dimly lit corners, and a bar that serves cocktails with enough care that returning for the drinks alone makes sense. Upstairs, you will find the erotic bookshop (literature, counterculture, art), the burlesque performance space, and a series of smaller rooms, each with a different atmosphere. Downstairs, a staircase leads to the back entrance on Pink Street (Rua Nova do Carvalho), which is itself one of the most photographed streets in the city.

There is a terrace for warm evenings. DJ nights on weekends. Live jazz and folk on weekday evenings. G&Ts run around €9. Cocktails €10 to €14. The crowd is a mix of locals and visitors who found their way here by word of mouth rather than guidebook, which is the balance Pensão Amor has managed to maintain for fifteen years.

If you enter from the front on Rua do Alecrim rather than the back on Pink Street, the experience is considerably more impressive. Walk through the entrance, up the stairs, past the artwork on the walls, and into the main room. That is how the building reveals itself.

→ See why this is one of the most talked-about bars in the city ←

Rua do Alecrim 19, Cais do Sodré. Also accessible from Rua Nova do Carvalho (Pink Street). Monday to Wednesday noon to 3am. Thursday to Saturday noon to 4am. Sunday noon to 3am. Phone: +351 213 143 399. pensaoamor.pt.

Insider tip: Go on a Thursday between 7pm and 10pm. The room has energy but isn't packed, the cocktails don't take 20 minutes to arrive, and if there's live music, you will actually be able to hear it. After 11pm on weekends, it gets crowded and loud. Both are fun. They are different experiences.

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See you tomorrow morning.