AIMA's backlog is almost gone. So why are 40,000 golden visa cases still waiting?

AIMA says the end of its backlog is in sight. It's Thursday, 8 October. Twenty-four degrees. Air quality: 50 (Good). Here's what you need to know.

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AIMA SAYS ITS OLD BACKLOG IS ALMOST CLEARED

AIMA, the immigration agency, is close to clearing the mountain of cases it inherited, according to the government. António Leitão Amaro, Minister of the Presidency, told parliament yesterday that only 5,000 of 445,000 old "manifestação de interesse" applications remain unresolved. That was the route that let people apply for residence after arriving without a residence visa, including on a tourist visa. Of the 940,000 files handled by AIMA's special backlog unit, he said 98% are now resolved.

That frees AIMA to work on two queues that have been stuck for years. On family reunification, it has made 55,000 appointments this year and granted 26,000 residence permits, already above what the minister called a historical average of under 20,000 a year. On golden visas, known officially as ARI, around 30,000 of 46,000 pending applicants now have appointments, but only 6,000 cases have been processed.

The minister put the progress down to more people and better systems. He said AIMA's staff has grown from 723 to 850, alongside more cultural mediators, more local support partnerships and a bigger call centre.

The government has made big promises on AIMA before. A year ago, Leitão Amaro himself said the agency would start 2026 without its backlog. It didn't. Golden visa cases were deliberately left until last.

Leitão Amaro says the government's immigration policy is now moving into a "second phase", focused on integration and tougher action on illegal immigration. A promised national integration plan still hasn't been published. He said the foreign population grew by around 50,000 between 2024 and 2025, a much slower rise than before, and that a fast-track work visa scheme run with employers has granted 12,000 visas from 21,600 applications, taking 20 days on average.

If you're waiting on family reunification or a golden visa, your case is now in the queue AIMA is actively working on. Most golden visa applicants have an appointment, but with 40,000 cases still to be processed, it's likely to be a long wait yet. If you had an old manifestação de interesse case and still haven't heard anything, you're among the last few thousand, and it's worth chasing AIMA directly.

Bottom line: the oldest cases are nearly done, but golden visa applicants in particular still face a long wait.

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September was the hottest September in mainland Portugal since official records began in 1931. IPMA, the national weather institute, says average maximum temperatures reached 31.03°C, 4.21°C above normal, and the average temperature was 23.41°C, 2.91°C above the 1991–2020 norm. Nights were warm too, with the fourth-highest average minimum on record. There were two heatwaves: one in the northern interior from 2 to 7 September, and a bigger one from 18 to 27 September that reached 72% of weather stations. It was also dry, with 12.7mm of rain, about 30% of the usual amount, making it the fifth-driest September since 2000.

Almost 3,000 newly retired public-sector workers have been told their pensions were too high and they'll have to pay some back. The Caixa Geral de Aposentações, the pension fund for public-sector workers, says it overpaid them by around €93 a month for four months, which it blames on a configuration error in its computer system. It says the situation will be corrected, which means lower monthly pensions and repayments. Some of those affected say they chose to keep working past retirement age because of the higher figure they were quoted. The PCP, the Communist Party, has called for urgent hearings with the Labour Minister, Maria do Rosário Palma Ramalho, and the fund's president. The problem affects public-sector pensions paid by the fund, not Social Security pensions.

Petrol stations will soon have to show how much the fuel tax cut is saving drivers on every litre. Under a new decree-law, stations must display the per-litre saving from the reduced ISP, the fuel tax, and the VAT on it, next to the pumps or on them, labelled "Redução ISP+IVA". The figure is the difference between the tax at a 2018 reference rate and the tax being charged now, and it will vary by fuel. Stations that don't display it, or show figures that are wrong or out of date, face fines of €1,000 to €3,000. The rule takes effect ten days after the decree is published, as part of the government's temporary package to soften fuel costs.

Learn European Portuguese Online with Gabriel Antunes

You can get by in Lisbon in English. Following the conversation at the next table, sorting things out at Finanças, the tax office, or chatting with your neighbours is another matter.

Gabriel Antunes grew up in central Portugal, moved to Lisbon to study languages and has lived here ever since. A qualified linguist and native speaker, he has taught Portuguese to international students since 2017, and in 2022 he made it his full-time work, founding portuguese-lessons.com, a registered Portuguese business that teaches European Portuguese online to students around the world.

His lessons are practical, flexible and built around what you need the language for:

Prices for every lesson type are on his website.

If his name sounds familiar, Gabriel is also the founder of VocaSpark, whose physical learning tools for tricky Portuguese grammar are now used in 23 countries. It grew out of his years of tutoring.

Reader offer: mention The Lisbon Letter when you first get in touch and you'll get 25% off your first month of lessons.

→ Book your first lesson here ←

Email [email protected] or WhatsApp +351 966 045 865.

We only partner with businesses we think genuinely help our community. If this is useful to you, or if you know someone who's been meaning to start or continue Portuguese lessons, every click and every share goes a long way to keeping this newsletter free every morning.

🍽️ SPOT OF THE DAY

VOZ GASTROBAR (GRAÇA)

Voz Gastrobar feels like eating at a friend's flat, because it more or less is one. Dinah Setton and chef Alexandra Sarabanda met working at Estrela da Bica, and when Setton spotted an old apartment for sale in Graça, opposite the historic workers' association A Voz do Operário, she talked her friend into opening a restaurant in it. You can wait on the sofa, eat in what was the dining room, or sit at the kitchen counter.

The cooking starts from Portuguese basics and then takes detours, in plates made for sharing. The menu changes often, but recent dishes have included Sesimbra mussels in red curry; a seaweed xerém, a cornmeal stew, with salt cod in pil pil sauce; steak tartare with anchovy mayonnaise and São Jorge cheese from the Azores; a pastel de pernil, a roast pork pie served with its broth; and Algarve oysters with homemade chilli and pickled strawberry. Expect to spend around €22 a head.

Worth knowing before you go: it's open for dinner from 7pm to 11pm, Tuesday to Saturday, with lunch on Saturdays from 1pm to 5pm. It's closed on Sundays and Mondays. Book ahead.

→ Find them here ←

Insider tip: ask for a seat at the kitchen counter, where you can watch Sarabanda finishing each plate.

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