Are Lisbon’s e-scooters about to disappear?

Lisbon’s shared e-scooters could soon be gone. It’s Saturday, 17 October. Twenty-five degrees. Air quality: 48 (Good). Here’s what you need to know.

🗞️ TOP STORY

LISBON’S MAYOR WANTS SHARED E-SCOOTERS OFF THE STREETS

Lisbon’s mayor, Carlos Moedas, wants to suspend the city’s shared electric scooters, and the city council will vote on it on Wednesday. In a video posted on social media on Thursday, he called the situation “a disgrace” that is “going to stop”, pointing to scooters ridden the wrong way down streets, dangerous riding, rising accidents and scooters abandoned in public spaces. He also raised particular concern about the number of minors riding them.

According to the mayor, the council collects more than 1,200 abandoned or badly parked scooters every month. He wants an immediate suspension, and he has said he hopes the Socialist Party will back the proposal, as it did when Braga suspended its shared scooters in June. Three companies run shared scooters in Lisbon: Bolt, Lime and Bird.

The pressure has been building for months. In August, the ACP, Portugal’s motoring association, launched a petition for a local referendum on whether the council should stop licensing shared scooters, and it has since gathered 20,000 signatures from Lisbon voters. According to ACP figures, there were 1,369 scooter accidents across Portugal in 2024, with 58 serious injuries and three deaths, and Lisbon is among the districts with the most incidents.

The operators have pushed back before. In August, Bolt, Lime and Bird said they had adapted to council rules and tackled bad parking, and argued that better infrastructure, enforcement and dedicated parking areas would work better than a ban.

Nothing changes until the council votes. If it passes, the shared scooters could disappear from Lisbon’s streets quickly. The proposal covers shared rental scooters, and nothing has been said about privately owned ones.

Bottom line: the mayor wants Lisbon’s shared scooters gone straight away, but it’s Wednesday’s council vote, and whether the Socialists back him, that will decide it.

⚡ QUICK HITS

A housing encampment is due to start in Rossio at 5pm today. The “Acampada de Lisboa pela Habitação” (the Lisbon Housing Camp) says it’s following the example of the housing camp in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol square. Organiser Adriana Lima told the radio station TSF that its demands include stopping property funds from buying up homes, more public housing, bringing empty buildings back into use and a cap on rents. It follows a camp in Porto’s Praça D. João I, which police cleared at about 3am on Thursday. The housing movement says 37 people were injured, two seriously. The PSP, Portugal’s public security police, cited “resistance” from protesters, and both the prime minister and Porto’s mayor defended the police. A public assembly is planned for 3pm tomorrow in Largo de São Domingos, next to Rossio, and marches in Lisbon and Porto on 14 November.

Parliament has backed tighter rules on health service care for foreigners who don’t live in Portugal. In a first vote yesterday, MPs approved a bill from the governing centre-right PSD and CDS-PP requiring non-residents and people without legal status to pay for treatment at the SNS, the national health service, or show proof of insurance or another body covering the cost. Urgent care would still come first, with the paperwork sorted out afterwards. A separate bill along similar lines from the hard-right Chega also passed. Both now go to committee before a final vote. The proposals were prompted partly by more than €1.2 million in unpaid emergency bills for non-resident patients in the Algarve in 2023 and 2024. Foreigners who are legally resident here aren’t the target of the change.

Schools across Portugal may close or face disruption on Monday because of a strike by non-teaching staff. The 24-hour strike, called by the National Union of Education Professionals (SINAPE), covers school assistants, administrative staff and technicians in public education, the people who supervise children and keep schools running day to day. The strike notice has no minimum services, so if enough staff walk out, some schools and pre-schools may not be able to open safely, even if teachers turn up. It isn’t yet known how many will take part, but several school groups have already warned parents. The union is calling for better pay, saying many staff now earn close to the minimum wage despite years of experience, along with proper career paths and more staff in schools. Check your school’s notices and confirm it’s open before dropping children off, and expect possible disruption to meals and admin even at schools that do open.

What you leave your kids and grandkids doesn't stay private.

What you had. Who received it. Filed with a court, open to anyone who looks.

But there's one asset that stays off it. No bank, no brokerage, nobody to notify.

And the best part? You can buy it inside your retirement account, tax-deferred and penalty-free.

See what it is:

Read the Full Story

A quick note: today’s ad comes from one of our network partners, SPONSOR. Partnerships like this one are what keep The Lisbon Letter free to read every morning, and we thank them for it.

🍽️ SPOT OF THE DAY

OSTRA LISBOA (CHIADO)

Ostra Lisboa was started by two cousins: one farms oysters, the other comes from the restaurant trade. “We don’t buy oysters. We raise oysters,” they say, and every oyster served at their small bar on Rua António Maria Cardoso comes from their own beds in the Ria de Alvor, in the Algarve, where the waters are clean enough that the shellfish don’t need purifying before they’re eaten. Opened this summer, the room is decked out in navy and white, with nods to Lisbon’s calçada pavements and books on the history of the oyster, and seats about 30 between the tables and the counter.

A trio of classic oysters is €8.80, and if you want to show off, there’s the Moby Dick, a giant oyster weighing more than 300g, at €6.90 each. Chef João Pinto’s menu goes well beyond the raw bar: the octopus and wasabi hot dog swaps the sausage for octopus, and the oyster rice, a soupy arroz caldoso with oysters, clams, tomato and lemon, is the dish Time Out calls a must. Expect to spend about €25 a head.

Worth knowing before you go: it’s small, so book ahead at weekends. It’s open from noon every day, until late evening at the end of the week, but it closes earlier in the evening from Sunday to Tuesday.

→ Find them here ←

Insider tip: start with the “Descoberta”, three oysters and a glass of house wine for €11, or swap the wine for Portuguese sparkling for €14.

📅 WHAT’S ON

See you tomorrow morning.

Reach Lisbon’s English-speaking community, every morning. Advertise.