Good morning, Lisbon. It's Monday, April 13, and we're looking at 20°C with sunshine. The metro is running this morning but closed again tomorrow, Baixa-Chiado's residents have gone on record about insecurity in the centre, and the working week is here. Let's get into it.
🌬️ AIR QUALITY: 21 (Good).
🗞️ TOP STORY
BAIXA-CHIADO RESIDENTS SAY THE CENTRE ISN'T SAFE ANY MORE.
A residents' association in Baixa-Chiado, one of Lisbon's most visited neighbourhoods, issued a formal warning this weekend about what it described as "worsening insecurity" in the district. Portugal Resident covered the story on Saturday.
For anyone who lives, works, or drinks in the centre, the broad shape of the complaint will not be new. What's different about the weekend statement is that it came from a residents' association rather than a bar owner or a tourism columnist, and that it used the formal word "insecurity" rather than the softer "antisocial behaviour" that Lisbon's civic vocabulary tends to default to. That's a deliberate choice. It's also a political one.
A bit of context. Baixa-Chiado is the tourist heart of Lisbon, and tourism in Portugal has grown more or less without interruption for over a decade. Baixa-Chiado absorbs a disproportionate share of the city's tourist volume against a small permanent residential population, and that ratio produces exactly the conditions you'd expect: very few eyes on the street that belong to people with long-term stakes in the neighbourhood, very many eyes on the street that belong to people passing through for three days.
The wider pattern matters too. The same week the Baixa-Chiado association issued its statement, INE data showed that 39.4% of Portuguese adults will experience generalised anxiety symptoms this year. Portugal Resident ran coverage of "Easter carnage" on the country's roads. The citizenship law was revised on April 1 partly in response to a narrative about a country losing control of who lives in it. None of these stories are the same story, but they rhyme: a public mood that wants to feel safer, more settled, more visibly in charge of its own streets.
The harder question is what anyone can realistically do about any of it. More police on Rua Augusta at 1am is an easy ask and a reasonable one. Reducing the visitor-to-resident ratio in Baixa is a much harder policy problem, and nobody in City Hall is currently proposing to do it in any serious way. Short-term rental restrictions have been tightened but not enforced with real teeth. The underlying pressure isn't going anywhere.
Bottom line: if you live or work in Baixa-Chiado, trust your instincts and don't assume the tourist spine is the safe spine. If you're a visitor, the city is still overwhelmingly safe by European standards. If you're a resident in any other neighbourhood, this is the warning flag. The centre hasn't been looking after itself lately.
⚡ QUICK HITS
Metro strike tomorrow. Tuesday, April 14. Full 24-hour walkout, no minimum service, all lines closed. Same script as last Thursday. If your Tuesday involves an appointment, a flight, or a school run, today is the day to sort your backup plan. Bus routes near major metro hubs filled up before mid-morning last week, and rideshare surge pricing doubled across the city.
Google is quietly backing off Portuguese clean energy. Portugal Resident reported on Friday that of the "Magnificent Seven" US tech companies, Google had until recently been the most committed to renewable energy sourcing for its Portuguese data centres, and that this has started to change. For a country that has pitched itself hard on the combination of green grid and data-centre infrastructure, a quiet pullback from the one hyperscaler most aligned with that pitch is worth watching.
Portugal News data last week showed Portugal ranks sixth most dangerous country in Europe for driving.
SIS 2026 Summit opens in Cascais today. International security summit at Cascais, running April 13-15. If you're in the defence, cybersecurity, or policy world, it's the week's biggest professional gathering.
🍽️ SPOT OF THE DAY
Campo de Ourique is the neighbourhood Lisboetas go to when they want to pretend they live in a different city for the afternoon. It's residential, leafy, full of independent shops, and almost entirely untouched by the tourist circuit. If you haven't walked around Jardim da Parada on a weekend lunchtime, you haven't seen the version of Lisbon that Lisbon residents are trying to protect.
A few metres north of that park sits Pigmeu, Chef Miguel Azevedo Peres's nose-to-tail pork restaurant and one of the more quietly serious restaurants in the city. The premise is simple and, if you think about it for more than a second, slightly radical: Pigmeu buys one organically raised pig a week, butchers it in-house, and serves virtually all of it. The menu is formally split into thirds: a third seasonal vegetables, a third offal, a third traditional cuts. A whole pig feeds about 350 people.
The classics include Torresmo do Rissol (crispy pork crackling), Croquetes do Pigmeu, and the Bifana Porcalhona, a hearty pork sandwich that reminds you what a proper bifana is actually supposed to taste like. Beyond that you'll find things that most restaurants don't want to put in front of you: heart in coriander sauce, cheeks, skin, trotters. The bread comes with pork-fat butter.
Pigmeu picked up a Michelin Bib Gourmand in 2025 for exactly the reason that award exists: serious cooking at a price you can actually pay. À la carte is probably the way to order, though the tasting menu is the full expression of what the kitchen is doing. There's a solid natural wine list, and Miguel also runs a wine bar at Cais do Sodré if you want to continue the evening.
→ Book a table ←
Rua 4 da Infantaria 68, Campo de Ourique. Closed Mondays and Sundays. Reservations strongly recommended, especially for weekends.
Insider tip: Sit at the counter if you can. You get a view of the prep area, the staff will talk you through what each cut is and where on the pig it came from, and you'll end up learning more about Portuguese pork than you will at any museum. It's also the best seat in the house if you're dining solo.
📅 WHAT'S ON
Tinariwen (Tomorrow, Tue April 14) LAV Lisboa Ao Vivo. Desert blues from the Sahara.
Oneohtrix Point Never (Tomorrow, Tue April 14) Culturgest. Experimental electronic.
Arsenal v Sporting, second leg (Wed April 15) Champions League quarter-final at the Emirates, 8pm UK time. Arsenal lead 1-0 on aggregate.
Louane (Thu April 16) LAV Lisboa Ao Vivo. French pop.
Italian Film Festival closing gala (Sat April 18) Coliseu dos Recreios. Tribute to Claudia Cardinale.
Lula arrives in Lisbon (Tue April 21) Official state visit.
Liberty Day (Sat April 25) Public holiday. Carnation Revolution celebrations along Avenida da Liberdade.
📜 ON THIS DAY
April 13, 1742. George Frideric Handel's Messiah received its world premiere at the Great Music Hall on Fishamble Street in Dublin. Handel had composed the entire thing in 24 days the previous summer, reportedly barely eating or leaving his London house. The Dublin premiere was a charity performance in aid of two local hospitals and a fund for the release of imprisoned debtors, and the demand for tickets was so great that the organisers asked women not to wear hooped skirts and men not to bring their swords so more people could fit in the hall. Around 700 people squeezed into a venue built for 600. The piece was almost universally panned by the London clergy when Handel brought it back to England a year later, and it took several decades to become the fixture of Western music it is today. So if you ever get reviewed badly on The Fork, hold the line. Handel had to wait longer than the entire run of most Lisbon restaurants before anyone agreed he was any good.
See you tomorrow morning.