Most of Portugal's fires don't start the way you think

More than 150 people have been detained this year for starting fires, and the country is still tinder-dry. It's Tuesday, 4 August. Twenty-seven degrees. Air quality: 30 (Good). Here's what you need to know.

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MORE THAN 150 PEOPLE HAVE BEEN DETAINED FOR STARTING PORTUGAL'S FIRES THIS YEAR

More than 150 people have been detained since the start of the year on suspicion of causing forest fires in Portugal, the national guard, the GNR, confirmed last week. The arrests have come as the country lives through one of its most punishing fire seasons in memory, with the entire mainland repeatedly pushed to maximum or very high fire risk through July and into August.

Not all of those detained are arsonists in the way the word suggests. The GNR is careful to point out that while some fires are lit deliberately, many are the result of negligence: sparks thrown off heavy machinery, garden waste burned on the wrong day, a campfire or a cigarette in dry countryside during a period of extreme risk. In conditions like these, the authorities say, it takes almost nothing. Low humidity, high heat and strong wind can turn a single spark into a fast-moving forest fire in a matter of minutes.

The recent cases show the range. In Penafiel, near Porto, two quarry workers in their fifties were detained after a fire that tore through around 500 hectares of forest and threatened homes and livestock; investigators believe it started from heavy machinery being used on a maximum-risk day, and one of the men was the person who called it in. In the Guarda district, police detained a man and a woman accused of lighting five separate fires last summer, allegedly to cause panic during local village festivities. Different motives, different circumstances, the same devastating potential.

The human cost of getting this wrong is enormous, and it is not only Portugal's problem this summer. Portuguese firefighters and civil protection teams have crossed the border into Spain to help battle huge blazes there, driving through the night from Guarda to Ávila, while volunteers from the animal-rescue group IRA work alongside them, pulling sheep, goats and horses out of evacuated zones, some already burned or suffering from smoke inhalation, and rushing them to veterinary hospitals.

If you are heading out of Lisbon this month, into the Alentejo, up to the centre, or anywhere rural, the rules during maximum-risk days are strict and worth knowing. No campfires, no barbecues except in designated spots, no burning of garden waste, no fireworks or sky lanterns, and no machinery that throws sparks near vegetation. Cigarettes tossed from car windows are a genuine ignition risk and, in these conditions, a potential crime. Check the risk level for your destination at fogos.pt before you set off, and if you see a fire starting, call 112 immediately.

Bottom line: Portugal is in the thick of a dangerous, exhausting fire season, and more than 150 people are already caught up in investigations into how these fires begin. Most of us will never light one on purpose. The point the authorities keep making is that, in a summer this dry, you do not have to mean to.

⚡ QUICK HITS

Brussels has fined Google €890 million, and the clock is now ticking. The European Commission fined Google €890 million for two breaches of the Digital Markets Act: favouring its own shopping, hotel, transport and flight results over competitors in search, and blocking app developers from telling customers about cheaper deals outside Google Play. Google has roughly until late September to change how it operates or face escalating daily penalties of up to 5% of its global turnover. It follows similar EU fines on Apple and Meta, and for anyone in Lisbon who searches, books a hotel or compares flights, it could change what those results look like within weeks.

Police found 197 kilos of cocaine hidden in a boat's hull. The Judicial Police, the PJ, revealed they seized 197 kilograms of cocaine concealed within the hull of a vessel, the latest in a run of large maritime drug busts that underline Portugal's position as one of the main Atlantic gateways into Europe. The haul would be worth an estimated €8 million or more at wholesale, and considerably more once cut and sold on the street. It lands in the same weeks that the navy and maritime police stepped up patrols along the southern coast.

Portugal is growing faster than the rest of Europe. New figures show Portugal's economy grew 0.8% in the second quarter, according to Eurostat, outpacing both the eurozone and the wider European Union average, driven largely by household spending and international trade. It is a genuinely good headline for the country at a time when much of Europe is barely moving. The same data shows one soft spot: investment is slowing, which economists watch closely because it shapes future jobs and wages. For now, though, Portugal is one of the brighter lights on an otherwise flat European map.

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🍷 SPOT OF THE DAY

RED NOSE (CAMPO DE OURIQUE)

On a quiet street in Campo de Ourique, one of Lisbon's most village-like neighbourhoods, a red light glows over a doorway that is part wine bar, part grocery. Red Nose is run by a pair of sommeliers, and it is built around a single obsession: natural wine, low-intervention bottles from small producers in Portugal, France and further afield, with a particularly good run of orange and volcanic wines that reward the curious.

This is not a place to be handed a list and left alone. The pleasure is in telling them what you like and being walked to something you would never have found yourself, then pairing it with a board of French charcuterie and hard-to-find cheeses, or fresh bread and a few small plates. Anything on the shelves you fall for, you can buy to take home, often cheaper than drinking it in.

The room is small and the mood is unhurried, though there is outdoor seating, which makes it exactly right for a slow catch-up or a low-key date rather than a big group. Doors open at four in the afternoon and it runs late, so it is an evening spot rather than a daytime one.

→ See the menu and find them here ←

Insider tip: if you have written off orange wine after one sharp glass somewhere else, say so. Talking them into changing your mind is exactly the kind of challenge this place lives for, and their volcanic whites are the usual gateway.

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