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Portugal's Atlantic coast has turned into one of Europe's busiest doorways for cocaine, and the figures this year are extraordinary. It's Monday, 10 August. Thirty-two degrees. Air quality: 30 (Good). Here's what you need to know.
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PORTUGAL HAS SEIZED MORE COCAINE IN 2026 THAN IN ALL OF LAST YEAR, WITH MONTHS TO SPARE
Portugal has already seized around 28 tonnes of cocaine since January, more than the roughly 25 tonnes taken in the whole of 2025, and there are still nearly five months of the year to run. The figure was announced this week by the Judicial Police (PJ), the force that leads on serious crime, at a press conference in Lisbon.
The pace has not let up. On Friday, a high-speed boat being chased about 60 nautical miles off the coast at Sines threw bales of drugs into the sea, and officers recovered 421 kilos. Days earlier, in an operation codenamed Skydrop, police pulled five tonnes of cocaine from a container ship that had been intercepted some 1,185 kilometres out from Lisbon and escorted into Sines, with three people arrested. Earlier in the year, authorities stopped a semi-submersible, a low-slung "narco-submarine," carrying nine tonnes, the largest single haul ever made in the country.
The head of the police unit that fights drug trafficking put the surge down to two things at once: more cocaine moving through international routes, and better detection by Portuguese authorities, working with the Navy, the Maritime Authority and the Air Force to catch the fast boats that use the coast.
One point the police were keen to stress is that Portugal is mostly a transit country, not the final destination. The drugs are bound for the wider European market, and it is Portugal's long Atlantic coastline and deep-water ports, Sines chief among them, that have turned it into a gateway.
The day-to-day effect on residents is small, but it explains the naval and air operations you may have seen reported off the coast this summer, and it puts Portugal squarely on the map of global trafficking in a way that brings both scrutiny and pressure on its ports and police.
Bottom line: Portugal has become one of the main gates through which cocaine enters Europe, and a record haul with five months still to go shows both how much is coming and how hard the authorities are now working to stop it.
⚡ QUICK HITS
The Interior Minister is heading to a courtroom over a secret operation in Brazil. Luís Neves, the Interior Minister and former head of the Judicial Police, will stand trial at the Court of Auditors over how a set of trips and contracts were paid for during his time running the force. The trips funded a confidential 2023 operation that sent officers to Brazil to investigate suspected infiltration of Portuguese consulates by the PCC, a powerful Brazilian criminal organisation. The prosecutor says the payments broke procurement rules; Neves says he asked for the audit himself and that the method was urgent, secret and saved the state money. Importantly, this is a financial-responsibility case about paperwork, not a criminal or corruption trial of the minister.
The government is hitting oil companies with a windfall tax. Ministers have approved a temporary 33 percent levy on the extraordinary 2026 profits of oil and refining companies, applying only to the slice of profit that beats their 2024-to-2025 average by more than a fifth. In practice it targets Galp, the only firm that does both extraction and refining here, which recently reported first-half profits up 44 percent to 812 million euros on the back of higher oil prices and refining margins. The money is earmarked to help cushion households and businesses from high fuel costs. It still needs parliament's approval, which it is expected to get.
A court has put a price on 15 years of unpaid housework. The Coimbra Court of Appeal has ordered a man to pay his ex-wife 45,000 euros in compensation for the domestic work and childcare she provided across their marriage, overturning a lower court that had refused her anything and told her to cover half the household costs. Domestic work has an "undeniable economic value," the judges wrote, reasoning that one partner's dedication to the home enriches the other while impoverishing the person who gives up income and career to do it. It reinforces a growing line of Portuguese rulings that treat unpaid care as a real financial contribution when a marriage ends.
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🍽️ SPOT OF THE DAY
The Old House is the first European outpost of a chain that runs dozens of restaurants across China, and it takes its Sichuan cooking seriously. It sits on Rua da Pimenta by the river near the Oceanário, with chefs brought over from Sichuan to cook the real thing rather than the familiar takeaway version.
That means proper Sichuan heat, built around ma la, the numbing, tingling buzz of Sichuan pepper and chilli that the region is famous for. Twice-cooked pork, spicy roasted fish, green beans with minced pork, handmade dumplings and a very good Peking duck all turn up on a menu that runs far deeper than the usual suspects. The room is elegant and lantern-lit, with tables out towards the water, prices sit above average from around twenty-five euros a head, and it is worth booking.
Worth knowing before you go: it is out in Parque das Nações, near the Oceanário and the cable car, so it pairs well with a day at that end of the city. It is open every day, for lunch and dinner.
Insider tip: if you are wary of the spice, say so and they will steer you, but the ma la dishes are the whole reason to come, so order at least one and share it around rather than skipping them altogether.
📅 WHAT'S ON
The solar eclipse (Wednesday, from about 6:35pm) Lisbon gets a deep partial, roughly 94 percent of the sun covered by around 7:35pm, low in the west. You need certified eclipse glasses and a clear western horizon.
O Sol da Caparica (13 to 16 Aug, Costa da Caparica) One of the summer's big Portuguese-language music festivals, a short hop across the river from the city.
Operafest: The Marriage of Figaro (14 and 15 Aug, Cloisters of the Cartuxa Convent, Caxias, Oeiras) Mozart in the open air of a former convent, the next act of the summer opera festival. operafestlisboa.com.
Cascais Atlantic Sunsets (Saturday 15 Aug, Forte de Santo António da Barra, Estoril) Armand Van Helden and Groove Armada headline the second seafront sunset date. shotgun.live.
Out Jazz (Sunday 16 Aug, Parque Urbano do Jamor, Oeiras) The free Sunday afternoon jazz session, in its August home at Jamor. Bring something to sit on.
Feira dos Alfarrabistas (Saturday morning, Rua Anchieta, Chiado) The weekly open-air second-hand book and print market.
See you tomorrow morning.
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