The rent law behind Lisbon’s housing protests is now up for negotiation

Lisbon marched on Saturday, and the government is now talking about changing the rent law. It’s Sunday, 25 October. Twenty-one degrees. Air quality: 16 to 29 (Good). Here’s what you need to know.

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THE RENT LAW AT THE HEART OF THE HOUSING PROTESTS IS NOW OPEN TO CHANGES

Housing protesters marched from Marquês de Pombal to Rossio on Saturday afternoon under the slogan “We have no home, so we set up tents!”, two weeks after the movement began in Porto. Hundreds of people of all ages took part in Lisbon, where Avenida da Liberdade was closed to traffic, and thousands more marched through the centre of Porto. Their main target is the government’s new rent law, and there are now signs it could change.

The law passed its first vote in parliament on 30 September, after Chega abstained, and is now with a committee, where bills are amended before a final vote. It isn’t in force yet. As it stands, it would let landlords begin eviction proceedings after two months of unpaid rent instead of three, drop the 2% cap on rent rises for new contracts, and allow them to ask for up to three months’ rent upfront with no cap on deposits.

Last Tuesday, the housing minister, Miguel Pinto Luz, said the government was open to revising the law with the Socialists, telling reporters it had found agreement “sometimes on the left, sometimes on the right”. Earlier that day, the Socialist leader, José Luís Carneiro, had called the law “inhumane and unjust” and challenged the prime minister to drop it. Chega, whose abstention got it through, appears to have backed away from it, and its leader, André Ventura, has pointed out that talks in committee haven’t even started.

The police message on Saturday also put the emphasis on talking. Four days after clearing the Rossio camp before dawn and detaining 55 people, the PSP, the Public Security Police, said it would keep prioritising dialogue and mediation, with riot police on standby. At the march, the Left Bloc leader, José Manuel Pureza, attacked the prime minister’s silence: “The prime minister’s whereabouts are unknown,” he said.

The coming week will show whether anything shifts. A protester has taken the authorities to court: a Lisbon administrative court has agreed to hear an urgent case brought to protect fundamental rights, and has given the interior ministry, which oversees the police, and the city council 48 hours to respond before it rules. This Tuesday, 27 October, the 55 people detained at Rossio are due back in court. On Wednesday, MPs hold the first vote on the 2027 state budget. On Thursday, President António José Seguro sees the parties one by one about social cohesion, having called for a broad agreement on housing, and he has called the Council of State, his advisory body, for 2 November.

Bottom line: The rent law isn’t in force yet, and the government now says it’s open to changes, so the committee stage will decide what renters actually face.⚡ QUICK HITS

The government has approved new rules to stop inheritance disputes from keeping homes empty. Under a decree-law approved on Thursday, a single heir can ask a court to order the sale of an inherited property once two years have passed without agreement. Heirs then get six months to settle or sell privately, after which the property goes to an electronic auction at an independently assessed market value. Any heir can still buy it at the price reached, and a home lived in by a surviving spouse or partner can’t be sold this way without their consent. The rules will cover inheritances already open but not yet divided, as well as future ones, but they still need the president’s signature and publication before they take effect. A sale frees the house but doesn’t necessarily settle the rest of the estate. The government cites around 485,000 vacant homes in the 2021 census, more than half of them in good condition.

Taxi fares in Portugal are now calculated on both distance and time. A new national reference tariff, in force since Friday, sets a €2 starting charge plus €0.58 per kilometre and €0.28 per minute on weekday daytimes for the first year, rising to €0.73 and €0.34 after that. By our calculation, a 6km, 15-minute weekday ride on the first-year rates comes to about €9.70. The per-minute rate rises at night, from 10pm to 7am, and at weekends and on public holidays, and bookings by phone or app carry an €0.80 supplement. The rules cover taxis, including those booked through apps, not ride-hailing services such as Uber and Bolt. Councils can set their own tariffs, and drivers have until 21 January to update their meters, so check the fare information inside the car.

Seventeen American refuelling planes are parked at Lajes air base in the Azores. Lajes, on Terceira, is a Portuguese air force base that the US has used since the Second World War. Lusa reports that it received a reinforcement of KC-46 tankers on 11 October, similar to the build-up days before the US and Israeli strikes on Iran on 28 February, after numbers had dropped to six in September. International media have been discussing whether the US could strike Iran again after its 3 November midterm elections, and a third US aircraft carrier is heading to the Middle East. Portuguese prosecutors opened an inquiry this month into the legality of the US use of the base, after a complaint from the Left Bloc, while Prime Minister Luís Montenegro has said he is certain it has been lawful.

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🍽️ SPOT OF THE DAY

PASTELARIA VERSAILLES (SALDANHA)

Versailles still looks much as it did when it opened in 1922. It’s all carved wooden ceilings, chandeliers, stained glass, wall-to-wall mirrors and a chequerboard floor, with paintings by Benvindo Ceia, in a building now listed as being of public interest. The waiters wear white shirts, black waistcoats with the café’s emblem and black bow ties. A Sunday morning here is as much about the room as the food.

The famous order is the house hot chocolate, thick and not too sweet, with a toasted scone and butter or something from the long counter of cakes and pastries. It also does proper lunches, from its own bife do lombo with chips and esparregado, a spinach purée, to veal croquettes with salad. At Christmas, its bolo-rei, the king cake, is a Lisbon ritual: one Christmas Eve, the manager remembers, the queue stretched to the other side of the avenue.

Worth knowing before you go: it’s open every day from 7:30am to 10pm, a short walk from Saldanha metro, and at weekends it fills with families, many of them former locals who come back for old times’ sake. Reviews are mixed on the service, though. Some visitors find the staff brusque or short on English, and recent reviews call it expensive for what you get, so expect to pay more than at a neighbourhood pastelaria.

→ Find them here ←

Insider tip: skip the regular pastel de nata and order the house chocolate version, a Versailles twist you won’t find at most pastelarias.

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See you tomorrow morning.

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