You could be stopped anywhere on Portugal's roads this weekend

The government is putting extra police on the roads this holiday weekend, after a first half of the year the minister is calling a "civil war." It's Thursday, 13 August. Thirty-three degrees. Air quality: 36 (Good). Here's what you need to know.

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"A CIVIL WAR ON THE ROADS": SURPRISE POLICE CHECKS FOR THE HOLIDAY WEEKEND

Portugal's Interior Minister, Luís Neves, has likened the country's road-accident record to a "civil war," and announced a wave of surprise police enforcement for this weekend's Assumption holiday, traditionally one of the deadliest stretches of the year on the roads.

The figures behind the language are grim. In the first six months of 2026 alone, Portugal recorded 17,941 road accidents, 223 deaths, around 1,300 serious injuries and more than 20,000 minor ones. Neves put the blame squarely on distraction, alcohol, mobile phones and plain bad behaviour, and said the government will start running "good driving" tests, using technology to study how people actually behave behind the wheel.

For this weekend, the plan is what the ministry calls "unpredictable" enforcement: not fixed, advertised checkpoints, but stops that can appear anywhere, run by the GNR, the National Republican Guard that polices the roads and rural areas, and the PSP, the Public Security Police. The message to drivers is blunt: assume you will be checked, and assume the rules will be enforced.

The urgency is not abstract. Last month, at the chaotic Agualva-Cacém transport terminal on the edge of Lisbon, a Carris Metropolitana bus veered out of control and killed two women waiting at the stop, injuring around twenty more people. This week the operator's investigation concluded the cause was human error: the driver appears to have lost control while changing the bus's destination sign, with no evidence of mechanical failure. The case is now with the Judicial Police.

What this means for you: if you are driving anywhere this weekend, build in time for delays at checks, and treat the basics as non-negotiable, no phone in your hand, nothing to drink if you are at the wheel, and your speed genuinely down to the limit. The enforcement is real, and the holiday roads are genuinely more dangerous than usual.

Bottom line: Portugal's roads are taking more lives than at almost any point in recent years, and this weekend the state is answering that with a visible show of force. The simplest way to stay clear of it is to drive as though you expect to be stopped, because you might well be.

⚡ QUICK HITS

Two of four young Portuguese tourists have been rescued off the Croatian coast, with two still missing. The group had set out before dawn on Wednesday in a tiny inflatable boat, no more than a metre and a half long, from a campsite on Croatia's Adriatic coast, and lost contact in severe weather in the Velebit Channel, a stretch of sea notorious for sudden, violent winds. A coordinated search was launched after an acquaintance raised the alarm. By Wednesday afternoon a young woman had been pulled from the water alive after roughly eight hours at sea, and a man was found soon afterwards, having managed to climb onto rocks himself. The search for the other two continued into the evening, with Portugal's foreign ministry saying it was following the case closely.

Ryanair is adding another Portuguese route, though still not from Lisbon. The airline has announced a new four-times-a-week connection between Porto and Rabat, the Moroccan capital, as part of what it calls its largest-ever winter schedule. It continues a familiar pattern, Ryanair expanding fast at Porto, Faro and Madeira while pointedly refusing to grow in Lisbon, a stance it blames on the fees charged by airport operator ANA and the capacity limits at the capital's airport. For travellers, it means the cheap new links keep landing at the regional airports rather than in Lisbon.

Portugal has become one of the fastest-growing data-centre markets in the world. The country's installed data-centre capacity has grown 23 percent since 2024, enough to rank it tenth globally for growth, according to analysis from the consultancy Savills. Portugal is still small next to established hubs like Frankfurt, London and Dublin, but those are running short of land and electricity, and investment is shifting towards places that can build faster and plug into cheap power. Portugal has abundant renewable energy and the transatlantic subsea cables that come ashore on its coast, which is increasingly drawing the big operators here.

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🍽️ SPOT OF THE DAY

TASCA BICA (CAIS DO SODRÉ)

Lisbon is not short of new restaurants, but few are as much fun as Tasca Bica, which opened this spring on Rua da Boavista in Cais do Sodré. It is the first solo project of chef Vic Vieira, a Brazilian who spent close to two decades cooking in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Bangkok and Macau before landing in Lisbon, and it shows in a menu that takes the humble tasca and runs at it with ambition and a sense of play.

The star is the chicken, and it is anything but fast food. Vieira ages half a bird in smoked jamón fat over the best part of a week, brining, coating and maturing it before finishing it over charcoal, and the result, at around twenty-two euros, is the reason to come. Around it sits a menu that mixes high and low with a straight face: cod croquettes crowned with tuna and caviar, chicken nuggets in a house spice blend with chipotle aioli, a hearts-of-palm salad from his mother's kitchen, and suckling pig in chicken gravy.

Before you go, you should know it is small, genuinely buzzy, and dinner-only, open Tuesday to Saturday from six in the evening until midnight, so book ahead if you want a table at a sensible hour.

→ See the menu and find them here ←

Insider tip: come for the chicken, but do not skip the odd-sounding high-low plates, the cod croquette with caviar is exactly what this place does best, taking something familiar and making it gloriously over the top.

📅 WHAT'S ON

See you tomorrow morning.

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