Your home in Portugal could come with a new mandatory bill

Portugal’s homeowners may soon have a new compulsory bill. It’s Saturday, 24 October. Twenty degrees. Air quality: 9 to 27 (Good). Here’s what you need to know.

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EVERY HOME IN PORTUGAL COULD SOON NEED DISASTER INSURANCE. NOBODY KNOWS THE PRICE YET

Homeowners in Portugal could soon be required to insure their properties against earthquakes, floods and storms, and next year’s budget proposal is already counting on it. INEM, the national medical emergency service, expects to collect an extra €117.5 million in fees in 2027, on the assumption that more insurance becomes compulsory, including disaster cover for homes. Público reported on Friday that the plan would apply to all homes.

The idea isn’t new. After the storms that battered Portugal at the start of the year, the government announced in April a new fund for natural disasters and earthquakes, tied to compulsory insurance for homes and business premises. It’s part of the Portugal Transformation, Recovery and Resilience programme, the government’s post-storm recovery plan, which has set aside €20 million to design the system. That’s the cost of building it, not what homeowners will pay. In May, the economy minister, Manuel Castro Almeida, said he expected the rules to be in force in 2027. The finance ministry still hasn’t said whether they’ll come before the end of this year or next year.

What homeowners most want to know is still missing. There’s no price yet. Nor is it clear who’s in: whether a holiday home or a rental counts the same as the home you live in, or whether homes owned outright are included. The government says lower-income households will get help with the cost, but it hasn’t said who will qualify or how much they’ll get.

At the moment, the only home insurance the law requires is fire cover for flats in buildings split into separately owned units. Mortgage lenders normally insist on a policy too, but it won’t necessarily include earthquakes, floods or storms. In 2022, just over half of Portugal’s homes had multi-risk cover for natural events, and the Portuguese Insurers’ Association has put the share of homes with earthquake cover at about one in five.

If you own a home, it’s worth checking now what your policy actually covers. Nothing changes until the rules are published.

Bottom line: The government wants compulsory disaster cover for homes by 2027, but the price and who gets help paying it are still blank.

⚡ QUICK HITS

The clocks in mainland Portugal go back an hour early on Sunday morning. At 2am on Sunday 25 October, clocks go back to 1am as the country switches to winter time. It’s 30 years since Portugal abandoned a four-year experiment that kept it on the same time as Madrid and Paris. The government scrapped it in 1996, citing the effect on children’s sleep and smaller energy savings than expected.

House prices in Portugal rose 18.4% in a year, even as sales fell again. According to INE, the national statistics institute, the median price of homes sold in the second quarter reached €2,445 per square metre, up 4.6% on the first three months of the year. Sales fell 9%, to 37,854, after a 10.5% drop the quarter before. Over the year to June, Lisbon was the country’s most expensive municipality at €5,192 per square metre, followed by Cascais and Oeiras. In Greater Lisbon, buyers whose tax residence is abroad paid 47% more per square metre than buyers resident in Portugal.

Students blocked two Lisbon secondary schools on Friday. Pupils shut the gates at Liceu Camões and the António Arroio art school, and organisers said teachers and other staff supported them. Their complaints ranged from conditions in schools to the cost of living, housing, the climate and money being spent on war. The Chumbado.PT movement behind the protest wants to spread the blockades to schools across the country and bring people out for today’s housing demonstrations in towns and cities around Portugal.

Parliament has backed bills to make non-resident foreigners pay for treatment on the SNS, the national health service. The bills, from the governing Social Democrats and CDS–People’s Party, and from Chega, were approved in principle on 16 October and now go to committee before a final vote. They would require non-residents to show proof of address or health insurance, and tighten the collection of unpaid bills. Emergency care would stay available, but the cost would fall on the patient or their insurer, and the government says legal residents’ rights are protected. If you have family coming to stay, make sure they travel with insurance. About 4.4 million of the SNS’s 19.3 million patient records are missing complete identification details.

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🍽️ SPOT OF THE DAY

A MERENDEIRA (SANTOS)

A Merendeira does two things, and Lisbon has been coming back for them for decades. The first is caldo verde, the kale and potato soup, finished with slivers of chouriço. The second is pão com chouriço, where the sausage is baked into the dough rather than stuffed into a roll, so it comes out of the oven warm and a little greasy, the way it should. There are other fillings, from salt cod to torresmos, crispy pork, and a bowl of arroz doce, rice pudding, to finish.

It sits on Avenida 24 de Julho, between the bars of Santos and Cais do Sodré, which explains its reputation as the city’s late-night refuel. The room is simple, with wooden tables and benches, and on a cold autumn day it works just as well for lunch.

Worth knowing before you go: it’s open every day from 9am to 7am the next morning, closing only for two hours, so there’s no bad time to turn up. It’s also cheap: the set menu bundles soup, bread, a drink, rice pudding and a coffee for a few euros.

→ Find them here ←

Insider tip: if you’re hungry, skip ordering piece by piece and go straight for the full set menu. With the clocks going back tonight, you also get an extra hour to fit it in.

📅 WHAT’S ON

See you tomorrow morning.

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