Portugal: Unions lead massive marches against spiraling cost of living, while encampments demanding affordable housing spread
Porto, Portugal – On Saturday, October 17, the rage of the people in the streets of Spain and France over the deteriorating quality of life for working-class and young people fully arrived in Portugal. Unions led massive marches around the country, and encampments led by young people demanding affordable housing were reestablished in Porto, after government repression earlier in the week. The protests spread to the capital of Lisbon and other cities.
Since October 10, young people in Porto, inspired by the hundreds of thousands of people in the streets of neighboring Spain have tried to maintain an encampment demanding an end to skyrocketing housing costs while wages stay flat. But the police responded to the protesters with brutality, injuring 37 people and callously dismissing them and their demands in a way that shook the conscience of the country.
In that context, Portugal’s largest and most militant union federation, the General Confederation of Portuguese Workers (CGTP), led huge marches in Lisbon, Porto and Coimbra on Saturday, October 17. The marches brought thousands of working-class people into the streets in a similar trajectory as the young people who have been pressing the demand for affordable housing.
The CGTP put forward concrete demands that could address the deep capitalist crises that working people face in all aspects of life in Portugal – like a 15% increase of the minimum wage, increases in pensions and social security, strengthening the national health system (SNS), and increasing funding to education.
Portugal’s conservative government has been systematically chopping away at working people’s quality of life, defunding public systems then privatizing them for the profit of the rich and multinational corporations. They’ve allowed private equity firms and short-term rentals like AirBnB to gobble up real estate, driving housing prices through the roof, while passing a new law that weakens renters’ protections and makes evictions easier.
After the CGTP marches filled the streets on Saturday, thousands of people gathered that evening in assemblies and decided to reestablish a tent encampment in Porto’s Praça Dom João I and to establish a new encampment in Praça do Rossio in Portugal’s capitol, Lisbon.
After having said earlier in the week that he would draw a hard line and absolutely refuse to allow a tent encampment in Porto, and then sending in the police to injure protesters in their tents in middle of the night, Porto’s municipal leader Pedro Duarte was forced to backtrack and allow the encampment to be reestablished on Saturday night in the face of huge public sympathy for the protesters and widespread repudiation of his harsh treatment of peaceful protesters. Lisbon’s officials were also powerless to stop the establishment of a huge new encampment in the center of the city.
At the union march in Lisbon on Saturday, CGTP Secretary General Tiago Oliveira said, “Today, it is quite evident that we live in a state of permanent class conflict – a conflict that is intensifying and becoming increasingly clear to each and every one of us. Let us be aware of one thing: when we have a government that does not view the world through the eyes of those who work—those who live by their own labor, the youth, and the majority of the people—it is highly unlikely that we will see policies that address the interests of workers, retirees, young people, or that same majority. These are distinct and opposing interests—class interests—and big capital will never look toward the working population with the aim of improving their living conditions. Instead, it will always pursue policies that serve its own interests and the accumulation of wealth through exploitation.”
Oliveira then called on people “to make this coming November a month of action and struggle – and, among other initiatives, to commit here and now that on November 24, the day the final vote on the national budget is scheduled to take place, we will be there, out in the streets near the Assembly of the Republic, for yet another major day of struggle!”