The PSP demobilized camped in Lisbon and Porto, holding 13 people and causing several injuries, including police, in action that took place simultaneously at 4:30 today.
© FILIPE AMORIM / AFP via Getty Images
01/11/2026
by
Lusa
Pat the same time, from 4:30 p.m. today, the PSP advanced on the protesters concentrated in the campsites in Lisbon and Porto to demobilize, withdrawing tents and holding 13 people, having recorded several wounded, including police.
Before the new police charge, a week after the last one also occurred at the same time in Lisbon and Porto, the police again warned the protesters, starting at 12:30, that they had to remove the tents and, if they did not, they were incurring a crime of disobedience.
Anticipating the police intervention, the deputies of PS Pedro Delgado Alves and Eva Cruzeiro, from Livre Jorge Pinto, Isabel Mendes Lopes and Paulo Muscho and BE Fabian Figueiredo were in Praça do Rossio, in Lisbon, and appealed to the commander of the Metropolitan Command of Lisbon of PSP, Iúri Rodrigues, to avoid the disproportionate use of force against demonstrators.
The protesters concentrated in Praça D. João I, in Porto, and in Praça D. Pedro IV, in Lisbon, did not comply with the dispersion police order, having decided to intervene, with the PSP Intervention Corps to advance on the human cord formed by the people protesting for the right to housing.
During the police intervention, the protesters launched petards and the PSP Intervention Corps resorted to physical force, including batonadas, to drive away the protesters, and in a few minutes the squares occupied by the camp in Lisbon and Porto were emptied.
The Lisbon Camp said that more than 30 people were injured, of which 10 were hospitalized, while the Porto Camp pointed to 35 minor and three serious injuries.
On the other hand, the PSP said it was aware of “the existence of injured civilians, but it is not possible at this time to proceed with a concrete number”.
In statements to the journalists in Lisbon, PSP spokesman Sérgio Soares reported that 13 people were arrested, six in Lisbon and seven in Porto, saying that 13 police officers were injured in the police intervention, all in Porto, 10 of the intervention police and three of a civilian unit.
A fourth police officer from this plainclothes unit in Porto withdrew the firearm when the protesters approached, having made “passive recourse to the firearm as a means of deterrence”, according to PSP.
Justifying the police action with the increase of popular resistance, Sérgio Soares argued that the use of force only happened after the protesters threw paints and petards at the police.
In a statement, the National Directorate of the PSP said that in Lisbon 69 camping structures were removed and seized, while in Porto 30, with both interventions counting with the respective Municipal Police in the removal and seizure work.
The PSP also reiterated that it “respects and guarantees the exercise of the right of assembly and demonstration”, but the exercise of these rights must “success peacefully, with respect for the rights of other citizens, public order and tranquility and within the limits and constraints provided for in the law”.
On the other hand, he warned that the right to demonstrate “cannot justify acts of vandalism or damage to the public heritage”.
Meanwhile, the President of the Republic, António José Seguro, requested information “in full detail” to the Government and Ombudsman’s Office, about what happened this morning in the demonstrations for housing in Lisbon and Porto and about the situation of the detainees and wounded, having talked this morning with the Prime Minister, Luís Montenegro (PSD), and with the Ombudsman, Luísa Neto.
In representation of the protesters of the Lisbon Camp, lawyer Ricardo Sá Fernandes said today that he will advance with criminal participation against the Minister of Internal Administration, Luís Neves, and the national director of PSP, Coelho de Moura, accusing them of “abuse of power” after the police charge this morning.
Between demonstrations and so-called camped demonstrations, with hundreds or thousands of protesters, the current protests against the housing crisis began in Porto on October 10 and expanded to Lisbon, but they have also motivated concentrations in other cities, days after the parliamentary approval of the new rental law, now under discussion in the specialty.
The initiatives, promoted by civic movements and spread across social networks, demand measures that respond to the crisis in the sector, the control of the prices of essential goods and fuels and defend taxes on the extraordinary profits of large companies in the banking sector.