Stories from Lisbon’s 27 shantytowns // Brussels recommends rent control, holiday rental crackdown // PM says government will deal with left and right

Portuguese news in English on Tuesday, June 10, 2025.

Stories from Lisbon’s 27 shantytowns

Emanuel Pina works as a security guard but, he tells Expresso, he had to build an illegal home to put a roof over his family. They had rented a T3 in Almada for €600, then, when that contract was rescinded, shared a single room. When that home was sold they ended up in Penajoia, a 600-strong improvised town that just three or four years ago was practically empty. His story is far from unique in the 27 shantytowns spread across the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, some created from the ground up in the past three years and others that already existed but grew much bigger. Last time Expresso tried to put a number on the phenomenon, in 2019, it found 13 such neighbourhoods, where about 1800 families lived.

Bairro do 2º Torrão in Trafaria. Photo: Jorge Branco

Jenicia, 20, who works 12 hours a day caring for an old lady in Lisbon and earns €700 on recibos verdes, had to ask for her first salary in advance to pay for the corrugated iron and other supplies for a man to build her barraca. Her neighbour’s construction in Loures’ Bairro do Talude doesn’t have windows, toilet, sanitation, water or electricity and her floor is a carpet spread on the bare ground. Most of the residents, most of whom are legal immigrants with jobs in Portugal, used to live in apartments or rooms before soaring prices forced them out. Geographer Professor Gonçalo Antunes said the country’s lowest earners had been completely excluded from the formal housing market, forcing the reemergence of phenomenons like this that were fading out. “It’s completely unacceptable that in 2025 there are families living without water, sanitation or electricity,” he said.

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