Around a hundred tents remain pitched today in Praça D. Pedro IV, in Lisbon, albeit some appear already empty, writes Lusa
João Veloso, one of the spokespeople for the Lisbon Encampment, told the state news agency that the protest initiative, which began on Saturday, “is still standing” and that participants still want to remain there, but only at the 7pm popular assembly will it become clear “what people intend to do, how [they will] continue and what the new demands will be”.
“So, the encampment remains standing strong. What is on the table is a new rental law that makes access to housing more precarious, so that is why we took to the streets, with the aim of blocking this new rental law or even repealing it”, he said.
According to the 30-year-old, “around 300/400 people” spent the night in the square and now during the day they take turns attending to their tasks, given that on weekdays “it is more difficult” to be present all the time.
“It’s a matter of going, coming back and being at the encampment”, Veloso clarified, explaining that, because he is a camera operator, he can still manage to combine his presence at the protest, which began on Saturday in Lisbon, with his work.
João said he lives with relatives, because of the “low salary” he earns, and admits that, at the moment, he knows that if he moves out he will “basically live to pay the bills”, which is why the current struggle splashed over the nation’s media for the last few days makes sense.
The people camping out in Rossio are “very diverse”, he acknowledged, noting that they include students, workers, people who are not currently working, and people of various ages.
“I think it is a very diverse reality, people who are part of collectives, others who are not part of any collective, so a bit of everything keeps turning up. People with different views, different jobs, different ‘backgrounds'”, he added, explaining that, ultimately, the goal is the same for everyone.
“What brings me, in fact, [to be here] is what is plain for everyone to see. We have a government that is turning its back on an extremely serious housing problem. In fact, for me, it is only crystallizing a set of other problems that we have all been feeling, such as the rising cost of living”, another protestor, by the name of Diogo, told Lusa.
Diogo, 42, says he can still afford to live in Lisbon, but it may not be long before he moves to the outskirts, where most of his friends are. His landlady “is an elderly lady”, he explains, and the future of the house is uncertain.
For Diogo, the government should have a modicum of awareness “and look at recent History […], and realize that when the population protests in this way and decides to leave the comfort of its routine to pitch a tent in the middle of a square, with all this exposure, it does not do so lightly”.
Diogo admits that the overwhelming majority of his friends and professional contacts have had to leave Lisbon, while many of his generation, are still sharing homes. That is not what should be normal, he stresses, because the expected path was to study, work, buy a house, get married and be able to have children.
“Most people my age cannot afford the luxury of living alone or with their partner, they have to share a home and live in rooms as if they were students. And then we complain, at the same time, that birth rates are falling. Who can even consider having a child nowadays?”, he shrugs.
For Diogo, it is “offensive, ridiculous and downright ignorant to fuel the narrative” that those who are camped in Rossio are “people who do not want to work and all that”.
Leonor, 30, who moments before speaking was setting up, with some friends, a kind of net to provide shade over two tents, also said she was at the protest because she believes that the housing situation in the country represents “an act of extreme violence against all people who work in Portugal”.
Citizens, she stressed, “depend on their income to survive”, and this protest is not just about the new rental law, “but, in general, the housing policy that treats houses and housing as a commodity and not as an essential good and a fundamental right that should be guaranteed”.
“I am also here because I believe that these moments of building popular power are essential. What is happening, this new Budget (…), public policies and the dismantling of public services by the government are not failures of this system, they are the capitalist system at work and the only way to confront this violence being imposed on us is to build popular power to dismantle the system”, she told Lusa.
Next to the statue, covered with small placards bearing messages of struggle and where the plaque has been altered to read “Art.º65 of the Constitution has died – Right to Housing”, there is an open support tent with working groups from the encampment and where information can be obtained. There is a first aid station and an information point, a water point, a food point, a list of needs and even a Volta point.
During the time Lusa remained at the site there was no sign of police nearby, although police sources have said this encampment, similar to the one in Porto, cannot remain in place indefinitely.
Source: LUSA