The No Frills Podcast

Across Portugal, housing protests have come under police attack, and the right to occupy public space is under threat. In the second episode of The No Frills Podcast, I travelled to Porto to meet activists, to try and understand how the city got to this point, and how police violence is only strengthening the fight back.

It all started when Portugal joined the EU and underwent a mass abandonment of poor-quality housing in the city centre, leaving a gap in the housing market which was filled by tourism, and which sparked the modern housing crisis.

On Halloween night last weekend, police attacked peaceful housing protesters in Porto and Lisbon for the third time in just two weeks. Their demand was simple: that the government address the cost of living crisis that is making it impossible for young people to afford a home. But as police violence escalates, many fear the spotlight is intentionally being diverted away from the right to housing, and towards the dismantling of the right to protest.

In the first episode of The No Frills Podcast, I explore the birth of a new social movement that has culminated in Madrid’s Sol encampment, where thousands bed down in a “tent city” every night in protest against a housing system in crisis.

From a generation of people afraid they will never be able to afford to leave their parents’ homes, to elderly neighbours fighting to stay in theirs, this is a story of grief but also hope, and the extraordinary convergence of circumstances that brought down the Spanish government.