The Dark Side of Portugal’s Economic Success Story

DESTROYING OUR HERITAGE”
However, Portugal’s PS seems to have reconciled itself easily to its predecessors’ neoliberal policies, including the encouragement of tourist rentals and tax exemptions for Chinese and Russian investors. “The golden visas and NHR status are two areas where the government hasn’t reformulated its policy,” Cordeiro admitted. “But we’re open to thinking about it, probably in a future parliament.”

This January he gave the go-ahead for Real Estate Investment Trusts, a new financial vehicle giving tax exemptions and reductions for real estate investment. Since July, the government has offered a five-year 50 percent income tax discount to Portuguese citizens who left during austerity and want to return (between 2010 and 2015, half a million people—5 percent of the population—emigrated). This measure is intended to encourage better-off young graduates to come back and invest in Portugal. There is no comparable tax break for those who could not go abroad during the crisis.

The day after the Stop Despejo demonstration, Morar em Lisboa organized a debate on the city council’s stance on Airbnb rentals. In a small room in the Alfama district, people argued until it grew dark. Lurdes Pinheiro of the neighborhood association was furious: “Alfama’s becoming a theme park. Everything the council does is for the tourists, not the locals. It’s architectural barbarism, and it’s destroying our heritage.”

On a nearby street, the Socialist council recently handed over the 16th-century Santa Helena Palace to Stone Capital, one of the city’s biggest property developers, run by two French brothers, Arthur and Geoffroy Moreno. It transformed the building into 20 luxury apartments. “On the other side of Alfama hill, Stone Capital has privatized a tree-lined courtyard that’s considered the green lungs of the Graça district,” said Ana Jara, an architect and opposition councillor (PCP). “They plan to build luxury gated accommodation without any public consultation or environmental assessment.”

Since a municipal election in 2017 in which the Socialist mayor, Fernando Medina, was reelected, the council no longer scrutinizes major urban projects. They are approved directly by the office of Manuel Salgado, the deputy mayor who has been in charge of city planning for 12 years. Jara accused him of “running a neoliberal urban development strategy whose sole objective is to make Lisbon attractive for financial investment.”