Welcome to the Week em Breve, a wrap-up of important Portuguese news to keep you up to date and in the know.
Wildfires continue raging across Portugal, state of alert extended again
Over 3,600 firefighters were battling wildfires across the country as of Monday morning, with five fires still active in the districts of Bragança, Guarda, Castelo Branco, and Viseu, officials said, according to Público.
On Sunday, a firefighter died in the municipality of Covilhã, in the district of Castelo Branco, in a car accident on route to a rural fire, the publication writes.
In all, provisional data suggests that 139,000 hectares of land have burned this year, or about 17 times more than by this time in 2024, according to euronews.
The “state of alert,” which began Aug. 2 and was already extended last week, twice, has been extended again by another 48 hours, to midnight of Tuesday to Wednesday, according to an announcement by the National Authority of Emergency and Civil Protection (Autoridade Nacional de Emergência e Proteção Civil, ANEPC).
The state of alert restricts access to forested areas, bans burning and limits the use of machinery in forests and other rural area, and prohibits fireworks.
Portugal continues relying on other countries’ fire-fighting planes
ANEPC head Maria Lúcia Amaral thanked Morocco for letting Portugal continue to use the two Canadair planes sent earlier this month, according to Jornal de Notícias.
Those two planes were sent because the three planes Portugal had on loan from Morocco earlier had “become inoperative,” according to Notícias ao Minuto.
Two more planes to combat fires were due to arrive from Sweden on Monday, officials said, according to Bloomberg.
Morocco — as well as Spain, Italy, and France — sent planes for containing fires in Portugal last year as well.
Morocco has eight Canadair planes, which can tackle a fire for over three hours at a time and can drop more than 400 tons of water or foam per day, according to Aerial Fire magazine.
Spain has 25, Italy 18, France 12, and Greece 17, while Portugal has none — but, as part of a European Union initiative to prevent a repeat of the catastrophic wildfire-related death toll suffered in 2017, it will get two planes… in 2029, according to Portugal Decoded.
Number of immigrants in National Health System soared 500% in 7 years
The number of foreign residents in Portugal’s National Health System (Serviço Nacional de Saúde, SNS) has climbed sixfold since 2017, to 975,397 — with 810,546 registering in the last seven-and-a-half years, according to recently released SNS data cited by Observador.
Foreigners now account for 7.83% of the people registered with centros de saúde in the country.
People who like to blame immigrants for everything should take pause, however: as Observador puts it, the amount by which foreigners’ Social Security contributions surpass what they use has grown from €514 million to €3.6 billion during the same time frame — representing a sevenfold increase in the amount of extra money pumped by immigrants into the country’s social support framework.
Far-right party offers help to overturn constitutional court’s ruling on government’s anti-immigration proposal
The far-right Chega party stands ready to lend a hand to Portugal’s ruling coalition government after its package of reforms aimed at curbing immigration was blocked by the country’s constitutional court, according to Público.
Earlier this month, the court ruled that the July 16 proposal by the coalition of Social Democratic Party (PSD) and the People’s Party (CDS) — passed in the national assembly with the help of votes from Chega — were unconstitutional.
President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who had sent the proposal for the court’s review, sent the package back to the assembly to rework the elements deemed unconstitutional by the court.
Last week, Chega’s populist leader André Ventura signaled that he’s ready to talk with the ruling coalition on how to “quickly circumvent the constitutional veto and allow this law to go into effect,” according to Público.
José Luís Carneiro, the leader of Socialist Party, likewise made himself available for discussions over the matter “in order to leave Chega isolated,” as Público put it.
Wages rise faster in tech than in the rest of the Portuguese economy — but not as fast as other sectors
Portuguese earnings continued rising[EF1] [AP2] : total gross monthly earnings per employee was €1,741 in the second quarter of the year, according to new data from the National Institute of Statistics (Instituto Nacional de Estatística, INE).
That’s up 6.0% from the same quarter last year in nominal terms, but only 3.7% higher in real terms, i.e., when taking into account the rise in the Consumer Price Index, INE said.
Given the persistent push to sell Portugal as a tech-forward country, it’s probably not surprising that compensation in jobs in the “high-technology services” sector rose faster than the average, at a rate of 6.9%, according to the report.
But that was well below the wage growth in “agriculture, farming of animals, hunting, and forestry” sectors, where earnings rose 11.5%.
Even public sector employees saw better earnings growth than tech employees, with average compensation rising 7.3%.[EF3] [AP4]
Supply-and-demand axiom turned on its head in Portugal’s rental market
When demand goes up, or supply goes down, prices rise, and vice versa, as any young capitalist will tell you.
Well, demand appears to have tapered off for rental properties in Portugal: homes available for rent in the country on the real estate website idealista received an average of 17 inquiries in the second quarter this year, which was 43% lower year-over-year, according to a report cited by euronews.
A spokesman for the website said that the “slowdown does not necessarily reflect a drop in interest from families, but rather an increase in the availability of properties to rent,” according to euronews.com
Median rent, meanwhile? It rose 3.5% during the quarter, according to idealista.
Sewage plagues Portugal’s famous surf town, again
The town of Nazaré, world-renown for its giant waves, again banned bathing along its northern beaches due to sewage problems, according to CNN Portugal.
This time around, contamination occurred due to an obstruction in a sanitation pipe that led to “effluents” flowing into the seawater for about an hour and a half, CNN reports.
The town’s mayor, Manuel Sequeira, said he’s not ruling out the possibility of sabotage, according to CNN.
Nazaré beach also closed on Aug. 1 after more than 100 people sought hospital treatment with symptoms including vomiting, nausea, and diarrhoea.
Last week, the presence of fecal matter in the water led to the closing of Verde, Verde Lago, and Alagoa-Altura beaches in the Algarve.
