On October 15, 2026, a major clash erupted in Porto between housing rights "activists" and the Public Security Police (PSP). The confrontation took place in Praça Dom João I. When police ordered the crowd to disperse and requested the removal of the tents, many demonstrators actively resisted police action. The resistance made a more forceful intervention necessary to restore public order.
Portuguese Prime Minister Luís Montenegro defended the police actions and warned against what he called "imported" climates of instability. He explicitly appealed to political parties and social movements to not succumb to the temptation of "importing into Portugal climates of instability and conflict" that, according to him, "do not have backing in Portuguese society."
The Prime Minister knows what he is talking about. Scarves, flags and signs of “support for Palestine” were held up by a considerable number of protesters, nothing new in Porto, as in January 2024, a similar affordable housing demonstration in Porto featured antisemitic slogans and signs, including calls for blaming Jews or Zionists for the economic crisis.
Two years ago, protesters used Israel-Hamas war narratives to discourage renting from Zionist landlords, instructing people “not to rent a house from Zionist murderers,” “We want a home to live in and Palestine is liberated,” and “Not Haifa and not Boavista, no to a Zionist capital!”
Boavista, a Porto neighborhood referenced, is the home of the Kadoorie synagogue and a growing number of Jewish residents. After the demonstration, Esquerda.net published an article titled “Israeli capital increases real estate pressure in Porto”. The article presented the Jewish and Israeli residents of Porto in a negative light and details the names of Israeli entrepreneurs working in the field of real estate in Porto.
“To march for hours through the streets of Porto in an organized demonstration, in the city with the country’s largest Jewish community and where decent and good Jewish businessmen live, and to carry anti-Semitic signs with messages whose call for violence is unquestionable, is not a private matter of one person or another but discrimination, incitement to violence and hatred, acts against which the police must act immediately,” Gabriel Senderowicz, president of the Porto Jewish Community, told Jerusalem Post at the time.
“In a country of 10 million people with only 5,000 Jews, most of whom arrived in the country in the last decade, the Jewish minority is once again accused of violating the basic rights of the Portuguese, such as the right to affordable housing,” Senderowicz added.
In 2024, the Jewish community of Porto filed a criminal complaint for discrimination and incitement to hatred and violence against the protestors who carried those antisemitic signs and against Esquerda.net, the official newspaper of the Bloco de Esquerda party, affiliated with the Portuguese socialist government per years that ended its tenure due to a series of corruption scandals.
