Portuguese architect wins €50,000 prize for rebuilding depopulated rural villages
Fernando Cerqueira Barros, an architect from Arcos de Valdevez, has won the 2026 Rafael Manzano Prize for New Traditional Architecture, worth €50,000. The Madrid-based Foundation for Traditional Building Cultures, which promotes the award, cited his work restoring villages hit by depopulation. His projects involve residents and local master craftsmen and rely on each region's traditional materials and techniques. Among them is the medieval São João de Cabanas monastery in Afife, converted into a hotel, which won a national architecture award in 2025. He will collect the prize in Madrid on 12 November. A doctoral student at the University of Porto, he is also a member of a UNESCO chair on heritage and landscapes.
Lisbon event uses a board game to test alternatives to housing market logic
On 31 October, World Cities Day, LupLab and the Arroios parish council ran a housing board game at Mercado do Forno do Tijolo in Lisbon. Players act as developers and often find it pays to wait for neighbours to build, even when that starves the city of homes. A panel then discussed capturing the public value embedded in property, reviving housing cooperatives, and a limited-profit "third sector" with cost-based rents. One speaker cited a study suggesting that even a million extra homes since 2010 would only have cut Lisbon prices by 3% to 7%.
Only a third of Portugal's 723,000 vacant homes could quickly return to the market
The 2021 Census counted 723,000 vacant homes in Portugal, 12% of the housing stock. Of these, 348,000 were already for sale or rent and 127,000 needed medium or major repairs. That leaves 249,000 homes, 4% of the stock, in good condition but off the market. Many vacant properties are in the interior, where demand is weak, while pressure is concentrated in the Lisbon and Porto metropolitan areas. Some are only temporarily empty. The analysis concludes that mobilising existing homes can ease the shortage but is unlikely to be enough, and calls for more building where demand is highest.
Vila Real de Santo António hands back 320 renovated social homes, 52 still to go
Of the 372 social homes covered by Vila Real de Santo António's housing requalification programme, 320 have been renovated and returned to their families, about 86% of the work. The remaining 52 are in the final stage of construction. The €50.3 million project, financed by Portugal's recovery plan (PRR) and the 1.º Direito housing programme, covers all social housing neighbourhoods across the municipality's three parishes plus scattered homes. Works include structural repairs, better thermal and acoustic insulation, waterproofed roofs and new water, electricity, telecoms and sewage networks, with a minimum 10% improvement in thermal performance. The council calls it the largest such operation it has carried out.
Portalegre council admits housing shortage persists despite 90 bids for ten homes
Portalegre's mayor, Fermelinda Carvalho, acknowledged that housing remains unresolved in the city, which has about 470 municipal homes. A recent tender for ten of them drew roughly 90 applications, some excluded for exceeding income limits. The first phase of the local housing strategy covers 108 homes, mainly in the Assentos and Atalaião neighbourhoods, with two more phases approved. Works are delayed because contractors are hard to find, several tenders drew no bids, and the council owns only some flats in partly occupied buildings. Next come a new tender, youth rental in Rua do Comércio properties, and a review of oversized homes.
Leiria council still cannot say when 19 Maceira cement-works houses will be rehabilitated
More than three years after Leiria council and cement maker Secil signed a protocol to rehabilitate 19 houses in the Maceira-Liz factory neighbourhood, no start date exists for the works. The council says approval of the execution project is being finalised, and a design contract for one additional house is being prepared. Next come a funding application under the Centro 2030 programme and the tender for the construction contract. It stresses that the preliminary steps, including securing the right to intervene in privately owned properties, have been done. The aim is affordable rental homes, mainly for young families, helping revive the neighbourhood.
Private firm buys derelict Portalegre wool factory complex, plans to restore it
A private company has bought the long-abandoned former wool factory complex in Portalegre, the city's mayor, Fermelinda Carvalho, told a council meeting. The site covers about 18,000 square metres and had been advertised at €2.34 million, though the price paid is not known. The new owners are preparing a prior information request for the council, which has already met them twice. This rules out the council using the site for housing, as a Socialist councillor had suggested. The council is also working on a new roundabout to improve access to the area.
Mothers' protest in Lisbon recasts housing crisis as a crisis of care work
Mothers formed a ring around their children at a housing protest in Lisbon's Rossio in late October. The opinion piece reads the housing crisis as a crisis of social reproduction: the unpaid work of feeding, housing and raising future workers, long absorbed by families and mainly by women, now unaffordable. House prices reached €2,076 per square metre in 2025, up 16.8%, and rents rose 5.1% in March 2026. The government's tax package cuts landlords' rental income tax from 25% to 10% and lifts tenants' rent deductions. A simulation shows a landlord gaining nearly seven times more than a tenant couple. A court has allowed the protest tent to stay until 24 November 2026, the final vote on the 2027 state budget.
