Abstract
Portugal’s housing crisis, intensified by the 2008 financial crash and subsequent austerity policies, has sparked diverse forms of resistance, including artistic expression. This article explores how music functions as a mode of protest and political articulation in response to real estate speculation and tourist gentrification, focusing on a corpus of 36 songs and 20 video clips produced between 2016 and 2024, primarily in Lisbon and Porto. Drawing on autoethnographic research and critical discourse analysis, the study examines how musicians denounce neoliberal urban transformations, express collective grievances and contribute to framing housing rights as both a political and cultural issue. It identifies three core thematic axes in these musical narratives: the commodification of housing, displacement driven by tourism and the intersection of precarity, inequality and low wages. By bridging urban sociology, cultural resistance and critical housing studies, the article highlights how music operates not only as expression but as infrastructure of protest: mobilizing affects, sustaining memory and amplifying counter-hegemonic imaginaries in contexts of deepening socio-spatial injustice.
Houses yes, Shacks no! The houses belong to the people Down with exploitation (. . .) This is going to be different now Let there be no people without houses As long as there are houses without people (. . .)
That is what the GAC (Group for Cultural Action) sang in 1976, in the aftermath of the 25 April 1974 revolution during the so-called PREC–Ongoing Revolutionary Period that followed the military coup d’état which established democracy in Portugal. Acting as a manifesto and appropriating one of the most iconic slogans chanted during demonstrations – ‘Yes to houses, no to shacks!’ – GAC denounced the social and economic divide between a bourgeois class that inherited property and had access to education, and a working population that possessed only their labour power, living in exploitative and undignified conditions in makeshift dwellings.
At the end of the dictatorship, around 25% of the Portuguese population lived in overcrowded houses and shanty towns without water, electricity or sanitation, mainly in Lisbon and Porto, the two largest cities. Addressing the housing crisis became a political priority, notably through the promotion of cooperatives and participatory urban planning initiatives, most famously SAAL (Local Ambulatory Support Service), where brigades of architects worked with residents’ associations to build and rehabilitate slum areas (Bandeirinha, 2014; Saraiva, 2025; Figure 1).
Moving forward in the fight for housing.
Fifty years after the revolution, the housing crisis is again a ‘hot topic’, dominating headlines, inspiring academic inquiry, appearing in graffiti-covered walls and fuelling street protests. Not only have the classic problems not ceased to exist, such as the lack or deterioration of public or affordable housing, but today, we are increasingly confronted with new challenges and complex financial real estate logics that affect a significant part of the population, including the middle class. Of particular concern is the resurgence of informal settlements in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, signalling a profound social and political regression. 1
As in other European cities, housing in Portugal has shifted from a social right to a financial asset. Neoliberal policies – such as rental liberalization and investment incentives like Golden Visas – have fuelled commodification and financialization, driving up prices and deepening inequality (Cocola-Gant and Gago, 2019; Pavel and Romeiro, 2022). This has disproportionately affected middle- and low-income groups and increased market volatility. At the same time, tourism-led gentrification has displaced long-term residents in Lisbon and Porto, reshaping neighbourhoods into tourist enclaves and eroding local identities. This post-austerity dynamic (Barbosa and Lopes, 2020; Mendes, 2017) mirrors trends across Southern Europe (Alexandri and Janoschka, 2018; Tulumello, 2021).
Moreover, the housing crisis in Portugal is deeply intertwined with social inequalities, precarious labour conditions and low wages. The austerity measures implemented between 2011 and 2014 worsened job insecurity and institutionalized atypical employment contracts, effects that persist despite macroeconomic recovery (Barbosa, 2020; Cantante, 2018). Youth unemployment and emigration remain high, while precarious work, particularly in the tourism sector, limits access to stable housing, thus entrenching socioeconomic vulnerability (Farha, 2017; INE, 2014).
This article is based on independent research conducted since 2020, analysing how artistic practices intervene in housing struggles as forms of protest and resistance. The project involved mapping cultural actions, interviewing artists and analysing artistic products, with particular focus on strategies, languages and modes of production (Barbosa and Lopes, 2020; Barbosa et al., 2023). Here we focus on music produced between 2016 and 2024, selecting and analysing 36 songs, mainly from Porto and Lisbon. The goal is to understand how Portuguese musicians use their songs to raise awareness, denounce and criticize urban and social transformations.
Like GAC in the 1970s, many contemporary artists embed housing struggles in their lyrics, generating new repertoires of resistance that both draw upon and reconfigure historical memories of protest. To analyse the political role of music in current urban conflicts, this article situates these practices within broader theoretical debates on cultural resistance, protest music and the right to the city. Through lyrical and visual analysis, we examine key demands and mobilization strategies, the symbolic and performative dimensions of protest music, its presence in demonstrations, its transformation into visual artefacts such as graffiti and its contribution to shaping counter-hegemonic narratives. These artistic expressions are also understood as reflections of collective experience and perception of the housing crisis. However, we also interrogate the contradictions and silences that may undermine their political reach.
The article begins by outlining how the post-2008 financial crisis, austerity and Troika intervention reshaped Portugal’s housing sector and deepened social inequalities, giving rise to renewed struggles for housing rights. It then contextualizes these movements since the mid-2010s. The following section introduces the researcher’s embedded position, the construction of the musical corpus and the analytical framework. Three thematic axes are explored: (1) market deregulation and commodification; (2) tourist-led gentrification and displacement and (3) inequality, precarity and low wages. The article concludes by reflecting on the dissemination and political ambivalence of protest music within contemporary housing movements.
Labour precarity and the housing question in Portugal, 2008–present
Despite two IMF interventions (1977, 1983), Portugal’s democratic transition led to major improvements in housing, healthcare, education and social protection (Barreto, 2000). European Union (EU) accession in 1986 reinforced a modernization narrative, with better living standards and wider access to credit and education (Carmo and Matias, 2019). The 1990s saw the launch of the Special Rehousing Programme (PER), which not only relocated thousands from informal settlements (Cachado, 2013) but also caused labour deregulation and a gradual state withdrawal from housing provision (Antunes, 2019). By the 2000s, a ‘precarious society’ had emerged (Soeiro, 2015), with employment and housing increasingly shaped by market forces, vulnerabilities later intensified by the 2008 crisis.
The 2008 Great Recession led to mass unemployment, precariousness and the Troika’s intervention (2011–2014). Around 485,000 people emigrated, and 332,000 jobs were lost, with youth unemployment peaking at 42%. Austerity policies eroded labour protections and the welfare state, deepening inequalities, particularly among young people, who, despite high qualifications, faced precarious jobs and limited prospects (Barbosa, 2020; Ferreira et al., 2017). As in past structural adjustment programmes in the Global South, public debt operated as a tool of coercion (Antentas and Vivas, 2012). Housing reforms in the Troika’s Memorandum promoted neoliberal restructuring, fostering commodification and financialization (Antunes, 2019). Simultaneously, tourism was reframed as a key recovery strategy, supported by incentives like the Golden Visa and tax benefits for non-habitual residents. The data is unequivocal: Between 2009 and 2019, the number of passengers at Porto Airport rose by 169%, and tourist arrivals in Lisbon grew by 233%. Local accommodation expanded by 461.5% between 2014 and 2021 (INE; Pavel and Romeiro, 2022). In this context of post-austerity, tourism became a ‘panacea for the social and urban crisis’ (Mendes, 2017), intensifying and expanding gentrification (Janoschka, 2018).
Following the Troika’s exit and the proclaimed ‘end of the crisis’, the Inequalities Observatory report (Cantante, 2018) highlighted the lasting impacts on Portugal’s labour market, particularly the rise in informal employment arrangements. Despite modest economic recovery, wage disparities and contractual precariousness persist, affecting many in the workforce (Cantante, 2018: 190). A 2019 study (INE) revealed a 22% drop in permanent jobs for young people since 2011, with a nearly one-fifth reduction in the under-35 working population as 171,000 emigrated. Carmo and Matias (2019) argued that austerity measures eroded rights and guarantees, with no transformative changes in labour dynamics despite recent marginal improvements.
The boom in tourism 2 and real estate has reduced long-term rental availability, driving up housing costs and accelerating gentrification and touristification (Cocola-Gant and Gago, 2019; Colomb and Moreira, 2021). Vulnerable groups and middle-income families face growing exclusion, with the OECD (2019) reporting a ‘squeezed middle class’ largely due to rising housing expenses. House prices increased by more than double over the past decade (EC, 2023), and the UN Special Rapporteur (Farha, 2017) warned that neoliberal housing policies have deepened structural inequalities. Carmo et al. (2018) also emphasize that market-driven urban policies have intensified spatial injustice and the displacement of lower-income populations. The setting up of the Secretary of State for Housing and the New Generation of Housing Policies in 2017 signalled growing government concern over the worsening housing situation.
The COVID-19 pandemic further weakened the country’s already fragile social and economic structures, with severe impacts on employment and housing (Carmo et al., 2020). Today, it is clear that Portugal, like many European cities, faces a severe housing crisis due to the commodification and financialization of housing, deregulation, real estate speculation, intensified tourist activity and insufficient investment in the public sector (Colomb and Novy, 2017; Potts, 2020). The Basic Law on Housing (no. 83/2019), passed under the previous socialist government in 2019, reinforced the right to housing, emphasizing the state’s responsibility to ensure access to housing with rent proportionate to family income, the freedom to choose one’s place of residence, adequate transportation networks, decent living conditions and exceptional protection measures for vulnerable groups such as youth, the elderly, individuals with disabilities and single-parent families. However, despite being enacted, the legislation has had minimal practical impact.
Meanwhile, the socio-political context in Portugal has undergone significant shifts, particularly regarding immigration. Between 2021 and 2023, the number of immigrants entering the country increased by 95% (INE, 2024), leading to growing public concern over overcrowded housing and precarious living conditions, often sensationalized in the media through reports of fires and unsafe dwellings occupied by migrant communities. This context has been instrumentalized by far-right actors, who increasingly link immigration to housing scarcity, mobilizing exclusionary and racialized narratives. The Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum, which was set-up in 2023 replacing the Immigration and Borders Service (SEF), has faced serious operational difficulties, including delays, lack of coordination and limited effectiveness in promoting the social inclusion of migrants and racialized communities.
Between 2018 and 2023, the number of unhoused people more than doubled, surpassing 13,000 (Alves, 2025). In 2023, nearly 5% of the population faced housing cost overburden, 12.9% lived in overcrowded conditions and 6% in severely inadequate housing, up from 4.1% in 2019. Immigrants are disproportionately affected: the Eurozone average for severe deprivation was 5.3% among nationals and 12.8% among foreigners (Alves, 2025). As Diogo (2021) highlights, 20% of the population is poor, most not due to unemployment, but due to low wages and precarity. The July 2025 demolition of shacks in Loures – despite protests from residents and human rights groups – ignited national outrage, exposing the contradictions of current housing policy and the criminalization of informal housing.
In parallel, Portugal underwent a period of pronounced political instability, with four legislative elections held in just 5.5 years. This cycle culminated in a significant shift to the right, marked by the rise of conservative and populist forces, particularly Chega, which became the second-largest parliamentary group. 3 Amid growing social discontent over housing, successive governments have alternated between short-term subsidies and market-driven solutions, while structural reforms have largely stalled. In its 2025 country report, the European Commission issued a sharp critique of Portugal’s housing policies, highlighting persistent delays in the construction of promised public housing and the inadequacy of measures implemented to date (EC, 2025). It explicitly recommended rent regulation, tighter restrictions on short-term tourist rentals and the mobilization of vacant public and private properties, proposals repeatedly blocked or reversed by recent governments. 4 Although the Government continues to defend the subsidization of tenants over market regulation, Brussels argues that such measures fail to address the root causes of the crisis and contribute to a long-standing trend of housing inaccessibility, particularly for young people and low- to middle-income households.
The convergence of political instability, the rise of the far right, the growing presence of migrant populations, alongside a sharp increase in homelessness and substandard living conditions, has fuelled the emergence of new urban social movements. These movements challenge the logic of commercialization, the financialization of housing and the gentrification of working-class inner-city neighbourhoods, while seeking to place the right to housing at the centre of Portugal’s political agenda.
Resisting dispossession: housing activism and cultural practices in post-austerity
In recent years, the housing movement in Portugal has undergone a significant expansion, both in terms of scale and territorial reach. Its roots extend back several decades: In Lisbon, sustained mobilizations against evictions of racialized populations from informal settlements were already underway in 2006–2007, led by Solidariedade Imigrante’s Housing Group and later by Plataforma Artigo 65, a precursor of Habita (Saaristo and Silva, 2024). These earlier struggles already demonstrated diversified strategies, local rootedness and the aggregation of historically excluded actors (Accornero and Pinto, 2015; Carmo et al., 2018). In the last few years, the movement has gained widespread visibility and continuity, expanding into other cities such as Porto. Building on this genealogy of struggles, the current cycle has deepened and scaled up previous efforts through sustained engagement, organizational stability, diversified strategies and deeper rootedness in local contexts, alongside the aggregation of actors historically excluded from formal political arenas, such as racialized and economically precarious communities.
Despite the temporal distance and differing contexts, contemporary housing movements share several continuities with the protest cycles of the Troika period: a critique of neoliberal capitalism from a transnational perspective, the central role of educated youth, the use of social media for mobilization and the pursuit of horizontal, fluid and participatory forms of political action, including performative actions (Della Porta and Mattoni, 2014; Barbosa, 2016). Although the cycle of protests during the Troika years did not explicitly foreground housing – still not perceived as a core public issue – it played a crucial role in revitalizing grassroots organizing outside of institutional frameworks, especially in Lisbon (Mendes and Tulumello, 2024).
This capacity for rapid, transversal and multi-scalar response signals the consolidation and expansion of more embedded and community-based forms of organizing that had been developing since the mid-2000s. Drawing on and extending previous mobilizations (Accornero and Pinto, 2015; Saaristo and Silva, 2024), these practices evidence a deepening of grassroots infrastructures and the constitution of enduring counter-publics capable of sustained political engagement. The emergence of new collective actors has expanded the movement’s repertoire by incorporating intersectional approaches, international alliances and strategic relationships with political parties, explicitly aiming to rescale housing conflict into a mass movement (Mendes and Tulumello, 2024). Organizations such as Habita, STOP Despejos or Vida Justa, in Lisbon, and HabitAção Hoje, in Porto, have maintained a long-term commitment, combining immediate responses – such as the obstruction of forced evictions – with structural interventions, including legal counselling, production of resistance manuals, statistical mapping, participation in public consultations and regular organization of assemblies and neighbourhood forums.
This activism is not only oppositional but also pedagogical and prefigurative. Housing collectives in Portugal have increasingly engaged in the production and dissemination of knowledge, using accessible formats and diverse media platforms to foster political awareness and mobilization. This dimension became especially salient during the COVID-19 pandemic: even under lockdown conditions, the collectives continued to operate, often in an articulated and cooperative manner. They rapidly launched petitions and public campaigns – most notably How do you quarantine without a house? – to draw attention to the structural violence of housing exclusion under emergency conditions. They also created and distributed simplified information on how to access social support measures, organized mutual aid networks to deliver food and basic goods to vulnerable populations and maintained a strong communicative presence. Nevertheless, this moment also exposed the fragility of many activist networks. As Mendes and Tulumello (2024) observe, the initial momentum – evident in the rent-freeze campaign – gradually gave way to fragmentation and demobilization, as isolation measures disrupted previously consolidated infrastructures.
Beyond emergency interventions, these groups have expanded their pedagogical scope by participating in podcasts, producing explanatory videos, giving interviews to mainstream and alternative media and launching awareness-raising campaigns that link housing rights to broader struggles against poverty, racism and urban exclusion. These communicative strategies are not ancillary but central to their political praxis: they make legal knowledge accessible, expose systemic injustices and foster collective identification with the housing cause. As such, this form of activism is not only reactive but generative, constructing new vocabularies, solidarities and political imaginaries that challenge the commodification of urban life and articulate alternative visions of the city as a common good (Figure 2).
2019 LGBT march in Porto, under the slogan “Porto won’t surrender and pride is not for sale” This slogan repurposes a housing rights chant “Porto is not for sale, the people won’t surrender”, replacing “the people” with “pride” to link queer liberation with anti-gentrification struggles. The poster exemplifies this intersectional approach, listing sexual and gender freedom alongside student activism, anti-fascism, anti-racism, and housing rights: “The city is nice but not for our money”.
Moreover, these movements exhibit a clear interconnection with other struggles – anti-racist, feminist, LGBTQIA+, environmental – reflecting an intersectional approach that runs through demands for the right to the city. This convergence is not only discursive but also materially rooted in shared urban experiences of precarity, displacement and marginalization. Housing collectives have actively participated in feminist and LGBTQ+ marches, May Day labour parades and commemorative demonstrations such as those marking the April 25th Revolution, consistently placing housing at the intersection of broader social justice claims.
A particularly revealing moment occurred in April 2024, when a nationalist group organized a protest in Porto under the slogan ‘Less Immigration, More Housing’. In response, housing movements, joined by anti-fascist and migrant solidarity groups, countered with the demonstration ‘Against Fascism, More and Better Housing’, explicitly denouncing the racialization of the housing crisis and reaffirming a politics of solidarity. This intersectional articulation is further reflected in a range of grassroots initiatives that connect housing struggles with broader dimensions of exclusion and citizenship. Examples include literacy programmes for undocumented migrants, legal counselling workshops in racialized neighbourhoods and collective mobilizations in peripheral areas marked by entrenched socio-spatial inequalities. A paradigmatic instance was the ‘Great March of the Neighborhoods’ in March 2024, which brought together residents from social housing neighbourhoods in Lisbon. Organized by a coalition of housing, anti-racist and community associations, the march framed housing not merely as shelter but as a collective right to belong and engage in urban life.
These local struggles are not isolated. On the contrary, they resonate with and are reinforced by broader internationalist engagements. Housing movements in Portugal have, for decades, aligned themselves with internationalist struggles, such as demonstrations in solidarity with Palestine, underscoring a shared critique of dispossession and racialized violence. This cosmopolitan orientation reinforces the understanding of housing not as an isolated policy issue but as deeply entangled with broader political antagonisms over territory, belonging and the right to live with dignity. The intersectional fabric of Portugal’s contemporary housing movement thus reveals a strong capacity for building alliances grounded in common experiences of precarity and exclusion. These movements do not merely oppose evictions or unaffordable rents, they actively reimagine the city as a space of collective care, justice and solidarity. Transnationally, Portuguese movements have joined initiatives such as the ‘Action Housing Day’ coordinated by the European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and the City. These alliances strengthen a shared diagnosis of housing precarity as a global and structural condition, driven by financialization and commodification, while also enabling the circulation of strategies, tactics and imaginaries of resistance across different urban contexts.
Cultural and artistic practices have also played a central role in the recent evolution of housing movements in Portugal, building upon earlier experiences of artivism developed during the Troika period. At that time, creative interventions, ranging from performances to community festivals, emerged as critical tools of political expression and urban dissent (Barbosa, 2016; Soares, 2013). Just as in earlier years, demonstrations have frequently included creative actions, concerts and collective rituals that reclaim urban space through aesthetic and affective means. The HabitAção festival (2019), organized by over 30 associations in Lisbon, exemplified this convergence of art and activism through a multifaceted programme of exhibitions, performances, street actions and public debates, aiming to ‘draw attention, provoke reflection, mobilize action and encourage dialogue’ 5 (Figure 3).
Demonstration against the closure of STOP, Porto, 07/24/23.
In parallel, resistance to the closure of autonomous cultural spaces – such as Casa Viva (Porto) or the Arroios Community Centre (Lisboa) – has underscored the erosion of urban space as a site for cultural experimentation, political engagement and collective agency. In Porto, the 2023 announcement of the closure of STOP, a self-managed centre hosting over 500 musicians, triggered a large-scale protest that reached national visibility and parliamentary debate. Slogans like ‘STOP hotel’ or ‘No space for artists in a tourist-centric Porto’ denounced the erasure of local culture in favour of speculative logics. Similarly, Gentrifest, a festival organized in response to the forced closure of an independent music label’s studio, became a site of creative resistance, mobilizing artists and publics against the displacement of cultural production. 6 These initiatives reflect a growing politicization of cultural practices, reclaiming art not as commodity but as a terrain of struggle against the commodification of urban life.
Sonic cartographies of urban injustice: music and the housing struggle
Across the world, music has long served not only as an accompaniment to protest but also as a performative and spatialized political practice. As John Street (2003) argues, music not only reflects politics, it does politics: It articulates dissent, mobilizes emotions and challenges dominant ideologies through rhythm, lyrics and performance. This insight is followed by Titus (2017), who conceptualizes protest music as part of a ‘sound space’, a concept that enriches critical spatial theories by emphasizing the auditory dimension of urban struggle. In this framework, music becomes a sonic counter-cartography (Moussa, 2019), mapping inequalities, resistance and aspirations within the fabric of the city. Rather than a critique of political conflict, music participates in its very construction, reclaiming streets, stages and digital platforms as spaces of affective and ideological contestation. In Portugal, where touristification, speculation and housing exclusion have reconfigured urban life, this role becomes especially salient: songs echo through occupied buildings, cultural centres, protests and online networks, transforming sound into a mode of claiming the right to the city.
Music also plays a crucial role in shaping collective identity and emotional resonance within social movements. According to Eyerman and Jamison (1998), protest music does not merely document political moments, it mobilizes the past and traditions, rearticulating inherited repertoires of resistance in new historical contexts. This dynamic is particularly salient in the Portuguese case, where contemporary housing songs often invoke the revolutionary memory of the 1970s. The symbolic power of music in Portuguese political culture is deeply rooted: the military coup that initiated the 1974 Revolution was itself signalled by two songs broadcast on the radio – Paulo de Carvalho’s E depois do adeus and Zeca Afonso’s Grândola, Vila Morena – which served as coded instructions to initiate the uprising. In this sense, music is not only a medium of protest but a catalyst of political transformation. Contemporary protest songs thus operate as cultural rituals that bind personal experience to collective struggle, producing what Rosenthal (2008) describes as the emotional and ideological infrastructure of protest. Furthermore, the expressive and integrative functions of protest songs are fundamental for sustaining movement cohesion. Music conveys complex political content through accessible affective forms (anger, hope, sorrow, defiance), which are not dependent on rational cognition but on shared emotional landscapes (Kizer, 1983; Rosenthal, 2008).
Methodologically, this study combines participant observation and autoethnography, drawing on the researcher’s dual role as an activist and an artist (Ellis, 2004; Adams et al., 2015). Embedded in Porto’s STOP music centre – an emblematic space for artistic production and political resistance – and actively engaged in artistic and political projects related to the housing struggle (including curatorial work, artistic residencies, photography initiatives and public debates), the author leverages lived experience to investigate how music articulates contestation. A parallel documentary analysis involved compiling news articles, activist materials and a chronology of key housing-related events and artistic interventions (Barbosa, 2020).
This groundwork informed a focused corpus of 36 songs and 20 music videos produced between 2016 and 2024, selected through a situated and reflexive process rather than statistical sampling. The starting point of 2016 marks the intensification of housing struggles in Portugal and its presence in musical projects. Songs were chosen based on their thematic engagement with housing injustice, gentrification, eviction and urban precarity. This approach aligns with interpretative and critical research traditions, privileging political and cultural relevance over representativeness.
The musical corpus spans genres including hip-hop, rock, punk, samba, folk, indie and experimental forms. It includes both underground and mainstream artists – such as Capicua or Gisela João – and reflects a diversity of positionalities, though only a quarter of the projects feature women, and six artists are Afro-descendant or Brazilian immigrants. Geographically, most are based in Lisbon (21) and Porto (13), with 2 coming from Braga and São Miguel (Azores).
Through critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1995; Van Dijk, 1993), the songs were analysed around three core themes, following an inductive approach: (1) neoliberalization and commodification of urban space; (2) displacement, exclusion and identity loss and (3) precarity and class inequality. The analysis reveals how music is not merely expressive but constitutive of housing movements, articulating critique, circulating imaginaries of justice and helping to reimagine the city as a space of care, solidarity and common belonging.
Neoliberalization, commodification and deregulation of the real estate market
Textual analysis reveals how musicians perceive housing as having been transformed into a commodified asset, driven by national and local government strategies, often backed by European institutions. This shift is framed as a neoliberal manoeuvre that capitalizes on Portugal’s economic vulnerabilities, portrayed as a ‘land of opportunities’. Musicians critically expose real estate speculation as a central factor behind the housing crisis: A land of opportunities / With empty houses and spaces / Ready to be occupied / Lots of sun all year round / low rents / A fantastic night life (. . .) Invest, possess, taste. (Portugrall, Llama Virgem, 2018) Take advantage while the bubble is swelling / Buy a tent and put it up for sale / Take it and leave it / The tenant will have to get used to it / Now he lives wherever he can. (Tê menos 1, Eu.clides, 2023)
This criticism underscores the role of an unregulated housing market in deepening inequality. The recurrent invocation of the real estate bubble invokes memories of the 2008 financial crisis. In 2022, Bloomberg 7 identified Portugal as highly vulnerable to collapse, echoed by the former economy minister Carlos Tavares, who warned that ‘the rise in [housing] prices not justified by economic fundamentals could correspond to a real estate bubble’. 8 His study recorded a 94% increase in housing prices between 2015 and 2022, ranking Portugal fourth highest in the EU, with values estimated to be overvalued by approximately 20%. The disparity between housing prices and income has led to a high price-to-income ratio, placing Portugal third in the EU (Sedes, 2023). Another study points to ‘periods of exuberance’ in price trends, noting deteriorating market accessibility since 2017 due to inflation, job instability, restricted credit and rising interest rates (Rodrigues, 2022).
The commodification of cities has multiple dimensions. The ‘Portugrall’ video clip (Llama Virgem, 2018) depicts Lisbon as a branded, spectacular city dominated by glamour, excitement and wealth, drawing parallels between evangelical pastors and web summit entrepreneurs to suggest a new form of ideological indoctrination. ‘What we want is tourists and their money’ (Porto Arder!, Grito, 2019). Among the resistance sentences written on the walls, we can read repeatedly: ‘Porto is not a brand’ or, as Cubranco sings (2017), ‘I do not even have a room to live in, nor a place to park (. . .) tourists everywhere, we are for sale’.
Some lyrics emphasize the moral accountability of landlords and their perceived greed: ‘My landlord had deep pockets / He tripled the rent, that big idiot’ (A tua cidade, Santrana, 2020). Critiquing those who exploit deregulated markets to hike rents and impose unjust conditions, artists underscore property owners’ abusive practices. Tenants are often blackmailed into accepting poor conditions: You need 3 deposits, this is normal (. . .) don’t forget, you’re in the middle of Lisbon, so you have to hurry, there are a lot of people on the waiting list. (Orientas-me uma renda?, Jhon Douglas, 2019) They still ask for 3 months’ rent in advance and demand / a deposit, a guarantor, and the blood of a virgin / a lock of unicorn mane / and a certificate from the Pope saying that I am suitable (Rendas alta, Gandim, 2024)
The obstacles are even more significant when you are an immigrant (Costa, 2023). Simulating a phone call to rent a house, Brazilian musician Jhon Douglas is faced with a series of additional obstacles due to his immigrant status: ‘So let us start with SEF, bring all the necessary documents, and I will also need a guarantor, hmmm, in your case maybe two’ (Orientas-me uma renda?, 2019). This narrative highlights not only practical rental difficulties but also discriminatory structures affecting immigrants and racialized communities in an exclusionary housing market (Figure 4).
Screenshot of the video clip ‘Enxaguado’, João Berhan, 2018.
Deregulation, liberalization and speculation have also led to a surge in vacant buildings: census data (2021) report 723,000 empty homes, enough to theoretically house all unhoused individuals or those on public housing waiting lists.
9
In several video clips, visual contrasts between abandoned buildings and tourist-heavy zones – filled with trolleys, tuk-tuks, souvenir shops, Airbnbs and cranes – illustrate tourist gentrification’s impact. Musicians question who benefits and call for resistance: Inhabiting is the secret / People the city / Ghosts and tuc tucs (. . .) If you’re going to live downtown / Those vulture tourists / They shit up my streets with Mac Donald’s (. . .) They pay little and take everything. (Escritor de interiores, Keso, 2016) Let me see if I understand this situation / There are so many buildings to live in / Who will benefit from this ‘great division’ / that makes the weak weaken? (Orientas-me uma renda? Jhon Douglas, 2019) Abandoned house in the middle of the street is not a favor (. . .) Of sick men / Who don’t even feel pain / Come break, beck, come (..) If no one lives here, not even the void will live. (Casa abandonada, Ana Luísa Caiano, 2023)
Tourist gentrification: displacement and loss of local identity
Many songs highlight the connection between real estate speculation and tourism-driven gentrification, emphasizing the impact of the Local Accommodation Legal Regime, which rapidly licences properties for short-term tourist use. Their lyrics and visuals reference ‘classic’ gentrification patterns, characterized by the displacement of long-term residents by wealthier newcomers. The growth of the hotel industry and the conversion of residential spaces into tourist lodging further intensify this trend. Within these cultural texts, one can discern three forms of displacement, as outlined by Cocola-Gant (2019): residential displacement, where locals are priced out by rising rents and short-term rentals; commercial displacement, where traditional businesses give way to tourist-oriented services and displacement of place, whereby neighbourhood identities are eroded and spaces become commodified.
In Contas à moda do Porto, an elderly woman protests: ‘Here it is regional, it is traditional, it is old, you understand? They [the tourists] do not have to come here to make everything modern (. . .) they take us out of our homes so they can come to hostels’ (Lumpen, 2020). The 2021 Census showed a population decline of 1.4% in Lisbon and 2.4% in Porto over the previous decade.
Housing is an open wound (. . .) the guests begin, hunger is infinite / Another AL, national pride, lawless race, where are you going Portugal? (Não sei o que é que fica, Garota Não, 2022) Come to the chambre of chaos / Justice is at the door / Sit down, make yourself comfortable / Look at that beautiful terrace / Do you want a sea view? (. . .) Put the locals up for sale. (Wilkommen, Pega Monstro, 2023) It’s all about speaking foreign / In the neighborhoods of the capital / And filling the piggy bank / From Local accommodation. (Marcha Erasmus, Ala dos Namorados, 2024) Everyone come and became tourist / People without homes don’t matter / What matters is earning money / The economy is everything / Asymmetry is what it is. (Hipoteca, Homem em Catarse, 2024)
Some songs critically engage with the racialized dimensions of gentrification and urban transformation. These narratives highlight how marginalized communities are displaced to accommodate privileged newcomers. They also historicize these processes by referencing colonial violence, evoking how modern Europe was built on the exploitation of colonized populations. Formerly Black and immigrant neighbourhoods become gentrified ‘hipster zones’, while displaced residents are pushed to the city margins. One lyric also denounces cultural appropriation and identity erasure in these processes.
Clay and cement mixed with rhythm, pseudo-afro, prog-rock, all appropriated by the hand of the boy with white guilt and good posture (. . .) identity is a thrombosis. (Pré-boss, Duques do Precariado, 2022) My blood is also in the mortar / with which Europe rose to a colossus (. . .) They do tourism in the black pit and move black people there behind a pit. They send hipsters to live in my neighborhood / and send my brodas there to the dungeon. (Mi ka bu nigga, Pretú, 2024)
Songs also convey the violence underlying these urban changes: evictions, harassment, homelessness and arson. Some include field recordings or documentary fragments. The punk band Grito! integrates news footage from a fire linked to real estate pressure in Porto, as well as images of the demolition of Torres do Aleixo, a social housing complex cleared to make way for luxury developments by the Douro River (Figure 5).
Image of the demolition of Torres do Aleixo, video clip ‘Porto Arder’, Grito, 2019.
For many, displacement means being forced out of the cities where they were born and raised: ‘They accepted fado, the laws of the market, crossed the river, went to live on the other side’ (Relaxa que encaixa, Baleia Baleia Baleia, 2022). Such references carry tones of loss and grief: ‘Do not push me, my heart is between Douro and Circunvalação’ (Capicua, 2020). In André Henriques’ video clip (Uma casa na praia, 2020), we see him wandering through an empty city, singing: ‘What if we ran away from here?’ ‘Leave the city posing for tourists, we will disappear’ (Figure 6).
‘My heart will stay in Porto’, urban art by 3 Pontinhos (alter-ego of the musician Santrana), glued next to a trolley and in front of a traditional shoemaker.
In other cases, displacement implies emigration, echoing the 2008 crisis exodus. Despite reductions after the Troika period, Portugal still registers one of the highest emigration rates in Europe, with over 2.1 million people abroad, one-fifth of the population. According to the Emigration Observatory, nearly one-third of youth aged 15–39 now resides abroad, many of them highly educated (Pena et al., 2023). This has major implications for labour markets and birth rates. The irony of being ‘priced out’ of Portugal surfaces in several lyrics: I was born in the wrong generation (. . .) I never wanted to, but I’m going to leave my country / I’m going to have to emigrate and try to be happy / In cheaper cities like. . . . London or Paris. (Rendas Altas, Gandim, 2024) But maybe if I emigrate / I can one day return / with a pension that pays for me / the perks / The 5-star service. (Hostel da Mariquinhas, Gisela João, 2021)
In the long term, displacement erodes local identity. Places of conviviality are replaced by sites of consumption; local commerce gives way to generic franchises indistinguishable from those across Europe: ‘Displacement place for local accommodation / At the very least, it is paradoxical. And now this place is the same as any other place’ (Não sei o que é que fica, Garota Não, 2023). This sense of nostalgia and melancholy permeates many lyrics and visual narratives: Nothing is what it seems anymore (. . .) The more vibrant the day / The more I feel it empty (. . .) she [Lisbon] insisted on being French (. . .) When a real earthquake hits the city (. . .) I won’t cry for her / if she doesn’t cry for me. (Enxaguado, João Berhan, 2018) I arrive at Praça da Alegria now completely changed / It looks like a luxury neighborhood only for well-traveled people (. . .) There was a neighborhood, there was socializing / children were playing around in the streets. (Napoleão Precário, Riça, 2020)
The closure of associative and cultural spaces is another theme (Nunes and Fagundes, 2024). Filipe Sambado (Dá um jeitinho, 2018) ends his song by referencing the eviction of the social centre Seara (Ascensão and Rodrigues, 2020), while Daniel Catarino’s album includes a note indicating that it was recorded in a studio that has since been gentrified, reflecting the broader displacement of independent music infrastructure. 10 In Erosão (2022), musicians invoke Lisnave, Lisbon’s former naval shipyards, a site of labour struggle and community resistance in the 1980s: ‘Lisnave was the symbol for the dead city, corroded by desertification, gentrification, the bankruptcy of the community state to the detriment of another that has both a decrepit past and a technocratic future’ (Erosão, Bandcamp release notes, 2022).
Social inequalities, precariousness and low wages
The issue of job insecurity and low wages is the third recurring theme in these songs, echoing the concerns of the generation shaped by the Troika years. Although during the 2011 crisis housing stress largely stemmed from high unemployment rates – particularly among youth – today’s difficulties are no longer unemployment related (currently at 6.5%), but they arise from the disproportionate rise in rents relative to stagnant wages. The following excerpts evoke the 2011 crisis: I dreamed of a good life one day / Right job, house in Lisbon / But I saw the shot hit my side (. . .) minimum wage doesn’t pay the rent / Tell me, Mr Minister, why is this wrong, a T0 in Barreiro
11
costs more than a salary. (T0 no Barreiro, Luta Livre, 2021) The job is very nice, it gives experience (. . .) and there’s still money left to pay for electricity (. . .) Be careful, there’s a dog coming / Playing with my right to housing. (Brincar com o cão, Chica, 2022) I can already smell living with my love / But how much is a salary to earn? It’s 600 [euros]. And a house for rent? 1200 [euros]. (Orientas-me uma renda, Jhon Douglas, 2022) [I looked] for a house to rent (. . .) the prices I saw, I even spat myself (. . .) these rents no one can stand it / Leaving parents’ house not even at 40 / not at 50 (. . .) there is no privacy / having sex slowly, moaning slowly / so as not to wake up the mother. (Rendas altas, Gandim, 2024)
The gap between wages and rent has tangible effects: most notably, the postponement of autonomy, which impacts privacy and future life plans. In 2021, Portugal had the highest age of home-leaving in the EU: 33.6 years (Eurostat). Although this decreased slightly by 2024, it remains above the EU average. Anthems from the Troika years such as Que Parva Que Sou (Deolinda, 2011) and Já Não Dá (Chullage, 2012) captured the frustration of a ‘generation stuck at home’, facing unemployment, unaffordable rents and delayed adulthood. These frustrations are often framed in terms of a generational paradox: the most educated generation ever, yet economically more precarious than their parents. Post-1974 educational expansion fostered rising aspirations, but these are now contradicted by lived socioeconomic realities.
Housing inequality is also evident in access to credit. For many without inherited property, secure jobs or down payment capital, mortgages are inaccessible. Portugal has the lowest household savings rate in the Eurozone. 12
I went to the bank to ask for money to buy / a cheap little house to call home (. . .) But it wasn’t working there either / The manager gave me that look / we’re sorry, it wasn’t approved. (T0 no Barreiro, Luta Livre, 2023) Buying instead of renting, say the Martins, with parents’ money I also talk like that / I only have a down payment if I sell two kidneys / Not counting the deed, insurance, IMI, IMT, Euribor, Installment, SPREAD your legs. (Rendas altas, Gandim, 2024)
These songs underscore housing opportunity gaps between those with family capital and those relying solely on wages. They also criticize foreign investment in real estate, which benefits from tax incentives. In 2023, the socialist government suspended new Golden Visas, citing harmful impacts on local residents. However, the new right-wing coalition pledged to reinstate them, alongside digital nomad visas – targeted at high earners (4× the minimum wage, approx. €3040/month). In just 1 year (2022–2023), 2600 such visas were granted.
Disparities between tourists’ and residents’ purchasing power are also frequently addressed. These lyrics contrast working-class Portuguese – often employed in the tourism sector – with tourists enjoying luxury. Fado singer Gisela João highlights that while tourism contributes to urban renewal and job creation, it also produces precarious work and resident displacement to peripheral areas: A glass of wine / A sunset snack / Have you noticed those who jostle each other early on the subway? (Portugrall, Llama Virgem, 2018) I was there at the restaurant for dinner / Prices were so high that I found myself choking / slow down, I don’t earn enough / I can’t go head to head with what tourists earn. (Sonho do Turismo, Balada Brassado, 2019) From the reception to the terrace / For the modern tourist / The only Portuguese is the employee, busy / Serving the caipirinha (. . .) It’s beautiful to see the house restored / And there are jobs for boys and girls / It’s just a shame the Portuguese don’t win for T3 / And have to move beyond Cochinchina. (Hostel da Mariquinhas, Gisela João, 2021) Here, those who sleep in the beds / Don’t know their neighbors / Are either rich or tourists / The salary is no longer enough. (Liberdade mentirosa, Aníbal Zola, 2024)
Co-living appears sarcastically as a recurring trope. While advertised as urban, youthful and flexible, lyrics suggest it masks forced communal living due to housing precarity (Barbosa, 2024): ‘Another pioneering project / Sunny co-living / My square meter of suburbia / It costs a lot, it costs a lot’ (Screech, Mona Linda, 2023). INE’s 2024 Living Conditions and Income Survey confirms worsening housing. The 2021 Census revealed 63.3% of Portuguese homes were overcrowded, and 21.7% lacked sufficient rooms. The Rendas Altas video clip (Gandim, 2024) portrays this comedically: The artist in a robe is surrounded by people ironing, eating, showering together or sharing beds. The lyrics critique the impossibility of privacy – not only sharing homes with strangers or friends, but even with ex-partners: ‘I have a friend who broke up with his girlfriend / They do not talk to each other, but they cross paths at home (. . .) Together forever for the sake of an income.’ ‘It says it is co-living; it is not speculation,’ concludes ironically the musician (Figure 7).
Screenshot of the video clip ‘Rendas altas’, Gandim (2024).
The same INE data show growing issues of humidity, poor lighting and inadequate sanitation. Energy poverty is also widespread: 17.5% of people report being unable to heat their homes, far above the EU average of 9.3%. For many, living in basements, garages or offices has become the only option. 13 Lyrics evoke this absurd normality with references to shared bunk beds, windowless 10 m2 flats, ‘garage comfort’ and ‘trailers that smell like pork sandwiches’.
Final remarks: contagion, dissemination and contradictions
The analysis reveals an intense surge in musical production around housing rights and tourist-led gentrification in Portugal since 2016, which at times has served as a counterpoint to the fluctuating visibility of public protests. Compared to the revolutionary period when protest music was predominantly folk based and directed at left-wing activists, students and organized workers, contemporary protest repertoires are stylistically diverse (from fado to indie, punk and hip-hop) and reach a much broader public, including audiences not necessarily politically engaged or organized. Songs convey political discourse through humour, metaphor and irony, rendering the message more accessible and emotionally resonant. As music circulates across virtual, institutional and public urban spaces, its dissemination is amplified through online radio stations, video clips and social networks. Musicians often engage not just artistically but also politically and publicly, using interviews, concerts, award ceremonies and social-media platforms to affirm their positions. Their lyrics are frequently appropriated by social movements as slogans, graffiti or rallying cries, underscoring the embeddedness of music within activist vocabularies, as Figure 8 illustrates.
Social media posts by the movements Porta Adentro and Casa é um Direito, using song lyrics to mobilize for housing protests (2023).
Music, in this context, serves as a political device that reinforces the language, symbols, emotions and memory of social movements, turning sound into a material force of contestation. What, then, can be the key functions that protest music fulfils within social movements? Protest songs perform a multiplicity of roles that strengthen the fabric of collective resistance. They (a) express collective identity and reinforce solidarity within activist communities; (b) mobilize emotions by activating affective responses such as indignation, hope and defiance; (c) transmit ideological content, conveying counter-hegemonic messages and articulating political demands; (d) construct and disseminate historical memory, preserving narratives of past struggles while reactivating them in present contexts; (e) promote visibility and public engagement through performance, media circulation and cultural practices and (f) sustain movement continuity by acting as an emotional and symbolic infrastructure that persists across time and contexts. As such, music constitutes not a mere accessory to protest but one of its constitutive elements, a resonant ‘sound space’ in which resistance is performed, emotions are choreographed and collective agency is amplified (Futrell et al., 2006; Guerra, 2020; Rosenthal, 2008; Roy, 2010; Titus, 2017).
Although music plays a powerful role in articulating housing struggles, a closer look at lyrics, video clips and contexts of cultural production also reveals certain limitations and contradictions that can complicate its political efficacy.
Protest songs in this corpus convey discontent, indignation and symbolic resistance, yet few offer concrete proposals. References to rent control, public housing or cooperative models are notably scarce. Resistance is often expressed through metaphor or irony, as in Balada Brassado’s warning: ‘Tourism is good, but it is like sweet wine; if it is too much it gives you crap (. . .) I saw greed winning.’ This aligns with what Payerhin (2012) terms magical protest songs, which foster group cohesion, as opposed to rhetorical ones aimed at recruitment and action. Still, songs frequently embed themselves in activist vocabularies and repertoires of resistance through imagery and lyrics. Graffiti walls, protest footage and slogans recur in videos such as Gentrificasamba or Contas à moda do Porto (Lumpen, 2020): ‘No matter how hard they try, things fail (. . .) there are fires in the neighborhoods’; or Pé fincado (G.U.N.S, 2023): ‘They went to our neighborhood and broke it down / We are from the Ghetto / Let’s live in unity (. . .) Look at me, I will resist.’ Some verses verge on insurgency, as in Wilkommen (Pega Monstro, 2023): ‘Come to the chambre of chaos (. . .) I want a coup d’état.’ As Street (2003) argues, labelling protest music as ‘propaganda’ is itself a political gesture. Rather than judging its neutrality, we must ask: how does it articulate discourse? What emotions does it mobilize? Whom does it reach? Despite their limits, these songs operate as cultural inscriptions of dissent, performing resistance and amplifying the urgency of urban justice.
A second tension concerns the stark asymmetry of visibility and circulation among the artists analysed. Although artists like Gisela João and Gandim reach broad audiences on YouTube (110,000 and 300,000 views, respectively), others – such as Porto-based punk bands Lumpen or Grito! – remain largely unseen, with under 800 views. This disparity raises questions about the political economy of protest music and its commodification. Even when lyrics critique housing financialization or tourist-led gentrification, high-profile artists may convert symbolic capital into commercial gain. Political discourse can thus coexist with – or even boost – market value. This recalls Denisoff’s (1970) distinction between movement songs, rooted in grassroots struggle and informal circulation, and commercial protest songs, disseminated via mass media with more diluted messages. Roy (2010) similarly notes that protest music often intersects with the cultural marketplace, generating ambivalence where authenticity and commodification coexist. While both forms contribute to political expression, their reach and political efficacy differ. This is not to question artists’ sincerity, but to recognize that structural advantages of fame create dilemmas. Artists like Capicua or Garota Não may benefit commercially, yet they arguably raise awareness of housing injustice more effectively than most independent acts. The ambivalent status of high-profile protest music – both critical and marketable – underscores the tension between visibility and co-optation, requiring analysis beyond content, into authorship, circulation and infrastructural privilege.
Another notable ambivalence concerns the emergence of nostalgic or localist discourses, occasionally tinged with conservative or exclusionary overtones. Some songs idealize ‘authentic’ neighbourhoods and their original inhabitants, romanticizing poverty or expressing frustration towards mass tourism in ways that approach touristophobia. A paradigmatic example of this speech is in this excerpt: You say that Porto is new, this is just a lethargic sleep / Back to the poorest and most broken style / As has always been our prerogative (. . .) Clean and fragrant gourmet, to see if it hits the top / Us laughing in the dirtier and cheaper tavern, order another glass. (Contas à moda do Porto, Lumpen, 2020)
At the same time, here and there, verses appear that indicate some saturation resulting from the excessive flow of tourists. In addition to the criticisms mentioned in the previous section, we can find references to the fact that the Portuguese accent can no longer be heard in certain places or to situations that disrupt daily public life, such as constant construction, endless queues or the impossibility of travelling by public transport. One of the clearest examples of this irritation or even antagonism towards tourists, in which relationships are no longer cordial (Delgado, 2007), is the video clip ‘Sonho de Turismo’ by Balada Brassado (2019), in which the Azorean rapper circulates through the paradisiacal areas of the island, astonished and uncomfortable with the massive tourism that no longer allows him to do his daily routines.
A final limitation lies in the near absence of intersectional perspectives. Although housing movements in Portugal often highlight how gender, race, sexuality and class intersect to shape vulnerability, most songs in this corpus remain centred on individual experiences, omitting those most affected, such as Roma communities, queer and trans persons, racialized immigrants or single mothers. Although exceptions exist (e.g. Kantata do Tecto Incerto, or lyrics on immigrant precarity), they are marginal. This omission is notable given the sample’s demographic: mostly white Portuguese men, reflecting dominant structures of national music production, yet misaligned with the groups most impacted by the housing crisis. As Whiteley (2005) argues, music is never politically neutral; it can reinforce or subvert systemic inequalities, serving as a contested site of recognition and visibility. Listening itself is shaped by classed, gendered and racialized dynamics, and can act as a form of politicized solidarity. These silences signal not just analytical gaps but also missed chances to build broader coalitions.
Fifty years after the April 25 revolution, the constitutional right to decent housing remains largely unfulfilled in Portugal. Defined by the UN Habitat (2014) as encompassing not only shelter but also dignity, accessibility and participation, this right is musically evoked in songs that translate structural injustice into affective and symbolic registers, amplifying subaltern narratives and reclaiming urban space (Freeland, 2009; Moussa, 2019). These struggles reflect broader European dynamics: precarious labour, rising rents and tourist-driven displacement, particularly acute in Southern Europe. Meanwhile, the far right exploits housing crises through xenophobic scapegoating, reinforcing exclusion. Protest music cannot alone alter urban regimes. Yet, as Payerhin (2012) reminds us, music does not create revolutions but helps to keep the revolutionary spirit alive, sustaining collective memory, emotional resonance and political imagination. More than lament, it becomes infrastructure for solidarity, calling not only for mourning but also for mobilization (Haycock, 2015).
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
