SAAL neighbourhood, Casal das Figueiras, in Setúbal. 2022. Photo by Pedro Augusto Almeida, used with permission
Portugal, 1974: 8.754 million people lived in Europe’s westernmost country, where about a quarter were illiterate; 38 out of every 1,000 children died in their first year. All under the Estado Novo regime, which had been in place since 1933.
Fifty years after the April 25 of that year, which marked the end of the regime, the country has transformed on every level. The coup d’état of the “Carnation Revolution,” the last revolution of the 20th century in Europe, opened the way for changes pushed for by the people in the streets.
On May 1, 1974, the first Labour Day after April 25, Portugal saw the largest demonstrations in its history, which then triggered a takeover of the streets by the disadvantaged classes. The people also began to organize themselves in their neighborhoods. Among the mottos of the period were: “Houses yes, shacks no” and “Houses are for the people. Down with exploitation.”
In Porto, residents of working-class neighborhoods gathered, demanding an end to the regime’s rules, which restricted their liberties. In Lisbon, residents of favelas joined the protests to demand decent housing, and occupied social housing, which had been completed but not distributed. More than 2,000 houses were occupied in the cities where the country’s industries were concentrated, such as Lisbon, Porto, and Setúbal.
Although there were no concrete data on how many people did not have housing — or on the living conditions of those who had a place — the study “General Housing Census: Mainland and Islands,” conducted by the National Institute of Statistics (INE) in 1970, points to the existence of 31,110 “shacks and others” across the country.
The architect José António Bandeirinha, in the work “The SAAL Process and Architecture on April 25, 1974,” estimated that a quarter of Portugal’s population lived in places lacking any decent living conditions. The first provisional government, and those which followed it, hurried to address this question.
On August 6, 1974, less than four months after the revolution, the SAAL – Local Support Service was created by an order signed by the minister of internal administration, Manuel da Costa Brás, and the secretary of state for housing and urban planning, Nuno Portas.
Being just a ministerial order, the SAAL had weak legislative power to solve Portugal’s housing problems. However, it made possible the construction of 75 neighborhoods, and there was a real engagement between public entities, such as the Housing Development Fund (FFH), professionals, students of architecture, social workers, and the people who would come to live in the neighborhoods.
Bandeirinha said that Nuno Portas, the secretary of state at the time when the FFH began to outline its plan to assist people who could benefit from SAAL, proceeded with a “systematization of actions and priorities that reflected a certain pragmatic focus based on experiences that he knew so well, particularly from South America and North Africa”.
As such, in SAAL, it is possible to note the influence of architecture projects that attempted to address social issues which took place in Latin America from the 1960s. Examples of these are the initiatives of cooperativism in Uruguay, the neighborhoods designed by Germán Samper Gnecco in Colombia, and, most notably, the PREVI-Experimental Housing Project in Peru.
In Peru, the president, Fernando Belaúnde Terry, an architect by profession, began to implement a plan that also aimed to solve the problem of favelas, which had proliferated in Lima because of a huge rural exodus towards the capital. Through an international competition, 13 international architects were selected, and they worked on PREVI with local architects.
With the 1968 coup d’état in Peru and the establishment of a military dictatorship, social concerns disappeared from the agenda, and of the 1,500 homes planned, only 500 were built, all of which were completed in 1974.
The Portuguese experience
The SAAL process led to the construction of 75 neighborhoods, although 170 projects had been planned: 17 through the Saal/North delegation; 34 by the Saal/Lisbon and South-Central delegation, and 24 through the Saal/Algarve delegation. Most of the municipalities concerned are located on Portugal’s coast. What is important to highlight, even more than the quantity produced, are the dynamics involved in developing this housing program.
How could they build neighborhoods that respect and incorporate the social and economic characteristics of the population? The Technical Brigades, put together for the construction of the SAAL neighborhoods, were composed not only of architects but also of social workers, who had a key role in understanding the people to be housed.
This engagement between different actors generated a dialogue between different social visions. Furthermore, wherever possible, the SAAL neighborhoods were built in the same areas as the favelas had been in to preserve the existing social relations that had developed over time, which had been crucial to resist the authoritarian power of the Estado Novo regime.
Another possibility that SAAL foresaw was people building for themselves. Wherever people considered it appropriate, they could build their own homes.
The struggle for housing in Portugal after the revolution was also a women’s struggle. As the researcher Lia Antunes writes in the article “My dream? Having a home. Thinking about housing, the city, and women’s citizenship in Revolutionary Portugal (1974–1976),” women were protagonists in the project and in discussions about the right to housing.
Despite the fact that SAAL lost momentum after the military coup of November 25, 1975, which put an end to the revolutionary process begun the previous year, and that it was repealed in 1976, it is an example of a public policy which incorporated public participation in a real and pioneering way, and which would not be implemented again in Portugal.
In 1976, the first Human Settlements Program took place, organized by the United Nations (UN) in the city of Vancouver, Canada. Portugal decided to participate by making SAAL known with the documentary “Habitat: A Challenge,” by the Portuguese director Fernando Lopes, one of the figures of the new Portuguese cinema whose most-known work is “Belarmino” (1964).
This production by the Portuguese Cinema Centre led to a short documentary film focused on the Portuguese housing shortages at the time that SAAL was taking the first steps to solve the issue and the sociopolitical context in the “Highway at the End of Europe,” as the political scientist Philippe Schmitter put it.
Housing, an ongoing issue
The Portuguese constitution of 1976, despite its seven revisions, continues to define housing as a right — Right No. 65. However, there remains a gap between theory and practice, and the possibilities opened by SAAL have been weakened by housing market speculation.
Over the past decade, Portugal has seen house prices rise. Eurostat, which gathers data and statistics from the European Union, highlighted that housing prices increased by 7 percent in the first part of 2024 as compared to the same period last year, while the European Union average was 1.3 percent.
The coordinator of the National Strategy for the Integration of Homeless People (ENIPSSA) said that the number of homeless people doubled between 2018–2022.
In 2023, there were two major street demonstrations about housing in several Portuguese cities, on April 1 and September 30. This year, on January 27, the streets of major cities were occupied by similar demonstrations, and a new protest was called for the end of September.
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Publish date : 2024-09-30 10:08:00
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