Anarchist social centre in Lisbon calls for solidarity
Resistance amidst ravening gentrification
In September 2015, atop one of Lisbon’s hills, the doors to Disgraça opened. For the past decade, this anarchist social centre has been a space of anti-authoritarian experimentation, organising, learning and solidarity – dedicated to resisting the suppressing machinery of State and Capital.
In March 2024, exhausted from the monthly race towards raising the rent of the space and faced with madly increasing rent prices, we decided to take matters in our own hands and collectively buy the space to take it out of the speculative housing market once and for all. To secure the space for the long-term, we need to raise 275.000 euros. As of June 2025, we’ve already raised 167.000 euros and put down 10% of the total cost to secure the purchase. We now have 4 months to raise the remaining 108.000 euros – and we’d like to invite you to do this with us.
Why take out the space from the speculative market: A quick portrait of the housing crisis.
Our choice to collectively buy the space and go through this incredibly labourious effort of raising this amount of money is based on the prediction that it’ll only get worse. In the last decade, Lisbon has been devastated by real estate speculation, the housing crisis and the elitisation of culture that has put its many community-run spaces in danger.
The housing crisis in Portugal, exacerbated by rapid, unbridled touristification and a focus on foreign investment of governmental schemes, has deepened even further in the past years. Rental values of new listings have gone up at least 65% since 2015 and 37% during 2022 alone. (1) In terms of actual leases (which include older contracts), housing rents per square metre rose by 7.2% last year alone – the biggest increase in 30 years. (2) Unsurprisingly, but ironically, the same year saw the demand for houses to rent fall 48%, doubling the number of available houses while the average age at which people leave their parental home reached the highest in EU at 33.6 years. (3)
This housing and rental bubble is all the more ridiculous since the needed housing already exists: there’s at least 750,000 empty houses across the country. (4) Despite this, State and Capital have made concerted efforts to prevent their use, with evictions and eviction requests increasing over the last years, especially in Lisbon and Porto (In 2023, 2.672 eviction requests were received, 17% more than the previous year). (5) Last year, a special centre was even created to “streamline and simplify” landlord-tenant procedures, issuing 881 eviction notices in its first 9 months alone. (6) Whereas there is no official data on the percentage of evictions, it is likely that their number will continue to rise (as even the president of the National Associations of Municipalities warns). (7)
Of course there have been responses from grassroots movements, too, with projects such as Stop Despejos, Casa Para Viver, Casa é um Direito, Habitação Hoje and many more coming together to organise manifestations, actions, and to support those who are being evicted. Various politically-engaged social centers in the city are also facing their own troubles: evictions, seeing their contracts finishing with no possibility to open new spaces, increasing rents, and so on.
Our friends over at Sirigatia – a self-managed activist space where a lot of different people and causes converge – received a letter of non-renewal of their contract in 2023. The landlord, who is a mega proprietor cited in the Panama Papers with 80 local housing spaces, ignored any attempt of negotiation. The handing over of the keys was scheduled for February 2024, but Sirigaita refused – launching instead the campaign “não se despeja um desejo” (you cannot evict a desire). After almost two and a half years, Sirigaita is still resisting within its doors, a resistance mirrored in court, local power institutions and the speculative market.
Cultura no Muro (ACM), a socio-cultural association with a vital role in the local political and community scene, is now facing the threat of eviction from its long-standing base at SMUP Parede. This comes despite ACM having contributed financially to the refurbishment of the building, which both organisations have shared for the past 14 years. As cultural spaces become increasingly elitist and commercialised, prioritising high-end events over grassroots initiatives, ACM is now being asked by SMUP to relinquish the keys to a space it has helped build and sustain for over a decade. Over the last years, other spaces have also started crowdfunding campaigns – while yet others are seeing the threat of eviction in the horizon.
Securing Disgraça long-term to sustain grassroots movements
This grim portrait shows that there’s a stark need for secured spaces: renting or squatting is simply not enough in a city facing this kind of volatility, and where illegal evictions are a norm. With the myriad of collectives and grassroots movements that use the space of Disgraça today, we need to be able to have a secure base that isn’t affected by the whim of Capital.
Disgraça is a stage for hundreds of people: every week we organise donation-based canteens and shows, talks, workshops, screenings and benefit events for the causes we are fighting for, being a home for many collectives to organise and prepare actions. It is a laboratory of anti-authoritarian practices: a horizontally-organised social center that aims to create links of community, solidarity and mutual aid. This 1000m² space hosts a free shop and a screen printing room, a kitchen and a canteen, a self-organised gym and a rehearsal room, a library and a garden. Over the past decade, we have seen and have been inspired within these walls by a myriad of events. Disgraça is also a source of information and inspiration through our anarchist infoshop Tortuga, where book presentations, conversations and book clubs have sprouted.
The fundraising efforts have been aplenty, and the support we’ve received has been really touching. But we are still 40% away from the value we need to raise.
By purchasing the space, all of this will be able to continue for the long-term – and we’ll be able to do so much more. The fundraising efforts have been aplenty, and the support we’ve received has been really touching. But we are still 40% away from the value we need to raise. Now is the most crucial time: can you help us make it through the finish line?
If you or your collective would like to support, here are some ways you can help:
• Donate through:
-our crowdfunding campaign [gofundme.com/disgraca],
-regularly (and anonymously) through liberapay - www.liberapay.com/disgraca,
-our Paypal (disgraca@riseup.net)
-or simply via bank transfer to: PT50 0045 9011 4039 0295 9239 1.
• Give an interest-free solidarity loan – get in touch at disgraca@riseup.net
• Organise benefits in your local social center :) If you need support, get in touch at disgraca@riseup.net or check out this folder and disgraca.com/material
• Print our zines and/or posters, share on your social media and spread the word in your community. You can find our material at [disgraca.com/material] or design your own! ;)
• Screen print t-shirts for Disgraça! Contact us to send you our designs, or make your own!
• Discuss other ways in your collectives (or not!) and let us know!
• Spread this text all over the world
www.disgraca.com
disgraca@riseup.net