A Music Festival Offers Six People Living in a Disused Lisbon School Four Nights in a Holiday Rental
The Festival Iminente runs at the former Escola Industrial Afonso Domingues in Marvila from 17 to 20 September. Six people live there. The same six who were counted in July, which suggests none took the council's Housing First offer.
Six people live in the former Escola Industrial Afonso Domingues (Afonso Domingues Industrial School) in Marvila, eastern Lisbon. Between 17 and 20 September the same site hosts the Festival Iminente, the music and street-art event created by the artist Alexandre Farto, who works as Vhils. The organisers have now offered those six residents a room in an Alojamento Local (a licensed short-term rental) for the four nights the festival runs.
The outline came on Wednesday from the festival's director, Juliana Almeida, who told a press conference she had "provided a space" near the old school. Observador established what the space is: a room in a holiday rental, for the four days, and specifically, in the organisers' own words, "for the periods in which the site will be open to the public".
The festival frames it carefully. The offer "does not correspond to a requirement to leave the School, nor does it alter the situation of the areas where they live", but is "a temporary alternative" giving "greater privacy and rest". Almeida says the residents remain invited and will have access to the site, that the organisers never asked anyone to go, and that the event "continues not to depend on the building being vacated". The alternative made sense, she said, because "a festival of this size implies more movement, noise and intensity in the space".
A building that was meant to become housing
The school has been shut since 2010, deactivated over the projected routes for the Terceira Travessia do Tejo (Third Tagus Crossing) and the high-speed line between Chelas and Barreiro. Both projects were later abandoned, and in 2022 central government ceded the building free of charge to the Câmara Municipal de Lisboa (Lisbon City Council) for a minimum of 25 years. The stated purpose was rehabilitation for housing through the Bolsa Nacional de Alojamento Urgente e Temporário (National Pool of Urgent and Temporary Accommodation), including a reception centre for people experiencing homelessness. Those plans never advanced. Under municipal management the land was instead ceded to the Festival Iminente until 2027, on a contract providing for future editions at the same site.
The occupation surfaced in reporting earlier this year that counted around two dozen people living in the building, some for years. With the festival build approaching, the council put up signs announcing the "closure and control of access" to the grounds. Organisers and council both rejected the words eviction and expulsion, though that was how residents described it. Three months later the council notified the occupants to leave.
What happened to the Housing First promise
Pressed in July, the municipality led by Carlos Moedas said "a concrete proposal was presented for integration into a supported community accommodation response, which provides housing units and ensures regular technical follow-up by specialist teams". Asked whether that meant reception centres or definitive housing, and how many had accepted, the council declined to answer in detail, referring only to "individual housing units" discussed case by case. Within hours the festival posted that some residents had visited units five minutes from the school, calling them "a first step toward joining the Housing First programme".
The four nights in a holiday rental are not that plan. Observador counted six residents at the school in July. Six remain today, which suggests nobody took the council's offer. Those who have accepted the festival's rooms intend to carry only essentials and leave their usual belongings inside the school.
Almeida draws her own boundary: the festival "is not the owner of the building and does not decide juridically on remaining in it", though "the residents keep their homes and their link to the School throughout this process". What happens once the site is dismantled is unresolved.
It lands in a city where the counting itself is contested. Lisbon's homeless figures were the subject of a public clash between City Hall and the sector in August, and the supply of units is the binding constraint: the impact investor Maze lined up a 40 million euro fund in June to buy Lisbon flats for the homeless precisely because the public stock does not exist. Marvila is meanwhile the target of a 1,400-home master plan across 28 hectares backed at 500 to 800 million euros. Our guide to registering an Alojamento Local covers how that category works in law.
