General Daily Briefing — Monday, 27 April 2026
BdP Governor Álvaro Santos Pereira Bought Galp and Jerónimo Martins Shares After Taking Office
Álvaro Santos Pereira, who took office at Banco de Portugal on 6 October 2025, placed orders for shares in Galp Energia and Jerónimo Martins in December — barely two months into the mandate. The trades surfaced in the annual interests declaration he filed with the European Central Bank in early 2026; Frankfurt's compliance office reviewed the entries under Article 7 of the Single Code of Conduct for High-Level Officials and ordered the operations reversed. Santos Pereira complied. Both Galp and Jerónimo Martins sit in the ECB's eligible-issuer universe, placing them squarely inside the perimeter the code carves out for Governing Council members. The disclosure lands at an awkward moment for a governor already due before parliament over the BdP's new headquarters and who has spent his first six months publicly censuring the Portuguese banking sector.
BES Bad-Bank Creditors Start Filing Claims Under the €650 Million No-Creditor-Worse-Off Principle
Twelve years after the resolution that broke Banco Espírito Santo into a good bank and a bad bank, common creditors of the BES estate have started formally filing for compensation, and the Banco de Portugal has begun the preparatory work for an administrative procedure that ECO put at roughly €650 million today. The number traces back to a Deloitte assessment estimating common creditors would have recovered 31.7% of their claims in liquidation; a Lisbon court fixed the recognised common credits at €2.05 billion in 2025. Trinity, PIMCO, BlackRock and CQS are among the institutional names already in the file. The Fundo de Resolução closed 2024 with a €6.5 billion deficit; the BPCE acquisition of Novo Banco will inject more than €900 million through the Fund's 13.56% stake, much of which a €650 million NCWO payout would absorb in a single pass.
Conselho Superior do MP Wants Porto's Specialised Domestic-Violence Section Shut Down
The Conselho Superior do Ministério Público has tabled a proposal to extinguish the specialised domestic-violence section of the DIAP do Porto, the unit set up at the end of 2019. The trigger is a 17 March 2026 inspection report covering 2022-2024 that calls workflow "morosa, fluida e protelada" and the Matosinhos arm's 82% archival rate "frankly concerning". The Conselho's preferred path is dissolution — sending cases back to territorial DIAPs with liaison magistrates — though it has offered a fallback of reinforcing staffing and facilities. Hours before the proposal surfaced, the new Bastonário of the Bar Association called for specialised domestic-violence courts on the bench side, exposing the gap between dissolving prosecutorial specialisation and deepening judicial specialisation.
Two Hundred Years of the Carta Constitucional — Wednesday Marks the 1826 Bicentenary
On Wednesday, 29 April 2026, Portugal hits 200 years since Dom Pedro IV granted the Carta Constitucional, the country's second constitutional document and the longest-serving by far — 72 years across four discrete periods between 1826 and 1910. Born of the succession crisis that followed João VI's death in March 1826, the Carta was an emergency answer to a Brazilian-emperor heir who could not legally inherit the Portuguese throne. It split power four ways including the poder moderador exercised by the king, created a bicameral parliament modelled in part on Westminster, and was amended four times under the Atos Adicionais. There are no major state commemorations scheduled, but the law faculties of Lisbon and Coimbra are running academic events, and the Portuguese postal service has issued a philatelic tribute.
Friday's SMMP Walkout Drew 75-80% Adhesion and Pushed Operação Babel Sentencing to 8 May
The Sindicato dos Magistrados do Ministério Público called a national strike for 24 April and the union's own count put adhesion between 75% and 80%. The Azores led with 76-79%, Madeira hit 55-60%, the Alentejo and Algarve recorded the most fully stopped courts on the mainland, and the North reached close to 60%. The most visible casualty was the postponement of the Operação Babel verdict — the Vila Nova de Gaia urbanism case with sixteen defendants — from the scheduled date to 8 May. The grievance is the 2026 placement competition's inclusion of lugares em acumulação that compress multiple jurisdictions into single posts. The Procuradora-Geral da República voted against revising the rules, which is why the union escalated.
INE Maps Half a Century of Portuguese Voting — From 91.7% in 1975 to a Recent 60% Recovery
The Instituto Nacional de Estatística timed its release for the 52nd anniversary of 25 de Abril and put hard numbers under a question Portuguese politics has argued for decades. Across all 53 national elections held between 1975 and 2026, average turnout among registered voters resident in Portugal and abroad was 58.5%; for those registered and voting in Portugal, 61.2%. The 1970s decade average was 79%; the 2010s collapsed to 47.5%; the current decade has recovered to 51%. The historical peak is 91.7% in the April 1975 Constituent Assembly election; the trough is 30.7% in the 2019 European Parliament vote. Legislative elections lead by type at 65.4% average, European elections trail at 40.8%. The recovery is real but narrow — driven by the high-salience 2024 and 2026 cycles rather than by structural change.
