General Daily Briefing: Wednesday, 16 September 2026
Good morning. Here is your Wednesday briefing for 16 September 2026: the day's essential Portugal stories for residents, expats and anyone keeping an eye on the country, running from new rules on what a bank may put in small print to the media regulator's verdict on how this year's presidential election was covered.
- Banking: the Bank of Portugal sets minimum font sizes for bank advertising and rules that the cost of credit may not sit behind a click, a scroll or a swipe.
- Social care: a 4.4 million euro care home in Mafra was inaugurated on Tuesday and cannot admit anyone, because the Social Security agreement is unsigned.
- Tourism: Brazilian visitors left a record 657 million euros in Portugal in the first half, and Portuguese travel to Brazil is growing faster still.
- Security: three men handed themselves in over the stray bullet that hit a Swedish tourist on Rua Augusta in August, as the mayor told the municipal assembly he is alarmed.
- Regulation: about four in ten people betting online in Portugal are on unlicensed sites, and most of them do not know it, two days before Parliament debates the law.
- Media: the ERC handled 58 complaints about the presidential election and reports that the law on televised debates does not fit a single-member contest.
The Tarifa Social de Energia in Portugal in 2026
The one Portuguese benefit nobody applies for: the state matches its own tax and Social Security data and the discount simply appears on the bill. About 735,000 electricity contracts carry it. Our new guide sets out who qualifies, the 6,272.64 euro income line, the two contract conditions that quietly disqualify otherwise eligible households (including a contracted power above 6.9 kVA), and what to do when the 33.8 percent discount does not arrive.
Expropriation in Portugal in 2026
The state can take your land for a road, a school or a railway, but it cannot do it quietly. The Expropriations Code gives you a written offer before anything is taken, 20 days to answer it with your own valuation, and a route to arbitration if you disagree. Since 9 August a taking by a municipality also needs a vote of the municipal assembly. The guide walks through each step and the deadlines that go with it.
The Bank of Portugal Puts a Font Size on Bank Advertising
The Banco de Portugal published a practical guide on Tuesday setting out, example by example, how banks must advertise their products. The underlying rules are not new: the size table it reproduces is Part I.A of the Annex to Aviso n.º 5/2024. What is new is the 45 pages of detail. The floor for mandatory small print is nine points in the press, twelve on websites, apps, social media and email, thirty on a poster read inside a branch, forty on one read from the street through the window, and ninety on a street mupi, scaling up for anything larger. Arial is "merely indicative": another typeface may be used if it reads properly and matches Arial's height, so Arial at 30 equals Calibri at 34 but not Times New Roman at 30. The measurement is taken from "the capital letters, without accents or cedillas, of the mandatory information". In digital media, font size is judged at 100 percent zoom on the screen where the advertisement appears. In audiovisual, characters must reach 3.5 percent of screen height, which the guide puts at 38 pixels at Full HD. The rule with the sharpest teeth concerns scrolling: the cost of a product and the benefit being advertised have to appear in the same field of view. If a reader must "click a button, turn the page, scroll down or perform any other action" to reach the TAEG, the all-in annual charge figure, the advertisement fails. A credit-card carousel cannot park the TAEG on the second image behind a swipe. The one carve-out is narrow: where the content advances on its own, as with an auto-playing carousel or a video, the requirement counts as met if the information follows immediately and the viewer does nothing.
A Care Home in Mafra Opened on Tuesday and Cannot Take Anyone
The Minister for Labour and Social Security, Maria do Rosario Palma Ramalho, inaugurated the second care home run by the Santa Casa da Misericordia de Mafra on Tuesday: 4.4 million euros, of which 2.3 million came from the Recovery and Resilience Plan, with 60 beds, 38 new jobs and 150 people on the waiting list. It cannot admit anybody. The agreement with the Instituto da Seguranca Social that would have the state co-finance 48 of the 60 places has not been signed, and the provedor of the Misericordia, Joaquim Sardinha, told Lusa that without it the home cannot enter service at all. Lusa reported that it knows of other institutions waiting months for Social Security authorisations before they can open a care home or a creche. The minister rejected that: there is no "wait of months in most cases", she said, describing instead "the normal procedure", and adding that projects funded through the Recovery and Resilience Plan actually move faster because some requirements are waived. Sardinha's case for building was blunt: "The hospitals are full of people who should no longer be there, there is no capacity in the social institutions, and we always have a great many people on the list." The building is Mafra's old hospital and health centre, vacated in 2019; the tender went out at 3.4 million euros and costs rose when one block had to be demolished for lack of seismic protection. The Misericordia's first home holds 76 residents.
Brazilian Visitors Left a Record 657 Million Euros in the First Half
Turismo de Portugal data supplied to Lusa put receipts from Brazilian visitors at 657.13 million euros between January and June, a historical maximum for a first half. Portugal took in 534,379 Brazilian guests, up 5.2 percent, who generated 1.18 million overnight stays, up 7 percent. Receipts rose 18.4 percent, which means spending per visitor climbed considerably faster than the visitor count. The result was flagged in advance: in April, at the Forum Atlantico de Turismo Portugal and Brasil in Sao Paulo, the Secretary of State for Tourism, Pedro Machado, told Lusa the data pointed "to 2026 beating all records". The reverse flow is growing faster still. According to Embratur, the Brazilian promotion agency, Portuguese travellers have again overtaken the French as the largest European tourist group in Brazil: of the 5,874,981 foreign tourists Brazil received between January and July, 177,956 came from Portugal, up 24.9 percent. Across the whole of 2025 Portugal sent 273,483 tourists to Brazil, the highest annual total since 2007. One distinction is worth keeping in view: the people counted here are guests in tourist accommodation, not the far larger population of Brazilians who live and work in Portugal, which a different set of statistics records.
Three Detained Over the Bullet That Hit a Swedish Tourist in the Baixa
Three men suspected of firing the shot that struck a Swedish tourist on Rua Augusta last month were detained on Tuesday evening. All three are treated as suspects in an attempted homicide, and investigators have not established which of them pulled the trigger. The detentions were first reported by Publico and confirmed by Noticias ao Minuto with a source at the Policia Judiciaria; the men handed themselves in after searches of their homes found them absent. On 10 August the woman, a visitor in her forties, was buying pasteis de nata in a pastelaria on the Baixa's main pedestrian street when a stray bullet hit her in the abdomen. She was taken to Hospital Sao Jose, discharged the following day and returned to Sweden to have the bullet removed. The shot came out of an argument between rival groups, reportedly sellers of louro prensado, the pressed bay leaf sold to tourists as cannabis. One suspect was detained the day after the shooting and released on twice-weekly reporting, in what the PSP said was a domestic violence case. By coincidence of timing, Carlos Moedas spent Tuesday evening on the same theme at the Lisbon Municipal Assembly, saying he has moved from worried to "alarmed by many situations". His central figure: between 2010 and 2026 the city gained 109,000 residents and lost 2,000 police officers, leaving about 6,000 PSP. The 100 municipal police and 200 PSP promised in May have not arrived.
Four in Ten Online Bettors Are on Unlicensed Sites
A study by Aximage for the licensed operators' association APAJO, released on Wednesday, asked a thousand people registered on online gambling platforms to tick the sites they had played on in the past year. Nearly 40 percent ticked an unlicensed platform. Only 19.8 percent said outright that they had used one, and of those who did tick an illegal site, 67 percent went on to say they had not played on one or did not know. Because the list could not include every site in existence, the association argues the real share is higher. Bonuses are the main draw, then better odds, a wider game catalogue and greater anonymity, which is what a minor needs and what somebody self-excluded for addiction needs. Younger players are the most exposed. Seventy-one percent of online players spend up to 50 euros a month; among those on unlicensed sites, close to 38 percent spend more. In June the Economy Minister put illegal online gambling in Portugal at around 24 billion euros, roughly the size of the regulated market. APAJO wants payment channels blocked, which would need the Bank of Portugal, and the regulated catalogue widened: in a decade of licensed betting, one new category of game has been added. The government promised a rewrite of the law for the summer and has published nothing. Livre brings the subject to Parliament on Thursday.
The Media Regulator Says the Debate Rules Do Not Fit a Presidential Race
The Entidade Reguladora para a Comunicacao Social opened 58 procedures over coverage of this year's presidential election, according to a report published on Tuesday covering both rounds. Forty-six were submissions from members of the public, eight were complaints from representatives of the candidacies, one came from a media organisation and three the regulator started itself. They produced 18 deliberations of the Conselho Regulador and 34 summary analyses, and within a month of the vote the ERC had dealt with every complaint and 82.6 percent of the public submissions. Television debates dominated, accounting for 18 of the procedures, with questions about which candidacies broadcasters chose to include, how operators coordinated, and who carries editorial responsibility for a debate organised by somebody else. The substantive finding concerns Lei n.º 72-A/2015, which governs journalistic coverage during an election. It ties a candidacy's "political and social representativeness" to the result obtained at the previous election to the same body, a workable test for a party and a meaningless one for an individual standing for a single-member office. Part of the election period also runs before the final list of candidates is settled. The ERC flags a second unsettled area: what media may publish on the eve of the vote and on polling day, where journalism ends and propaganda begins, and how its own powers divide from those of the Comissao Nacional de Eleicoes.
