Portugal's Registry Backlog Grew 13% in a Month, and the Union Says the IRN Stopped Publishing the Totals That Show It

The waiting times at Portugal's registry and notary offices got worse this summer, not better — and the union that represents the people who staff them says the state body in charge quietly stopped publishing the figures that would have shown it.

According to the Sindicato dos Trabalhadores dos Registos e do Notariado (STRN, the Registry and Notary Workers' Union), the total volume of delays across the conservatórias — the offices that handle everything from births, marriages and deaths to property deeds, company records and vehicle registrations — rose by just over 13% in a single month. The union summed up the accumulated backlog across all services and found it climbed from 40,947 days in May 2026 to 46,289 days in June, an increase of 5,342 days, or 13.05%. "The debacle is unequivocal," the union said.

What the numbers show

The union's reading of the Instituto dos Registos e do Notariado's (IRN, Institute of Registries and Notaries) own monthly maps paints a picture of a service falling behind rather than catching up:

• 237 of 404 conservatórias — 58.66% of all offices — were running behind in June.
• 192 services (47.52%) saw their delays actually grow over the month.
• The vehicle registry (registo automóvel) was hit hardest: its accumulated delay more than doubled, from 845 days to 1,738 — a jump of 105.68%.
• One service worsened by 1,300% in percentage terms; another added 272 days in absolute terms.
• The single most backed-up service is now sitting on a queue equivalent to four years and seven months of work.

The accusation of a vanishing dataset

The sharper edge of the union's complaint is not the backlog itself but what it says the IRN did with the evidence. From May to June, the STRN claims, the monthly statistics stopped carrying the global totals at the bottom — "suppressing precisely the indicators that showed the national worsening," in the union's words. "Removing the totals does not eliminate a single day of delay," the STRN said. "It only reduces transparency. It is up to the IRN to explain why it changed its reporting and stopped publishing indicators previously considered relevant, exactly when those numbers began to contradict its narrative."

That charge lands directly on a recovery story the government has been telling. The IRN's president, Blandina Soares, said in early July that the institute had "recovered delays in 20 conservatórias of the property, commercial and vehicle registries in just 30 days" — a plan covering three property offices, five commercial ones and twelve vehicle registries, part of a stated effort to "safeguard" the summer. The union's retort is that the 30-day plan was aimed first at offices with fewer pending cases, the easiest wins, while the official May-versus-June maps show the opposite of a turnaround: the global delay rose and more offices slid into arrears. It called it "inadmissible that more recent, simpler or statistically more convenient requests are handled at the expense of the oldest cases just to produce communicationally favourable results."

A staffing hole years in the making

Behind the queues is a workforce that the union says is far too small. The STRN puts the shortfall at roughly 270 conservadores (registrars) and 2,731 oficiais de registos (registry officers), and it wants an immediate "recruitment shock" of 100 more registrars and 2,000 more officers, alongside organised, paid, voluntary overtime that does not strip the counters that serve the public.

The tension is not new. In June, the STRN held a week-long national strike, from the 8th to the 13th, over what it called the sector's critical situation. The union reported adherence of around 80% on the first day and 93.41% by the Friday, closing most conservatórias across 14 mainland districts as well as the Azores and Madeira. The IRN, which sits under the Ministério da Justiça (Ministry of Justice), rejected the union's accusation that it had tried to condition the strike. Two months on, the union is warning that the underlying problem has not moved.

What this means for expats

The conservatórias are where a great deal of an expat's Portuguese paperwork actually gets processed, so a growing backlog is not an abstract statistic — it can be the difference between a plan that goes ahead this autumn and one that slips into next year.

• Property purchases: The property registry (registo predial) records who owns what. Delays there can hold up the paperwork that follows a completed sale, so if you are buying, budget time and lean on the Casa Pronta one-stop counter and an up-to-date Certidão Permanente de Registo Predial rather than a paper request at a busy office.
• Bringing in a car: The vehicle registry is the worst-hit service in these figures. If you are importing and legalising a car, expect the registo automóvel step to take longer than the headline timelines suggest.
• Citizenship and civil records: Nationality files and civil-registry certificates (birth, marriage, death) pass through this same system. Anyone on the naturalisation path — already lengthened by last year's law change — should treat registry delays as one more reason not to leave documents to the last minute.
• Cartão de Cidadão and everyday admin: Card and certificate counters were among the first to close during June's strike. Where you can, use the online routes covered in our guide to renewing your Cartão de Cidadão to avoid the physical queues altogether.
• Watch the reform, not the rhetoric: The government has separately moved to rewrite court and registry procedures to cut paperwork. Whether that translates into shorter real-world waits — or, as the union fears, better-looking dashboards — is the thing to judge over the next few months.

For now, the story is a familiar one in Portuguese public administration: a promised recovery on one side, a rising queue on the other, and a fight over which set of numbers gets to be the official one. The next monthly maps — assuming the totals reappear at the bottom — will show who was right. On the Portuguese identity-document and registry-security tape, our report on the overnight theft of 500 citizen cards, 200 passports and two official dry seals from the Chaves registry office, and what it means for anyone with a document waiting at a counter sets the latest reference. For anyone working through the Portuguese civil registry, our 2026 guide to changing your name in Portugal: the six-word limit, the 200 euro process decided by the conservador dos Registos Centrais, the seven changes that need no permission, and what marriage and divorce do to surnames sets the latest reference. On the Portuguese holiday-property rulebook, our guide to timeshare in Portugal, covering the direito real de habitação periódica, the 14 days to cancel, the ban on taking any payment before that runs, and the six-month renúncia that ends the right sets the latest reference. On the rules that govern access across a neighbour's land, our guide to rights of way in Portugal, covering the servidão de passagem, the landlocked plot that can force one under article 1550, and the twenty years of non-use that ends it sets the latest reference.