Self-Defence in Portugal in 2026: A Practical Guide to Article 32, the Necessary-Means Test, Why Fear Excuses Going Too Far, the Citizen's Arrest You May Make, and the Pepper Spray That Is a Crime to Carry

A man in Lisbon was robbed this month, got into his car, went after the thief and ran him over. The Portuguese press has spent the week asking whether he committed a crime. It is a fair question, and the answer is not the one most people assume, because Portuguese law draws its lines in places that surprise almost everyone who arrives from an English-speaking country.

There is no "stand your ground" here and no "castle doctrine". There is also no duty to retreat written into the statute. What there is instead is a short, dense article of the Código Penal (Penal Code) that has been read by Portuguese courts for decades, a companion article that forgives people who go too far out of fear, a rule in the Código de Processo Penal (Code of Criminal Procedure) that lets an ordinary person make an arrest, and a weapons law that quietly makes carrying most of the things people buy "for protection" a crime in itself.

This guide sets out what the law actually says. It is general information about Portuguese law as it stands in 2026, not legal advice about your situation. If you are in a live case, get a lawyer.

1. The four words that decide everything

Article 32 of the Penal Code is one sentence long:

"Legítima defesa is constituted by an act carried out as a necessary means to repel a current and unlawful aggression against legally protected interests of the agent or of a third party."

Every fight about self-defence in a Portuguese courtroom is a fight about the words in bold. Take them one at a time.

"Aggression"

The aggression must come from a human being and it must be aimed at a legally protected interest. That interest does not have to be your body. It can be your liberty, your home, your honour or your property. Portuguese law, unlike some others, does allow force in defence of property. What it does not allow is force out of proportion to what the property is worth, and that is where most property cases fail.

"Current"

This is the word that decides the Lisbon case, and it is the word most people get wrong. Actual in Portuguese means happening now: imminent, underway, or still continuing. An aggression that has finished is no longer current, and once it is over there is nothing left to repel.

The practical consequence is blunt. While someone is taking your bag, the aggression is current. The moment they are running away with it, the aggression against your person is over, and what remains is a property loss that the law expects you to pursue through the police and the courts. Chasing a fleeing thief and injuring him is not self-defence, because there is nothing left to defend against. It may be something else, which is covered in section 4 below, but it is not article 32.

"Unlawful"

You cannot claim self-defence against a lawful act. If a police officer is arresting you lawfully, resisting is not legítima defesa. If you started the fight, you generally cannot rely on the article either, because you provoked the situation.

"Necessary means"

The Portuguese test is necessity, not proportionality in the loose sense. You may use the means that are necessary and sufficient to stop the aggression, and no more. If shouting would have worked, punching was not necessary. If a punch would have worked, a knife was not necessary. Courts assess this from the position of the person under attack in the moment, not with the calm of hindsight, but they do assess it.

Note what is missing: there is no requirement in the text that you first try to run away. Portuguese doctrine does not impose a general duty to retreat. But retreat is one of the things a court will weigh when deciding whether the force you used was necessary, so in practice the distinction is narrower than it sounds.

2. When you go too far: article 33

Article 33 is the article that saves people, and it has two very different parts.

Number 1: "If there is an excess of the means employed in legítima defesa, the act is unlawful but the penalty may be specially attenuated." So going too far does not simply cancel the defence. The act stays a crime, but the court can drop below the normal sentencing floor.

Number 2: "The agent is not punished if the excess results from disturbance, fear or fright that are not blameworthy."

That second paragraph is the closest thing Portuguese law has to the instinct most people bring to this subject. If you overreacted because you were genuinely terrified, and that terror was a reasonable reaction to what was happening, you are not punished at all. The word doing the work is "não censuráveis", not blameworthy. Panic at a masked intruder in your bedroom at three in the morning is not blameworthy. Rage at someone who insulted you is a different thing.

3. If you were wrong about what was happening

Suppose you were mistaken. You believed you were being attacked and you were not. On the criminal side, this is treated as a mistake about the facts and it removes intent, though negligence may remain.

On the civil side the rule is written down and it is harsher. Article 338 of the Código Civil (Civil Code) says that if you act "in the mistaken supposition" that the conditions for direct action or self-defence exist, you are obliged to compensate the damage caused, unless the mistake was excusable. In other words you can be acquitted of a crime and still be ordered to pay. The civil and criminal tracks in Portugal are separate, and an acquittal does not automatically close the civil claim.

4. Direct action: the article for getting your own property back

Article 336 of the Civil Code covers what the Penal Code's self-defence article does not: recovering something that is yours. It permits the use of force "to realise or secure one's own right", but only when four conditions all hold:

• direct action is indispensable, because it is impossible to reach the normal coercive means (that is, the police and the courts) in time;
• without it the right would be practically nullified;
• the person does not exceed what is necessary to avoid the loss; and
• the action does not sacrifice interests superior to the ones being protected.

That last condition is the one that decides the road case. A person's physical safety is an interest of a completely different order from a stolen phone or wallet. Running someone over to recover property sacrifices a manifestly superior interest, and article 336 does not cover it. The Civil Code's own self-defence article, 337, sets the same limit in different words: the harm caused must not be "manifestly greater" than the harm that would have resulted from the aggression.

5. The arrest you are allowed to make

Portugal does have a citizen's arrest, and it is narrower than most people think. Article 255 of the Code of Criminal Procedure says that in a case of flagrante delito (caught in the act) for a crime punishable with a prison sentence:

• any judicial authority or police body shall make the arrest; and
• any person may make the arrest, but only if one of those authorities is neither present nor able to be called in useful time.

The second limb is a fallback, not a parallel power. If a police officer is fifty metres away, or a call would bring one in time, a private arrest is not authorised. And having made one, "the person who made the arrest immediately hands the detainee over" to a judicial authority or police force, which draws up a summary record. You do not hold anyone, question anyone or take anything from anyone. Holding someone beyond that point risks the crime of sequestro under article 158 of the Penal Code, which carries up to three years or a fine, and much more if the detention lasts or causes injury.

Article 256 defines flagrante delito generously: a crime being committed or just committed, and also the case where the person is "pursued by anyone immediately after the crime, or found with objects or signs that clearly show that they have just committed it".

Two limits are worth knowing. Where the crime requires a complaint from the victim to be prosecuted, the arrest is only maintained if the victim exercises that right in the act immediately following. Simple theft under article 203 and simple assault under article 143 are both in that category, which ties this directly to the six-month complaint clock covered in our guide to queixa versus denúncia. And where the crime requires a private accusation, there is no arrest at all, only identification of the offender.

6. The offences you are exposed to if the defence fails

It helps to know the size of what you are arguing against. If legítima defesa is rejected, these are the articles that apply:

• Simple assault (article 143): up to 3 years or a fine. Requires a complaint. The court may waive the penalty where there were mutual injuries and it is not proved who struck first, or where the person merely retaliated against the aggressor.
• Serious assault (article 144): 2 to 10 years, where the injury removes an important organ or limb, gravely and permanently disfigures, gravely impairs capacity for work or the use of the body, causes a particularly painful or permanent illness, or creates danger to life.
• Aggravation by result (article 147): if death results from an assault, the sentence for that assault is increased by one third at both the minimum and the maximum.
• Homicide (article 131): 8 to 16 years.
• Privileged homicide (article 133): 1 to 5 years, where the killing was done under "comprehensible violent emotion, compassion, despair or a motive of relevant social or moral value" that sensibly diminishes guilt. This is the article that catches many failed self-defence cases.

For scale, the crime you were defending yourself against carries its own numbers: robbery under article 210 runs from 1 to 8 years, and from 8 to 16 if death results.

7. Carrying something "for protection" is its own offence

This is the part that most often catches newcomers, because the objects sold openly online are not lawful to carry here.

Under Lei n.º 5/2006, the Regime Jurídico das Armas e suas Munições (Legal Regime for Weapons and Ammunition), class E covers exactly the things people buy for self-defence:

• defence aerosols (pepper spray) that are homologated under European legislation and cannot be confused with weapons of another class or with other objects;
• electrical weapons up to 200,000 volts, with a safety mechanism, not resembling another class of weapon or another object;
• industrially produced firearms and ammunition capable only of firing non-metallic bullets, designed from the outset to eliminate any possibility of lethal aggression, and homologated by a member state.

Class E items are not freely carried. Article 9 says their acquisition, possession, use and carrying may be authorised to holders of a licença E, or to holders of a class B, B1, C or D licence, a home-possession licence or a special licence. Article 16 sets the conditions for a licence E: over 18, in full enjoyment of civil rights, demonstrably in need of the licence, of good standing, and holding a medical certificate under article 23. "Demonstrably in need" is a real hurdle, not a formality, and the application has to state the justification.

Everything one rung down is worse. Article 86, number 1, paragraph d) makes it a crime punishable with up to 4 years in prison or a fine of up to 480 days to carry, among other things:

• a defence aerosol that is not homologated under class E, or any gas-launching weapon;
• an electrical weapon that does not meet the class E specification;
• a baton, an extensible baton or an electric baton;
• an automatic or flick knife, a stiletto, a butterfly knife, a throwing knife, a throwing star, a card with a concealed blade, or a knuckleduster;
• a bladed weapon concealed as another object; and, crucially,
• "other bladed weapons or devices or instruments with no defined application that can be used as a weapon of aggression, where the bearer does not justify possessing them".

That final catch-all is why a baseball bat kept in the boot of a car with no bat, ball or team to go with it is a real legal risk in Portugal, and why the spray a friend brought from abroad is not the harmless precaution it looks like. Under class A, defence aerosols outside the class E definition, gas-launching weapons and extensible or electric batons are outright prohibited; the latter are reserved to the armed forces and security services.

And there is a sting in the tail. Article 86, number 3 provides that penalties for crimes committed with a weapon are aggravated by one third at both limits, and number 4 says a crime counts as committed with a weapon whenever any participant carries one at the time, visible or concealed, even if they are properly licensed. So if a confrontation goes wrong and you were lawfully carrying, the licence protects you from the possession charge but increases the sentence for whatever else happened.

8. Defending someone else, and defending against a danger that is not a person

Article 32 covers "the agent or of a third party", so intervening to protect a stranger is on exactly the same footing as protecting yourself. The same necessity test applies.

Where the danger is not a human aggression at all, a different article governs. Article 34, direito de necessidade (right of necessity), makes an act lawful where it is an adequate means to avert a current danger, provided the agent did not voluntarily create the danger (unless acting to protect a third party), the interest saved is sensibly superior to the one sacrificed, and it is reasonable to require the injured party to bear that sacrifice. This is the article for breaking a car window to get a child or a dog out of it in August heat, not article 32.

Article 35 goes one step further with estado de necessidade desculpante (excusing state of necessity): a person acts without guilt where they commit an unlawful act adequate to avert a current danger, not removable in any other way, threatening life, physical integrity, honour or liberty, and where it would not be reasonable to require different conduct in the circumstances.

9. Six practical conclusions

1. Force is lawful while it is happening, not afterwards. The single most common mistake is acting after the aggression has ended. Once the person is running away, call 112.
2. Use the least that works. Necessity is the statutory test. Anything beyond the minimum that would have stopped the attack is excess, and excess makes the act unlawful even if the sentence is reduced.
3. Fear is a real defence, anger is not. Article 33, number 2, forgives excess caused by disturbance, fear or fright. It does not forgive excess caused by fury or by wanting to punish someone.
4. Property does not buy a person's safety. Both codes cap defence of property below serious harm to a person. Neither one will cover injuring someone to recover a phone.
5. You may arrest, but only as a fallback, and you must hand over immediately. If the police are reachable in time, the private arrest is not authorised.
6. Do not carry a "self-defence" object without a licence. Non-homologated pepper spray, batons, extensible batons, stun devices outside the class E limits and flick knives are all criminal to carry, up to four years or 480 days' fine, and possession aggravates any other charge by a third.

Living here does not require carrying anything. Portugal's crime picture is unusually favourable by European standards, though it is not static: Porto's police command recorded 10.9 percent more offences this year with 8.4 percent fewer violent ones, and the risk most visitors and residents actually meet is pickpocketing concentrated around Belém and São Jorge Castle, which is a crime you report rather than one you fight. If something does happen, the useful next step is the procedure set out in our guide to reporting a crime in Portugal, including the free interpreter and the offences you can file online.

Sources

Primary law throughout, read in consolidated form on the Diário da República: Código Penal, articles 31 to 39 (grounds excluding unlawfulness and guilt), 131, 133, 143, 144, 145, 147, 153, 154, 158, 203, 210 and 212; Código de Processo Penal, articles 254 to 257 and 261; Código Civil, articles 336 to 340; and Lei n.º 5/2006 of 23 February, the Regime Jurídico das Armas e suas Munições, articles 2, 3, 4, 9, 16 and 86.