The Lisboa Brief, Week of 29 August 2026: A Year On, Carris Still Cannot Say When the Lifts Reopen, Moedas Counts Zero of His 200 Police, and the Baixa Loses Its Last Bank

A year on from the Elevador da Glória, Carris has published a page of answers and still cannot name a date for reopening the four lifts that stay shut. Elsewhere: the mayor says not one of the 200 police promised in May has arrived, central Lisbon's anaesthetists are filing liability disclaimers, and the Baixa is losing the last institution that made it a financial quarter.

A Year On, Carris Publishes a Page and Still Cannot Name a Date

Thursday 3 September is the first anniversary of the derailment on the Calçada da Glória that killed 16 people and injured 24, from 15 nationalities. Carris marked the approach on Wednesday with an online page: a chronology, a set of frequently asked questions, an account of what has changed inside the company. What it does not contain is a reopening date. Four pieces of the historic network are still shut, the ascensores da Glória, do Lavra and da Bica and the Santa Justa lift, with only the Graça funicular back since 30 April. Carris says the rest will return "with the greatest possible speed", but that the work waits on validations from the Comissão Técnica Independente.

The internal changes are real: a new engineering and methods department inside the electrical-mode maintenance directorate, and within it a Núcleo de Ascensores e Elevadores created to supervise and inspect the maintenance of these machines. Carris revoked its contracts with MNTC in November and moved four to LIFTECH. On outsourcing, the criticism that has trailed it all year, it does not retreat: it is reinforcing its own teams, but "some very specific interventions will always have to be assured by certified external partners." Of 40 registered victims, four compensations are concluded, and the memorial on the Calçada is listed for next month, still undated.

Strup, the transport workers' union, says the questions it put to City Hall and Carris on 17 September 2025 are still unanswered. It will lay flowers at the foot of the Calçada at 10.30am on Thursday, for all the victims and for André Marques, the 40-year-old Carris brakeman who died on the carriage. And Livre, after meeting the board in June, reported that Carris means to replace the Glória and Lavra equipment outright with a modern certified system, retiring funiculars that have run for more than a century.

"We Still Have None": Moedas on the 200 Police

Carlos Moedas met the PSP's national director on Thursday and came away without agreement. On 12 May the prime minister promised Lisbon and Porto 200 extra officers each, plus 100 municipal police for Lisbon, with no deadline attached. The mayor's count three months on is blunt: none, and none. The Interior Ministry says the reinforcement "is already under way" through Corpo de Intervenção units moved to patrol duty since June. Both statements can be true at once, which is the problem with the promise.

The Capital's Health Week

The Southern Zone Doctors' Union told members on Thursday to begin filing declarations declining functional responsibility, the shield Amadora-Sintra's nurses raised in July. The cause is a shortage of anaesthetists across the Unidade Local de Saúde de São José, which runs several of central Lisbon's largest hospitals; scheduled surgery has been cut, and at Santa Marta the union says the emergency team is down to one anaesthetist.

Primary care points the same way. Lisboa e Vale do Tejo added 48,948 people without a family doctor in the year to June, while the North and Centre took roughly the same number off their lists. Loures and Odivelas is the worst unit in the country: a third of residents have none.

Two Moves on the Map

Fidelidade takes its new Entrecampos head office next month and the Banco de Portugal will follow it onto the old Feira Popular ground, taking more than 1,400 staff into one building. That closes out a twenty-year plan to keep the Baixa a financial quarter; downtown keeps the treasury counter, the historic seat and the Money Museum.

At the other end of the market, the average student room advertised in Lisbon went from about 500 euros to 550 in under a week after Sunday's university placements. Supply grew by 942 rooms; prices rose 10 percent anyway. The state's scholarship reference value for a Lisbon room stops at 500.

In the Courts

A Lisbon administrative court annulled the Universidade Nova de Lisboa's second rectoral election in five months, over eight days' notice where the university's rules require a month. Nova will appeal. The inquiry into the Esquadra do Rato gained six more months because prosecutors now believe far more officers were involved than they first counted; it holds 23 arguidos, seven in pre-trial detention. And Isaltino Morais refused a 2,550 euro fine, so the Court of Auditors will try the Oeiras mayor over appointments made without competition, alongside Seixal's mayor and his predecessor.

Also Around the Region

Martifer has won the steelwork and facades for the Humberto Delgado expansion, 3,924 tonnes of structure to be erected inside an airport that never closes. Three months after asking creditors to forgive 90 percent of a 25 million euro debt, the holding company behind Estrela da Amadora sold for about 40 million to a German group backed by Thomas Müller and Mats Hummels. Mafra shut an Ericeira hostel that had traded two years unregistered. And the petition against building inside the Sintra-Cascais Natural Park passed 7,500 signatures, forcing a plenary debate.

On in Lisbon

Festas da Rua runs from 4 September to 4 October, putting music and open-air cinema into public spaces across the city. It opens at the Vale do Silêncio in Olivais with Divas Pop on 4 September and the Gulbenkian Choir and Orchestra on 5 September, then Festa na Praça on 12 September with Mariza and NAPA. The Feira da Luz runs daily in Carnide until 27 September. And Lisbon hosts the ASI Best Sommelier of the World from 11 to 17 October.

That is the capital's week. The Lisboa Brief returns next Saturday.

Feature image: the two carriages of the Ascensor da Bica, out of service since September 2025, passing on the Rua da Bica de Duarte Belo, by Pedro J Pacheco (CC BY-SA 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons.