The Porto Brief, Week of 20 September 2026: The VCI Lorry Ban Draws 27 Infractions in 48 Hours, Parking Is Next, and Two Sites Bought for Mosques Find No Bidder

Welcome to the Porto Brief, your weekly view from the banks of the Douro. The lorry ban on the VCI finished its first week, the council said parking is the next thing it will rewrite, and a fire took the roof off a building on the Aliados before dawn on Saturday. Your roundup for 13 to 20 September.

Week one of the lorry ban

The ban on heavy goods vehicles using the Via de Cintura Interna took effect at seven on Tuesday morning. By nine on Wednesday evening, a full 48 hours later, the PSP had recorded 27 infractions. Commander Marco Almeida told Lusa that the level of compliance from hauliers and firms had been broadly good, that the force cannot check every lorry on the road, and that it is staying out there doing as much explaining as enforcing: some drivers, he said, are still learning the digital platform on which an exempt journey has to be registered in advance.

The rule covers goods vehicles over 3,500 kilos with three or more axles, 7h to 21h on weekdays, and journeys loading or unloading in Porto or Vila Nova de Gaia are exempt if registered first. Pedro Duarte was candid about the scale of what it fixes: it "will not solve the traffic problem on the VCI", he told Lusa, but it can be a start. We went through the first week's numbers here.

Something else is moving on the same road. The council told Lusa on Monday it is closing a protocol with Infraestruturas de Portugal, which owns the VCI, to take over parts of running it: landscaping, clearing the ground alongside, and managing accesses and junctions. One example Duarte gave is a permanent tow-truck arrangement, so a small collision stops choking the whole ring.

Parking is next

On Tuesday the mayor said a new parking policy will be presented before the end of the year, and described its direction plainly: less surface parking, priority for residents. "It will make it harder to park a car for anyone coming in from outside the city, or anyone away from where they live," he said. Asked why some neighbourhoods have far more resident-only bays than others, he said correcting that imbalance is part of the point. The argument underneath it is that public transport has to become more worthwhile than driving, and parking is the lever the council controls.

Five runners still in hospital

Sunday's Porto half marathon was run in about 30 degrees, and a number of competitors collapsed. By Thursday, five athletes were still in hospital, four of them in intensive care, split between São João and Santo António. Santo António said one patient had moved to a normal ward and that of the two left in intensive care, one had a guarded prognosis. Run Porto's founder Jorge Teixeira defended the event, saying the medical cover was "exemplary" with a 76-strong team, that all five were breathing unaided, and that many runners were not prepared for the course in that heat.

Fire on the Aliados

At 2h26 on Saturday, fire broke out in the roof of a building under renovation on the Avenida dos Aliados. Twenty-five firefighters and nine vehicles brought it under control by about 4h52. Nobody was hurt and the cause is under investigation. It is the same avenue where the council condemned 19 of its 56 trees a fortnight ago.

Two sites, no bidders

The public auctions of two properties bought by the previous executive to convert into mosques both went deserted on Wednesday. The first, near the Batalha, at least drew an audience; the second had nobody in the room but council finance staff and reporters. The executive approved the sale in July over PS votes against, after Duarte said building mosques "is not a priority" for his administration, while insisting the auction did not stop the religious communities bidding themselves. The original proposals, drawn up under Rui Moreira and pulled before any vote, cited a Muslim community of roughly 7,000 people in the city.

Around the north

Porto has tendered 2.4 million euros for a cycle route to Matosinhos, about a fifth of which shares the carriageway with cars. Five student residences in Lisbon and Porto, 883 beds in all, have passed to a European fund for a reported 80 million euros. Nurses at São João want the ULS to hire, arguing the wear on emergency staff justifies a hardship allowance. A plenary of about a hundred academics at the new Universidade Técnica do Porto demanded negotiations on the transition out of the polytechnic, full recognition of service and elected rather than appointed management. And preparatory works on the Porto to Oiã high-speed line start at the end of this month, from the Aveiro end.

Further out, the composer César Viana resigned as artistic director of the Guimarães religious music festival over the council's "institutional and commercial rapprochement" with Israel, after the mayor met Israel's ambassador. At Covas do Barroso, Coimbra researchers dated the grievance to well before the lithium project. And five hundred flights out of Lisbon, Porto and Faro sit inside easyJet's October cabin crew strike.

At the Dragão

The season's first clássico is tonight, 20h30 at the Estádio do Dragão. FC Porto go in top of the league on 18 points from six games, Benfica second on 16; a home win opens a five-point gap. Francesco Farioli refused to call it decisive, praised Marco Silva for getting his ideas into the Benfica side quickly, and said he had been watching Fulham tapes for the patterns. Froholdt is fit after a concussion; Nehuén Pérez and Fofana are out injured.

What's on, and the weather

The 36th Encontros da Imagem, the oldest photography festival in the country, opened on Friday and runs to 1 November, with more than 30 exhibitions across Braga, Guimarães, Porto, Vila Verde and Avintes. This year's theme is "Territórios do Imaginário: Lugares Encantados". At the Igreja da Lapa, the Irmandade shows the heart of D. Pedro IV in public on 25, 26 and 27 September. As for the sky: Porto is under a yellow heat warning until Tuesday evening, forecast at 32.8 degrees today and Monday, and then the break arrives from the north and Wednesday drops to about 22.6.

That is the week in the Invicta. If there is a story we have missed on your doorstep, just hit reply. The Portugal Brief

Feature image: the Paços do Concelho at the head of the Avenida dos Aliados, Porto, by Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton (CC BY-SA 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons.