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March 4, 2013 Last Saturday’s “Que Se Lixe a Troika” (Fuck the Troika) demonstrations represent a qualitative as well as quantitative shift for the anti-austerity movement in Portugal, says socialist activist Mark Bergfeld, who recently attended the Left Bloc Congress. In more than 40 towns and cities across Portugal, 1.5 million people (800,000 in Lisbon) took to the streets against the government’s slavish submission to the dictates of the Troika of IMF, ECB, and EU. In the wake of the first “Que Se Lixe a Troika” demonstration on September 15, an ongoing militant dockers’ strike, and a general strike on November 14 of last year, Saturday’s demonstration is starting to tackle the unfinished business of the 1974 Portuguese Revolution. Portugal’s rulers are trembling. In the run-up to the demonstration on Saturday, the Lisbon City Council removed all loose cobblestones along the demonstration route in the city centre. This comes after protests have been steadily radicalizing in the course of a few months. Clashes between police and protesters in front of parliament, revolutionary murals going up in city centres, protesters piling up rubbish in front of banks, and government ministers being insulted by the public are commonplace in Portugal 2013. Students at the ISCTE University in Lisbon hit the headlines in recent weeks when they heckled Deputy Prime Minister Miguel Relvas in front of rolling television cameras and forced Relvas to flee the building while students sang the revolutionary anthem “Grândola, Vila Morena.” The action resonated with millions of people glued to their TV screens as Relvas has been under attack for obtaining his university degree from a private university in a matter of a year. Once labeled “the good pupil of the Eurozone,” Portugal is quickly turning into a Greek-style laboratory of austerity and neo-liberalism. Unemployment now stands at 17.5% with one and a half million people out of work. According to Eurostat figures about 24% of the Portuguese population live below the poverty threshold. The economy is estimated to contract by two points this year. While this manifests itself in a sharp drop in domestic consumption the continued instability of the Eurozone adds fuel to the flames. Cuts to healthcare and the welfare state as well as diminishing purchasing power is making life unbearable for millions of Portuguese people.