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The common denominator is non-violence. A mixture of ingenuity, humour and nostalgia for the good old days is the recipe that wide sectors of society are following to express their outrage in the face of the social and economic debacle.
In the conservative government’s year and a half in office, the unemployment rate has climbed from 11 to 16.9 percent, while GDP fell by 3.2 percent in 2012 and one-quarter of the population of 10.6 million are facing poverty and social exclusion.Painting murals, which was popular three decades ago, is making a comeback.
Hundreds of young people are using paint and the walls of urban buildings across the country as a form of protest against the neoliberal free market policies of the government of Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho. Democracy does not just mean voting every four years, they argue.
One example is Marquês da Fronteira Avenue, one of Lisbon's main arteries, where dozens of people responded to a call by the Associação de Combate à Precariedade (Association to Combat Job Insecurity) and Precários Inflexíveis (Inflexible Precarious Workers), gathering on Sunday Feb. 24 to paint huge murals about the crisis, in an atmosphere of festive solidarity.