Lisbon, July 27, 2026 (Lusa) - Half a year after the storms that mainly hit the centre region of Portugal in January and February, some progress has been made, but the reconstruction of the affected areas is still far from complete as regards the repair of homes, businesses and municipal infrastructure.
Several storms, notably Storms Kristin, Leonardo and Marta, struck the mainland over a three-week period from late January, causing at least 19 deaths – more than half of them during recovery work – and leaving several hundred people injured, homeless or displaced, particularly in the Central, Lisbon and Tagus Valley, and Alentejo regions.
More than 35,000 homes were affected across the country; over one million people were left without electricity; half a million customers were without telecommunications services; more than 18,000 claims or emergency incidents were recorded by the end of the first half of February; and more than 200,000 claims were submitted.
The estimated losses exceed €5.3 billion.
The Government declared that 90 municipalities in the areas affected by Storm Kristin were in a state of emergency, a declaration which entails a range of support measures and exceptional provisions; it subsequently extended this status to the whole country, provided the damage was caused by the storms.
In the wake of the storms, the PTRR programme – Portugal Transformation, Recovery and Resilience – was announced at the end of April, with a total budget of €22.6 billion to implement 96 measures by 2035, aimed at the country's economic recovery following the consequences of the bad weather.
These are the key points regarding the most recent developments relating to this year's storms:
+++ Support from the European Solidarity Fund +++
Portugal is to receive an advance of €65.37 million from the European Union (EU) Solidarity Fund to finance recovery following the «train» of storms.
The advance payment follows a request submitted by Portugal to the EU, stating that the storms caused damage in excess of €5.3 billion, through which the Government hopes to receive around €250 million.
The funding approved by Brussels is an initial payment; the allocation of further aid will have to be approved by the European Parliament and the Council of the EU.
On 2 July, the leader of the Reconstruction Task Force for the Central Region of the country, Paulo Fernandes, revealed that the support mobilised to date for the damage caused by the storms totalled €4.2 billion, involving insurance companies, public programmes, the Portuguese Development Bank, social security and various government departments.
Of this amount, around €3.6 billion had actually been paid out.
+++ Ombudsman's Office opens 15 cases +++
The Ombudsman's Office has launched 15 complaint proceedings after receiving around fifty complaints relating to the consequences of Storm Kristin.
Among the grounds for complaint were the slowness and difficulties in accessing public support, delays in restoring essential services – notably electricity, communications and telephone services – problems relating to claims for compensation from public bodies and insurers, and «damage to public infrastructure and risks to people and property, particularly on roads, embankments and other infrastructure».
The bodies most frequently cited in the complaints received are local authorities, the Central Regional Coordination and Development Commission (CCDR), Infraestruturas de Portugal, E-Redes and «other public administration bodies with responsibilities for managing support and restoring services».
+++ Homes +++
Around €49 million had been paid out by 20 July to support the repair of homes damaged by bad weather in the Central Region, according to the CCDR do Centro, which added that the process was not yet complete.
According to this body, of the 25,723 applications in the Central Region, 17,034 had been decided by that day and 11,839 had been paid out, whilst a further 5,195 had been rejected and 6,473 applications remained under assessment by the municipal authorities, with a further 1,682 under review by the CCDRC.
In the Central region, of the 73 municipalities with applications for home repair grants, 26 had already finalised all their applications.
In Lisbon and the Tagus Valley (LVT), comprising 52 municipalities, the CCDR reported that, as of 15 July, €25.3 million had been paid out in grants to families whose homes had been affected by the bad weather.
Of the 9,840 applications submitted to the support programme for owner-occupied and permanent housing in this region, 9,558 had been processed, with payments made to 5,899 beneficiaries, totalling around €25.3 million. A total of 3,659 applications were rejected due to ineligibility, insufficient documentation or the applicants withdrawing their applications.
The Government received 35,905 applications for support to rebuild homes in the affected areas, of which nearly 17,600 were for support of less than €5,000 and nearly 18,300 were for support of more than €5,000.
+++ Employment +++
Around 22,500 workers benefited from incentives to retain jobs in companies affected by the storms, said the minister of the economy and territorial cohesion, Manuel Castro Almeida, earlier this month.
According to government figures, 5,500 workers were placed on simplified ‘lay-off' (reduction in working hours or suspension of contracts), whilst 123,500 workers benefited from the temporary exemption from social security contributions.
In districts where a state of emergency was declared, workers on ‘lay-off' received their full gross salary up to a limit of three minimum wages (€2,760).
+++ Payment deferrals and loans +++
Businesses and households have payment deferrals on loans related to the storms until the end of April 2027.
In the case of businesses, they must already have benefited from support measures or exemptions from social security contributions, or from the ‘lay-off' scheme. In addition, they must have recorded a fall in turnover of more than 20% in the first quarter or compared with the monthly average for the three months preceding January 2026.
For households, the moratorium applies to loans for owner-occupied and permanent housing relating to properties located in the affected municipalities and where the beneficiaries have been covered by the ‘lay-off' scheme or have been unemployed since 28 January 2026 due to the effects of Storm Kristin on companies based in or operating in those regions.
In early June, the Banco Português de Fomento (BPF) announced that it would lend €1 billion to companies and public bodies whose activities had been affected by the storms.
Of the total amount, €500 million is earmarked for small and medium-sized enterprises, in loans with terms of up to 12 years, in addition to a further €250 million in funding for applications channelled through commercial banks and another €250 million for public bodies to finance infrastructure (such as roads), with terms of up to 30 years in this case.
+++ Agriculture +++
The Government has extended the deadline for submitting applications for extraordinary aid aimed at recovering from agricultural losses caused by Storm Kristin until 15 September and has extended the measures to beekeepers.
According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, the amendment aims to enhance the effectiveness of the support scheme by increasing the number of beneficiaries covered and adapting the measures to the different realities of the agricultural sector.
On 22 June, the Management Committee for the Common Organisation of Agricultural Markets approved €30 million in aid for Portuguese farmers affected by the storms, and at the time, the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries assured that all possible sources were being utilised to support farmers and acknowledged delays in the allocation of funds.
At the time, the aid mobilised to address the effects of the storms exceeded €623 million in the agriculture and forestry sectors.
In the Lisbon and Tagus Valley region, by mid-July more than 2,119 applications had been submitted relating to losses estimated at around €153 million, of which 851 were validated and sent to the Institute for the Financing of Agriculture and Fisheries (IFAP) for payment, totalling more than €5 million, according to the CCDR-LVT.
+++ Forests +++
By 15 July, almost 20,000 kilometres of roads and forest tracks had been cleared in the affected areas of the country, according to the minister of the economy and territorial cohesion.
Castro Almeida noted that «the country lacks the resources; there are not enough people or equipment to clear all the fallen trees» and emphasised that municipalities have prioritised clearing those that pose the greatest danger in the event of fires, due to their proximity to homes and roads, and that this will account for only around 10% of the felled timber.
+++ Local Authorities +++
The National Association of Parishes (Anafre) has demanded a response regarding funds earmarked for damage caused by Storm Kristin which have not yet reached the parishes.
Anafre's president, Francisco Branco de Brito, said that the association, «despite having made repeated requests», has not yet been able to arrive at a total figure for what the parishes require, although estimates point to «substantial sums».
Anafre has been «very critical» of the way the damage assessment was carried out, arguing that the parishes should have been able to liaise directly with the Regional Coordination and Development Commissions (CCDRs) rather than through the local authorities.
Minister Castro Almeida stated on 9 July that the local authorities affected by the storms will receive funding to cover proven damage to infrastructure.
He also noted that many local authorities have received advance payments from the State and that the remainder may apply for a funding scheme comprising 60% non-repayable grant and 40% loan.
Exceptional financial measures for the recovery of local authorities affected by the storms allow councils to take out short-term loans until 31 August without prior authorisation from municipal assemblies.
The Government had already increased the Municipal Emergency Fund (FEM) by €75 million as an advance «on account of any financial aid contracts that may be concluded», for the immediate recovery of schools, municipal roads and other local authority infrastructure.
Municipalities in the Central region alone reported damage to municipal infrastructure and facilities amounting to around €961 million, according to the CCDR for the Central region.
However, the Government emphasised that the figures initially reported by the local councils were merely estimates, and it is now necessary to ascertain the actual damage to roads, water networks, sanitation systems, schools and other facilities to ensure «equitable» treatment across municipalities.
+++ Transport routes and roads +++
On 15 July, the minister for infrastructure stated that 21 roads affected by the storms remained closed, noting that «they have problems whose resolution involves a high degree of technical complexity».
In the wake of the storms, Infraestruturas de Portugal (IP) recorded more than 300 instances where sections of road in the network it manages were completely cut off, with repairs in some cases likely to take several months.
The state-owned company estimated that repairs to damage caused by the storms on the Oeste and Beira Baixa lines should be completed by the end of the year.
The bad weather also affected electricity and water supply infrastructure, which collapsed and took more than a month to be restored to a stable state.
The cost of restoring the electricity network following Storm Kristin, which mainly affected the country's Central region, stands at around €110 million, E-Redes revealed to the Lusa news agency on Friday.
By 10 July, the Energy Services Regulatory Authority (ERSE) had received around 60 requests for intervention following around a hundred complaints in the customer complaints register in the wake of the bad weather at the start of the year, according to data sent to the Lusa news agency.
Outage duration, difficulties in communicating with the network operator, and losses incurred or damage to equipment are the main complaints.
+++ Telecommunications +++
Around 1,600 customers, mostly in the Leiria region, were still without fixed-line services on 21 July, the National Communications Authority (Anacom) reported, emphasising that these customers represent less than 1% of the fixed-line connections initially affected.
Anacom stated that the majority of the affected connections are expected to be restored by the end of the first week of August.
By 15 July, Anacom had received around 2,200 written complaints relating to the extreme weather events at the start of the year, concerning delays in restoring services and recurring faults after repairs, difficulties in contacting operators, billing for the period of service disruption, and the scheduling of technical interventions.
The storms caused problems for more than 300,000 customers of the electronic communications operators Meo, NOS, Vodafone and Nowo, according to the National Communications Authority (Anacom).
+++ Insurance +++
Insurance companies paid out or set aside €1.4 billion in compensation in relation to the 218,000 claims registered following the storms, the chairman of the Insurance and Pension Funds Supervisory Authority (ASF) said on 21 July.
Gabriel Bernardino noted that 99.6% of the claims reported up to 10 July had undergone assessment, 84.5% had been closed and 88.4% had been settled.
The chairman of the insurance regulator estimated total losses at €5.3 billion, with 26% of this amount being «covered by insurance policies».
By region, the number of claims reached 85,000 in the district of Leiria, whilst Santarém, Lisbon and Coimbra recorded between 22,000 and 26,000 each.
According to the official, the number of reported claims is highest in the case of residential properties (179,000).
He also acknowledged that some insurers are posting losses due to the impact of the series of storms that hit Portugal, but assured that the market is «robust».
+++ Labour shortage +++
The leader of the Task Force for the Reconstruction of the Central Region of the Country stated that the shortage of workers is one of the main constraints on the execution of reconstruction work and emphasised the importance of the immigrant workforce, particularly in the forestry and construction sectors.
To meet these needs, the leader indicated that the Mission Structure is liaising with the Government, the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA) and the «main forestry organisations» to identify skilled workers who can be recruited from abroad.
+++ Displaced people +++
In Almada, Setúbal, several families who were left homeless due to bad weather and landslides in the district were still living in temporary accommodation in July.
Some families have moved for the fourth time this month since they were unable to return to their homes.
RCS/AYLS // AYLS
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