‘Housing is an open wound’: The political role of music in Portugal’s urban struggles

Portugal’s housing crisis, intensified by the 2008 financial crash and subsequent austerity policies, has sparked diverse forms of resistance, including artistic expression. This article explores how music functions as a mode of protest and political articulation in response to real estate speculation and tourist gentrification, focusing on a corpus of 36 songs and 20 video clips produced between 2016 and 2024, primarily in Lisbon and Porto. Drawing on autoethnographic research and critical discourse analysis, the study examines how musicians denounce neoliberal urban transformations, express collective grievances and contribute to framing housing rights as both a political and cultural issue. It identifies three core thematic axes in these musical narratives: the commodification of housing, displacement driven by tourism and the intersection of precarity, inequality and low wages. By bridging urban sociology, cultural resistance and critical housing studies, the article highlights how music operates not only as expression but as infrastructure of protest: mobilizing affects, sustaining memory and amplifying counter-hegemonic imaginaries in contexts of deepening socio-spatial injustice.