Lisbon City Council will “very soon” present changes to the municipal programme Lojas com História (Shops with History), which currently has 154 recognized establishments in operation, with 32 spaces closed, most of them by mutual agreement between landlord and tenant.
“They didn’t close 150 Shops with History, but 32,” said Diogo Moura (CDS-PP), Councillor for Culture and the Economy, at the Lisbon Municipal Assembly meeting, as part of a topical debate on the closure of stores in the city, requested by the PCP municipal group.
Rejecting the claim made by some MPs that hundreds of Historic Shops have closed, Diogo Moura explained that there is a record of the closure of 32 distinguished establishments, of which “29 closed by mutual agreement between landlord and tenant, three were relocated and three were closed temporarily”.
“At the moment, we have 154” Shops with History in operation, the mayor revealed, adding that in the current 2021-2025 term, 15 establishments have been distinguished in two years and it is expected that seven more will be classified this month, making a total of 23 newly recognized spaces.
In the debate, PCP deputy Natacha Amaro said that “the lack of rent control and speculative rent increases in recent years have been one of the major drivers of the wave of closures in commercial spaces”, and called for an urgent review of the municipal program Lojas com História (Shops with History).
“Where is Lisbon City Council?” asked PS MP Pedro Roque, lamenting the lack of an integrated vision for public space and considering that “the open bar policy of this executive kills any possibility of diversifying commerce in some areas of the city”.
The president of the Santa Maria Maior parish council, Miguel Coelho (PS), said that “almost a hundred stores have closed in his area and many of them were establishments with a lot of history”, noting that this was due to the “rent law, the touristification of low-quality masses and the persistence of zero licensing”.
The Socialist mayor argued that the next government should be persuaded to eliminate zero licensing, at least in the historic centers, noting that the stores that have closed have been replaced by “junk food stores, hostels and souvenir stores with no quality whatsoever”.
Regarding the recent closures of historic establishments, the Councillor for the Economy said that “it’s not worth demonizing and it’s important to be aware of the cases”, considering that “there is misinformation” and revealing that the council is working on changing the regulations for the Shops with History programme, in order to “increase the scope and possibility of distinction”.
Regarding the Ferin bookshop, Diogo Moura said that “it’s not true” that the landlord wanted to close it, explaining that “the tenants had a debt of hundreds of thousands of euros, decided to open another business in Bairro Alto, which has the support of Lisbon City Council, and decided on their own initiative to close that space”.
Playing an active intermediary role in this matter, the councillor said that in the case of Ferin there is already an investor interested in the same publishing area, who is negotiating with the landlord, which goes against a petition to safeguard the interior space of this establishment, all the architectural and aesthetic elements and the façade itself.
The Adriano Coelho haberdashery, which was due to close, was able to guarantee that the store will remain in place after the structural work in that space, said Diogo Moura.
As for the Campos barbershop, there was no rent increase, the tenant “had a rent that he hadn’t paid for some time and made an illegal subcontract for more than double what he had to pay”, but the space will remain and “the landlord has already received several proposals to occupy the space and has not accepted any because it is in the restaurant area, because he wants to keep all the architectural and aesthetic elements of the space”, he revealed.
Regarding Casa Chinesa, the shopkeeper and the owner of the building are the same and have decided to close the space, explained the mayor.
With regard to the Bota Alta restaurant, where the rent has risen from 1,300 to 11,000 euros, Diogo Moura said that the tenant had an old lease and decided to switch to a new one, thus falling outside the protection provided by law for Historic Shops.
