After the storms passed, Portuguese municipalities face the challenge of rebuilding devastated infrastructure in a context of permanent urgency, where multiple clocks with different rhythms coexist: that of emergency, that of bureaucracy, that of response capacity, and that of populations waiting for solutions. Municipalities were on the front line during the critical period, but now face the difficulty of accelerating processes without compromising the technical quality of interventions, since many solutions require geotechnical studies, structural assessments, engineering projects, and public procurement procedures.
Law No. 42/2026, of 7 August, created a temporary exceptional regime that relaxes financial rules for municipalities in a state of calamity, notably allowing short-term loans. Order No. 9675-B/2026 opened the application procedure for the Municipal Emergency Fund, providing for State co-financing of up to 60% of eligible costs. However, local officials warn that these measures, although positive, are insufficient given the scale of the damage, which in some cases reaches values similar to the municipal budget. Many municipalities had to resort to bank financing to proceed with urgent interventions, compromising their future financial sustainability.
The growing impatience of populations results from the daily experience of restricted roads, uninhabitable dwellings, and interventions that have not yet begun. The article emphasises that this dissatisfaction should not be turned into political opposition, as the calamity had no party colour. Rapid reconstruction cannot mean hasty or poorly studied solutions, at the risk of losing tomorrow what is recovered today. Small and medium-sized municipalities do not have the financial capacity to absorb successive calamities, and pushing costs onto municipal loans would mean financing the present by compromising the future, worsening inequalities between territories with different financial capacities.
