Taxi professionals from all over the country gathered at Lisbon’s Park of Nations early on Monday morning and set off for a slow-drive along the city’s main arteries at around 9am.
But, instead of following on with a previously-planned route, many of the drivers congregated by the Clock Roundabout near Lisbon airport and only called off their stance at around 2.30am the following morning after police threatened to block their vehicles in.
Traffic to the airport was plugged for some 15 hours as the drivers refused to move their vehicles.
ANA airport management officials had already issued a warning urging passengers travelling from the airport that day to allow more time for expected disruption to traffic in the vicinity due to the protest.
Confrontations between protestors and police broke out during the course of the day, with a number of people, including journalists, sustaining injuries and vehicles being damaged.
One man, apparently completely unrelated to the protest, sustained serious injuries after throwing himself off of a fly-over bridge over the Clock roundabout amid the frenzied assembly.
Three people, all taxi drivers, were arrested during the action. According to public prosecutors in Lisbon all three are suspected of the crime of damage of property. One of the first two to be brought before a judge is also suspected of possessing a prohibited weapon and of physical assault.
Police had detained two men on Monday at a highway roundabout near the airport that taxis had blocked as part of their protest, and a third man near the airport itself.
One of the men at the roundabout was said to have been detained for having thrown objects at a police car and the other for hurling a pyrotechnic devise at officers.
The other man, a taxi driver, was detained for vandalising a car used for passenger services with the Uber online platform against whose planned legalisation the protest was called.
The trio now face a summary trial.
At noon on Monday, six representatives of the main taxi associations were summoned by the Environment Ministry for an “emergency meeting” following the incidents.
Florêncio Almeida, the head of Portugal’s taxi association ANTRAL, has said more action will be staged this coming Monday, 17 October, when the drivers will gather outside Belem Palace in Lisbon and town halls in Faro and Porto to call attention to their struggles.
However, on Wednesday this week, a representative for the FPT Taxi Union told RTP they would not be taking part in the action, and that the decision to stage more protests had been made rashly.
Meanwhile Lisbon Mayor Fernando Medina has said Monday’s taxi drivers’ protest was “damaging” for the sector, and he believes there should be a single rate for all taxis serving the airport.
Mayor Medina made the comments during his weekly opinion slot on news channel TVI24, but failed to explain how the measure would work and what advantages it would bring.
Addressing the battle between taxi drivers and online platforms like Uber and Cabify, the Mayor said the issue surpasses technology and is a “very complex problem.”
Curiously, the protest seems to have further backfired after the Uber app became the most downloaded app from the App Store in Portugal on the day of the action following the attention drawn to it by the protest.