"We will hold a flash mob demonstration on October 9 in front of City Hall to express our dissatisfaction. 200 emergency golden blankets will be installed, and we need your support to show up and lie on them at 7 pm. for a great photo!" the Aqui Mora Gente residents' association announced in a Facebook post.

Fighting for the right to rest, Lisbon residents intend to protest against the intolerable levels of noise, insecurity, dirt and unhealthiness, degradation and disrepair of public spaces, and the operating conditions of commercial establishments.

"Join together for a better Lisbon for everyone," urges Aqui Mora Gente on the demonstration's poster.

The protest is scheduled for October 9, three days before the October 12 municipal elections, and a gathering is planned in front of City Hall, "transforming Praça do Município into a stage of urgency, fragility, and unity."

"The installation is not a spectacle, but a necessity. It is a cry for attention, a demand addressed to the authorities, a mirror held up to the city itself," emphasizes the Lisbon residents' association.

The demonstration takes the form of a 'flash mob' installation, with the residents' association predicting the creation of "a fleeting image, but one of enormous collective power," adding that, "in a coordinated gesture, the public will embody the growing malaise of a city deprived of its most basic right: the right to rest."

"At the centre of the work will be 200 emergency blankets, arranged in a strict grid. The blankets, with their metallic sheen, reflect both the surface of a vibrant city and the fatigue that permeates it. They are at once beds and signs: beds that evoke thousands of sleepless nights for residents, and alarm signals, declaring the emergency experienced by those suffering the consequences of inaction," explains Aqui Mora Gente.

The 'flash mob' also aims, according to the residents' association, to condense the intimacy of rest into the language of urgency, by replacing the softness of a sheet with the cold reflection of an emergency blanket: "What should have been banal has become a crisis; what should have been private has been forced to become public testimony."

Starting at 5 p.m., Praça do Município will begin to be transformed, with the grid-like blankets erecting "a silent architecture of discontent," and a cloth draped across the space proclaiming in two languages—Portuguese and English—the urgency of the hour: "Right to Rest".

According to Aqui Mora Gente, the installation will be completed at 6:30 p.m., awaiting the arrival of residents. At 7 p.m., they will be invited to lie down on the blankets, "aligning their bodies in a collective gesture of vulnerability and resistance." At that moment, the square will be converted into a communal room, "a public dormitory, a portrait of a city awakened against its own will."

“The act will be recorded in a single photograph” and, afterwards, the blankets and cloths will be removed and “nothing material will remain” at the site of the demonstration, informs the association, remembering that this final absence highlights the ephemeral nature of the protest and the precariousness of the right it defends, considering that “the right to rest is constantly threatened, slippery, fleeting, unless it is protected”.