Hundreds of trucks crawled from Paredes to Coimbra in a protest over diesel prices
Police counted 380 heavy vehicles, organisers 450 from 117 companies. Five hours along the A42, A41 and A1, no incidents, over a litre of diesel that has risen 63 cents since February.
Hundreds of trucks, most of them from the earthmoving and public-works sector, staged a slow-motion protest on Friday from Lordelo, in Paredes, to the Coimbra Sul junction, along the A42, A41 and A1 motorways. The GNR police counted 380 heavy vehicles during the morning; organisers put it at 450 from 117 companies. The convoy set off at 7:40am and reached Coimbra around 12:30pm, five hours later, without incident, though traffic backed up as it arrived.
The trigger is diesel: a litre of standard diesel has gone from €1.59 in February to €2.22 in September, 63 cents in seven months. The firms asked for “concrete answers” and for the same kind of support already given to passenger and freight transport, and counted it as a “first victory” that the infrastructure minister had admitted their sector had been forgotten.
The government has already approved two aid packages: €118 to €458 per vehicle for hire-and-reward freight operators, €30 million in total, and €420 per bus for private coach companies, worth €5 million. Neither reaches earthmoving firms, which is exactly the gap the organisers say they are protesting about.
Diesel had already set off alarms this summer: in July, the price logged its biggest single-week jump of the year, 13.5 cents from one Monday to the next. Some sectors do get direct fuel support, such as fishing through the Mar2030 fuel rebate. The trucks on the A1 on Friday do not.
By Beatriz Mota
Image: J.P.Ribeiro / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
