Climate activists glue themselves to energy company headquarters in Lisbon

By Alyssa McMurtry

OVIEDO, Spain (AA) - A group of climate activists on Monday glued themselves to the doors of the headquarters of Portuguese energy company Galp in Lisbon.

The activist group Climaximo said police have detained three of the more than 20 protesters involved in the action.

Photos show that two young women and one young man glued their hands to either side of the building’s front doors, effectively blocking the main entrance to the energy company’s headquarters.

The rest of the protesters held signs denouncing the company’s record profits amid “climate chaos” and the cost of living crisis.

Galp is the largest oil and gas group in Portugal. It engages in a variety of projects ranging from hydrocarbon exploration to refining and selling fuel at the retail level.

In July, the energy company reported an adjusted net income of €420 million in the first half of 2022 — a 153% jump from the first half of 2021.

Portugal suffered from drought and a summer of record-breaking heat this year, which experts say was made more likely by climate change.

At the same time, Portugal’s annual inflation hit 9.3% in September — a 30-year high fueled by rising food and energy prices.

“Companies are using the invasion of Ukraine as an excuse to brutally increase the prices of fossil fuels when the truth is that these price increases basically just line the pockets of these companies. They are dragging us into a social crisis while we’re living through a climate collapse,” Climaximo activist Mariana Rodrigues told local newspaper Diario de Noticias.

“What we need now is energy security, and that will never be possible as long as fossil fuel companies dominate the market and the government,” she continued.

On Friday, activists from the Just Stop Oil group in London threw tomato soup at a Vincent van Gogh painting at the National Gallery before gluing their hands to the museum’s wall.