Lisbon Mayor Carlos Moedas said today was a day to remember the victims, speaking after a ceremony one year on from the Glória funicular derailment, which claimed 16 lives and injured 24 people.
“It is a very sad day. It will always be a very sad day for Lisbon. A day to pay tribute and show our solidarity, but also a day of gratitude. To honour those who died, those who are no longer with us, that is our duty, our duty of remembrance,” Carlos Moedas told reporters on Thursday, 3 September, following the ceremony.
The mayor said that “not a single name” of those who lost their lives in the accident on 3 September 2025 must ever be forgotten.
Moedas stressed that people must “never forget who they were, what they did, the people they were. That is our duty of remembrance. It is the duty Lisbon and its residents have towards this tragedy,” he said.
For the mayor, the anniversary was also “a day of solidarity with the families”, who now have “a dignified, unique, simple space which, at the same time, represents their loved ones”.
“We will never forget them,” he concluded.
Moedas declined, however, to comment on an open letter from victims’ relatives, published by RTP on Wednesday this week, in which they complain about a lack of support and describe “a year of silence and forgetfulness”. They said that the only contact they had received from Lisbon City Council was an invitation to attend the inauguration ceremony of the memorial, with assurances that their privacy would be respected and that no journalists would be present.
“After a year of silence, what we needed was not to be protected from the debate, but finally to be part of it,” the signatories said.
Moedas defended the council’s record of support, saying: “Please don't take this the wrong way. I think today is a moment… And please don't take this the wrong way, I understand the questions (…) the answers have been given. The council has always been present, is present and will always be present.”
The mayor arrived at Largo da Oliveirinha, next to Calçada da Glória, accompanied by the Patriarch of Lisbon, Rui Valério, when most of the victims’ relatives were already at the site. The two men greeted the families, who were gathered on one side of a commemorative olive tree, somewhat shielded from the cameras of reporters, and visibly emotional.
Several wreaths were laid, most of them white, including one bearing the colours of the French flag, reflecting the nationality of one of the victims.
Rui Valério led a short prayer, blessed the olive tree and reminded those present that “the passing of the days does not erase absences”. A minute’s silence was then observed.
At the end of the ceremony, the president of Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa embraced relatives of the victims, four of the Portuguese nationals who died having been employees of the institution.
The commemorative tree, a 150-year-old olive tree, has been planted in the square, with 16 limestone blocks engraved with the victims’ names, one for each of the 16 people killed.
Earlier in the morning, trade unionists and colleagues of brake operator André Marques, one of the 16 people killed in the Glória funicular derailment, laid a wreath and observed a minute’s silence on Calçada da Glória, near Restauradores in Lisbon.
Source: DN
Photo credit: Tiago Figueiras / CML
