Every time economic uncertainty has spiked over the past two decades, Portuguese banks have responded the same way: they've pulled back on lending. It happened in the 2008 financial crisis. It happened during the sovereign debt crisis and the troika years. It happened again during the pandemic. But according to a new Banco de Portugal survey released this week, it hasn't happened this time, even with a US tariff shock and a war involving Iran both landing in the same stretch of 2026.
A 15-year pattern, broken
The findings come from the central bank's "Inquérito aos bancos sobre o mercado de crédito" (bank lending survey), published Tuesday. Banco de Portugal examined six periods of heightened uncertainty between 2008 and 2026 and found that corporate credit supply became more restrictive in every single one of them, with one exception: the recent period covering the US tariff increases and the Iran war, when the uncertainty index reached levels close to those seen during the pandemic.
In that most recent period, credit to companies saw only "a slight tightening, similar in magnitude to that recorded during the inflationary shock," according to the central bank's report. Lending criteria for households, meanwhile, haven't changed in any meaningful way. Taken together, the report concludes that the underlying factors don't suggest uncertainty has been an important factor shaping credit conditions this time around, a real break from the pattern of the prior 15 years.
Why this time is different
Banco de Portugal points to risk perception as the consistent driver of credit tightening across all six periods it studied, for both companies and households. What made 2008 and the sovereign debt crisis worse, though, was that banks themselves were in financial trouble at the same time, funding costs rose and balance sheets came under strain, compounding the pullback. This time, banks aren't carrying that same burden, which the survey's findings suggest is a major reason risk perception alone hasn't translated into a broader credit squeeze.
Demand is actually rising
The demand side tells its own story. In 2008 and during the sovereign debt crisis, both companies and households borrowed less. During the pandemic, corporate borrowing rose while household borrowing fell. In the current period, Banco de Portugal reports that demand has risen slightly for both companies and households alike.
For mortgages specifically, the central bank ties the increase in demand to the evolution of interest rates and to Portugal's regulatory and tax regime for housing, echoing separate data showing mortgage lending hit a record above €115 billion in May. For companies, the survey attributes rising demand mainly to financing needs: inventory, working capital, and debt renegotiation, rather than distress borrowing.
None of this guarantees credit conditions stay this loose. Portugal's fuel prices have been climbing again and the ECB meets this week with a real, if still minority, chance of a surprise rate move, either of which could still shift the picture the next time Banco de Portugal runs this survey. For now, though, the data say something genuinely unusual for a country that's spent the last two crises watching its banks pull back exactly when borrowers needed them most: this time, credit kept flowing.