Article included in the thematic dossier “Portugal and the Great War“, edited by Jorge Fernandes Alves and Gaspar Martins Pereira.

The difficulties of the portuguese urban towns to be supplied with staple food caused a deep escalation of prices and diverse moments of generalized hunger in the most underprivileged layers of our society during the Great War. From the need to study these harmful effects in a circumscribed geographic area, this article addresses the «question of subsistence» within the community of Setúbal, then the third city with the highest demographic index in the country and characterized as a working and fishing region. From the institutional point of view, the present study will emphasize the inoperative measures of the City Hall within the framework of the ‘war economy’ and exemplify the difficulties that a social solidarity institution such as Misericórdia de Setúbal experienced. Among the impacts addressed, it will be analyzed the intense social upheaval generated by famine, that was marked by collective assaults on farms and commercial establishments, by strikes and by anti-interventionist protests of a «working class volcano» that erupted..

Keywords:
Great War, Setúbal, Food Supply