Portuguese democracy is at stake in the coming years. André Ventura, the leader of Chega, the far-right party that has just obtained shocking results in the March 10 elections, has a project for the country: it is about reaching the head of the government and then not letting go. that bite for decades. He calls this “the government of a generation.” The objective is, according to Ventura, to bequeath “a country equal to the one our ancestors one day left us.”
Half a century after the Carnation Revolution, Portugal runs the risk of drifting towards a mitigated democracy, what today is often called an illiberal regime. It will be enough for Ventura to continue his path until he wins a general election and, then, control the levers of the Portuguese political system. On the recent election night, when he celebrated obtaining 18.1% of the votes, the leader of Chega announced that this was “the last step” in his ascension to power.
Ventura already has great influence in the state security forces, whom he carefully pampers. When the representative of a police force, where discontent is rife due to salary reasons, threatened in an interview to sabotage the electoral act by not guaranteeing the participation of the police in the elections, something necessary for the mechanics of transporting ballot boxes and votes, it was Ventura who assured, smugly, that “that was not going to happen.” He said it with aplomb, almost as if he was the one in charge of the security forces.
After April 25, 1974, the Portuguese Communist Party also tried to take over the revolution, once the conservative countercoup of March 11, 1975 had failed. The international scenario at that time allowed it. We were still in the Cold War and half of Europe belonged to the Warsaw Pact. The fact that Portugal gave rise to a European Cuba was not nonsense. The communist project failed for three main reasons: First, Portuguese society had savored a gentle developmentalism in the final phase of the Estado Novo, at the beginning of the seventies, and was more interested in well-being and consumerism than in redeeming collectivisms. Second, communism emerged in Portuguese culture as a foreign body, something like a Soviet UFO personified in the enigmatic figure of Álvaro Cunhal, made of Moscow steel. Third, the other major left-wing party, the socialist party, faced communist pretensions and its leader, Mário Soares, became a standard-bearer of democracy and freedom.
The Communist Party, which at its best reached 19% in general elections, ended up cornered. He has, it is true, done a great job in some city councils and in the unions, he has influenced the directions of Portuguese politics, especially during the first cabinets of António Costa, but, after the years of fire of the revolution, he did not return govern the country. He remains even today in his corner, from where he refuses to clearly condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine on the grounds that Putin had motives for this military operation.
Half a century has passed since the revolution, and Portuguese democracy is risking Chega. Once again, the international outlook is favorable: we have Trump, Orbán, Meloni, Milei and company. There is a wave of radical right that is trying to impose its tide throughout the Western world. However, at this time the fight to save Portuguese freedom will be much harder than in the seventies, also for three reasons.
First, the country has not yet recovered from its endemic economic modesty. Many people have hard lives. If there were no social subsidies, 4.4 million Portuguese would be at risk of poverty, in a nation of 10 million. Second, Chega is not, like Soviet-inspired communism, a foreign body in Portuguese culture. Its roots sink into the humus of an old nationalist traditionalism that has already had many faces throughout our history, among them those of King Sebastián and Salazar. Third, its leader, André Ventura, an effective populist who, in reality, was an honors student and a university student with an illustrious career, has already managed to connect with a considerable part of the citizenry. A true veneration is springing up around him. Furthermore, at 41 years old, he has an enormous capacity for work. Ventura is no joke.
A people tired of suffering due to the hardships of Portuguese life, people, on the other hand, aware of the dangers of today's world, see hope and refuge in Chega and Ventura. This is how many authoritarianisms were born. Throughout the remainder of this year, Portugal will be one of the boards on which the great game is played between true freedom and attenuated democracy that will mark the future of the West.
Preventing Chega's rise entails, on the one hand, working to once and for all solve the economic and social issues that feed the extreme right, listening to the suffering that resonates in their votes; and, on the other hand, it is necessary for the democratic right to bravely confront Chega. Montenegro, the leader of the Democratic Alliance (AD), plays the role that Mário Soares played against Cunhal in the hot summer of 1975. For now, AD's distance from Ventura's party seems more like an exercise in political tactics than fruit of true conviction. The time has come for that conviction.
In Portuguese history, the times of freedom, if we count them, have been fewer than the centuries of oppression. Our past works against us and in favor of Ventura. We have to earn another half century of democracy.
