In 2017, when the now leader of the Portuguese far-right André Ventura made the leap into politics as a candidate for a mayoralty on the outskirts of Lisbon, within the conservative PSD party, people still immediately recognized him on his routes campaign, despite the fact that he was a beginner. "They knew me for being a Benfica supporter on television," he explained later. Football worked as a lever of popularity for this former seminarian lawyer who in 2019 founded Chega (enough is enough, in Catalan). With his racist and xenophobic message and his harsh and effective speech, he emerged as a third force, albeit with only 7% of the vote, but the polls give him almost twice as much.
Ventura now appears as the great protagonist of Lusitanian politics. Without much rationality, it is constantly being discussed whether, after the next elections (in 2026, although they could be earlier), the PSD would agree, if the liberals would lift the veto or if the socialists, in case they were defeated , the conservatives would help.
"Just five years ago, André Ventura was Benfica's man. It was this that catapulted him towards a national figure", says journalist Vitor Matos in the podcast that the weekly newspaper Expresso is dedicating to the life trajectory of the Chega leader, through elaborate weekly installments.
The social omnipresence of football is very intense in Portugal, more so than in Spain. At the weekends, the first information given by the public broadcaster RTP is that of the goals of the big three: Benfica, Porto and Sporting de Lisboa. Thus, it is not surprising that it serves as a leadership platform, in the already classic Portuguese way of the television talk show.
Although they were not at all unknown and talked about politics, they became commentators on television as the current president of the republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, and also the prime minister, António Costa, launched their careers towards power , as also happened with several of his predecessors, such as José Sócrates and Pedro Santana Lopes, who presided over Sporting.
But Rebelo's calm and ironic interventions have nothing to do with the vociferous, rough and insulting style, in a similar vein to the Spanish, of the sets where Ventura matured. It was a very suitable training ground for the constant overacting of a rising ultra-right, as seen with Jean Marie Le Pen. Then, with power in sight, the forms soften, as did his daughter Marine, but Ventura is far from this phase.
The Chega leader is indeed unleashed. On March 28, when two workers at the Ismaili center, a minority of Islam, died in Lisbon in a knife attack by a mentally challenged Afghan refugee, Ventura wrote on Twitter that "the open door policy without any control leads to this. The blood of these victims is the responsibility of the Afghan criminal but it is in the hands of the Government of António Costa". Then he insisted on that line, connecting it with the theory of substitution in vogue in the European ultra-right. It consists of the prediction that in a few generations Muslims may be the majority in Europe.
Born into a non-religious family in a suburb of Sintra, where his father had a distribution company for businesses, Ventura converted to Catholicism and was baptized at the age of 14. He adopted fundamentalist positions. He explained that he mortified himself with the sackcloth. He went to the seminary, in the end he left it because he could not stand celibacy, in the face of carnal attraction. Then he studied Law.
Ventura warns of a "risk of a certain cultural and civilizational adulteration of Europe with migratory flows from Islamic countries". There are neighborhoods in Lisbon that look like Africa to him. It calls for the strictest control of entry into the EU. And he has the gypsies in the spotlight, as was clear at the 2017 municipal meetings, when he denounced that they live in "impunity", "from State subsidies" and without the law being applied to them.
The non-existence of the requirement of a minimum percentage of votes to have seats allowed him to be deputy for the district of Lisbon in 2019 with only 2%. He entered the Parliament with his devastating speech in front of a traditional right in very low hours and against a center-left Government. He took advantage of the situation and in 2022 it climbed to 7%, which in the midst of high fragmentation among minorities placed him third, partly because Costa used it to mobilize his electorate.
The best result was obtained in the southern half of the country, where the right in the north had always been weaker. But with an abstention some time ago close to 50%, it is doubtful that in Lisbon, the Alentejo and the Algarve Ventura captured many votes from the left, but rather it seems that he mobilized voters who previously abstained, moreover of what he took away from the PSD.
Now the polls give Chega 13%, similar to what Vox has, at a time when Costa is in sharp decline, while the conservative leader, Luís Montenegro, of the PSD, settles into ambiguity for not having defined its future policy of alliances.
Like Ventura, he knows that there is still a lot of game left.
