No Portuguese politician is now ready to solve real problems of the people [VIDEO INTERVIEW]

Portuguese journalist Hugo Dos Santos joins Cross-Border Talks to discuss the outcome of Portuguese snap parliamentary elections on 18 May 2025. Interviewed by Małgorzata Kulbaczewska-Figat, he explains the rise of far right Chega party, which has grown to become the second political force in the country, as well as comment on the failure of the left-wing parties. According to Hugo, a political consensus worked out after the Carnation Revolution is over and Portuguese politics is now undergoing the most serious restructurization. However, no one seems capable of tackling the genuine social problems, such as lack of affordable housing and unemployment.

The transcription of the interview is available below the video.

Welcome to the newest episode of Cross Border Talks! In this episode, I am pleased to be talking to Hugo dos Santos, a Portuguese journalist and documentary filmmaker who has extensive experience reporting on events in Portugal and the situation in his home country. We will be discussing the outcomes of the Portuguese parliamentary elections in the wider context of the pan-European rise of the far right, which Portugal is also experiencing, as well as the wider social problems Portugal has been facing. Thank you very much for accepting the invitation to Cross-border Talks, Hugo.

Thanks for the invitation.

The Portuguese legislative election, which was held on 18 May, was a snap election. The Democratic Alliance, a centre-right to right-wing alliance, won the election, with the far-right party Chega coming second. 

Up until around 2019, Portugal was described as an exceptional country. Some political scientists spoke of Portuguese exceptionalism, that is, an immunity to the success of radical right parties, despite the fact that such parties had gained ground in national parliaments across Europe for the previous decades. Portugal seemed to be a country where people were not interested in this kind of discourse. But this is no longer the case. 

In 2019, Chega had their first electoral successes, and they have now multiplied the number of seats they hold in the Portuguese parliament.

Hugo, what is the background to these developments? Why the turn to the right?

It’s a huge question, and the answer is equally huge. However, I would like to say something about the topic of Portugal being this exceptional case where there is no far right party. I think there were very small far-right parties in Portugal, more like neo-Nazi groups. But that doesn’t mean that far-right thinking and racism, which is important in our case, didn’t exist. 

Some people have observed that racism was so widespread in Portuguese society that a far-right party wasn’t necessary. You can see evidence of this in the polls in the regions that were controlled by the Communist Party in southern Portugal, which are now the regions where people vote most for the far-right. This discourse didn’t just appear magically. It was already there. 

Another reason might be the distance from the 1974 revolution, which marked our transition and the transition of all the parties. The right and left parties are structured around the same myths surrounding the Carnation Revolution. They don’t share the same perspective, but they are all linked to this history. The arrival of the Chega party marks the end of this connection between the Portuguese past of the current Portuguese Republic.

I don’t know how much people following your media know about the Carnation Revolution, but it began with a coup d’état. It continued through a complicated revolutionary process that almost led to civil war. There were clashes between the right-wing and far-right-wing parties and the leftist parties.

When the transition took the form of elections and a more traditional democratic parliamentary system, the right and left wings agreed not to go to civil war. The right wing also abandoned their historical links with the far right and the dictatorship. They abandoned the idea of handing power to the army, for example.

The left parties agreed to participate in this democracy, even though they thought it would mean the end of their revolutionary prospects at the time. However, this agreement is no longer respected nowadays. Chega arrived exactly 50 years after the Carnation Revolution.

But why has the far right been able to regroup and re-emerge while more radical left-wing parties have failed? The left wing Bloc’s failure is another unexpected result of this election.

In reality, there are two questions in one. 

From the right perspective, abandoning this agreement after the Carnation Revolution meant that traditional right wing voters began to vote for the Chega party without shame. Specifically, young people, because nowadays, Chega is the most popular party among young Portuguese people.

Additionally, the Chega party has grown in popularity due to its stance on issues that are still very relevant in Portugal. One example is the anti-gypsy racism that is widely shared by Portuguese society. Nobody had previously used it as an electoral argument. They also exploited people’s anger about corruption, particularly local corruption, which is rife in Portugal. They used this anger. 

There is also this kind of colonial racism that hasn’t been addressed since the dictatorship because the dictatorship was also a colonial empire. There have been democratisation processes and education in this new democracy, teaching people how to vote and participate in society, but nothing has been done about this structural racism.

Chega addressed these issues, and they have finally become widespread in the population. Now, there are a lot of fantasies about migration, invasion and Islamophobia spreading everywhere in Europe and the United States. These are Trump-esque arguments that Chega also used, and they’re strangely popular.

The last possibility is that there is a kind of macho reaction among young people, because the surveys and polls show that young men are voting five times more often than young women. So it’s also a kind of masculine vote. However, I don’t think it’s very different to the situation in the rest of Europe and the United States.

The second part of your question was about why the left has failed. 

I think the left failed, because the left in Portugal — mainly the centre-left Socialist Party, the old-style Communist Party, which is quite similar to the Greek one, and some smaller leftist parties like Bloco de Esquerda or Livre — failed. I think the identity of all these parties is really linked to the revolution and everything that happened afterwards.

After 50 years, I think all these topics became frozen in time and more of an identity matter. I think that many parties and people on the left have neglected real relationships with people in favour of a way of identifying as left-wing. I saw a lot of campaigns that were only brought to people’s attention through Facebook. All the activists did was put a little badge on their Facebook profile saying that they supported a particular topic or cause. And that’s not enough. It’s one of the reasons for the failure.

Another issue is that this way of behaving creates blindness to important topics. Nowadays, for example, the cost of living in Portugal is very high. It’s difficult to live in big cities, but it’s difficult to live outside them too. If you don’t live in a big city, you’re living on the outskirts of not only Portugal, but Europe too. You can’t find employment and there are no longer any transport links to the big cities. You are left behind.

This unemployment is also causing ecological problems, as there are not enough people in these areas to prevent so many fires in Portugal. It’s also because there’s not enough work that Portugal is still a country of immigration. People keep leaving to live abroad.

All these problems are linked, yet they are not given enough attention by the left-wing parties in Portugal. This also explains why they failed in these elections.

In another interview about the rise of the far right, this time in Germany, our interlocutors also cited insecurity and fear as reasons why many German voters chose Alternative for Germany as their favourite party. What you say reveals a similar picture, with a lot of insecurity over economic issues such as the high cost of living, lack of decent housing and lack of jobs. However, there is another issue that makes voters all over Europe feel insecure, and which is also exploited by the far right. That is the migration issue. Could you elaborate a bit more on Portugal’s migration policy and whether it has helped to resolve Portugal’s economic issues?

According to specialists in Portugal, migrants contribute more to society than they receive from it. This is not a topic of discussion in Portugal. Incidentally, migrants don’t usually choose to go to Portugal. They sometimes use Portugal as a way to enter Europe, but it’s not a country that people choose as a priority. I think the far right is just making things up and trying to scare people with these topics. In reality, there is racism surrounding migration.

There have been migrants in Portugal since the ’70s and ’80s. But at that time, it was mainly migration from the countries that used to be colonised by Portugal, or from Brazil. Therefore, people who came spoke Portuguese.

 In the 1990s and at the beginning of the 2000s, we had a wave of Ukrainian workers. The Ukrainians were white and Christian, but Orthodox. They were judged as different. They were accused of stealing our jobs. It was always the same old story. Brazilians have been subject to discrimination in Portugal since the 1990s. They still are. It’s the same kind of racism. They bring violence and rob us of our jobs, the racist discourse says. 

Racism is widespread in society. However, I can’t say that it was the main topic of public conversation. It was peripheral to people’s lives. Only recently, through the fantasies brought from abroad,Chega managed to make it an interesting topic and bring it to the attention of the public. It’s just an attempt to create something scary that doesn’t exist.

I don’t think migration is a problem in Portugal and it’s not even an important topic. It’s not like in Germany, where one million refugees arrived suddenly. In Portugal, that’s not the case.

You mentioned a number of economic and everyday life issues earlier. Now, my question is about the government that will be formed after these elections. Do you think they will be capable of tackling these issues?

They must be aware that if they don’t do anything, Chega will win the next elections. The far right will then gain even more votes from this popular discontent. Do you think there are people who are both competent and willing to address these key economic and social issues?

I think the main danger nowadays is that the PSD — supposedly a centre-right party, but actually just a right-wing party — is trying to steal voters from Chega. They are still trying to create the impression that it’s better to vote for them for security on migrant issues. Rather than explaining that Chega is simply inventing these issues, they are attempting to adopt a populist approach. This is the main danger in Portugal, because who knows what the centre-left Socialist Party, which lost the last election, will do to win back those same voters? I think the main danger lies there. 

After forming a new government, the same problem arises because the PSD cannot govern alone, so they may try to form a coalition with the Socialist Party. I don’t think that will happen. They will probably try to form minority governments, searching for votes from Chega or the Socialist Party, and trying to seduce one or the other party one law at a time. When it comes to addressing the real problems facing the Portuguese people, unfortunately I don’t think there are any parties that will tackle them.

Even among the small left-wing parties that are in the minority nowadays, I don’t see much hope because they are not addressing the real problems facing the Portuguese people. For example, the Communist Party focuses a lot on international issues. They are quite obsessed with the war in Ukraine and they are a pro-Russian party. I think a lot of their discussions focus on these topics. They are not focusing on the real problems of the Portuguese people.

Well, that’s not what a left-wing party should do, at least in my opinion. I am also really worried to hear that the Portuguese mainstream parties are going to repeat the mistakes of the centre-right and centre-left parties in Europe over the last decade. Nowhere has allowed the far-right populist parties to effectively gain their voters; instead, the whole political discourse and atmosphere in the country has shifted to the far right. This is also the case in my country. Hearing that nobody wishes to tackle real social problems, I must ask: what next?

What’s next? I don’t know.

I don’t know what’s going to happen, but in my opinion, I don’t think Chega or its leader, André Ventura, are great tacticians. I don’t think André Ventura is a clever man. I don’t think Chega is led by clever people.

I think the people who oppose Chega are also poorly organised and underestimate the danger. I think this is linked to what I mentioned at the beginning of our conversation: they are trying to appear left-wing without actually defending left-wing perspectives. 

For example, when Chega organises a meeting or puts up posters all over Portugal, there is almost nobody from the left who opposes them. Even among left-wingers, there is discussion about respecting democracy and not being violent. I think they are losing their ideals for an identitarian cause. There was one ridiculous example, for example. In Lisbon, anti-fascist activists burned a poster and filmed the action. It was more about being spectacular; they just burned it. From there, there were a lot of discussions among left-wing activists about whether it was appropriate to burn a poster, even if it was almost a neo-fascist poster. In a way, they are afraid of engaging with the outside world. 

The hope in Portugal nowadays is that a new generation of activists is emerging from the city suburbs, including people of migrant origin, who are organising and focusing on these issues. It’s a glimmer of hope, but Chega is also using them to claim they are a minority and play on the racism of the rest of society.

Nevertheless, it’s positive that this is happening in Portugal. This new generation of activists wants to achieve concrete change in these areas. However, I’m not sure if they are enough to effect change in Portugal.

Perhaps this is only the beginning. From what you’ve said, I conclude that, as in many other European countries, the stable political system with the same mainstream parties that used to be in place is now coming to an end in Portugal. What was agreed upon 50 years ago is no longer valid.

Ideas that were not supposed to appear in mainstream parties’ programmes are now gaining huge popularity. In this situation, a completely new balance of forces will need to emerge. If people’s rights are to be respected and social problems resolved, there needs to be a renaissance on the left wing. Meanwhile, the far right is doing very well. 

Thank you very much for your insights. We will keep an eye on the situation in Portugal.

We will see how events develop. We will be watching with interest to see if these new movements and people’s grassroots organisations can effect change in a country that, from what I understand, deserves it. Thank you very much, Hugo, for joining us today.

To everyone who has listened to us or watched the video: don’t forget to subscribe to Cross-Border Talks to make sure you don’t miss any of our guests. Stay in touch and we’ll see you again soon.

Cover photo: Andre Ventura, leader of the far right Portuguese Chega party.

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