It’s April, the year 2024, and it’s ‘parabéns’ all round – believe it or not, my 61st birthday beckons which will make me 11 years older than Portugal’s still fledgling democracy, 50 years young on April 25 when anticipated raucous ‘golden’ anniversary celebrations should be somewhat dampened by the implications of the latest election results – but more of that a little later.
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
— T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land
On top of those two ‘milestones’, Portimão will also commemorate the centenary of having been granted city status on December 11, 1924, albeit a little later this year.
But let me start off by giving you a short, potted history of the transition from monarchy to dictatorship and finally parliamentary democracy in this, our country of residency or regular holiday destination of choice.
Unlike other European countries such as Greece, France or Britain, the concept of democratic rule is relatively new to Portugal. Prior to the Carnation Revolution in 1974, the last King of Portugal was Dom Manuel II, formerly the Duke of Beja and thereafter known as ‘the Unfortunate’, who unwittingly ascended the throne following the assassination of his father, King Carlos I as well as elder brother, the Prince Royal Luís Filipe.
Manuel was perfectly happy serving in the Portuguese navy until February 1, 1908. On that day, the royal family returned from the Ducal Palace in Vila Viçosa to Lisbon. On their way to the palace, the carriage carrying King Carlos and his family passed through the Terreiro do Paço plaza where shots were fired by at least two republican activist revolutionaries, Alfredo Luís da Costa and Manuel Buíça. It is unclear whether the assassins were attempting to kill the King, the Prince Royal or the prime minister, João Franco.
The murderers were shot dead on the spot by the royal bodyguard and were later identified as members of the Portuguese Republican Party.
The King’s wounds were fatal, Prince Luís Filipe was mortally wounded, and Prince Manuel was hit in the arm while Queen Amélie remained unharmed.
Days later, Manuel II was proclaimed King of Portugal and the Algarve. The young monarch, who had not been groomed to rule, sought to save the fragile position of the Braganza dynasty by dismissing João Franco and his entire cabinet later that year. The ambitions of various political parties made Manuel’s short reign a turbulent one.
In free elections held on August 28, 1910, the republicans won only 14 seats in the legislature, but Manuel’s tenure of the throne ended with the fall of the monarchy during the October 5 revolution. Fighting erupted in the streets of Lisbon and what had started as a military coup initiated by soldiers was joined by civilians and municipal guards. Once it was clear that the Republicans had taken the country and the coup d’état was complete, Manuel and his entourage departed for England where he lived the rest of his life in exile in Twickenham, Middlesex, close to my alma mater in Hampton, of all places.
Meanwhile, back home, political paralysis, the outbreak of World War I and subsequent economic depression contributed to the rise of António de Oliveira Salazar, an academic, economist and politician who served as Prime Minister of Portugal from 1932 to 1968.
Having gained power, he reframed his governance as the Estado Novo – “New State” – with himself as a dictator. The regime he created lasted until 1974, making it one of the longest-lived authoritarian regimes in Europe.
However, in August 1968, Salazar suffered a cerebral haemorrhage and, despite making an initial recovery, he was re-admitted to hospital 16 days later. On September 16, he went into a coma and President Américo Tomás replaced the incapacitated 79-year-old Prime Minister with Marcelo Caetano.
Salazar’s former right-hand man maintained the regime’s increasingly unpopular policies as well as its costly colonial war in Africa, fuelling widespread resentment, culminating in the Carnation Revolution military coup led by left-leaning junior officers overthrowing the Estado Novo government on April 25, 1974.
This mostly peaceful transition – almost no shots were fired, restaurant worker Celeste Caeiro offered carnations to the soldiers when the population took to the streets to celebrate the end of the dictatorship, with other demonstrators following suit and carnations placed in the muzzles of guns – produced major social, economic, territorial, demographic, and political changes in Portugal and its overseas colonies, finally bringing full-blown democracy and the end of the aforementioned colonial war.
These momentous events also prompted a mass exodus of Portuguese citizens from Portugal’s African territories (mostly from Angola and Mozambique), creating over a million Portuguese refugees – the “retornados” – in their own former homeland.
Fast forward 50 years of relatively stable and mostly socialist governments and the country once more finds itself at a crossroads. Late last year, President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa was forced to dissolve the ruling majority PS socialist government led by António Costa which had become embroiled in multiple charges of alleged corruption and political sleaze, thus prompting the incumbent Prime Minister’s resignation.
Elections held on March 10, 2024, to elect members of the Assembly of the Republic to the 16th Legislature of Portugal, with all 230 seats up for grabs, resulted in a hung parliament with the centre-right Democratic Alliance (AD) led by Luís Montenegro winning 80 seats, closely followed by the Socialist Party (PS), now led by Pedro Nuno Santos, a close second on 78.
More significantly, the election also saw the emergence of the right-wing populist CHEGA party as the third largest in parliament, quadrupling its previous count to 50, after a turnout of 66.2%, the highest since 1995.
Luís Montenegro has been appointed Prime Minister, but as he, or any other mainstream party, have refused to work with CHEGA, his term in office will no doubt be short, ineffective and be sure to lead to new elections sooner rather than later – all of which begs the question of “who is CHEGA”?
Officially stylised as CHEGA! – meaning “Enough!” -, the recent political phenomenon is a national conservative, ultra-right-wing populist party formed in 2019 by André Ventura, a sometime TV football pundit and holder of a PhD in public law from the University College Cork in Ireland who broke away from the Social Democrat PSD party in 2018.
In the 2024 election, the party was the most voted in the Faro constituency, which corresponds to the Algarve, with majorities in Portimão, Lagoa, Albufeira, Loulé and Olhão. This was the first time that a third party was the most voted in a district since the Unitary Democratic Coalition (CDU) won the Beja District in 1991.
Portuguese political scientists credited CHEGA’s advances to a protest vote against the two largest parties, and the result in the Algarve to the difficulty that locals face finding housing in the tourism-dominated region. But there is more to it than that oversimplification.
CHEGA considers itself a party with nationalist and conservative roots.
Its agenda is heavily focused on criminality issues, support for the police forces of the country, and the misuse of taxpayers’ money in terms of corruption at the top, overstaffing in the civil service and undeserving welfare recipients at the bottom. The party supports life imprisonment and chemical castration and the death penalty for crimes such as terrorism or child abuse.
Describing itself as a strong proponent of Western civilization, the party positions itself against Islamist extremism, favours stronger border controls, limited immigration from former Portuguese colonies such as Brazil, Portuguese-speaking African countries, Macau and East Timor, while taking a more critical stance on non-Western immigration.
It also calls for a zero-tolerance policy on illegal immigration and for the deportation of immigrants with criminal records or those who are economically inactive. CHEGA’s stance on the European Union has been described as Eurosceptic. Due to its anti-immigration, anti-Islam and populist stances, CHEGA has been the target of critics who underline the party’s extreme views on various subjects, some of which include the negative comments regarding minorities, namely the Romani community, and the use of racism as a pretext to form political agendas.
The party has also been targeted for reusing a slightly modified version of the motto of the dictator Salazar “Deus, Pátria, Família” (God, Fatherland, Family), as well as for having supporters of Salazar within their ranks.
The Global Project against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE), an American NGO specialising in the study of extremist movements, warned in a 2023 report that CHEGA is an “anti-immigrant, anti-women, anti-LGBT, anti-Roma, anti-Muslim and conspiratorial party” containing white supremacists, neo-Nazis and fascist sympathizers – and yet it currently holds the balance of power.
To me, CHEGA is just another opportunist xenophobic movement cynically feeding off the ignorant masses whose unfounded fears are propagated and then mirrored in well-versed propaganda. The same is happening all over Europe with varying success, Hungary, Holland and Italy leading the way for likeminded rabble-rousers in France (NF), Germany (AfD) and the United Kingdom (BNP), an unfortunate reflection on failing mainstream political parties which increasingly appear to be losing touch with their constituencies.
Ironically, CHEGA’s success on immigration issues locally would leave the Algarve crippled if implemented. Who would work on the construction sites, tend fields and pick fruit, man restaurant kitchens, keep hotels running and do all the cleaning? Even the majority of lifeguards are from South America!
I cannot see an enthusiastic Portuguese labour force waiting in the wings to replace the current army of hard-working Indians, Eastern Europeans, Brazilians and Africans who are keeping our tourism-based economy afloat.
Oh, Golden Visa holders, retired ex-pats and five-star holidaymakers, don’t worry – CHEGA is not coming after you!
Enough said. I will celebrate my birthday next week, followed by ‘Liberation Day’ on the 25th and hope that freedom, liberty, diversity and cultural inclusiveness remain part of the cosmopolitan Portugal I have come to know and love.
By Skip Bandele
|| features@algarveresident.com
Skip Bandele escaped to the Algarve almost 25 years ago and has been with the Algarve Resident since 2003. His writing reflects views and opinions formed while living in Africa, Germany and England as well as Portugal.
