The success of the far right is a benchmark for a changing Portugal
The sun-drenched Algarve on Portugal’s southern coast is a place where guitar-strumming backpackers gather around fragrant orange trees and digital nomads hunt for a laid-back vibe. It’s not exactly what comes to mind when you imagine a bastion of far-right political sentiment.
But it is in the Algarve where the anti-establishment Chega party came first in national elections this month, unsettling Portuguese politics and sparking new unrest across the European establishment. Nationally, Chega received 18 percent of the votes.
“It’s a strong signal for Europe and for the world,” said João Paulo da Silva Graça, a freshly elected Chega MP, as he sat in the party’s new headquarters in the Algarve, while tourists crowded a bakery downstairs to buy vegan custard tarts. “Our values must prevail.”
Chega, which means “enough” in Portuguese, is the first far-right party to gain ground on the political scene in Portugal since 1974 and the end of António de Oliveira Salazar’s nationalist dictatorship. The success formula combined promises of greater law and order with stricter immigration measures and appeals to economic resentment.
Chega’s breakthrough has presented Portugal as the latest version of a now familiar dilemma for Europe, where the invasion of far-right parties has made it increasingly difficult for mainstream competitors to avoid them.
The leader of Portugal’s centre-right coalition, which won the election, has refused to ally with Chega, but experts say the result is likely to be an unstable minority government that may not last long.
Chega showed once again that the taboos that had kept far-right parties out of power, especially the long shadow of a right-wing dictatorship from the last century, were disappearing. Today, the far right has made gains in Italy, Spain and Germany, among others.
Portugal was considered the exception. It emerged from Salazar’s dictatorship as a progressive society that supported liberal drug laws and showed little interest in the far right. In recent years it became a booming tourist destination, full of foreign investment, expats and a growing economy.
Yet this month, more than a million Portuguese cast a protest vote for Chega. Many saw this as a protest vote.
The Socialist and mainstream conservative Social Democratic parties have experienced a painful financial crisis and a severe austerity period in recent decades. But even during the country’s recent economic boom, many have felt left out, fearful and forgotten.
Large numbers of young Portuguese are leaving the country. Many of those who continue to work for low salaries that have not kept up with inflation and left them out of the unaffordable housing market. Public services are under pressure.
Chega campaigned promising higher salaries and better conditions for workers, who the party said had been impoverished by a greedy elite. It fought against mixed toilets in schools and against refunds for former colonies.
A corruption investigation into the handling of clean energy projects, which toppled the socialist government last year, gave Chega a new talking point with which to attack the ruling class.
The party’s message struck a chord with many Portuguese who had not voted before, attracting young voters through powerful social media. It also resonated with voters in the Algarve who had reliably voted for the Socialist Party in the past.
“Here we have to work, work, work and we get nothing,” said Pedro Bonanca, a Chega voter who takes tourists on a boat to the fishing island of Culatra, off the coast of the Algarve.
“When I ask old people why they vote for the Socialist Party, all they can say is that they got us out of the dictatorship,” says Mr Bonanca, 25. “But I don’t know anything about that. It was long ago.”
At the top of his Instagram search bar was André Ventura, the charismatic former football commentator who once trained as a priest before founding Chega in 2019.
In previous campaigns, Chega used the slogan “God, Fatherland, Family, Work”, similar to the “God, Fatherland, Family” slogan of the Salazar dictatorship. Before the recent elections, Chega promised a mix of social policies that experts described as unrealistic, including plans to raise the minimum wage and pensions while cutting taxes.
“Chega became a kind of gathering party of all concerns,” says António Costa Pinto, a political scientist at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon.
In the Algarve, Chega called on underpaid waiters with unstable jobs, who had been priced out of their hometowns or forced to emigrate. The party’s message resonated with aging fishermen, who had to continue working to earn a living. Farmers were spoken to who said they felt left behind and that the government had prioritized watering golf courses despite the threat of drought.
“If we die, it’s because of them,” farmer Pedro Cabrita said of the government. “My vote for Chega is a protest vote,” he said as he stared anxiously at his orange grove, which he feared would dry out this summer.
In Olhão, an impoverished tourist town where Chega won almost 30 percent of the vote, José Manuel Fernandes, a fishmonger, wondered why, despite Portugal being part of the European Union, he couldn’t aspire to the lifestyle of the Germans or French. tourists around him.
“In the summer I see couples having a good time here, living in campers,” said Mr Fernandes, who voted for Chega, as he cleaned a giant squid. “I’ve wanted to go on holiday abroad for 30 years,” he added, “but that moment never came.”
Economists say Portugal, which started from a lower economic point when it joined the European Union in 1986, has made progress but not the kind of productivity gains needed to catch up with its wealthier European partners. Instead, it remains a relative bargain for European tourists and retirees, while many Portuguese feel increasingly plundered.
In the seaside resort of Albufeira, as British singles with bunny ears flashing through the streets, Tiago Capela Rito, a 30-year-old waiter, closed the cocktail bar where he worked. Despite working since he was 15, he still lives with his mother because he can’t afford his own apartment, he said.
He had never voted before, but he voted for Chega. “Ventura is telling us that we don’t have to leave the country to survive,” said Mr. Rito, who juggles construction and kitchen jobs in the off-season, “that we can stay here and have a life.”
Nearby, Luís Araújo, 61, a waiter who also voted for Chega, said his son, 25, earned more than three times his salary in a Dublin restaurant.
“Our young people are leaving and these guys are staying here,” he said of the influx of workers from Nepal and India who have arrived to fill low-paid jobs.
Although the number of immigrants arriving in Portugal is smaller than in Italy or Spain, Mr Ventura has described the recent influx of South Asian immigrants as a threat.
“The European Union is being replaced demographically by the children of immigrants,” he said in Parliament in 2022, recalling the “great replacement” conspiracy theory. “No one wants that in twenty years Europe will be largely made up of individuals from other continents.”
For some, Chega’s rise has revived old fears, especially among members of the Roma community, one of Mr. Ventura’s early targets.
The specter of the resurgence of the extreme right is also disturbing for some older Portuguese.
As he cleared his nets of small crabs and squids, Vitór Silvestre, 67, a fisherman on Culatra, said he still remembered that during the dictatorship years he was afraid to talk to the shoemaker or even to friends, without knowing who could be an informant.
“And now we are voting for the extreme right again?” he asked.
Tiago Carrasco contributed reporting from Faro, Portugal.