Conservation

Portugal fined for environmental failings

Portugal has been fined 10 million euro’s by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) for failing to comply with the Habitats Directive (adopted in 1992), that aims to protect over a thousand species, including mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish and plants. It also has been ordered to pay a compulsory fine of 41,250 euro’s a day until it complies with a previous court order from 2019.

The daily fine corresponds to a penalty of 750 euros for each of the sites, that the court stated had ‘still not be been protected’ despite the Portuguese Government having been ordered seven years ago to comply with EU laws. The fine will be reduced once a site is brought into compliance.

The court said in a statement that ‘these are particularly serious breaches of EU environmental law, in which Portugal has persisted’, whereas ‘its territory hosts rich biodiversity – including 99 habitat types and 335 species covered by the Habitats Directive .´

The European Commission has battled for years to try to force Portugal to conserve and protect habitats and species in areas that should have been designated for conservation under the EU Habitats Directive, that established Natura 2000– the world’s largest ecological network .


Under EU law, sites of community importance include Peneda-Geres – Portugal’s only National park – the natural park Lithoral Norte and the Minho and Lima rivers. Also included are Valongo, home to rare fern species and an important site for the golden-striped salamander, the Serra D’Arga mountain and Corno do Bico, a protected landscape.

The Government was ordered by court to comply with the EU Habitats Directive  in a case brought by the European Commission in 2019 after allegations it had failed to designate sites of community importance as special areas of conservation (SAC).

Under the directive, countries had to designate sac sites that needed protection within six years, with accompanying measures to protect rare habitats and species. In 2019 the court found that Portugal had failed to fulfil its obligations to designate 61 areas under the Atlantic and Mediterranean biodiversity classification.

Although a spokesman of the government declared that ‘’very little remains to be done for the work to be completed and to fully comply with the obligations arising from the Habitats Directive’, environmental NGO ZERO (Association for a Sustainable Terrestrial System) criticised the government for not taking the implementation of environmental projects seriously.

Enjoy your week          Aproveite a semana               (pic Sapo/Ptres)






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Javali

Steady increase in the number of wild boars in the country

Javali (wild boar, wild swine or wild pig) has become one of the most controversial wild mammals in Portugal. Once mainly restricted in remote forested and mountainous areas, populations have rapidly expanded and are now present across much of the country.

The wild boar is a pig native to much of Eurasia. The species is now one of the wides-ranging mammals in the world and has been assessed as least concern on the IUCN Red List due to its range, high numbers, and adaptability to a diversity of habitats.

The species are divided in four regional groupings (Western, Eastern, Indian, and Indonesian). The wild boars live in matriarchal societies consisting of females and their young. Fully grown males are usually solitary outside the breeding season. The species has well developed canine teeth, which protrude from the mouths of adult males.

The wild boar has a long history of association with humans, having been the ancestor of domestic pig breeds as from 13,000 BCE in the Near East (Tigris Basin). The Portuguese word javali stems from the Arabic word ‘jabalii’ (meaning ountaineers’).There was also a separate domestication in China some 8,000 years ago.

The English term ‘boar’ is mostly referred to wild males, but is also used to refer to domesticated, male breeding pigs. In domestic pigs most of their bodyweight is concentrated in the posterior, which is the opposite of wild boars, where most of the muscles are concentrated in the head and shoulders.

In the Mediterranean region, males average 50 kg in weight (females 45 kg). The animal’s head is very large, taking up to one-third of the body’s length, and well suited for digging. The head acts as a plough, while the powerful neck muscles allow to upturn considerable amounts of soil. The animal’s main predator in Europe is the wolf.

According to the European density map – produced by the international network ENETWILD with reference values from the European Wildlife Observatory (EOW) – the wild boar is, after the roe deer, the most widespread hoofed mammal in Europe, inhabiting a wide range of environments, from forests and scrubland to agricultural areas and high altitudes with harsh winters.

The EOW states that hunting data show a steady increase in the number of wild boars in Europe. This growth leads to concerns about damage to agriculture, traffic risks and the potential spread of infectious diseases such as African swine fever. Nowadays, Portugal is home to 400,000 wild boars with a clear increase (25%) over the past 10 years.

Happy reading                       Boa leitura                   (pic Wikip/Sapo)



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Anozero’26

TO HOLD, TO GIVE, TO RECEIVE is the theme of the Coimbra Biennale ‘26

If you decide to visit the 17th century Monastery of Santa Clara-a-Nova – perched atop a hill in the Portuguese university city, and overlooking the medieval centre of Coimbra from across the Mondego river – do bear in mind that the place might be haunted.

You need nerves to walk through the black ground-floor corridor of the dormitory wing, where tortured wails ambush you from the monkish cells. Sung in Albanian, Chinese , Kurdish, Kyrgyz and Turkish, these laments are part of an installation (‘Start Again the Lament’) by US artist Taryn Simon.

After the last nun died in 1891, Santa Clara-a-Nova served for almost a century as a barracks for the Portuguese army, and since 2015 the convent has been the central hub of Anozero, a biennal art festival with works from all over the world. But that arrangement however, could soon come to and end as the government has recently granted a private company the right to develop the former nunnery into a hotel.

The concept of a city hosting an international art exhibition at regular intervals goes back to the first Venice Biennale of 1895, when the capital of Veneto sought to rejuvenate the Italian art market. The festival brought in visitors who would later return as tourists, while also granting the local population access to international artworks.

In the 1990s – fuelled by cheap air travel and the Bilbao effect – every city wanted its own biennale such as Kassel’s Documenta, New York’s Whitney Biennal and the Bienal de São Paulo. But with the boom came backlash: the suspicion that biennales were above all an excuse for a select, international art crowd descending on a city for just a few weeks and leaving behind a large carbon footprint but little meaningful engagement with the local population.

Despite being around since 2015 and operating on a modest budget, Coimbra’s Anozero has been at the forefront of art festivals trying to rethink the format.
’In Portugal, we have a tendency to live on old glories,’ says Carlos Antunes, co-founder and director. ‘The biennal is meant to be a door to the future.’

This year, Anozero’s curators propose a new remedy for biennale fatigue: anarchism. Its title Segurar, Dar, Receber ( to hold, to give, to receive) turns out to be inspired by Kropotkin, the Russian anarchist philosopher. Anarchism here does not mean anarchy but cooperation. Kropotkin’s idea was that mutual aid was more central to evolution than Darwin’s idea of the survival of the fittest.

For the opening, Portuguese artist Vasco Araújo led a delegation of 260 singers – all dressed in white and taken from local choirs – on a march from the city’s central square to the convent, while singing a chorus from Verdi’s opera Nabucco.

For its next edition in 2028, Anozero is teaming up with Manifesta, the nomadic cultural biennale, that travels to a different location in Europe every two years.

Anozero runs at the Monastery of Santa Clara-a-Nova and various venues across Coimbra until July 6

Enjoy your week          Aproveite a semana               (pic Público/Guardian)

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Drawings

‘As you are drawing something, it often turns into something else’ (Paula Rego)

Story Line is the largest ever exhibition of the drawings of the Portuguese-born artist Paula Rego.
Curated by her son, Nick Willing, the exposition features work on paper from the 1950s, right around the time she settled in Britain, to her death in 2022.

Rego was born in 1935, during the early years of the Salazar dictatorship, and criticised the fascist regime in her art until it was overthrown in 1974. By then, she was married to fellow artist Victor Willing, and lived in England. Apparently her father had told her, aged 17, to leave Portugal, where women were repressed, and for the rest of her life she would fight against that.

Swineherd (1969) ‘is an example of a drawing inspired by Hans Christiaan Andersen’s fairytale. Paula’s version puts the girl among the swineherd’s pigs, wearing a giant spider for a shawl. In Jungian psychology the spider is a powerful symbol for ‘Shadow’ (the repressed part of the self) and ‘Mother’ as creator. The web can represent entrapment but also creativity.’

Unknown Title (1973) ‘There is both an air of acceptance of her situation and a hint for rebellion. This woman, who looks conspicuously like Paula, has spent so much time in the kitchen that she is literally dressed in pots, pans and cutlery. Although she appears resigned to wearing lingerie, she is clearly testing the male gaze in an act of defiance.’

Girl and Dog with Nuns (1986) ‘The dog was undoubtedly chosen instinctively. Dogs embody devotion and loyalty. Paula is not exploring nursing, she is playing with her faithfulness, testing it, prodding it, and most of all, subjugating it.’

Study for The Maids (1986) ‘ In Genet’s play two housemaids plot to kill their mistress. Its psychologically charged drama triggered a string of personal memories which felt very modern, very universal to Paula. She connected the power struggle and role reversal within an ordinary domestic setting to her own upbringing.’

Study for the Dance II (1988) ‘Here she was trying to express movement and, more specifically, a kind of folk dance she had grown up with. This was Vic – her husband – adopting her steps, as he had done thirty years earlier when he moved to Portugal, learned to speak Portuguese fluently and embraced his new life.’

Study for Crivelli’s garden (1990) ‘Perhaps her most famous picture from her residency in the National Gallery. Paula decided to make it a celebration of women, not least because women are poorly presented in the National Gallery, and choose to feature female saints. She invited people who worked in the gallery to pose for her, as well as family and friends, and made lots of studies before embarking on painting.’

Study for Embarkation (1992) ‘When Paula left the National Gallery, she moved into a temporary studio in Islington. Here she continued exploring memories from her past with Vic, and in particular, experiences that she had not yet properly processed.’

Study for Jenufa (1995) and the subsequent painting tell a nuanced story. ‘The pose was carefully considered. This is not a woman on her knees, but crouching, ready to leap. Her Jenufa is not a victim, but a survivor, with a strong body braced to face whatever the world throws at her.’

Study for Untitled / Abortion Series (1998) ‘She made a series featuring young girls, some in school uniforms , recovering from illegal abortions. What history taught us – Paula said – is that this always will go on, whether we approve it or not. To protect the lives of our daughters, sisters, mothers and aunts, we need to reach past our religious or political allegiances and grasp a compassionate public health solution.’

Don’t Leave Me II (2000) ‘What is touching about this drawing is its ambiguity. Who is saying this to whom? Don’t leave me, daughter, or don’t leave me, mother? As ever, by drawing it, Paula was trying to understand how she felt, and what this might mean for her.’

War Rabbits (2003) ‘You can do anything to rabbits, Paula once said. However, these are not real rabbits; they are masks and dolls which also echo human forms, paradoxically flung into the heat of the battle, embodying a callous dialectic of violence, which normalises the slaughter of those we value most.’

She Doesn’t Want It (2007) ‘Drawing took over her painting in 2007. She made a series of large works with conté and graphite, which were unveiled in New York in 2008. The work She Doesn’t Want It examines the casual brutality of coerced sex work.’


Paula Rego: Story Line is at Victoria Miro in London until 23 May

Enjoy your week                   Aproveite a semana

(pic © courtesy Estate of Paula Rego and Victoria Miro)



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Transparency

Portugal plummets in 2025 Corruption Perception Index, with the worst score ever.

The watchdog Transparency International Portugal (TIP) is challenging declarations by the Ministry of Justice on the assessment of anti-corruption policies in Portugal, and rejects claims that the Anti-Corruption Agenda– one of the government’s flagships – contains a clear anti-corruption strategy.

Instead, the Ministry’s technical report 2020-2024 ‘doesn’t provide any evidence of a structured, methodologically identifiable assessment of the results of an anti-corruption strategy in the past four years.’ TIP states.

Even worse, no proposal, timetable, or implementation process is known for the period 2025-2028. ‘The absence of this new strategy raises doubts about the commitments made and the consistency between political discourse and government action,’ the corruption watchdog declares.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Justice recently announced that it has finalized 17 of the 42 measures outlined in its National Anti-Corruption Agenda. Judge Rita Alarcão stated in the same press release that progress this far demonstrates that it is possible to act with effectiveness.

The Corruption Perception Index (CPI) is an annual indicator compiled by Transparency International that assesses the perception of corruption in the public sector on a scale from 0 (corrupt) to 100 (clean) in more than 180 countries.

Government corruption is increasing worldwide due to a lack of leadership.
This year, the global average GPI score fell for the first time in over a decade, to just 46 out of 100. The NGO’s report reveals that ‘the vast majority of countries are failing to keep corruption under control’, highlighting that two-thirds of countries score below 50 on the index.

Portugal fell to 46th place, scoring just 56 points out of 100. Cape Verde ranked as the highest-placed nation with 62 points within the Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries, leaving Brazil (35), Angola(32), and Mozambique (21) far behind.

At the same time, countries scoring above 80 fell from 12 a decade ago to just 5 (i.e. Scandinavia, Singapore), highlighting ‘a worrying trend of democracies showing a deterioration in perceptions of corruption.’ 

Analyzing the results, TIP president José Fontão points to a correlation between rising perceptions of (state) corruption and the growth of populist rhetoric attacking institutions. He called the politicians to end isolated short-term measures, and above all to show more political will to tackle abuses of power and the factors driving this decline, such as the roll-back of democratic checks and balances, and attacks on independent civil society.


It should not be forgotten that the common people are paying the price, as corruption leads to under-funded public hospitals and schools, unbuilt defences against the climate crisis, and withers the hopes and dreams of young people.

Enjoy the week            Aproveite a semana               (pic Publico/Sapo)






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Hormuz

‘Hormuz’ probably derives from the Persian pronunciation of the principal Zoroastrian god Ahuramazda (also known as Ormazd or Horomazes)

The Strait of Hormuz  – 34 km wide at its narrowest point between Iran and Oman – is in the news every day. The instability in the Middle East and the American and Israeli aggression against the people of Iran have once again placed this strait at the centre of international geopolitics.

A significant proportion of the world’s energy (i.e. oil and gas) passes through here, and any threat to navigation in this strategic waterway proves to have an immediate impact on the global economy.

But few people know that, for over a century (1515-1622), this very strait was under the governance of Portugal, controlling the entrance to the Persian Gulf, one of the world’s most important trade routes.

The Portuguese conquest of Hormuz occurred when the Portuguese admiral and conqueror Afonso de Albuquerque established a fortress – named Nossa Senhora da Conceição (Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception) – on Hormuz island, thereby giving the Portuguese full control of the trade between India and Europe through the Persian Gulf.

The campaign against Hormuz was a plan of King Manuel I of Portugal to thwart Muslim trade in the Indian Ocean by capturing Aden – to block trade through the Red Sea, Hormuz – to block trade through Beirut – and Malaca to control trade with China.

The island of Hormuz was then not ruled by the young king Turan Shah, but by its vizier, Rais Nurredin Fali. After taking Hormuz, Albuquerque adopted the principle of indirect rule: the king was allowed to rule his kingdom as a vassal of the Portuguese Crown, but it was disarmed, and the Portuguese took control of the defence, effectively turning it into a protectorate.

During the 16th century, Hormuz became the most cosmopolitan city in the world. Merchants from many different places gathered in their markets: Persians, Arabs, Jews, Armenians, Indians and Europeans. A world of wealth and luxury, best captured in the Arab saying: ‘if the world was a golden ring, Ormuz would be the jewel in it.’
 

With all maritime transport between the Far and Middle-East passing through Hormuz, the total annual revenue – paid in ashrafi gold coins – was enormous, as pearls from the Persian Gulf, Indian spices, Chinese silk and the war-horses trade from Arabia to Goa in India, were heavily taxed. Of all the Portuguese possessions in the Orient, Hormuz became a vital source of income for the Portuguese State of India, part of the Portuguese Empire

Hormuz would remain a Portuguese client-state until its fall to a combined English-Persian force in 1622. Today it is part of the Iranian province of Hormozgan.

Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz constitutes a violation of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) – neither ratified by Iran and the US – by denying transit in a strait used for international navigation. According to the North-American newspaper The Atlantic, the crisis is the largest in the history of the global oil market.


Happy Easter                Feliz Páscoa                            (pic Sapo/Lusa)     



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Lobo-Antunes

‘I don’t write the books, it’s my own hand working independently’

“A revolutionary in Portuguese literature
A psychiatrist never considering being anything else than a writer
A writer marked by the colonial war in Angola
A colonial war that brought ‘ghosts’ and ‘death’ to his work
It wasn’t Lobo Antunes who lost the Nobel Prize, the Nobel Prize lost him
Writing as a ‘virus’ and a generation that is ‘passing away’
His exhilarating novels forced Portugal to confront its darkest moments.”

António Lobo Antunes – one of the most important voices in modern Portuguese literature who died on the 5th of March at the age of 83 – published 41 books, 32 of which are novels. His books often resist straightforward plot, instead unfolding through overlapping monologues in which multiple voices circle the same events from different angles.

He was the second Portuguese writer – after Fernando Pessoa – to be included in the prestigious Bibliothèque de la Pléiade and several times nominated for the Nobel Prize, which he never received.

His exacting modernistic style provoked a lifelong controversy between him and that other icon of the Portuguese literature – José Saramago – who did win the Nobel Prize in 1998.
However, many in Portugal felt the honour had gone to the wrong writer.

He was trained as a psychiatrist, worked in the Miguel Bombarda hospital in Lisbon and wrote in the evenings. From 1971 to 1973 he served as an army doctor in Angola. His experience during Portugal’s brutal colonial war marked him profoundly and the war’s moral disorientation and emotional wreckage would haunt much of his fiction.

His first novels – Elephant’s Memory and South of Nowhere – both published in 1979 – drew on his experiences as a young doctor navigating the political and personal upheavals of post-revolutionary Portugal, and brought him instant acclaim.

In South of Nowhere (Os Cus de Judas), a veteran addresses his blood-soaked memories to a silent woman in a Lisbon bar, but in fact directed at a Portugal that has all but forgotten its war crimes.

But it was his magnum opus Fado Alexandrino (1983) – capturing the generation’s disillusionment with the colonial war – that confirmed his status as a major literary voice. In novels such as The Inquisitor’s Manuel (1996) and The Splendour of Portugal (1997), he explored the lingering shadows of colonialism, the hypocrisy of the Portuguese elite and the dysfunction of family life.

Act of the Damned (1985) is set in the aftermath of the 1974 Carnation Revolution that saw the end of dictator Salazar’s Estado Novo regime. The book inhabits the minds of a landed aristocratic family as they congregate at the deathbed of its patriarch, keen on their inheritance. Meanwhile, communists are baying for blood, and the family must flee.

Through widely acclaimed internationally and translated into many languages. Lobo Antunes remained relatively little known in the English-speaking world. He is survived by his third wife, his three daughters and his three brothers

Enjoy your week         Aproveite a semana             (pic Publico/Sapo)





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Coffee

qahwa -kaffa – kahve –capha- cafeh – caffé – café – koffie – coffy – coffee

The origin of the word coffee is probably derived from Kaffa, the name of an Ethiopian kingdom in the 15th century. At that time in Yemen a beverage was prepared from a plant of Ethiopian origin, which proved to be useful to keep the Sufi mystics awake for praying at night. The word used for the beverage was qahwah, and considering that the plant came from Kaffa, it is not unreasonable to think that there would be a relationship.

Etymologists, however, are inclined to consider the word being a derivation from a word that meant ‘wine’ in Arabic. A non-alcoholic wine; the perfect solution for Muslims who needed a stimulant but were not allowed to drink alcohol.
Coffee sales were centred in the Yemeni city of Moca and spread from there throughout the Arabian Peninsula.

In the 16th century, the governor of Yemen, Ozdemir Pasha, took the coffee to the court of Suleiman the Magnificent, and from then on coffee became popular in Istanbul, and thereafter in the entire Ottoman Empire, under the Turkish Ottoman name kahve.
Cafés were booming in the capital, and the sultan introduced coffee masters in his court. Anyone who wanted to be someone in the Empire had to have at least someone who knew how to prepare good coffee; nowadays called baristas!

From Istanbul, it wasn’t difficult for the beverage to reach Venice, one of the biggest trade centres in the world. There might have been those who thought it a little suspicious for Christians to drink a Muslim beverage but when beverage coming from the depths of Arabia delighted the palate of the Pope, no Christian hesitated to have a coffee, which the Italians called caffè.

The popularity of coffee thereafter spread across the capitals of Europe, and finally arrived in Paris, where it ended up being one of the central elements of the city’s identity under the French name café, the same name also used for the beverage in Portugal, where the first coffee roasters appeared in Lisbon in the 17th century.

But there was – besides the southern route across land via Istanbul – a second northern route through which the habit of drinking coffee spread throughout the continent, in a similar way as tea was introduced in Europe. And once again, Dutch ships were involved, which transported the product directly from Yemen to the UK.

In 1652, the first English coffeeshop was opened in Oxford and soon after coffee shops expanded as popular meeting points in London. Unlike the word café – which came via the South – the word coffee comes from the Dutch word koffie.

The word espresso comes from the machine that, from the mid-20th century onwards, was used to create espresso coffee. Previously, the beverage was prepared in the Turkish way, mixing the ground beans with boiled water. Now, with the machine, the coffee is prepared with hot water passing under pressure over the ground beans and running through a small spout (called bica) into the cup.

In Portugal, the usual word to ask for an espresso is the word café (or bica).
So, whoever asks for café – just like that – is asking for an espresso.

Enjoy the week                                                 Approveite a semana




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Zé-Povinho

‘Zé Povinho looks from one side to the other, and stays – as always – the same’

Zé (abbreviation from José) Povinho (‘little people’) is a caricature of the Portuguese everyman, created by Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro – journalist, socialist,  publisher of satirical newspapers, and ceramist – in the second half of the 19th century.


The figure became a symbol of the Portuguese working-class people, critiquing in a humorous way the main social, political and economic problems in the Portuguese society.

The cartoon made its first appearance in the newspaper A Laterna Mágica (the Magic Lantern) in 1875. Zé Povinho is often depicted with his mouth open and not intervening, resigning when faced with injustice or corruption and unaware of the big issues in the country. He is an expression of the common, simple man.

He became a popular figure of the Portuguese people in the tri-dimensional ceramic form made by the Bordalo Pinheiro factory in Caldas da Rainha – 75 km north of Lisbon – that is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year.

The Bordalo Pinheiro museum in Lisbon opened an exhibition last week commemorating the anniversary of the creation of the character Zé Povinho by visual artist Bordalo Pinheiro (1846-1905).

The exhibition (until September 6) is entitled TOMA! – referring to the figure’s characteristic gesture of the arm, representing his revolt and insolence – and presents 400 Zés Povinhos created over one and a half century.

The collection brings together pieces by various artists, from its creator to well-known contemporary artists and anonymous potters in the most surprising materials; from glass to magazine covers and textiles.

The museum director, João Alpuim Bothelho, emphasizes that Bordalo Pinheiro’s humour always has a political touch but is not populist and that Zé Povinho is a ‘universal figure’ due to his essence, giving as an example the many foreign visitors who find a parallel figure in their own home countries.

Enjoy your week                   Aproveite a semana                (pic Lusa/Sapo)

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Presidency

‘We need a country that is prepared, not surprised’ (President elect)

In spite of the unprecedented floods and landslides as a result of the last two weeks’ train of storms, people turned out in surprising numbers for the presidential elections last Sunday. The former Socialist leader António José Seguro got 67% of the vote – almost twice as many as his rival, Chega leader and far-right populist André Ventura – and more than any other president before him.

Even in areas where voting has been delayed due to the bad weather and lack of conditions to open polling stations – comprising approximately 0.3% of the electorate – Seguro was the most voted candidate.

In less than three weeks, mainland Portugal has been raided by six storms – Ingrid, Joseph, Chandra, Kristin, Leonardo and Marta – which were accompanied by heavy rainfall. The damage caused by the extreme weather already amounts to more than 4 billion euros, and so far 15 people have lost their lives during this national calamity.

But it’s not over yet. The continuing rain and rising river levels – especially of the Tejo, Douro and Mondego –  are leading to extensive flooding and landslides, as a result of the completely saturated soils. These extreme events will occur with greater violence because of the climate crisis, which leads to warmer atmospheres and oceans.

A recent report of the McKinsey Global Institute concluded that a quarter of the country is currently exposed to climate risks – floods, forest fires and drought – and that the government will need to invest double the amount it currently spends on climate resilience.

Although Portugal’s presidency is a largely ceremonial role, it holds some key powers, including the ability to dissolve parliament under certain circumstances, to call snap elections, and to veto legislation.

The longstanding moderate socialist Seguro – who paradoxically has won the support of mainstream politicians on the right wanting to halt the rising populist tide – assured the Portuguese, however, that he has no interest in changing he constitution, in increasing the president’s powers, nor in dissolving the current minority government.

Last May, the far-right Chega party became the second largest parliamentary force, overtaking the Socialists and landing behind the centre-right ruling alliance, which garnered 31.2%.
‘With more than 32% of the vote this month, Chega managed to exceed the government’s share of the vote, reinforcing Ventura’s project to cannibalise the rightwing space in the country.

Keep your feet dry         Mantenha os pés secos (pic Público/Sapo)

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