It wasn't for lack of warning

The election results from a week ago were not a surprise. Practically the whole of Europe, including the USA, experienced the same phenomenon. The Portuguese exception never existed. Not during the liberal monarchy, nor during the first republic, during the Estado Novo, and even less so now. We are a European country open to the outside world. What happens abroad ends up happening here. Any analysis of the latest election results implies acknowledging that only the distracted could have been surprised.

Chega is here to take the place of the PS. I have warned about this several times in texts in Observador and Contra-Corrente, with Helena Matos and José Manuel Fernandes. Among the texts, I highlight this one, from June 2021 , in which I raise the hypothesis that the PS, similar to what the French PS did with its headquarters on rue Solférino, in Paris, might be forced to sell its headquarters in Largo do Rato. It seems unthinkable and impossible, but it was far from happening. Chega grew in 2024 at the expense of the PS and abstention. In 2025, it was only at the expense of the PS. For some reason, Ventura's party won where the left dominated. These voters did not stop being socialists and became far-right. They only want someone to guarantee them social protection. These are people who believe that the greatest threat to their social rights is immigration. People to whom the PS said no, that they were wrong. These people did what was expected: they voted for those who told them that immigration was the biggest threat to their social rights. That is why they stopped voting for the PS and started voting for Chega. They did so in 2025 and will continue to do so, because from now on it will be very difficult for the PS to turn things around. It could happen, but if it does, it will be by luck. The trend was determined a long time ago.

It was dictated when the PS was unable to scrutinise José Sócrates or stop his actions. It became more pronounced when António Costa feigned defeat and became Prime Minister. Some will say that this is all water under the bridge. And it is. But it left its mark. It was at that time that the right became anti-establishment . The PS's downward trend was evident during the 8 years in which Costa did nothing but push the problems under the rug. He did nothing, but announced everything and more. Those were the times of celebration and revelry, when people would say out loud that the country was fantastic, that there were no problems, that the people were happy, and measures were announced that were not implemented. It was the time of make-believe. The time when the PS laughed left its mark on people, many of whom were PS voters.

The socialists are now accusing Pedro Nuno Santos. A poor devil who is nothing more than someone who grew up convinced that he was fantastic. Since no one ever told him otherwise, he became the leader of the PS with the certainty that he would make a difference just by being who he was. Worse still: when they warned him not to be arrogant, he did what arrogant people do: he pretended he wasn't. He disguised himself, convinced that no one would notice that it was a mask. The tragedy of Pedro Nuno Santos is the same as that of all those who grow up spoiled and are not told that the world outside is not the same as the world at home.

They will tell me that Chega has no cadres. It is true. But that is now. It will have them later. Those who are in the State with the PS will easily move to Chega and become Chega cadres when Ventura's party delivers the final blow to the PS. Life goes on and what people said yesterday, no matter how inflamed and indignant they are with Ventura's populist speech, they will deny tomorrow. It was not only Peter who denied Christ three times. It is human nature to do so once, twice, three times, as many times as necessary. There is nothing new in this.

Chega is not a far-right party. It is not, it was not and it will hardly ever be. Chega is a populist right-wing party. This distinction is important because, contrary to what many believe, we are not experiencing a return to the period of the 1920s and 1930s. If there is a historical period that can be used as a comparison for what we are experiencing, it is the last quarter of the 19th century. At that time, a major technological transformation took place that had a major impact on people's lives. The light bulb was commercialized in 1879 and in the following decade, electricity was able to travel long distances. The telephone appeared at the same time. Steamboats began to cross the Atlantic on a large scale. The development was extremely positive, but the immediate consequences for people's lives were frightening. Migration reached unprecedented levels. People left the countryside and went to the cities. Amidst a mass of anonymous people, human beings alone felt helpless. Without ground.

Nationalism, the sentiment that Napoleon ignited and spread throughout Europe, was the glue that held together the fractured tradition. Democracy expanded, and citizens began to listen to and vote for populist politicians who promised a connection. William Jennings Bryan, who was 19 when Edison allowed the light bulb to be sold on a large scale, ran twice for the US presidency, in 1896 and 1900, on a populist platform. In the US and in Europe, presidents, heads of government, kings and emperors were shot or bombed to death. Fear was rife, but it was not the cause of the Great War in 1914 or the Second World War in 1939. These politicians were not far-right. They were not fascists. They were simply populists. They did not have the ideological underpinnings that led to the far-right, fascism and Nazism.

Likewise, Chega is not fascist. It has no ideological basis, much less any philosophical basis, to support this claim. It is simply a populist party led by opportunists who are very aware of the times. That is all it is. Nothing more than that. Any attempt to politically combat Chega without understanding this reality does not diminish it, it only makes it grow even more.

The rise of Chega does not shock me. In the same way, I am not afraid that it will eventually replace the PS. Both are statist parties. Ventura is a demagogue who either does what he promises (and leads the state to bankruptcy) or betrays those who voted for him and are included in the system. To prevent Ventura from deciding between the two possibilities, it is up to the defenders of liberal democracy to present and implement solutions to the real problems of citizens. It will not be easy. And the main reason why it will not be easy is that we are witnessing a radical transformation in the world that could lead to the end of Western supremacy. Despite China's growth, the West's pillars are still the international use of the English language, the dollar is the world's exchange and reserve currency, and the philosophical and civilizational assumptions of the West still serve as a reference for what we call the rule of law. However, all this could change if technological decline, attacks on the rule of law and central bank independence (as Trump does to the Fed) inflict irreparable damage on the system.

These are complicated times. But in Portugal, we could have anticipated this, as I had the opportunity to warn in this , this , this , this , this , this , this , and in this text in Observador. It was not a case of fortune-telling. It was merely an objective observation of what was happening abroad. Chega catching up with or even overtaking the PS is not something unexpected. So, please, do not act surprised when the bomb we have been holding for a long time explodes in our hands.