Welcome to the Week em Breve, a wrap-up of important Portuguese news to keep you up to date and in the know.

Neo-nazi mob attacks group in front of theater, injures actor

A number of violent attacks by far-right groups took place last week, with anti-fascist protests of far greater numbers held across the country in response.

On Tuesday evening, roughly 30 individuals, reportedly including members of the ultranationalist Reconquista (Reconquest) and the Portuguese chapter of the explicitly neo-nazi international Blood and Honour movements, attacked a group of actors in front of the A Barraca Cinearte theater. Renowned stage actor Adérito Lopes was wounded during the assault, sustaining injuries to the eye and cuts to his face.

The attack, which occurred on Portugal Day — a holiday instituted during the Estado Novo dictatorship as Race Day but kept on after the April 25, 1974 revolution as Dia de Portugal e de Comunidades Portuguesas, as well as commemorating the death of the renowned Portuguese poet Luís Vaz de Camões —  also marked the 30th anniversary of the murder of Alcindo Monteiro, a young man from Cabo Verde who was attacked by neo-nazi groups in central Lisbon in 1995.

Camera footage of last Tuesday’s attack revealed that at least one of the aggressors, a member of Blood and Honour, had been involved in the murder of Alcindo Monteiro. 

Earlier this year, in April, Expresso reported that Blood and Honour had been mentioned in provisional drafts of last year’s Relatório Anual de Segurança Interna (Annual Internal Security Report), but was ultimately struck from the final version. Parliament is scheduled to discuss this omission on June 25.

Far-right antagonists in Porto attack food relief volunteers

Later on Tuesday night, in Porto, two individuals attacked members of a social association who were distributing food to the homeless. According to Público the victims, both female, claimed that two young men started to accost them on the street, performing Nazi salutes and blaming the volunteers for Portugal’s rising immigrant population, and soon escalated to forcefully pushing them against a parked van, smacking and punching them. The suspects, aged 24 and 27, reportedly identified themselves as Chega supporters.

Hundreds gather around Portugal to protest racism, fascism

On Sunday, numerous protests were held across Portugal in response to the spike of fascist violence last week and the frightening rise of the country’s far-right more broadly. Hundreds of people gathered in solidarity with the country’s at-risk communities in front of the A Barraca Cinearte theater in Lisbon, the site of Tuesday’s violent attack, with protests of similar size occurring in Porto and Coimbra.

Many protesters invoked images and symbols of the April 25 Revolution, wearing red carnation lapels and leading chants of “fascismo nunca mais, 25 de abril sempre” (fascism never again, April 25 forever).

Speaking with reporters, activist and actress Andreia Galvão warned that the fascist threat would not stop at Portugal’s immigrant communities: “The targets of neo-Nazis or the far right are all people. . . these groups, being unconstitutional, should be dismantled,” she said.

Montenegro government’s new program passes from Council of Ministers to Parliament 

Amid the mess of Santos celebrations, neo-nazi mob violence, and anti-fascist protests, this week’s legislative developments have flown somewhat under the radar: on Saturday, the Government Program of Prime Minister Luís Montenegro and his newly-formed government was handed over to the parliament after being voted through the Council of Ministers on Thursday. The new program’s contents are at times vague or opaque, but it is clear that Chega and other far-right parties have strengthened their influence on the new government. Some of the stated goals and strategies, in fact, can be traced back to proposals first made by members of the right.

Proposed restrictions on immigration

Immigration, which dominated narratives across the political spectrum leading up to last month’s snap election, is duly addressed in the proposed Government Program. Among other things, Montenegro’s government intends to limit the issuance of new work visas to only “highly qualified candidates,” implement a Portuguese language proficiency requirement for the renewal of temporary residence visas, and introduce a new “Bom Regresso” (Good Return) Program, with the ostensible purpose of helping “all people who want to return to their country of origin.”

Perhaps most striking are the proposed amendments to the family reunification processes, an already tightly regulated and highly specific means of entry into Portugal. The new program proposes to add a clarification that legal entry via family reunification is not an “unrestricted right” and is necessarily dependent on the country’s “capacity for integration,” despite the fact that family reunification is protected as a fundamental right under international law and by the European Convention on Human Rights. Legal experts warn this new “clarification” would in effect create opportunities to complicate, obstruct, and ultimately erode the right to reunification.

A week ago, Chega leader André Ventura called for a suspension of the right to reunification, according to Expresso.

Social subsidy beneficiaries will be forced to work

Elsewhere in the proposed Government Program are plans for new legislation that would obligate the recipients of certain social benefits, in particular the Rendimento Social de Inserção (Social Integration Income, RSI), to work a certain number of hours per week. The details are still unclear, but the framework is strikingly similar to a suggestion raised by Chega’s own André Ventura in 2020. In December of that year, Ventura proposed that recipients of social benefits should be put to work as cleaners or other types of “auxiliary work in public facilities.” The motivation for this renewed proposal, as laid out in the new program document, is to strengthen the value of the country’s working class, affirming that no worker has “an income lower than the public support received by a person who does not work.”

RSI recipients received an average monthly subsidy of €152,96 last year, according to Nova Economics for Policy’s Portugal, Balanço Social 2024.