Welcome to the Week em Breve, a wrap-up of important Portuguese news to keep you up to date and in the know.
Portugal could hold elections again for 3rd time in 3 years…
Shaken by yet another alleged corruption scandal, Portugal could soon host another election.
On Friday, Portugal’s parliament scheduled a confidence vote on the center-right government of Prime Minister Luis Montenegro, who heads the coalition between the Social Democratic Party (Partido Social Democrata – PSD) and the People’s Party (Partido Popularo – CDS-PP), according to the Associated Press.
Opposition parties are expected to vote against Montenegro, who’s being questioned about potential conflicts of interest related to his family firm, Spinumviva, most notably the 4,500€ monthly retainer it receives from casino operator Solverde — which has concessions with the Portuguese government, and where Montenegro worked until 2022, including as the representative of a group negotiating — wait for it — for an extension of its concession contracts with the state.
Montenegro has denied he’d done anything wrong, saying he put the firm under the control of…
Well, his wife and kids.
The Tuesday vote will likely end in a no-confidence outcome, and Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa — who has the authority to call elections — said mid-May would be a good time for them.
… but André Ventura said he wouldn’t run for president…
André Ventura, the former TV personality-turned leader of far-right party Chega, has formally withdrawn his candidacy for President of Portugal.
Ventura — who came in third in the 2021 presidential election behind Ana Gomes and Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa — only formalized his candidacy for the 2026 presidential election last Monday, March 3, posting a video on social media claiming that it “never made so much sense for Portugal to have a President of the Republic who is not silent in the face of corruption and the patronage that destroy our nation.”
That apparently stopped making sense about three days later, when the Chega leader told journalists that he plans to represent his party in the assembly again rather than make another run for president.
“The scenario has changed, the context is different, and my first and greatest responsibility as party leader, and this will not change in the coming weeks, is to be the head of the list of Chega in the legislative elections,” he said, according to Lusa (italics ours).
…while some Lisboetas apparently want Elon Musk out of the country’s elections
Given that Ventura boasted about being invited to the inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump, it’s not surprising that some people in Lisbon are worried that Trump’s right-hand man, the tech tycoon Elon Musk — who spent over a quarter of a billion dollars to get Trump elected — could be getting involved in Portugal’s politics.
On Sunday, dozens of protesters showed up at the Tesla showroom in Lisbon’s El Corte Inglês to protest the billionaire’s influence in European politics, given his previous use of his social media platform X to promote right-wing elements in Britain, Germany, Italy, and Romania, Reuters wrote.
One Lisbon doctor said it was time to fight back, lest Europe “return to the 1930s,” according to Reuters.
Hate speech directed at immigrants in Portugal is up — and so is crime against them
A new report from Casa do Brasil de Lisboa found that anti-immigrant hate speech in Portugal is on the rise.
A survey of 262 people found that 67.2% strongly believe that hate speech against immigrants has increased, 66.4% strongly believe that politicians’ anti-immigrant stance leads to violent hate crime against immigrants —and 75.4% said they’ve been targets of some sort of hate speech.
The report added that the number of hate crimes rose 38% from 2022 to 2023, according to figures provided to news agency Lusa by Portugal’s police.
1 in 6 Portuguese residents doesn’t have adequate heating
Portugal’s older homes aren’t known for central heating, and despite the abundance of portable heaters available in the country’s stores, 15.7% of the country’s residents didn’t have enough money in 2024 to heat their homes, according to a new report from Statistics Portugal (Instituto Nacional de Estatística – INE).
That’s down from the average of 20.8% in 2023 — but the numbers were far higher in 2024 among the elderly (22.0%) and those at risk of poverty (30.9%).
I see Airbnb everywhere
If you thought alojamento local (short-term rentals) were pretty much all over Lisbon, an interesting feature available to the public from Turismo de Portugal will let you confirm that graphically, and in minute detail: head to this map and type in an address or zoom in and out to see that, indeed, one could in theory book a place to stay on pretty much every street in the city’s center and many of them well beyond it too.
And that list only includes the registered apartments — as anyone here for more than a few months knows, many of the city’s short-term rentals are advertised off Airbnb and other similar platforms, for various reasons.
