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Memories of the dictatorship are fading. Discontent is growing. The time had come for Chega to appeal to voters’ frustrations.
By Emma Bubola
Emma Bubola reported from Faro, Portugal, and several other cities in the Algarve, speaking to officials, tourism workers, farmers and fishermen.
The sunny Algarve region on Portugal’s southern coast is a place where guitar-playing backpackers congregate near aromatic orange trees and virtual nomads seek a laid-back atmosphere. That’s not exactly what comes to mind when it comes to a bastion of far-right political sentiment.
But it was in the Algarve region that the anti-establishment Chega party finished first in this month’s national elections, disrupting Portuguese politics and injecting new anxiety into the European establishment. Nationally, Chega won 18% of the vote.
“This is a strong signal for Europe and for the world,” said João Paulo da Silva Graça, a newly elected MP from Chega, sitting in the party’s new headquarters in the Algarve as tourists ordered vegan cream cakes at a ground-floor bakery. Our values will have to prevail. “
Chega, which means “enough” in Portuguese, is the first far-right party to gain ground on Portugal’s political scene since 1974 and the end of the nationalist dictatorship of António de Oliveira Salazar. His good luck formula combined promises of greater law and order with stricter immigration measures and an appeal to economic resentments.
Chega’s advance has presented Portugal as the latest edition of a now-familiar dilemma in Europe, where the rise of far-right parties is making it difficult for primary contenders to avoid them.
The leader of Portugal’s centre-right coalition, which won the election, has refused to be friends with Chega, but believes the result is most likely to be a volatile minority government that may not last long.
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