The south of southern Europe, the lower end of the Iberian Peninsula, has become a fertile territory for the extreme right, especially in Portugal. In all of the five southern constituencies, the Algarve and the four that correspond fully or partially with the Alentejo, the ultra André Ventura came second on Sunday, ahead of the conservative Luís Montenegro and only behind the socialist Pedro Nuno Santos.
On a different scale, since the Lusitanian ultras of the Chega have achieved a level much higher than the maximum of Vox, this Lusitanian geography of the ultra suffrage has significant similarities with the Spanish one. In the general elections of 2023, the party of Santiago Abascal hit the ceiling in Ceuta, Murcia and Almeria, with between 23% and 21% of the votes. Vox was also around 20% in Toledo and Guadalajara, but at the same time, compared to its average of 12.3% for the State as a whole, it was around 16% in southern constituencies such as Málaga, Granada and Melilla, as well as also in Albacete, Ciudad Real and Alicante. On the other hand, in Badajoz and Cáceres, neighbors of Alentejo, the ultras lacked power.
It’s not all coincidences. Vox’s and Chega’s electoral maps show relevant differences, especially with regard to the respective capitals. With its 14% from Madrid, those from Abascal exceeded their average by 1.7 points, while those from Ventura remained in Lisbon 1.1 points below theirs, and thanks to the fact that in the metropolitan area they compensated for the marked weakness of the city.
The north appears as an unfavorable territory for both parties, but in very different ways. It constitutes the black hole of Vox, especially in historical nationalities, from the respectable 10.6% of 2023 in Tarragona to the minuscule 2.1% in Gipuzkoa, passing through 7.6% in Barcelona or close to 5% from A Coruña and Ourense. Even if he plays with the advantage of not having to measure himself against a peripheral nationalism that does not exist in Portugal, in the northernmost part, the closest to Galicia in all aspects, Ventura was facing the tradition of voting on the classic right , that of the PSD of Montenegro.
The only constituency where the Chega did not get deputies was precisely that of northern Bragança, a neighbor of Zamora and Ourense. However, he got the same number of votes as the country as a whole, which was insufficient because there are only three seats up for grabs. In Viana do Castelo, Braga and Vila Real, with Pontevedra and Ourense, it managed to be around that 18.1% of its national average. However, in the populous Porto, he was almost three points behind.
Ventura’s goal of leading the right seemed like a chimera in the campaign. At the polls, the conservative Democratic Alliance coalition beat the Chega by only 1.6 times, but the replacement did start from the Tagus down, where the Chega occupies the space left free by the decline of the left , especially from the communists, swept from their old fiefdoms in the Alentejo. In Grândola, the town of the anthem of the carnation revolution 50 years ago, the Chega climbed to second place, behind the socialists, in front of the conservative PSD and with the communists in shambles.
Ventura’s result in Grândola, of 19.5%, more than unthinkable not long ago, is not so high in the context of Alentejo, since, for example, he took almost a quarter of the votes in the constituency of Portalegre, while the neighboring Algarve prevailed with 27.2%. In the sum of those five districts that include, even if only in part, the Alentejo and the Algarve, Ventura fulfilled his dream of overcoming the conservatives, with a three point lead, propelled by a whole past of marginalization and utopias never realized, together with a present of sudden increase in immigration.
Chega’s main asset is the skilled demagogue Ventura. But the key to the future of the Portuguese right lies in the way in which the hitherto rather gray Montenegro takes advantage of the simultaneously privileged and demonized position of prime minister.
