‘The Algarve is Chega’s kingdom’: resort city’s voters tempted by far-right party | Portugal

TThe road to Albufeira is full of billboards. Some, like the faded one at a crossroads leading to the heart of Portugal’s southern resort city, offer a sun-bleached view of seductive real estate, golden beaches and lively nightlife. Others, emerging ahead of Sunday’s local elections, are peddling different kinds of promises.

By far the most numerous are members of the far-right Chega party. Political posters contain one-line complaints about public health, education and housing, telling passing motorists that all these problems will be solved with Chega in power.

In a city that has voted for the centre-right PSD for more than two decades, disappointed Albufeirans are likely to help Chega deliver a historic night on Sunday. Chega, who leapfrogged the socialists to second place in May’s general election, now hopes to capitalize on local disappointments to win dozens of municipalities across the country and position himself similarly in the next general election.

The Algarve is at the heart of the far right’s strategy. Chega leader André Ventura, a former football commentator and columnist who left the PSD six years ago and founded the new party, described the region as “the stronghold of the party” and the starting point of the “conquest” of Portugal by the far right.

A recent poll for the Portuguese daily newspaper Diário de Notícias put Ventura’s party in the lead in the national vote for the first time. The cocktail of populist policies, including tighter controls on immigration and chemical castration of pedophiles, has captured the attention of voters fed up with a series of corruption scandals that have dogged the two main parties in recent years. Some think Ventura is on pace to become prime minister.

“If there is a new political scandal and new early elections in two months, Chega will most likely win the general elections,” said António Costa Pinto, a political scientist at the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Lisbon.

Chega voters in the Algarve argue that the party should use Sunday’s elections as a springboard to power across the country. Daniel Vicente, a 30-year-old bartender from Albufeira, said: “I sincerely hope Chega wins. The Algarve is collapsing… Portugal is collapsing.”

Vicente’s biggest concern is housing prices. Facing the same overtourism consequences as other parts of Europe, the Algarve has the second highest housing cost in Portugal after Lisbon. Rental prices in Albufeira have increased by more than 16% in the last year alone.

Echoing some of Chega’s talking points and misinformation, Vicente pointed to low-wage immigrants coming to the area.

“Everything is going well for the immigrants who come here,” he said. “They share two-room flats with 10 people. They pay little rent, so they have money left over. I don’t know what kind of support they get, but they must be getting some support because they are opening their own stores and you wonder how they do it.

“I have to pay 800 euros (£696) just over minimum wage for a flat and everything else [€870 a month]. “No one is giving me anything and I don’t have enough money in the bank to ask for a loan to buy a house.”

This rut ​​was the Chega’s breeding ground. The party’s meteoric rise, fueled by three snap elections in the past three years and wildly disproportionate media coverage, lies mostly in Ventura’s capacity to tap into people’s untapped anger and use it to disrupt the political conversation.

Miguel Carvalho, journalist and author of Por Dentro do Chega (Inside the Chega), said: “In 2019, Ventura went where politicians have not gone in years. He listened to the people, he was their shoulder to cry on. And he promised to shout for them as much as he could.

“When they started making these statements that people were ashamed to make in public, and the media gave these statements a microphone and made Chega look bigger than it is, people started to think that they too had the right to talk like that. They felt represented and Chega grew.”

He said the party was “based in Ventura and based on his intuition. That’s why it grew so much, so fast.”

Carvalho said the days when Ventura had to chase Santiago Abascal, leader of Spain’s far-right Vox party, or Italy’s Matteo Salvini for a selfie were over. “He is the one invited now. He often travels to Spain and Hungary. Bolsonaro supporters idolize him. Now he is their star.”

The stark contrast between the Algarve’s image as a seaside paradise and the realities of daily life for many of its inhabitants made it the perfect target for Chega and an ideal laboratory for Portugal’s rapidly changing politics. Albufeira has a population of 40,000 and attracts approximately half a million visitors annually.

“Much of the economy is based on low wages, tourism and tourism-related migration,” Costa Pinto said. “These issues make people very sensitive to Chega’s message.”

Three tuk-tuk drivers waiting for passengers near the popular Praia da Oura beach spoke fondly of Ventura being the first politician to pay attention to them.

“Ventura puts the Portuguese people first,” said Filipe Serrão, 50, who boasts of being one of the first Chega activists in Albufeira.

Brazilian driver Rodney Sudário (38), who has been in Portugal for 18 years, said he would vote for Chega. He wasn’t bothered by Ventura’s demonization of immigrants because he thought the problems came from those coming from “non-Christian cultures”; This is something his colleague Tiago Filipe, 29, agrees with.

“Chega is not against immigrants, it is only against those who do not want to work,” Filipe said. “The immigrants from Southeast Asia are all unskilled. And the Muslims just want subsidies. They want to take over Europe, Islamize it.”

Not everyone agrees. A few meters away from the tuk-tuks’ parking lot, an Indian man who has been working in Albufeira for 10 years nodded. He was worried that a Chega win would “make everything harder” for him and others like him.

“It surprises me that the Portuguese who immigrated everywhere are now against immigration,” he said. “It wasn’t like this before, but Chega talks and talks and promises everything, impossible things. If Ventura wins and kicks out all the immigrants, where will he find people to work in restaurants and agriculture?” said the man.

But for some, Sunday can’t come soon enough. “If Chega wins, we will take our flags and travel around in tuk-tuks,” Filipe said. “This will be a party. The Algarve is Chega’s kingdom. The rest of the country will follow.”