Spain Crashes While Portugal Awakens

Portugal voted last Sunday. And it was not just another election. It was the first truly European election of 2026. Not because of its demographic weight, but because it revealed something that is becoming increasingly rare on the continent: an electorate willing to cross lines. For the first time since 1986, Portugal is headed for a second round in a presidential election. For the first time in exactly forty years, the country will face a runoff. The last time Portugal had a presidential runoff before 2026 was in the elections of 1986. Since the historic Carnation Revolution, a second presidential round had not occurred again until 2026, making this runoff a highly unusual event in Portuguese politics.

Last Sunday, the hegemony of Portuguese socialism stopped being automatic. The Socialist Party did not sweep the vote, did not settle the election in the first round, did not avoid the runoff. It felt the breath on its neck from a right-wing force that has finally stopped being decorative and begun to look like a real alternative. The name of the party that embodies this change is as simple as the political gesture it proposes: Chega. Enough. A short, sharp word, without euphemisms. A word the Portuguese have decided to pronounce out loud. And a word that, curiously, the Spanish seem not to know. In Spain people often talk about “putting one’s foot against the wall.” The problem is that putting your foot against the wall is not advancing. At best, it is merely stopping the retreat. Portugal, this time, decided to move forward.

Socialism Hardens

Chega’s candidate is André Ventura. Many call him the Portuguese Javier Milei. The comparison says more about the cultural differences between the two countries than about the candidates themselves. Ventura does not sing, shout, or insult. He does not use crude language or provoke through performance. He simply takes clear positions on the issues that the European right considers central: control of illegal immigration, safety in the streets, investment in real infrastructure, and the authority of the state. In Portugal, that alone is disruptive. So much so that Portuguese socialism itself, seeing voters slipping through its fingers, hardened both its rhetoric and its policies. It toughened immigration rules, banned the use of the chador in public spaces, and adopted measures that until recently it would have denounced as reactionary.

The strategy was the usual one: steal the rhetoric so the votes do not follow it. But this time it was not enough. André Ventura and Chega forced a second round. There is, moreover, a delicious irony in the names. The socialist candidate is named Seguro—which means “secure.” The right-wing candidate’s surname is Ventura, almost Adventure. And the Portuguese, traditionally cautious and sober, seem willing to venture a little. Not too much, but enough to shake a system that had functioned for decades without real shocks.

The parties that came in third and fourth place also say a great deal. Both belong to the center-right. The third, Liberal Initiative, founded in 2017, entered the race led by a successful businessman named Cotrim, who seriously aspired to reach the runoff. Fourth place went to an independent candidate, a retired admiral without a party. The relevant fact is this: the political space that is growing in Portugal is not to the left of socialism, but to its right. Something that in Spain should attract attention.

Ventura, moreover, is not only debating specific policies. He wants to restore the strength of the Portuguese presidency. The socialists, as so often in Europe, managed to turn the president into a figure symbolically relevant but with real power concentrated in the prime minister. In other words, citizens elect someone and then the party chooses who actually governs. In Spain this hardly needs explanation: Spaniards voted for Feijóo and Pedro Sánchez governs. That is where the inevitable comparison appears. The Portuguese right and the Spanish right are not very similar.

Ventura has a vocation for power. He wants to govern, to exercise authority, to command. Not merely to criticize. In Spain, by contrast, the right continues to keep a low profile. It still does not dare to grab the lever, take the wheel, or grip the helm. It attacks power, grows drip by drip—and that is it. Cotrim’s example is illustrative. He used his aquiline profile as a campaign symbol, claiming it was “the profile Portugal needs.” The problem is that while Cotrim went sideways, Ventura went straight ahead. And although he did not fully exploit this advantage in his communication, it confirms that in times of exhaustion the one who goes straight forward tends to prevail over the one who asks for permission.

A Blow on the Table

Portugal, in this way, is giving Spain a lesson. Not to Spanish socialism, which is quite comfortable with the timidity of its opponents, but to the Spanish right. Because while Spain bleeds between DANAs, train crashes, and a state that fails to react, Portugal has struck the table. At last an electorate reacted after growing tired of infinite caution.

It does not matter so much who wins the second round on February 8. What matters is that the Portuguese political order has already changed. Whatever happens, socialism has ceased to be indestructible and the right has ceased to be decorative. Spain, by contrast, remains trapped in its own inertia. A right that wins elections but does not govern. A left that loses votes but not power. And an apathetic electorate that watches its own life with a mixture of astonishment and fatigue, waiting for a change that never arrives. Portugal has awakened. Spain, for now, continues to crash.