Until now, there had been two constants in Portuguese politics: the north voted right and the south voted left, and the Alentejo was a stronghold of communism. The first constant, thanks to the mirage of a winner in each electoral district, was more or less preserved, but the second constant definitely jumped into the air last Sunday: for the first time since the Carnation Revolution (which we will commemorate). Middle century in one month), the Portuguese Communist Party did not elect any MP in Alentejo. The days of Álvaro Conihal, when more than half of Alentejo came to pick the ballot from the basket and gavel to put it in the ballot boxes, are not far away.
However, what happened? What other ballot did the people of Alentejo choose in this election? Here lies the problem or the turning point: the rise of the extreme right in Chiga is almost entirely linked to the map of communist electoral strongholds. If we take the Algarve region, the southernmost region of Portugal, which, however, can be defined as the Alentejo region Turbo tourismChiga's best results were in Setubal, Beja, Évora… where Cunhal surpassed or received 50% of the votes in good times. Alentejo ze Bovinho has gone from raising a closed fist to raising his arm with an open palm to hail a taxi.
But this is nothing new. This shift of votes from the ranks of the communists to the ranks of the far right has been well studied in France, where it was first identified; Somehow, we haven't stopped seeing it since then in many other parts of the Western world, though certainly not in such an obvious and sharp way as in Portugal. However, the first reaction to this is usually very common: blame the left I wake up – Whatever – abandoning the working class in favor of all kinds of partial struggles, thus leaving it under the feet of horses, or black shirts. Manolo or Paco appears to clench their fists and raise their arms at the first LGTBIQ+ acronym placed in front of them.
But is it so? The Portuguese experience tells us that on the one hand, as we have seen, it is clear that a large part of the traditional communist electorate went to vote for the far right in these elections, yes, but on the other hand, and this communist left that was going to abandon them turned out to be the left that least resembled the caricature of the left. I wake up The entire Western Hemisphere, courtesy of the Greek Communist Party of Greece, which not long ago took a stand against equal marriage with I don't know what cheap-paying excuses. The Chinese Communist Party is a classical, orthodox, Leninist and Stalinist Communist Party, which not only hides the hammer and basket, but also waves this symbol everywhere. This does not prevent him, of course, from waging other despised struggles as a postmodern leftist, of course, but after all, it is difficult to accuse the Chinese Communist Party – specifically the Communist Party – of being leftist. I wake upgenuinely
It is that, as it could not be otherwise, this left I wake up Apparently it also exists in Portugal. Again, remember to use the tag without verifying its authenticity, but as a description of the caricature used. In this sense, the Esquerda mass will fill this space. Now, the BE has also become a communist formation, although it no longer boasts a hammer and basket. As in many other things, the division between the Communist Parties in Portugal is a classic one: on the one hand, there are the orthodox Stalinists of the CPC, and on the other, there are the heterodox Trotskyists and Maoists of the BE. We must also add the Lever, which emerges from this space – especially from the European Union – and which defines itself as a green left and which – yes now – will be identified with the common post-communist space in Europe. To be clear, the Spanish equivalent is Livre, not BE, or even less so, PCP.
Well, that left I wake up Portugal, which finds its strongholds in the big cities, as everywhere on the continent, against the classic left of the CPC, and whose electorate we have already seen is more rural, has not suffered the wear and tear in these elections. BE remains, whether it happens or not, the same as it was in 2022, and Livre doubles the modest results. Likewise, their voters do not match those of the far right: Lisbon, Porto, Braga, Coimbra, etc. They give the best results in BE and Livre, and the worst in Chega.
In an unexpected turn of events, the easy caricature doesn't solve anything for us. Oh, if only everything were that simple… However, there is a really annoying and worrying side. I do not know to what extent the insistence on material conditions explains this entire reactionary wave, as usually happens in the usual analyses. In the end, Lula da Silva's governments lifted a large number of Brazilians out of extreme poverty and misery, which did not prevent a chemically pure fascist and neo-Nazi proposal like Bolsonaro's from winning elections later. Fortunately, Lula took revenge and now rules Brazil.
Ultimately, the election results in Portugal remind us once again that we have a pending task at home, because if fascism is growing on the other side of the peninsula, it is already in government here. Do we have the right weapons to fight it? Are we hitting the target of our attacks? Are we content to condemn the most bizarre manifestations of Spanish fascism that we suffer from while continuing to whitewash the most obscure, normalized, and therefore most dangerous manifestations? That, my friend, is known only to the wind.
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