Miguel Nunes Silva is the Director of the Lisbon-based Trezeno Institute and a municipal representative of the Portuguese conservative, anti-globalist CHEGA! party. He holds an MA in European Studies from the College of Europe and his career has spanned several UN and EU agencies, as well as the private sector. His analyses can be found in Portuguese publications as well as The European Conservative, The American Conservative, and The National Interest.
In this wide-ranging interview, a leading voice from Portugal’s national-conservative camp reflects on CHEGA’s rapid ascent, André Ventura’s electoral breakthrough, and the broader political realignment reshaping Portuguese society. The conversation explores the party’s critique of the post-1974 order, its battle against what it sees as a technocratic and media-driven establishment, and its stance on issues ranging from immigration and cultural identity to EU integration and Atlanticism. It also situates Portugal’s national awakening within a wider European and transatlantic shift, examining lessons from figures such as Trump and Orbán while addressing Serbia’s place in a potential “Europe of sovereign nations.”
CHEGA’s meteoric rise in Portugal’s political landscape has reshaped the country’s discourse. How do you interpret the party’s success in giving voice to millions who felt politically homeless, and what does this signal about the broader realignment of Portuguese society?
CHEGA!’s success has different roots. Portugal’s parliamentary system was for 40 years very similar to the German one with five main parties dominating the partisan game. Two of those were considered to be on the right: the catch-all PSD and the smaller chrtistian-democratic CDS. In 2015, the Left broke tradition and united to bring down a PSD-CDS government in parliament and the leaderships of PSD and CDS reacted by turning Left. This was an outrage to many right-wing constituents, be they conservatives or classical liberals, who would, by 2019, found two new parties: the liberal Iniciativa Liberal (IL) and the conservative CHEGA! (CH). A second source of voters were non-voters who felt inspired by the anti-establishment nationalist tone of CH. Yet a third, although less influential, were supporters of fringe radical-right views who finally saw in CH and André Ventura, a viable political project, contrasting with the decades old upstarts that had always been electorally irrelevant.
André Ventura’s presidential candidacy galvanized unprecedented support for national conservatism. In your view, what were the key ideas and strategies that allowed his campaign to break through decades of political inertia and capture the imagination of diverse constituencies?
Ventura’s electoral platform did not change as he had to mobilise his own political base to make sure that he was well placed in the first round of the election. His speech focused on mass immigration and corruption, as per usual. Ultimately, the Left was successful in dividing the Right which would have otherwise been more popular, congregating around a single candidacy. In the second round, Ventura gained an additional 10% of the voters, coming mainly from dissatisfied conservative sectors of PSD who could not conceive voting for a socialist, as well as a small margin of classical-liberals from IL, for the same reason.
Portugal, like much of the West, is in the midst of a cultural and civilizational moment of truth. How do you define the cultural war in Portugal today — and what role does CHEGA play in defending traditional identity, faith, and historical memory against progressive cultural engineering?
One of the positive aspects is that Portugal is a peripheral nation that therefore escapes some of the most deranged trends that doom countries such as France or Germany. On the negative side, Portugal has an aged boomer population that is highly politically correct, exceptionally conformist and offers the smallest levels of scepticism in mainstream media of the entire European continent. Add to this mix, a regime whose narrative is shaped by a para-marxist revolution that took place on the 70s (1974) as well as a long history of imperial and colonial expansion which are weaponised against the Portuguese population by both stigmatizing our cultural past as well as justifying the ‘multi-cultural’ future of the country, by the woke elites. CH obviously tries to resist the suicidal policies of the Left but must do so under a constant atmosphere of suspicion and institutional ostracism, caused by mainstream media propaganda.
For years, the so-called ‘radical center’ has effectively blocked substantive reform and change. How has CHEGA articulated its critique of this managerial oligarchy, and what concrete policies do you believe can dismantle entrenched technocratic control to restore democratic accountability?
CH has had a constructive role by requiring anti-corruption measures, including measures against revolving doors between the public and private sectors, heavier sentences for violent crime and pedophilia, and calling for the dismantling of the NGO and QuaNGO network which lobbies politics and media. These entities drain public and European funding from civil society and use them for subversive actions, from indoctrinating children with gender ideology to lobbying for mass immigration from the third world.
The left has dominated media and academic institutions for decades, shaping narratives and marginalizing dissent. What strategies do you advocate for countering this hegemony, fostering intellectual pluralism, and elevating voices of conservative thought in Portugal’s public sphere?
This is what entities like the Trezeno Institute are meant to accomplish but we operate at a complete disadvantage given our lack of funding and the structural problem which is conservatives largely having jobs and families to take care of. The typical leftist activist has no such constraints and even enjoys public funding to some extent. In a country like Portugal, the reach of social media is real and growing but still marginal, while mainstream media can afford to operate at a loss. Either mainstream media undergoes reform or political change will be painfully long and sclerotic.
Young Portuguese are increasingly politically awakened yet often lack pathways into meaningful influence. How do you assess the position of young people within Portugal’s national conservative movement, and how can CHEGA and allied intellectuals harness this energy for genuine generational renewal?
The young generation is certainly more conservatively minded and supports CH by wider margins than boomers. However, in a country with an inverted age pyramid, their support is far from consequential. It also does not help that, as a smaller constituency, they also espouse more radical views.
On the European stage, the EU has advanced policies that many see as entangled in geopolitical adventurism and warmongering. What is your position on the EU’s current foreign-policy orientation, and how do you envision a foreign policy grounded in peace, national interest, and sovereignty?
Having worked and studied in the Brussels circles myself, I have for many years been aware of its tendency for utopian universalism and wanton subversion of national sovereignty. CH is more nuanced but, personally, I believe the greatest mistake was to create a permanent bureaucracy in Brussels. As long as that bureaucracy remains in place, national sovereignty in Europe will be at risk. Therefore, no surprise that every leftist attempt at dismantling traditional values and institutions ends up subsidized with Brussels money, since the more Brussels can extend its jurisdiction at the cost of national governments, the better. European nations ridiculously sponsor their own subversion as much as Europeans finance their own propaganda.
In the United States, the Trump presidency catalyzed what many describe as a conservative revolution and decisive anti-woke push. How do you interpret the significance of this movement for Europe, and in what ways can Portugal’s national conservative ecosystem learn from and align with these developments?
Trump is not perfect but his victories as much as those of Milei, Orbán or Bolsonaro, prove that national-conservative policies are not only possible but also more effective than the para-marxist system we have inherited from the boomer social-democracy paradigm. Boomer social-democracy in fact aims at consolidating the deranged values of the swinging 60s, by institutionalizing ‘counter-culture’ and the principles of the May of 68. In order to return to the normalcy of capitalist conservative leadership such as it existed in the 1950s, the extremist subversive deviant structures set up since, must come down.
In an era of media saturation and narrative warfare, effective communication is essential. What is your vision for a national-conservative media and intellectual infrastructure in Portugal — and how can coordination among political forces, cultural institutions, and emerging platforms accelerate the reclamation of the public square?
Portugal is beset by two main vices in the area of freedom of speech and information: one is external funding for propaganda aimed at the national audience and the other is nominal right-wing forces being unwilling to fight the Left with the same unscrupulous methods the Left fights the Right. The former artificially maintains corrupt mainstream propaganda on life support whereas the latter guarantees leftists never fear reprisals for their institutional abuses: if every time a centre-right government came to power, it decided to fund right-wing NGOs and media, to the same extent the Left does for its activists, then both sides would, ultimately, reach the conclusion that public funding should not be politicized. As things stand at the moment, there are no disincentives to leftist politicization of civil society.
Looking beyond Portugal, many Europeans sense the need for a “New Europe of Patriots” grounded in sovereignty, tradition, and cultural rootedness. What is your position on Serbia’s role within such a continental reawakening, and how might nations like Serbia be integrated into a cooperative network of sovereign, patriotic states shaping the future of Europe?
As a Portuguese who once lived in Belgrade, allow me, first of all, to say that the 1999 NATO intervention is not something I regard with pride. Portugal had no national interest at stake in Kosovo, nor had NATO been attacked. There was no justification for my country’s belligerence against Yugoslavia and much the same could be said for the current conflict in Ukraine. Therefore, as a nationalist, as a conservative and as a realist, I can only interpret the interventions as politically motivated and consisting of ideological overreach. I wish I could say that Portugal’s conservatives think alike but, alas, even in the circles of CH, Atlanticism is very strong. Rather, I will stress the ‘boomer’ character of Portuguese society. Unlike many in Serbia and the Balkans, for instance, I do not perceive that the Atlanticist war on Yugoslavia was economically motivated. The economic domination of the Balkans by western European and US interests was already proceeding before the wars and would have taken place regardless. In that respect, the economic vulnerability caused by Marxist economics is chiefly to blame for Eastern Europe’s permeability to the Atlanticist hostile takeovers of the 1990s. I make it a point to clarify this aspect since the mobilisation of western societies is, instead, more motivated by the Baby Boomer mentality consisting of ‘end of history’ narratives. Neema Parvini beautifully illustrates this tendency by invoking John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ in his explanation of the concept of ‘boomer truth regime’. What was not understood in the 1990s, was how leftist and Marxist, concepts such as ‘human rights’ had been reified to become. In other words, it was political autism and ideological arrogance that drove and still drive Atlanticism, and not some conspiratorial resource grab motivation. Portuguese F-16s invading Yugoslav airspace might have carried templar cross roundels but they actually represented the 3 arrows of the Iron Front since the conflict was about soixante-huitards in power in western capitals, waging war on nationalists in the traditionalist Balkans. I mention all of this to explain that Serbia will have to contend with this structural defect of Atlanticist institutions whether it is in them or out of them. If Serbs believe their problems would end by joining the EU or even NATO, I would point to the current dilemma of countries like Hungary. I would also caution that further integration with the EU will only strengthen subversive forces in Serbia, working for globalist interests. NATO aggression might have been outrageous for Serbs but I can assure that Brussels subversion is outright perverse. The one good piece of news from a European conservative Right perspective is that, given Serbia’s long and proud history as a bulwark against Ottoman domination, Serbs are widely seen as an integral part of Europe and the Western world; for us national-conservatives, Brussels’s boundaries are irrelevant.
