The Intercidades from Lisbon arrives at Vendas Novas station on Wednesday at 6:15 pm and dumps dozens of passengers. None of them was the leader of the PSD, who had foreseen this trip in his script of “Sentir Portugal”, in Évora, after being summoned by the President of the Republic for an audience in Belém. “Montenegro missed the train because of Marcelo,” justifies one of the members of the social-democratic entourage who was waiting for him at the station.
Luís Montenegro arrives in the country of bifanas 30 minutes later, by car, already in his shirtsleeves and vents: “I arrived 45 minutes late, but it wasn’t mine, it was his [de Marcelo]”. This unexpected jump in the program does not allow him to visualize the local problem that brought him there, to the station. The locals pay 120 euros, only by train to Lisbon, it costs only 40 (and still includes all transport in the metropolitan region of Lisbon – AML) for those who live next door, in Pegões, parish of Montijo, one of the municipalities of the AML.
The delay does not stop Montenegro from dragging the agenda further. The meeting with the firefighters lasts and lasts and lasts. It is a constant of the Social Democratic leader: he likes to listen, ask questions and hear again. Institutional meetings therefore take a long time. He lectures on topics with ease, a skill most likely derived from his experience as a parliamentary leader in the Passos Coelho era.
This was also what happened early in the morning at the University of Évora, when the oldest academic group Seistetos caught the social-democratic leader by the black nail. Everything is going well, but there is still time for “a song or two”.
In this desire to report the local ills, but replicated on a national scale, the PSD chairman had already drawn attention to the “serious problem” of the lack of accommodation for students. “There has been a divestment, which means 70% less accommodation is offered for students who want to take the courses and also here in Évora. possibility to build university housing”. He emphasizes that “a blockage is created that could lead to many students giving up higher education”.
Montenegro comes to rest over dinner, which of course was in one of the famous bifanas restaurants. Eat one and a half, the simple, accompanied by a coriander cream and an imperial. Sitting at the table, in addition to the local party leaders, are the only deputies elected by the district of Évora, Sónia Ramos, Pedro Alves, former deputy and until recently president of the Viseu district, and the deputy general secretary Paulo Cavaleiro, one of the men who help prepare excursions with local party structures.
Personal and family expenses
Back in Évora – where he once again rented a boarding house in the city center to spend the week -, already in the hybrid Lexus that transports him around the country (which was already the car of the Rio presidency), he sets the agenda with the advisor, Ana Cristina Gaspar, checks messages and emails on her cell phone. long. And he accuses some fatigue in this ant-work of making himself known to the country and maintaining daily resistance to the government. “I feel good, I got through it, but it requires a lot of physical effort. I’ve had shifts of 13 or 14 hours. It’s demanding,” he admits to DN.
Sitting, as is his custom, next to the driver, blue tie folded on the dashboard, he also bears the costs that this promise of traveling across the country entails for his personal life. His wife, who has undergone minor surgery, cannot keep him company in Évora, as happened during the visiting week in Viseu, and the children, one in the 12th grade and the other in the university, are in the class (the first in Espinho, city where the family lives).
But “exceptional balance” are the words he uses to classify “contact with people” in the congregations he visited. “This is an opportunity to get a different view of the ideas we have about things, by listening to the dramas, the difficulties of people, in the fields of economy, industry, services, universities, schools, health units” he says. . Therefore, he says, he insists “that things should not be too formal.” “There are places where the agenda is to enter the central cafe,” he adds.
It rejects the idea that these weeks on the ground were designed to get the podium it doesn’t have in Parliament. “Had I been in other places I would have, but that way the communities are taking advantage of the media presence of my presence to showcase some of their issues,” he says. At the same time, he regrets that “the media is more concerned with national issues” than with local issues. Although at the daily time scheduled for statements to journalists, there is no begging to talk about the state budget, church pedophilia cases, TAP and the closure of obstetric emergencies, among other things. Pure and hard opposition to the government and in particular to António Costa.
The political message of the Social Democratic leader also travels through the streets and roads of the Évora district. The giant billboard on which Montenegro appears to be censoring “socialist austerity” and the “1 billion cut in pensions” is all over the roundabouts of this Alentejo, where the PSD has grown in the number of elected officials.
“Making the Carpet for Others”
Without the institutional gatherings you can’t escape, Thursday kicks off in Arraiolos and the Carpet Interpretive Center is the first stop. “When I was young, I made a pillow (in Arraiolos). I don’t know where it is,” reveals Luís Montenegro, wanting to prove that he once learned to sew.
She takes a seat in a small Alentejo chair next to the embroiderer and tries to sew the rug being worked on. “Oh, this is more or less,” says the generous embroiderer, after reminding her of the needle turns. Arraiolos’ quick embroidery workshop evokes the irony of Pedro Alves: “You can’t say you take the carpet from someone, you make the carpet for someone”.
A joke that somehow fits into the time of Montenegro’s contestation of Rui Rio’s leadership and in which the former president of the Viseu district was removed from the list of deputies in the last legislature (precisely because he was the current president). of the party had supported). Pedro Alves is now the Municipal Coordinator of the PSD and advisor to the Parliamentary Group in the Assembly of the Republic.
Luís Montenegro really wanted to focus on the importance of “making a carpet”, because “taking it out” now makes no sense in a PSD that is even united in the direction, with two vice presidents such as Paulo Rangel and Miguel Pinto Luz.
“It’s a national brand [os tapetes de Arraiolos] that it’s important to preserve this art and also encourage it to be preserved as an ex-libris of our craft,” he says, still at the Interpretive Center. Soon after, he hit many of the stores that sell it , in an interaction with the owners.
And being in Alentejo, I couldn’t ignore wine and its producers. The winery chosen to highlight the importance of the sector to the country was Júlio Tassara de Bastos – Dona Maria Vinhos, in Estremoz. Here he recalls the difficulties wine producers face with the rise in production costs, including energy and fuel. But it was also at this winery that I wanted to talk to journalists about the obstetric emergency shutdown and TAP.
It smells of wine, of course, and the televisions are getting ready to go live. One of the journalists asks him to go “a little bit to the left”, but adds: “You shouldn’t be so keen on going that way”. Montenegro corrects: “I am a central type.” And then follow the direct with much criticism of the Minister of Health, António Costa and Pedro Nuno Santos, holder of the Infrastructure portfolio.
The Social Democratic president still has time to play football in Portel and later, after a dinner with the JSD of Évora, he shows off a shirt that was offered to him by the sports association of that municipality.
Another day of “Feeling the Country” ends at Casa Morgado Esporão, the former home of the lords of Morgado do Esporão, the local lodging chosen for this week’s “headquarters” in the district. A T1, with living room and kitchenette and a mezzanine, almost halfway between the most famous monument of the city, the Temple of Diana. A central place that allowed him, as in Viseu, in the first week of this program to walk through the center of Évora and contact the people.
Historic victory in four rooms
In the last municipal elections of 2021, still led by Rui Rio, the PSD achieved a historic result in the Évora district. It brought together four municipal councils (Mourão, Redondo, Reguengos de Monsaraz and Vila Viçosa), either alone or in a coalition. The Social Democrats and coalitions with other parties also resulted in more votes and a tripling of the number of elected councillors. In addition to “taking over” Mourão and Reguengos de Monsaraz from the PS, the centre-right parties also took over the presidency of the chambers of Redondo, “stolen” from an independent movement, and of Vila Viçosa, which was held by the CDU. The PSD now has, alone or in coalition, 19 councilors across the Évora district, 13 more than in the 2017 elections.
Source: DN
