AD caravan ended in Barcelos, with a speech by Marques Mendes who was applauded at a rally inside a pine cone tent. Before, it was Rui Rio’s turn to enter the campaign with a direct attack on Chega’s top of the list for Viana do Castelo: “We no longer knew how to get rid of Doctor Eduardo Teixeira”
Luís Marques Mendes waited for nightfall to appear in the Gil Vicente Theater square in Barcelos. Arm in arm with Luís Montenegro, with a smile on his lips and almost always with an expression of surprise at the flood that chased him and tried to greet him at all costs, the putative candidate for President of the Republic walked through the streets until he reached a tent set up and to the beam. “Montenegro is a good guarantee for those who are undecided, he will be a trustworthy prime minister. I know him well,” he announced as soon as he reached the stage.
In around 20 minutes, Marques Mendes spoke essentially to the undecided and warned them about “the degradation of the Social State that has reached proportions never seen before” in health, education and housing. “We need to change government and policies to create new ambition and new hope for the Portuguese”, appealed the former PSD president.
In the audience, where hundreds of social democratic activists from the Braga region were giving a standing ovation, there was no João M., for whom the idea of a social state “that works” will dictate who will vote for next Sunday. Aged 47, with a gray beard and creased eyes, João had been sitting all morning on a blanket covered and decorated with a statue of Our Lady of Fátima.
At 11:50, on Rua Soares Pereira, he had his hands raised in the direction of Luís Montenegro and the entourage that followed him during a morning commotion in Arcos de Valdevez. “I was upset, I felt ignored, people stood in front of me, but neither a hello nor a handout”, he tells CNN Portugal at the same time that a few meters ahead, Montenegro was speaking, promising to young people, workers, to retirees and pensioners: “We will not leave you alone”.
João is a pensioner. He receives 175 euros every month after, two years ago, a heart operation at Hospital São João which went badly, combined with a back problem, led to his disability. “I used to work at the Vila Verde Parish Council, but now I can’t work anymore and look, I’m here begging, because it costs 50 euros to not sleep on the street every month and another 60 euros for medicine, it’s not possible to live like this , that’s why I’m here.”
Every day, João gets a ride from a friend to get to the same street where Luís Montenegro started his adventure. He has a friend at a delicatessen next door who helps him with food and “you can always make a little more money here”, he says. On Sunday, he will vote, but without hope that things will change. “A person votes for one person, votes for another and it’s all the same,” he says.
The delegation from Montenegro left Arcos de Valdevez during the morning, but continued in the district of Viana do Castelo, where Rui Rio was the gala guest of a second rally that gained more and more intensity and had its high point when, a balcony, Montenegro embraced Rio which, in the words of the current social democratic leader, “symbolizes the strength and cohesion in the Democratic Alliance”. “We are not here for the small games of politics, for