Tendo falado tanto da política, estou quase tão interessado no resultado das legislativas (amanhã!) como estou no resultado da votação no meu país daqui a uns meses.
Segundo as sondagens mais recentes, o PS ultrapassou o AD brevemente mas o AD retomou primeiro lugar logo depois. Ambos os partidos principais têm menos de 30% cada um, e o Chega tem 17%. Falei com uma amiga nas redes sociais (cujo ponto de vista é muito mais esquerdista do que o meu) e ela acha que uma coligação AD/Chega é pouco provável e espero que tenha razão porque aquele gajo é insuportável.
This has been a really exhausting week, writing one long text per day plus a few smaller ones. It’s been exhilirating though. I like a challenge! I’ll probably go easy for the next few days, to give myself time to do other things. Thanks to everyone who has read any of these, and special thanks to someone who has not only read all of them (apart from the one that just went live one minute ago!) but also corrected approximately 8 million mistakes: Cristina, tu és muito simpática!
By the way, it’s probably obvious, but although I have learned LOTS about portuguese politics in the last week, I am still basically clueless, so if there are any floating voters reading this, please, for the love of god, don’t go letting anything I’ve said influence you. Who knows? Maybe André Ventura is the best potential primeiro-ministro. LOL. Seems unlikely, I wouldn’t let him run a pie shop, let alone a country, but it’s your vote. Use it wisely.
It’s a pretty simple game that starts with the player being rescued from a car crash by Ventura and exchanging phone numbers. It then takes you through a series of days in which you can work to earn money, go to the shopping mall, or call your man to go on a date. At the mall, you can buy accessories for your Ventura, such as sunglasses and hats. On the dates, you can chat, question his choice of venues, and deal with various enemies who appear, such as gypsies and antifa members. You can play as yourself, although if you are a male it’ll send you away with “Bro, sai daqui. O André Ventura não gosta de paneleiros”. That sets the tone, really: the game is sending up his actual attitudes so it warns you right at the start to expect racist, sexist and homophobic language throughout.
Playing games is, of course, a bit silly, but we can’t study vocabulary all the time. Most of us have apps on our phone that we use to pass the time on lunch breaks or on public transport, so having a Portuguese game to play is good way to keep your brain in Portuguese mode without a huge commitment of energy. I doubt this one is going to be an addiction because the joke is bound to wear thin after a while but I’ll play it a few times and see where it takes me.
There’s a politician in Portugal called André Ventura who’s the leader of a “party” called CHEGA. The fact that CHEGA sounds a lot like MAGA is probably not a coincidence since he’s a populist: someone who builds a following by telling one section of society that they are the real, the deserving people, that everyone poorer than them is a dirty sponger, everyone richer than them is corrupt and anyone who has read a book is an elitist. Oh and he talks a lot of shit on Twitter too, like old whatsisname.
I’ve come across a few twitter accounts sending him up, like this one above. It appeals to me because I like puns. André Ventura = Aldrabé Ventrulha.
I think the pun in the first name is based on Aldrabão which is a sort of crooked person or con artist
1. [Informal] Que ou quem diz ou faz coisas com intuito de enganar. = BURLÃO, IMPOSTOR, INTRUJÃO, TRAPACEIRO
2. [Informal] Que ou quem fala de modo confuso.
3. [Informal] Que ou quem não é limpo ou perfeito no que faz.
"Aldrabão", in Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa [em linha], 2008-2021, https://dicionario.priberam.org/Aldrab%C3%A3o [consultado em 22-09-2021].
And in the second, it seems to be Entulha – 3rd person singular of Entulhar, meaning basically throw it in the junk pile or dispose of it in some way. It seems mostly to be used for either olive pits or builder’s rubble. Why do those two things go together? I’ve no idea.
en·tu·lhar - Conjugar (en- + tulha + -ar) verbo transitivo 1. Meter ou dispor em tulha.
2. Encher de entulho.
"entulha", in Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa [em linha], 2008-2021, https://dicionario.priberam.org/entulha [consultado em 22-09-2021].
Anyway, I think the general idea seems to be that he’s a crook who needs to be on the scrapheap.
I’m not sure how seriously to take Ventura. He somehow got eleven percent in January’s presidential elections and came third, so he can’t be written off entirely. But that still leaves forty percent of a country to convince and I think they’d take some convincing. Pictures I’ve seen from the campaign trail in the local council elections show some pretty underwhelming gatherings, not Trump style rallies. He doesn’t seem well-enough organised to be a serious threat. More of an Iberian Tommy Robinson than a new Salazar – but maybe that’s just my perception from my distance. He does seem to be a racist douchebag, and he’s been fined for saying some things that were out of line. I’ve also heard that he did time, maybe for fraud, but I can’t find a source for that so maybe it’s just a rumour.
There have even been calls to ban CHEGA itself as a racist organisation. As a general rule of thumb, I’m not in favour of banning organisations unless they are actively advocating or engaging in violence, not just talking shit. It only makes them look like martyrs and the authorities look like repressive, censorious dictators. Why give them that martyr status? Even the “oh isn’t he awful” hand-wringing stance with which the BBC treated Nigel Farage – another clueless, sloppy populist with racist leanings – fanned the flame of his appeal to the point at which he was able to knock us out of the EU. So it’s best not to build these idiots up too much, even by showing disapproval. Better to give them the same arms-length treatment as other fringe parties like the Greens and Plaid Cymru and let them make their own case under their own steam until they burn themselves out. It’s too late for us with Farage now. I hope Portugal don’t make the same mistake with Ventura.
Anyway, all of the above is just my uninformed wittering. I’ll be finding out more over the next week or two, but in the meantime if anyone wants to correct any misconceptions in any of it, drop me a note in the comments 👇
Luso 