Long Reads: Portugal’s Left in Retreat w/ Catarina Príncipe (Part 2)

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🗓️ 2 October 2025

⏱️ 54 minutes

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Summary

This week’s episode of Long Reads is the second in a two-part interview. In our last episode, we spoke to Catarina Príncipe about the politics of Portugal since 2015. Today we’re going to cover developments from 2022 onward.

One of the main themes in that period has been the rise of the far right. In 2022, the parties of the radical left, the Communist Party and the Left Bloc, lost ground and were no longer part of the governing majority. In this year’s general election, the right-wing Chega Party became the second-largest force in the Portuguese parliament. Chega’s breakthrough came at the expense of the Portuguese Socialist Party, which now had the third-largest group of MPs. For the Socialists, it represented a dramatic fall in the space of three years.

Catarina Príncipe is a contributing editor for Jacobin and she co-edited the book Europe in Revolt. She’s also a member of the Left Bloc.

Listen to the first part of the interview here: https://apple.co/4mmUUec

Read Catarina’s article “How Portugal’s Right Won the Election” here: https://jacobin.com/2024/03/portugal-right-wing-chega-election

Long Reads is a Jacobin podcast looking in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with the magazine’s longform writers. Hosted by features editor Daniel Finn. Produced by Conor Gillies with music by Knxwledge.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This week's episode is supported by W.W. Norton.
0:04.7	They've just released a new book that explains why the tech industry keeps producing dangerous and exploitative software.
0:14.1	Fatal abstraction, why the managerial class loses control of software, is written by Daryl Campbell, a former tech insider and a contributor
0:24.4	to The Verge. Campbell argues that a revolution of tech workers is needed to stop our drift
0:31.7	towards a technological dystopia because industry executives and investors will never do it themselves.
0:40.4	Fatal abstraction is available now wherever you get your books.
0:47.1	Hello, you're very welcome to Long Reads, a Jacobin podcast where we look in depth of political
0:52.2	topics and thinkers.
0:53.9	My name's Daniel Finn. And the Features editor here at Jacobin, and I'll be presenting the show.
1:00.0	In our last episode, we spoke to Katerina Principae about the politics of Portugal since 2015.
1:08.0	Katerina is a contributing editor for Jacobin, and she co-edited the book, Europe in Revolt.
1:16.0	She's also a member of the Left Block.
1:19.2	This week's episode is the second part of her interview.
1:23.3	Today we're going to cover developments from 2022 onwards.
1:27.1	One of the main themes in that period has been the rise of the far right.
1:31.9	In this year's general election, the Chega party became the second largest force in the
1:36.9	Portuguese parliament, as France van Cath reported.
1:41.7	Once considered Europe's long-time exception, Sunday's vote put paid to that, with another
1:47.0	milestone for the far-right in Portugal.
1:50.0	Shiga, or enough, had already made history in 2019 by becoming the first far-right political
1:57.0	party to enter Parliament since the Carnation Revolution brought down Portugal's
2:01.6	dictatorship in 1974.
	...

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