Montenegro’s “manual of resistance”: “Specialist in earning time”

O La Vanguardia wrote this Monday, September 14, about the “pressed” Luís Montenegro and his “manual of the Portuguese resistance”.

According to the Spanish newspaper, with the announcement of cuts in the IRS and supplement for pensioners, the Prime Minister “gave time for his minority government by neutralizing the motion of censorship of the far right, led by André Ventura, “in the context of an increasingly intense offensive to lead the Portuguese right”.

For journalist Anxo Lugilde, Luís Montenegro “was able to divert the attention of the Minister of the Internal Administration, who was in difficulty”, with the announcements of tax cuts on the income of the medical class and the “bonus” for pensioners.

In addition, “as was expected,” he noted the publication of the neighbouring country, “the socialists rid Montenegro of the consequences and it came out of the debate more unscathed than expected.”.

It recalls La Vanguardia that in April 2024 Montenegro “came to power with just over a third of the chairs, 80 out of 230”, a number that increased to 91 in May 2025, but that is still “long enough to form the much desired majority”.

The leader of the Democratic Alliance (AD) thus became, according to the Spanish newspaper, “expert in buying time at all costs”. And, “now he needs this more than ever”, since he suffered “a significant fall” in support, losing about six percentage points, according to the last polls, “with several of them putting him “third, behind the socialist José Luís Carneiro and the leader of the Aquista, André Ventura”.

For La Vanguardia, “the fiasco of the Prime Minister’s party in the first round of presidential elections in January, with the PSD-supported candidate occupying a humiliating fifth, marked the beginning of a year that is being disastrous for Montenegro, whose popularity also suffered due to the government’s industrious management of the disaster caused by storm Kristin in the center of the country.”.

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However, “the election in February of socialist António José Seguro as head of state, who took office promising to put an end to the ‘election frenzy’ of recent years in Portugal and with a commitment to institutional stability, gave Montenegro a new breath.”.

An “impulse” that Anxo Lugilde claimed to be “extremely necessary”, at a time when “the main external rival of Luís Montenegro, the extreme right-wing candidate, André Ventura, came to the second round of presidential elections” and there is an “internal war”, in the PSD, “increasingly fierce”, with his “old mentor and now his greatest ideological critic”, conservative Pedro Passos Coelho, Prime Minister between 2011 and 2015, leading it.

La Vanguardia also recalls the different “scandals” in which Montenegro was involved. From Spinumviva to labor reform, the trip to the World Cup in the middle of the fire season and now the controversy around his “star minister”, Luís Neves, who is being “investigated by the Public Prosecutor (MP) among other Portuguese agencies, due to the management of the Judiciary Police, a force that he headed until February”.

Note the Spanish newspaper that Luís Neves is “as loved by the Left as despised by the far right” and the Aquida found in him the “munition” for his new offensive against the Government of AD.

“ This offensive includes the motion of censure rejected last Tuesday by Parliament as a result of the abstention of the Socialist Party. Its current leader, José Luís Carneiro, following the example of his party colleague, the President of the Republic, also categorically rejects new elections, in this case with the aim of strengthening his position”, says La Vanguardia.

In order to distance himself, both from the Cávez and from the PSD, he defends the Spanish publication, “Carneiro stated that his abstention was, in fact, ‘a vote of distrust’ in the Government, a statement that passed virtually unnoticed in the media coverage of the EUR 800 million aid package announced by Montenegro”.

Before finishing his analysis to the Portuguese Executive, Anxo Lugilde recalls Pedro Sánchez’ book “Manual da Resistência”. In it, the Spanish Prime Minister “explains that it was during a visit to Lisbon, to meet the then socialist Prime Minister António Costa, who found the formula that allowed him to form the coalition that brought him to power in 2018 and began his eight years of increasingly distressing survival”.

“And now Montenegro is living a practical, Portuguese and right-wing version of the resistance manual, with almost two and a half years of a minority government, which constantly seeks to buy time,” the journalist concludes.