Good news for Portugal: “this time, I wrote frankly well”. The statement was made by the President of the Portuguese Republic, congratulating himself on the national performance. In the Economy? No, the country has survived for 20 years in stagnation and will be surpassed by Romania in GDP per capita, already in 2024. In Health? No, every day we read news of layoffs and ruptures in the hospital services of the SNS. On education? No, learning recovery remains a fiction and strikes loom on the horizon. So, while so much goes wrong in the country’s economic and social development, what “this time I wrote frankly well”? It was football. Let’s celebrate.

This is an old subject: the importance attributed to football is neither new nor surprising. The resignation with which the State’s failures in key sectors (health, education) are tolerated did not start yesterday either and, they will tell me, this is also why it will not catch us off guard. Clear. But everything has a limit: resignation is one thing, being treated like an idiot is another. And, however resigned the Portuguese may be, the Government and the Presidency of the Republic now only speak to the country through contradictory and inconsistent revisions, based on the budget that, on the other side of the chamber, nobody understands, nobody notices, nobody cares.

But now everyone notices, notices and cares. And, in this aspect, Health serves as an exemplary case — see the evolution. In 2015 and 2016, the country was lulled by the song that it would have the best SNS in the world (as stated by the president of the Order of Doctors at the time). Those were the times of contraptions and the country snuggled into this illusion until the bubble burst. It burst in 2019, exploded completely in 2020 with the pandemic and has remained in tatters ever since, with the lack of doctors in the SNS and the worsening of indicators on the care provided, from excess mortality (which Covid-19 does not explain ) to serious failures in services (such as obstetrics and neonatology). Nothing to prevent, in 2021, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa to decorate the SNS with the most important national Honorary Order, for “motivated acts and services provided, in particular during the pandemic”. But, today, instead of ovations for the best SNS in the world, it has become a consensus that the SNS is imploding and that it needs urgent reforms — those that the Government and the Presidency of the Republic ignored for years. Therefore, what to think when you hear Marcelo warning about the opportunity “which cannot be intoxicated” update the SNS?

I multiply the examples. In Education, the devastation in the learning of thousands of children, namely those from the most disadvantaged social contexts, is ignored, pretending that everything is fine: the President of the Republic assured that we have the best teachers in the world and the Government has already guaranteed that Portuguese students would improve during the pandemic — long live Portugal, the country of miracles🇧🇷 In Social Security, the discussion returned on the sustainability of the pension system, with a commission to respond to the “challenges of aging” — this after we were promised that there was no discussion to be had; the “aging” of the population must be taken by public authorities by surprise. In the economy, while the poor Romanians of 20 years ago are becoming richer than the Portuguese, and our country is sinking in European comparisons, the government came to assure us that everything is fine: after all, we are growing more than the Germany , tells us the proud prime minister🇧🇷

Anyway, “did it really go well” in football? Great. But in the economic and social development of the country, everything is frankly going wrong. It is undisguised: everyone has noticed and everyone cares. All but Marcelo and Costa. It’s time for the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister to let go of their fantasies and, too, start to care.