Source: Johns Hopkins University

Lives across Europe have been turned upside down by the pandemic, with eerily quiet streets and families at home grappling with uncertainty—many of whom are turning to Steven Soderbergh’s movie Contagion or Albert Camus’ 1947 novel The Plague (its publisher is struggling with so many orders), perhaps hoping to distract themselves with past or fictional health crises.

But stranger than fiction, some governments around the world—most notably the Brazilian administration of President Jair Bolsonaro, who fired his health minister and is encouraging young people to go on with their lives as usual—have downplayed the importance of social distancing. Also, the Swedish government has not implemented lockdown measures seen elsewhere.

Other governments reacted more decisively to stop the spread of the coronavirus. They realized that the cities that reacted to the 1918 influenza outbreak, the Spanish flu, early on, by shutting schools and banning gatherings, were able to limit fatalities. The Portuguese government, for instance, reacted before any COVID-19 deaths had taken place, and had more time to prepare due to the country’s location on the edge of Europe, among other factors. Local transmission happened later than in neighboring Spain, where at the end of April, there were over 230,000 people infected, compared with around 24,000 in Portugal, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University on April 27, 2020.

The difference is even more stark when looking at the deaths-per-100,000 inhabitants ratio. The figure for Spain is 49.6, while Portugal’s is 8.8. However, it’s not generally true that small countries do better. Belgium counted 62.1 CORVID-19 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, compared to Germany’s 7.2. Europe’s other big countries have done much worse; the figure for Italy is 44.1, for France 34.2, and for the United Kingdom 31.3.

Two Weeks Behind

“This is not a ‘Portuguese miracle’ and we have not reached the end of the pandemic to be able to make an assessment,” Filipe Froes, the head of the intensive care unit at Lisbon’s Hospital Pulido Valente and an advisor to Portugal’s health minister, told me.  

“Portugal benefited from the fact that we are two weeks behind Spain,” Froes pointed out. “We declared a state of emergency and measures of confinement at the same time as Spain and Italy and used those precious days ahead to increase the response capacity in hospitals as well as involving primary health care, so that infected patients could be treated in ambulatory care.”

Portugal could have done even better, though, Froes pointed out, had it controlled people on arrival at Portuguese airports. “There should have been an articulated response within the European Union. Just like it has economic measures it should have collective measures for health too,” he argued.

Countries in the EU have diverged on social isolation measures, money, medical equipment, and border restrictions. But one thing all these countries have in common is overworked staff in hospitals and lack of some basic equipment. Sonia Lontrao, a nurse at Lisbon’s Egas Moniz hospital, told me that medical staff like herself are working 12-hour shifts with minimum protection, putting their lives at risk.

The EU was criticized in particular for abandoning Italy during the outbreak. China stepped in to provide assistance, whereas Italy’s request for help from the Union Civil Protection Mechanism initially came to no avail. However, the EU Civil Protection Mechanism did end up sending nurses from Romania and Norway to help Italy, and Austria offered 3,000 liters of disinfectant. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen offered “a heartfelt apology.”

The Trillion Euro Fight

 Not everyone is in apologetic mood, though. Portugal’s prime minister, Antonio Costa, recently blasted Dutch Finance Minister Wobke Hoekstra for asking the European Commission to investigate countries such as Spain and Italy for not having a financial cushion to allow them to face the COVID-19 crisis, saying his words were “disgusting.” EU finance ministers then settled on an agreement to approve a financial support package worth half-a-trillion euros. It includes €200 billion, which the European Investment Bank will lend to companies, and €240 billion in credits which the European Stability Mechanism bailout fund will make available to governments. This brings the EU’s total fiscal response to the epidemic to a least €1.2 trillion.

“It’s too early to celebrate, as none of the details have been figured out,” Mujtaba Rahman of the Eurasia Group told me. “Russia and China have intervened, to try to bolster their influence in parts of Europe where Brussels has not been forthcoming. Whether that can now be corrected with the EU’s response to the economic fallout is an open question, but the initial signs are not very promising,” Rahman added.

EU cooperation may be falling short, yet the epidemic has brought to light sporadic acts of kindness. People are looking out for vulnerable neighbors and sewing masks. Camus’ daughter, Catherine Camus, told The Guardian that the main message in her father’s book, The Plague, was that we are responsible for our actions. “We are not responsible for coronavirus but we can be responsible in the way we respond to it,” she said.

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© REUTERS/Pedro Nunes

The parallels have been all too easy to draw. The center-left leaders of Spain and Portugal were both facing general elections and both were expecting their parties to emerge the strongest, thus looking to hold talks with parties to their left in order to be able to form new administrations.

But the similarities end there. In the wake of his electoral win on October 6, the Portuguese prime minister and leader of the Socialist Party (PS), António Costa, now dominates a political arena characterized by moderation and consensus. By contrast, Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s acting prime minister and leader of the Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), finds himself in a much more polarized and unstable landscape going into the country’s November 10 election, the fourth national vote in as many years.

Although Costa fell 10 seats short of the parliamentary majority he would have liked, his victory was nonetheless a resounding endorsement by Portuguese voters of the geringonça, or “contraption”, the nickname for the three-way leftist partnership he has led since 2015. His government has kept the country’s economic recovery on track while reversing much of the austerity introduced by his predecessors.

In the October 5 election, his PS strengthened its presence in parliament. Forming a new administration looks more straightforward than it was four years ago. He could attempt to repeat a deal with either of his previous partners, the Left Bloc (BE) and the Communist Party, or involve other, smaller, forces on the left.

Five Months of Impasse

In Spain, the upcoming election and its fallout promise to be more heavily fraught with dilemmas and difficulties for Sánchez.

The 47-year-old already won a general election in April, with his party emerging as the largest share of votes but still falling short of a majority. After five months of impasse he was unable to gain the support he needed from other parties in order to form a government, triggering this repeat ballot.

The PSOE’s most natural ally in the wake of the April election appeared to be Podemos, to its left, which leads the Unidas Podemos coalition. But the two parties clashed over the format of a potential new government, with the PSOE wanting a Portugal-style governing partnership and Podemos preferring a formal coalition which would give it control of several cabinet portfolios.

With policy detail barely discussed, the talks descended into a public, and increasingly personal, spat between Sánchez and Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias.

“What people are seeing is the left losing—once again,” said Gabriel Rufián, a member of parliament representing the Catalan Republican Left (ERC), as the clock ran down on an agreement. He was invoking the Spanish left’s repeated and well-documented failure to unite when under pressure. He also warned that it might be more difficult for Sánchez to form a government after a new election, as political storm clouds threatened to gather throughout the autumn.

A Stalled Progressive Vision

Since taking office as prime minister in June 2018, Sánchez has been touted as a standard bearer for the Europe’s center-left. Young, internationally minded, and outspoken on issues such as the importance of a strong EU, climate change, and feminism, he has been seen as an ideal counterweight to the right-wing populism sweeping Europe.

Yet the recent political paralysis has stalled the implementation of his progressive vision for Spain and put his more internationalist ambitions on hold.

Initially, polls had suggested Sánchez’ Socialists would benefit from a repeat election, gaining seats and making them less reliant on other parties to govern. But the political fragmentation which began in Spain half a decade ago, with the arrival of Podemos and then Ciudadanos further to the right, continues. A new party, Más País, led by the young former deputy leader of Podemos, Íñigo Errejón, has emerged in recent weeks and is expected to take votes from both of the other main parties on the left.

Also complicating the panorama is the issue of Catalonia, which has been dominating the political agenda in recent years. As the territorial crisis has refused to fade, it has polarized and often poisoned the national political debate.

Sánchez’s PSOE positions itself as a moderate unionist force, opposed to Catalan independence and the right to self-determination but seeking to calm tensions by finding common ground with those in the north-eastern region wanting to break away from Spain.

Discord over Catalonia

The parties to Sánchez’s right have cast him as weak on the issue, or even a willing participant in the Catalan independence project. The conservative Popular Party (PP) used this message in the April election, as did Ciudadanos, while the far-right Vox owes much of its recent rise to its extreme brand of unionism.

Such discord on this highly emotive issue has added to the lack of post-electoral consensus. Ciudadanos, which has lurched to the right since beginning as a centrist party, refused to consider talks with the PSOE to form a new government after the last election. More recently, the party’s leader, Albert Rivera, appears to have softened his stance but remains wedded to an uncompromising approach to Catalonia which makes any deal with Sánchez difficult, particularly if he should also need the support of Catalan or Basque nationalists.

Angering Franco Nostalgists

Moreover, the Catalan crisis is expected to flare up again with the imminent announcement of the verdict on the case of 12 pro-independence leaders who went on trial earlier this year for their role in the region’s controversial and unsuccessful bid for secession in 2017. The election campaign is therefore likely to take place amid turmoil in Catalonia and renewed tensions with Madrid.

However, Spain’s current polarization is fueled by history as well as geography. Ever since taking office, Sánchez has been trying to exhume the remains of the dictator Francisco Franco from his huge mausoleum outside Madrid and bury them somewhere more appropriate for such a divisive figure. The plan has been repeatedly delayed by legal and bureaucratic hurdles. With the supreme court recently ruling in favor of the exhumation, it is possible that Franco’s body will be transferred before the November 10 election.

The idea of the exhumation is popular among left-leaning Spaniards. However, Franco nostalgists, who are a minority, angrily oppose the move and the political right deems it an unnecessary stirring up of the past. If and when it happens, it promises to add yet another element of animosity to Spain’s riven politics.

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Artwork © Dominik Herrmann

Just a few years ago, Portugal was mired in its deepest economic recession since 1975. When I moved to Lisbon in 2011, the country was down on its knees, its people drowning in unemployment and suffering tax hikes in exchange for a €78 billion bailout.

But in 2015 an unlikely parliament-only alliance between the Socialist Party (PS) and left wing-parties, referred to as a geringonça (which translates to something like a “contraption”) turned the country into a success story. Socialist Prime Minister António Costa became the poster boy of the European left and opinion polls indicate that it is likely he will be re-elected in October.

While countries like Italy shift toward far-right populism, it doesn’t seem to stand a chance in Portugal. The new Basta! (“Enough!”) party, whose leader once opted to skip a debate with other candidates on national television to comment on football on another channel, has no seats in parliament. A conference of far-right groups held in Lisbon earlier this month saw only 65 people attend and instead sparked a protest that attracted hundreds of people who marched down streets in the city center slamming the government for allowing such an event to take place.

The government has benefitted from improved economic indicators and falling unemployment. Also, the country’s political landscape is different from most of Europe. “Euroskepticism, immigration, and sovereignty are themes that are not present in Portugal,” António Costa Pinto, a political analyst, pointed out to Berlin Policy Journal.

Despite widespread initial skepticism, the Socialist government has been praised by Brussels for turning around the economy, cutting the deficit, halving unemployment to 6.4 percent, reversing cuts to wages, and offering businesses incentives. Portugal’s economic recovery and the rise of the left has been portrayed as a success story, with the Standard & Poor rating agency lifting the country’s status from junk to investment grade.

Too Little to Live On

But might Portugal’s success story be overrated? The International Labor Organization said in a recent report that while Portugal had “demonstrated that taking steps to foster employment-oriented policies and safeguard social cohesion helped to speed up its recovery, it was too soon for it to ‘rest on its laurels.’” The report went on: “There are still a significantly higher number of precarious workers than prior to the crisis, and the young and the long-term unemployed continue to face particular challenges in their integration into the labor market. The country’s external debt remains high.”

Costa’s Socialist Party had come to power in November 2015 after an inconclusive general election, by forging an unexpected “anti-austerity alliance” with the far-left Left Bloc and Communist Party. They ousted the center-right bloc led by Passos Coelho, which had been in power since 2011 and had imposed harsh austerity in exchange for a three-year €78 billion bailout program. The geringonça operated by vowing to overturn austerity, which Costa referred to as “tearing down the last remains of a Berlin Wall,” while promising to comply with EU rules.

After seeing her salary frozen over several years, Paula Fernandes, 50, initially had high hopes in the new government. She was among state workers demanding a retroactive salary hike to recover the income she had lost. Today, her living standards have improved, but not as much as she had hoped. “My salary has increased a little bit, but so have my taxes and the cost of living,” Fernandes explained.

Portugal’s minimum wage currently is €600 per month, up from €530 euros in 2016. According to a study by Lisbon’s ISEG university, €1,000 a month is the minimum amount one needs to pay for housing, food, and other basic living expenses.

“Propagandistic Vision”

“That idea [that the economy is growing] is a propagandistic vision of the government,” Raquel Varela, a historian, researcher, and university professor at Nova University Lisbon, said. “There was a drop in the real value of wages and an increase in taxes. There is less unemployment, but the number of people earning the national minimum wage tripled,” Varela added.

Fuel-tanker drivers are among workers fighting to have their salaries raised, from €650 per month to €1,000 by 2025. They recently held a strike that led the government to declare a state of crisis and to issue a decree ensuring they would deliver enough fuel during the peak of its tourism season. This followed the country’s worst labor unrest in years in April when 40 percent of petrol stations were left without fuel.

“A responsible government has to be ready for the worst,” Prime Minister Costa said at the end of an emergency meeting over the strike, which took place just two months before the general elections on October 6. The government’s move to issue a civil order divided the government’s parliamentary base, with Left Bloc leader Catarina Martins complaining that “issuing a civil requisition at the request of employers is a mistake and a restriction of the right to strike.”

Portugal has undoubtedly made headway since having to seek the bailout back in 2011, when it was forced to commit to a set of measures. Yet some of those measures are contributing to the rise in inequality. One of those was a new rental law that liberalized the housing market and led to a rapid escalation of house prices, which soared by 18 percent in 2017 alone. Now previous residents are being evicted in droves.

Lisbon’s Alfama neighborhood, where I live, and which is featured in Wim Wenders’ movie Lisbon Story is bustling with tuk-tuks, and the nearby new port terminal is bringing in a record number of tourists. It has gone from being a “slum by the sea,” or a “ghetto with a view” as it was described by the New York Times in 1988, to a tourism hot spot. My next door neighbor recently mentioned that there were just a handful of long-term residents still living on our street.

The geringonça is now taking steps to curb social inequality and discontent, with a new law aiming to treat housing as a citizen’s right amid complaints that tourism has become unsustainable. So not all is rosy in Portugal, despite Lisbon’s gleaming, newly renovated historical buildings and a city center, once abandoned, now bustling with life. And not everyone is benefiting from the country’s newfound success.  •

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