António's morning begins with ritual: check work email, check news, check the family calendar. His wife is already at the hospital—she's a radiologist, good job, stable—and the kids are at different stages of their morning chaos. Beatriz, seventeen, is outraged about something on Instagram. Tiago, fourteen, is playing video games when he should be eating breakfast. Normal life.
The news, though, is never quite normal anymore. Four years of Ventura's presidency have made the morning briefing an exercise in tension management. António didn't vote for Ventura—voted for Gouveia e Melo in the first round, then reluctantly for him in the second round against Ventura. But here they are. Democracy spoke.
The drive to work passes through neighborhoods that haven't changed much, physically. Porto is still Porto: granite buildings, river views, construction cranes everywhere despite everything. But the billboards have changed. More Portuguese flags in advertising. More "authenticity" language. A subtle nationalism that wasn't there before—or that wasn't visible before.
His job at a technology consultancy continues much as before. The company works with German and French clients; they don't care who's president of Portugal as long as contracts are honored. António appreciates this bubble. When he's debugging systems architecture, Ventura doesn't exist. The code doesn't care about political rhetoric.
Lunch with colleagues brings political conversation, as it always does now. Rui thinks Ventura has been "contained by institutions"—the constitution limits presidential power, the government is still AD, not Chega. Sandra disagrees: "It's the discourse that matters. What's acceptable to say has changed forever." They argue, good-naturedly. António stays quiet. He's learned that political opinions cost more than they're worth.
His daughter texts during the afternoon: "Did you see what they said about the university?" He hasn't. He looks it up. Some Chega deputy proposing "ideological balance" requirements for faculty hiring. The universities are protesting. Beatriz is furious—she wants to study political science, wants to make a difference. António remembers being young and certain.
After work, he picks up Tiago from basketball practice. The coach is Brazilian, been in Portugal fifteen years, good with the kids. António wonders, briefly, how he's finding things. But he doesn't ask. What would he say? "Sorry about everything"? He likes the coach. That will have to be enough.
Family dinner is the highlight of António's day. Carla gets home late but they wait for her. She talks about hospital politics—funding issues, staff shortages, the same complaints from before 2026. Healthcare hasn't gotten worse or better because of Ventura; it's gotten worse because of the same long-term trends no president has addressed.
Beatriz brings up politics. "How can you just... accept this?" she demands. António explains, again, that he didn't accept it—he voted against it. "But you're not fighting," she says. Fighting how? He goes to work, pays taxes, tries to raise decent children. What else should he do?
The evening news shows Ventura giving another speech. António has learned to read the subtext: which dog whistles, which targets, which phrases will dominate tomorrow's conversation. It's exhausting. He remembers when Portuguese politics was boring. He misses boring.
Before bed, he checks in with his mother in Vila Real. She's eighty-two, conservative but not Chega. She thinks the country is "too divided now" and wishes everyone would "calm down." António agrees with the sentiment if not the analysis. Calm down how? Tell that to the families being deported, to the Roma being harassed, to the journalists being threatened. But his mother lives in a village where none of that touches directly. Her Portugal is still Portugal.
António lies awake, briefly, thinking about the next election. AD might win again; they might need Chega support. PS is still recovering. The cycle continues. His role in it feels small, watching from the middle, neither threatened enough to flee nor privileged enough to ignore.
"Just survive until things change," he tells himself. But what if they don't?