I thought this article would be entirely dedicated to the Minister of Health. The worst we can remember in Portugal. Perhaps, in the days of the liberal monarchies, the nation had someone responsible for the health of the Portuguese people with a worse legacy than the one we have today. However, we have found no record of this.

Ana Paula Martins was born in Guinea-Bissau, at the height of the Estado Novo, shortly before local uprisings ignited the self-determination of those peoples against the dictatorial regime in Lisbon. Her academic career focuses on pharmacies and pharmaceuticals, complemented by epidemiology, which may be useful for defining diagnoses of the patterns of disease left by Spinumviva’s governance across the national territory. She was an advisor to the Cavaco Silva government, president of the Portuguese Pharmaceutical Society, and chair of the Board of Directors of the Lisbon North University Hospital Center.

Her resume is relatively short but incisive. Added to this is a particularly viperous activity in the comments she made about those previously responsible for health, especially when she was president and spoke about Marta Temido, the minister who resigned under strong national pressure.

It is also important to note that she was born in Guinea, as this is relevant to the analysis and reflection on hypocrisy. Ana Paula Martins has been avoiding health care for too many months. We have lost count of the contradictory statements she has made over the months she has held those positions.

There have been too many mistakes, unfounded treatments, and total indifference towards the media that question her. She went even further in the latest episode of the tragic soap opera she stars in, shielding herself behind the new narrative of Coelho’s PSD, which blames people of other nationalities for everything and anything. The woman who died was to blame. After all, she wasn’t from here. She didn’t have a cell phone and didn’t speak Portuguese. And that means she and her child deserved to die, it seems. It doesn’t even seem that way, actually, because what the minister said wasn’t even what had happened.

We know with some certainty, and believing that the world is not ending yet, that Ana Paula Martins will not remain in her position until the end of this term. There is a strong possibility that she will have already been fired by the time this article is published. Dismissed, that is. The rich are not fired, I almost forgot.

The original purpose of the article was to talk about her, her many mistakes, and how she came to bury the National Health Service, opening the doors to Coelho’s friends and the majority shareholders of Spinumviva, so that health, sickness, and everything else could be privatized.

I was going to write these lines to also talk about Leitão Amaro, Luís’s right-hand man, who has been making violent speeches about nationalities and external threats. If we were given to read one of the texts that the Minister of the Presidency has been striving to read, without knowing that it comes from him, we would easily believe that it had been prepared by an advisor to one of the barflies who hang around in the corridors of the house of democracy these days. It’s foreign criminals on one side, crime confused with nationality on the other, xenophobia served up as the dish of the day. It’s a disgrace. Well seasoned by Secretary of State Armindo Freitas and godfather Passos Coelho, who walk around with the infamous theory of the great replacement on the tip of their tongues. A false theory, used to try to steal voters in the quagmire of hatred.

Either they realize it and don’t care, or, worse, they don’t even realize they are growing the gang of self-proclaimed “good people.” The government we find in Lisbon is regrettable. Seeing Montenegro flanked by Bolieiro and Albuquerque, touting a working group on regional finances, was the worst horror movie we could have wished for this past Halloween. From there, neither good winds nor marriages of any kind. At the end of the day, only the entrepreneur who deigns to ask Spinumviva for advice will survive. The rest is straw to burn, which does not give Lisbon any votes.

But this article was changed when I learned of the dismissal of the then Regional Director of Culture to take up a position in another portfolio. Culture was once again left adrift. It’s not that she had made her presence felt recently. Some say they hadn’t even noticed her there. And many people who had allegedly been promised some kind of partnership probably still thought Duarte Chaves was in charge. She left of her own accord, or someone else’s, on her way to the Regional Directorate for European Affairs and External Cooperation. Such an important position, vacant for six months without anyone noticing. Perhaps it is appropriate. We shall see.

It would not be fair to say that culture is left empty. It already was. Rather, it is left in the hands of its Regional Secretary, who has never really emphasized culture. On the eve of the Portuguese Capital of Culture, with 50 years of autonomy beginning in January and 600 years of the Azores’ discovery awaiting us in 2027, we are back to square one. The media informed disgruntled employees of their boss’s departure. Museums where it rains inside and libraries at the service of misinformation by appointment. Archipelagos of culture sunk in tidal waves of incompetence.

Having mentioned the approach of Ponta Delgada, Portuguese Capital of Culture 2026, I commend RTP Açores for the initiative to bring its organization to the fore in a debate attended by the Commissioner for the event, who managed, at least for me, to raise more questions than certainties. She shielded herself so much behind bureaucracy and the total budget of €5 million, for all the lack of knowledge surrounding the event, that it led me to question the underlying criteria for her appointment, as well as the weight of salaries, travel, accommodation, food, and other allowances in the total budget for an event of this size… from Ponta Delgada to Ribeira Grande.

One thing I am sure of: Pedro Arruda “dismembered” the whole narrative he tried to put across.

Returning to the initial topic, I can only add that, unlike the Minister of Health, who does not want to leave, and the Minister of the Presidency, who does not want to admit he is joining the other party, the Regional Director has moved far away from the problems. There are no obvious solutions to these misgovernments. I don’t yet know who will succeed Sandra Garcia at the time of writing. I like to imagine who will succeed Leitão Amaro or Ana Paula Martins. Who I would like, of course. Whoever comes, in fact, does not bode well. And if it is as expected, the best thing is to return to old habits. Home remedies for ailments. Fascism in the streets, resistance in the shadows, censorship on the corner. Culture abandoned, worked on in spare time, by those who do it for pleasure, with no aspiration other than to be honored when, many years from now, someone values them again. Because some things are unlikely to change in this country.

Alexandra Manes is from Flores Island but lives on Terceira Island in the Azores. She is a regular contributor to several Azorean newspapers, a political and cultural activist, and has served in the Azorean Parliament.

NOVIDADES will feature occasional opinion pieces from leading thinkers and writers in the Azores, providing the diaspora and those interested in the current state of the Azores with a sense of the significant perspectives on some of the archipelago’s issues.

Translated to English as a community outreach program from the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute (PBBI) and the Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures Department (MCLL).