On October 7, 2026, Maricarmen died at the age of 87, after a life marked by hardship and struggle, during which she never forgot to raise her arms and call upon us to stand united. She died a symbol, a martyr to the final throes of a decaying regime of savage capitalism, now fortified by the forces of digital feudalism, which turn the markets against the most vulnerable until the pressure becomes unbearable, until it begins to crush. Maricarmen was crushed. One among so many. The struggle ignited by her protest will endure. In Spain, hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets, chanting her name, demanding dignity, peace, bread, healthcare, and housing. True freedom can exist only when we understand the genuine meaning of that hollowed-out slogan, which Portuguese neoliberals now brandish without a trace of shame, even as they approve dictatorial measures designed to increase rents and privileges for those who wield power. The pressure that killed Maricarmen—how many Portuguese women has it already killed? How many more will die in the streets of Lisbon, Faro, or our own Region?
In the very week that the Spanish heroine departed this world, protests erupted in France. The accounts emerging from those streets deserve our attention. It was the younger generation that took to the French roads, arms interlocked, music in their ears and revolution in their hearts. They demand better conditions in which to live and to learn. Teachers who are afforded the means to exist with dignity. And schools that are not factories churning out puppets in the service of the prevailing system. Macron, whose vision extends no further than numbers, responded with police charges. The French people did what they know best how to do: they united. Not around the poisonous falsehoods of Le Pen, but around this generation.
New winds are beginning to sweep across our streets. In Spain, France, and the United States, Generation Z is no longer dismissed as a spoiled, antisocial tribe. Now that the wallets of the adult population are beginning to feel the same pressures long endured by young people newly entering the workforce, a spirit of solidarity is beginning to emerge with a force not witnessed in decades.
There is a sorrowful beauty in the testimonies we encounter. In the genuinely left-wing politicians who place themselves between the police and the students to shield the latter from harm. In the French trade unionists, heirs to the spirit of May 1968, who have returned to the public squares to stand shoulder to shoulder with adolescents and reject Macron’s response. In entire communities that have taken shape beneath the tents of Madrid, helping one another, singing and smiling, even in the very heart of the gathering storm.
Some argue that an unmistakable danger lies within these waves of protest. It is true that the elections they may provoke—and, in the Spanish case, have already provoked—leave the doors open to the rise of a nouveau fascism, as we witnessed in Brazil with the seizure of power by the criminal Bolsonaro family. Yet we cannot surrender to the temptation of shackling ourselves to a status quo that grows, with every passing day, more intolerable than anything we have experienced in this century. At the political centre, the established powers kneel before the machinery of war, expand military budgets, diminish social protections, and dismantle healthcare and education in the name of artificial intelligence.
It is this generation that has been fighting, teaching us that this is not the end—it is simply very late. Macron, Montenegro, and others who prefer numbers to human lives must be brought down, without fear of the Le Pens and Venturas of this world. We must demand more, and demand better, so that the future belongs to this youth, rather than to the minority that flourishes through podcasts and squalid backrooms, spewing its venom. This is the generation we need. The generation that understood that the moment was now.
Revolution, at full steam. Let us learn from them. Portugal, too, needs something like this.
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)