“Cavaco Silva impacted everyone in that generation, it was felt that the country had a direction. He was the one who put an end to the shacks in Lisbon.”

He was born and raised in Lisbon, in 1979. He is an only child, which has its advantages and some disadvantages. He has been passionate about airplanes since he was 4 years old and brought to the podcast a photograph of him at the “controls” of a plane, at the Air Museum, in Alverca.

The family “lived very well” and had a privileged childhood and adolescence, but his parents always made a point of showing him other realities.

His mother was a teacher at a primary school in Marvila, today an upscale area of ​​the city, but at the time with many social neighborhoods. As a child, she often accompanied her mother to work and confesses that from an early age she understood the difficulties of others. “That wasn’t my world, but my parents always wanted me to know other realities”, she confesses.

His father is still a lawyer and his son has always had the gift of oratory. At the age of 5, he wore his father’s toga and jumped on the sofa to give a speech.

At home there was a lot of talk about politics and law. Her mother was always more to the left, but she ended up “dragged” to the center of the right. “I am essentially a moderate, who life has given me the luck of having a voice,” she confesses.

As a child, I spent my summer holidays in Guarda. “In the morning I would wake up and go get the eggs from the henhouse,” he says. After their grandmother’s death, they recovered the family house and it is still there today. When he talks about these times, he remembers a village that 50 years ago was already old and that today is deserted. The cousins ​​left there early and today when he returns he only finds “half a dozen elderly people”.

At the age of 26 he went to live Washington. For a young man passionate about politics, that was an “extraordinary” year, he recalls. At the end of the day he wandered around the bars near the Capitol and joined aides, lobbyists and journalists. “I heard Obama speak long before he was a candidate,” he says.

Those times in the USA, and the subsequent visits, were clear to recognize that in the country there are “two Americas” and that it is “very clear” where the vote for Donald Trump comes from.

When talking about the former President of the United States, it is difficult not to draw a parallel with Portugal and the discourse of “discontent” that Chega now capitalizes on – but which considers that, in other times, it was from other parties such as the Bloco de Esquerda or of the PCP.

“It’s not discussing the foam of the day that we’re going to reach these people, because that doesn’t interest them. When they hear a speech of discontent, a speech about getting rid of things, an anti-system speech, of course they take turns. The parties of the system cannot make this speech, they have to react and attack the problems that people have head on”, he continues.

Fifty years after the 25th of April, he also confesses that his biggest disappointment is the “radicalization” of society.

Gonçalo Matias is the guest on the new episode of Geração 70. He is President of the Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation and before he was 40 he was already director of the Global School of Law at the Catholic University.

The curriculum is vast. He was Deputy Secretary of State for Administrative Modernization and consultant in the presidential elections of Cavaco Silva and now Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. This is a conversation about the country’s evolution, about Law and politics, about today’s young people and problems that have remained unchanged for 50 years. Listen to the interview here.

Geração 70 is not a podcast about politics or economics, nor about arts or science. It’s a loose conversation with today’s protagonists who were born in the 70s. The generation that is in charge of the country or on the way. Here we talk about expectations and frustrations. Of dreams come true and those that were lost. A first-person portrait of the indelible passage of time, a journey from the 70s to the present day led by Bernardo Ferrão