Seguro's Carnation Revolution Address Puts the Social State on Notice — President Tells Parliament the Designs of the Constitution Cannot Stay 'Dead Letters' as the SNS Wobbles

Portugal's new President António José Seguro delivered his first 25 de Abril speech on Saturday morning, closing the solemn session at the Assembleia da República that marked the 52nd anniversary of the Carnation Revolution. The session began at 10:00, with party representatives speaking before President Aguiar-Branco gave the floor to the head of state. It is the third major parliamentary intervention by Seguro since he took office on 9 March 2026 — after his inauguration speech and his 2 April address marking 50 years of the Portuguese Constitution.

The headline pledge from Belém was a direct one: Seguro committed to working with the other sovereign organs of the Republic — Government, Parliament, Tribunal Constitucional — so that "the designs of the social state are not dead letters". He pulled the same line through housing, education and labour, but the operative case study was the Serviço Nacional de Saúde, which the President called the most pressing test of whether April's promise still holds. The framing builds on a line he used in early-April speeches — that Portugal's challenges come not from constitutional defects but from the "non-compliance" of those who govern the rights it guarantees.

The political context

The session falls in a particularly heavy political week. On 22 April, Seguro received the social partners individually at Belém — CGTP first, then CAP, UGT, CIP, CCP and CTP — to take the temperature of the Trabalho XXI labour-code overhaul. The next day, UGT's Secretariado Nacional voted unanimously to reject the Government's final draft of the package, with Minister Maria do Rosário Palma Ramalho giving the union 15 days to come back with a counter-proposal and pegging 7 May as the last CPCS meeting before the diploma is sent to Parliament without a concertation agreement. The President had already signalled in March he would not promulgate a labour reform he considered to break with the spirit of April.

On 24 April, the day before the solemn session, Seguro also designated former Health Minister Adalberto Campos Fernandes to coordinate the Pacto Estratégico para a Saúde — the cross-party negotiating effort to put the SNS on a sustainable footing. Seguro called the SNS situation "unacceptable" in his designation note, and the Saturday speech turned that note into a constitutional commitment.

What the speech says about the next five years

Three signals are worth reading. First, the President is positioning himself as a defender of the social-state architecture rather than as an institutional referee — closer to the activist model of Mário Soares and Jorge Sampaio than to the centrist consensus-builder his predecessor Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa cultivated. Second, by repeatedly invoking the formula "compliance with the Constitution" rather than "defence of the Constitution", Seguro is preparing the ground to use his veto pen and his power to refer laws to the Tribunal Constitucional in cases where, in his reading, statutory promises are emptied out by under-implementation. Third, the SNS framing is directional — it puts the President on the same side as the unions and the patient associations heading into the negotiation Adalberto Campos Fernandes is now coordinating, and it raises the political cost for the Government of any settlement that does not include hard funding and staffing commitments.

Marcelo at the Associação 25 de Abril dinner

The night before, on Friday 24 April, former President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa attended the traditional Associação 25 de Abril dinner alongside Seguro, Prime Minister Luís Montenegro, Aguiar-Branco and the leaders of the parliamentary parties. The pre-dinner remarks from Seguro previewed Saturday's tone — Portugal must not only celebrate but "cumprir Abril" ("fulfil April") in three planes: justiça social, dignidade do trabalho and verdade. The labour-dignity line landed particularly heavily given the open standoff with UGT and the CGTP's planned 1 May mobilisation.

Belém and São Bento opened to the public

Belém Palace gardens opened to the public on Saturday afternoon from 13:30 to 19:00 (entry until 17:45), with cultural performances and the customary children's programming. At 17:00, Seguro hosted a conversation with 25 young people on "Liberdade, Democracia e Futuro" inside the Palácio. The Assembleia da República was also opened to citizens from 14:30 to 18:30, with dance from the Conservatório Nacional, a 15:00 lecture on "O 25 de Abril na imprensa de humor" by curator Álvaro Costa Matos, a stencil-painting workshop in the cloisters, an urban-dance performance at 17:30 and a closing concert at 18:00 with Milhanas and Maria Morango. Three exhibitions stayed open through the afternoon: a bibliography of constitutional revisions, a fashion display titled "Liberte a moda, vista a Constituição" featuring 1970s clothing, and a 1976 legislative-campaign poster collection.

The chronology of party speakers

The order of intervention at the solemn session followed parliamentary tradition — smallest party to largest, ending with the President. PAN, BE, IL, PCP, Livre, CDS-PP, Chega, PS, PSD took the rostrum in that order, before Aguiar-Branco's parliamentary address and Seguro's closing presidential speech. Several leaders used their slots to anchor positions on the labour reform, the housing crisis and the SNS — three files where, by Friday evening, the Government was visibly negotiating against the clock. The President's framing on Saturday was widely read as putting institutional weight on the same three files.

What expats should take from the speech

For foreign residents, the immediate practical signals are three. First, the SNS is now the President's headline file: expect a higher tempo of public debate around hospital staffing, waiting lists and the private-public balance — and a higher likelihood that any reform package crosses Belém before it reaches the Diário da República. Second, on labour, the President is on record that he will scrutinise the Trabalho XXI package against the constitutional principles of "dignidade do trabalho" — which raises the probability of a presidential veto or a Tribunal Constitucional referral if the Government and PSD-CDS-Chega majority push the diploma through Parliament without UGT's signature. Third, on housing, the line about "o Estado acordou tarde" suggests the President will not stand in the way of further housing intervention — including any tightening of short-term rental rules that Mais Habitação left unfinished.

None of this changes the legal framework expats live under between now and the next sitting of Parliament, but it sets the political weather for the second quarter of 2026 — and signals that the new President intends to use Belém's symbolic and constitutional levers far more actively than his predecessor.