CHEGA leaders amplify false restaurant claim to 1.7 million views – Portugal Resident

A false account of Portuguese customers being expelled from a Costa da Caparica restaurant for speaking Portuguese has been amplified by senior CHEGA figures, attracting more than 1.7 million views and triggering hate messages against the business.

The episode comes days after the publication of academic research identifying disinformation as a “structural element” of CHEGA’s digital communications strategy.

CHEGA MP Rui Paulo Sousa first circulated a 20-second video on Tuesday, claiming that “in Portugal, Portuguese people were expelled from an Indo-Pakistani restaurant for speaking Portuguese”.

Sousa, who chairs parliament’s Transparency Committee and is also an Amadora councillor, said the restaurant manager had demanded that the customers speak English, and threatened to call the police.

CHEGA leader André Ventura amplified the claim the following day, inviting his followers to watch the footage.

“It seems that now, in Portugal, we can be thrown out of restaurants because we speak — imagine — Portuguese,” he said.

Ventura described the incident as the result of Portuguese people allowing others to “do whatever they want”, ending his intervention with the words: “They shall not pass.”

But an investigation by Lusa Verifica (a service founded to counter repeated misinformation in the public space) found that the customers were not asked to leave because they were speaking Portuguese. The Pasha Beach Bar, a Mediterranean restaurant with a multicultural staff, said they were expelled after allegedly directing racist and abusive remarks at an Algerian employee.

The short video showed only the final moments of the confrontation, with manager Mahmoud Al-Hadad repeatedly asking three women and a man to leave. The exchange which led to his intervention was not included.

According to Al-Hadad, the customers questioned what the employee was doing in Portugal if she could not speak Portuguese. One later allegedly referred to her as “another f****** refugee” when she was unable to describe the flavours of shisha available.

“At that moment, I decided to ask them to leave because they had been racist towards my colleague,” he told Lusa. “I did not shout or push them. I asked them several times to leave, in my limited Portuguese. But I would never expel customers if they had not been rude.”

The manager said Italian customers witnessed the incident and spoke to Maritime Police officers called to the premises by the group.

The original caption accompanying the video also acknowledged that the customers had been accused of racism, although it disputed that characterisation and complained that the manager had treated them “like dogs”.

An Instagram account which initially repeated the customers’ version has since issued a public apology, saying it had shared footage showing only the end of the incident without knowing the full context.

The restaurant’s Portuguese owner, Ana Duram, said she and her staff had since received abusive telephone calls and hate messages. Speaking to Lusa in a conversation repeatedly interrupted by tears, she said the distorted account had seriously damaged the business.

“We do have problems with illegal immigration, but this is indecent,” she said. “I will not allow our employee to be mistreated.”

Duram said legal proceedings had been launched against the customer who originally uploaded the video and that the restaurant intended to pursue those responsible for defamation, including CHEGA politicians.

The business said security-camera footage of the incident is available and can be examined by the authorities.

Sousa acknowledged to Lusa that he did not know which restaurant was involved and had carried out no checks before publishing the allegation.

“I posted the video of what happened, which I have no reason to believe is false,” he initially said.

After being given the restaurant’s explanation, the CHEGA deputy said he would still leave his posts online. The post remains on his social media feed today, with restrictions on its form of sharing.

“It is their word against the word of the person who made the video,” Sousa is quoted as having told Lusa. “I will keep it there until there is a court ruling that the video does not correspond to the truth.”

Pasha Beach Bar is carrying the video, but with its version of events written over the images, stressing how sad it is to live in a world where so many people judge without knowing the facts”.

CHEGA’s press office did not respond to Lusa’s questions

Lusa Verifica has classified the claim that the group was expelled for speaking Portuguese as false.

The case closely reflects the practices identified in recent research by academic Ana Filipa Joaquim, who examined CHEGA’s online communications around the legislative elections of 2019, 2022 and 2024.

Her study found that the party increasingly combined disinformation, inaccurate claims and genuine information stripped of context with emotionally charged political messaging designed to encourage sharing and mobilise supporters.

Joaquim described the approach as increasingly professionalised, with CHEGA demonstrating a growing understanding of how social media algorithms could be used to seize attention and influence the public agenda.

The Caparica video followed much the same trajectory: a brief recording stripped of the events preceding it was given an incendiary political interpretation, shared without verification and retained even after the missing context had been supplied.

Source: noticiasaominuto/ Lusa Verifica