Do we like them?Do we like Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa?
Our score: 7 out of 10. Decent and on the right side on colonial history and pandemic leadership, with one contested trans-rights veto and a messy family-linked affair.
Marcelo is a Lisbon-born law professor, born in December 1948, who became Portugal's best-known TV political commentator before he ever ran for anything. He won the presidency in 2016 as an independent, was re-elected in January 2021 with 60.7 per cent in the first round, and spent a decade sharing power with Socialist prime ministers even though he came out of the centre-right.
His style was the whole brand: selfies, hugs and being everywhere, which earned him the label President of Affection. Critics reckon all that presence watered down the office's authority, and polling early in 2026 had his approval at its lowest in years.
He was also a heavy user of the veto: 50 over his decade, the most since the 1976 Constitution, though none after the current government took office in May 2025. He dissolved parliament three times, in 2021, 2024 and 2025, and each crisis drew fire from one side or another.
The harm check is where the asterisk lives. In May 2018 he vetoed a bill letting 16 and 17 year olds change their legal gender without a medical report, saying a medical evaluation early on seemed reasonable to him. ILGA Portugal said parliament could overcome the veto, and the bill went back for changes. Nothing he said that I could open shows him campaigning against LGBTQ+ people, though I couldn't read the reports on his 2024 veto of school gender-identity rules, so that one isn't weighed here.
On colonial history he went further than most politicians dare. In 2024 he said Portugal must pay the costs of slavery and colonialism and should lead on reparations, and in 2025 he said it should take total responsibility for colonial-era crimes. That drew strong criticism, including a parliamentary motion to charge him with treason, which was rejected. On foreign policy he went off-script in September 2025, saying Trump objectively functions as an asset of Russia in the war against Ukraine, and opposition leaders said he'd gone further than prudence allows.
The messy bit is the Brazilian twins case, a row over access to expensive hospital treatment that reached the presidency, with a parliamentary inquiry running into early 2026. He said he gave the most neutral response possible, publicly broke with the family member involved, and I found no source saying he was himself charged with anything. That's the one stain, and it dented his popularity.