This is part of our special feature, Me Who? The Audibility of a Social Movement.
“Cristiano Ronaldo is one of Portugal’s modern heroes, perhaps his greatest name, and that’s why the Portuguese, more than any other people, should make a profession of faith in his innocence.” —Paulo de Almeida Sande, Observador
Der Spiegel’s 2018 interview with Kathryn Mayorga—where she accused Cristiano Ronaldo of having raped her in 2009—and its revelation of a confidentiality agreement between her and the Portuguese football star involving the payment of 375 thousand dollars, was met in Portugal mostly with disbelief, prompting a strong wave of support for the football player and national icon. Until that moment, the impact of #MeToo in Portugal had been incipient and resumed to a great extent to the coverage of the most mediatic cases of US politics and entertainment. In that sense, the Portuguese context differed from other European countries, which “embraced and re-interpreted” the movement and where “the international version of the #MeToo found many locally translated equivalents, which spurred higher social media campaign engagement compared to the international albeit original version” (Zacchia, Corsi, & Botti, 2019,36; see also Askanius &Hartley, 2019; Starkey, Koerner, & Sternadori, 2019). Issues which had prompted cautious reactions among feminists like “the social locations of perpetrators and victims,” their “media visibility” (Zarkov & Davis, 2018: 4) and the need to critically examine the politics of locations and to decolonize feminism (Lukose 2018) were not explored in-depth in the Portuguese media engagement with the movement. Also absent from Portuguese mediascape were attempts by femonationalist voices to capitalize the movement and even to appropriate it for anti-immigration agendas, as it happened in Germany (Garraio, 2019). The prominence of independent movements resembling (and/or inspired by) #MeToo in countries like India, Pakistan, Tunisia, and South Korea was also absent from the Portuguese mediascape, a situation that contributed decisively to a narrowing perception of the movement as an American celebrities-related phenomenon. Hence, rape allegations against Ronaldo meant the peak of public engagement with #MeToo in Portugal so far.
This essay examines the subjectivities (re)created by this case and, by analyzing the irruption of rhetoric against #MeToo in the debate about Ronaldo/Mayorga’s case, questions how far it may have contributed to the promotion of a hostile environment against the movement in Portugal.[1] It explores if and how far the widespread popular support for the footballer relied on and reproduced entrenched cultural stereotypes, which have traditionally excused aggressors of sexual violence and blamed women who claim having been raped; then it explores the role of football as the larger cultural background framing the reception of Mayorga’s rape allegations in Portugal.
Stemming from a feminist and intersectional perspective of gender relations and informed by literature about the social and discursive construction of rape myths (e.g. Lonsway & Fitzgerald, 1995; O’Hara 2012; Ryan, 2011), this essay puts forward critical discourse and semiotic analysis of nineteen opinion articles published in four Portuguese reference mainstream media (legacy and new media) and one popular national TV-show in the three weeks following the Spiegel’s interview. The criterion for selecting these media is related to the fact that they are considered references in the national media sphere, operating a formal separation (Cunha, 1997; Garcia, 1995) between journalistic pieces and opinion articles; furthermore, they cover a broad spectrum of Portuguese political mediascape. Diário de Notícias (since 1864) is currently a center-left weekly print newspaper with an online daily edition. Público (since 1990) is a center-left daily print newspaper with an online edition. Expresso (since 1973) is a center-right weekly print newspaper with an online daily edition. Observador (since 2014), a right-wing digital native medium, is the only medium in Portugal that has a definite political trend. Prós-e-Contras (since 2002) is a weekly two-hour evening debate of the main channel of the public television service (RTP1). The debates are about the most current topics and have guests that are supposed to represent the diversity of Portuguese society in the addressed topics. Hence, the four media and the TV show are expected to gather opinions from various spheres of Portuguese society.
#MeToo in Portugal via Cristiano Ronaldo
The performance of networked feminist visibility via hashtag feminism as a tool to denounce social injustice (Clark-Parsons, 2019) has been very weak in Portugal. There were certainly several initiatives that were reported in mainstream media: the student who in February 2019 pasted white sheets in the bathrooms of her Faculty in Lisbon with the inscription #WhyIDidn’tReport and transcribed the collected anonymous testimonials on Twitter[2]; the initiative by media personality Diogo Faro, who, aiming to prepare a video on “machismo,” asked women on Instagram in March 2019 to send him an email describing their experiences of sexual abuse and aggression.[3] However, and in spite of the fact that Faro himself was surprised by the amount of testimonies he received, none of these initiatives reached a real national dimension. Also, though many Portuguese women participated in #MeToo, there was no local translation of the hashtag developed in Portugal, and with the exception of Ronaldo, there was no public exposure of rape or sexual misconduct allegations against Portuguese men in the context of #MeToo and similar initiatives to reach a national/public debate. Certainly, feminist outcry at some controversial verdicts involving rape and domestic violence were informed by the international context of empathy with victims of sexual violence and condemnation of sexism that was encouraged by #MeToo. The media discussion of the case which prompted more indignation in Portugal—the Gaia rape sentence in September 2018[4]—was though more closely related to debates about “la manada” gang rape in neighboring Spain, involving foremost criticism of the pervasiveness of sexism in the judiciary. In fact, until Kathryn Mayorga accused Cristiano Ronaldo of rape, #MeToo’s presence in Portugal had involved mainly the mainstream media coverage of cases involving US-celebrities and politicians (e.g. Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump) and the media discussion of “Deneuve’s letter” (09.10.2018).
Spiegel’s interview with Mayorga was followed by an intense media coverage of the case. Footage and pictures of her dancing with Ronaldo were broadcasted exhaustively in national media. Prominent columnists wrote opinion articles about the case.[5] High-rank politicians[6] and government members[7] were asked to comment on the allegations. Heated discussions erupted in social media. Only at this stage did the popular TV show Prós e Contras organize a session on #MeToo.[8] Rape allegations against Ronaldo meant the peak of public engagement with #MeToo in Portugal, although the case did not involve the type of hashtag feminist for which the movement stands nor did it involve Portuguese institutions. Spiegel’s interview with Mayorga was part of the magazine’s work of investigative journalism on documents disclosed by the Football Leaks; the alleged rape had taken place in the US and was being investigated by the American judiciary system. Ronaldo’ status as a national symbol and prodigy and Mayorga’s admission that #MeToo had encouraged her to come forward contributed to the case being discussed in Portugal not as “the troubles of a rich Portuguese abroad” but as the case through which the country assessed #MeToo.
Support for Ronaldo on social media consisted, on the one hand, of memes stressing his good character and sex appeal (the narrative “good looking men don’t need to rape”) and, on the other hand, of memes based on the character assassination of Mayorga. One, for instance, was a photo of her with the inscription “The judge asks the “victim:” When did you realize you were raped? The girl answered, wiping her tears: When the 300.000$ were over.” Opinion articles in reference newspapers avoided such type of offensive discourse; nonetheless, support for Ronaldo also operated through the construction of “narrative immunity” (Waterhouse-Watson, 2013) for the footballer that questioned Mayorga’s intentions and past actions (the payment involved in the agreement of confidentiality) and raised doubts about her testimony by depicting it as claims without factual evidence which were heard only because of the social environment created by #MeToo (e.g. Almada,[9] Nunes,[10] Sande,[11] Ramos,[12] Varela, and Lopes[13]). Consider Almada: for him the whole affair looks like a case of extortion. He warns against media trials and popular justice, recalling episodes of mob violence from the 1506 Lisbon pogrom.
Direct support for Mayorga was rare in op-eds in reference newspapers. With the exception of Faustina’s op-ed “Mayorga, YoTeCreo,”[14] where the endorsement of Mayorga’s story was explicit, most columnists who did not express support for Ronaldo focused their critical analysis on the sexism and/or nationalism that pervaded the debate in Portugal (e.g. Câncio,[15] Cosme,[16] [17] Cristo,[18] Garrido,[19] Lopes,[20] Marques,[21] Silva,[22] Tavares,[23] Teixeira Lopes[24]). These contributions signal a deep uneasiness among feminists fearing the repercussions of the debate in the combat against sexual violence. In her Público’s editorial “Saint Ronaldo and the prostitutes,” Lopes argues that the insults targeting Mayorga voiced by so many women exposed that the “deep machismo embedded in large parts of the female population will take centuries to eradicate.” In her op-ed “Lesson of the week: victims of sexual violence, remain silent,” Cosme criticized those who demand presumption of innocence for Ronaldo and Kavanaugh of embarking in the character assassination of the alleged victims, thus reinforcing “this ominous message to future victims and victims who suffer in silence: the world still doesn’t believe you.”
Indeed, it was through the trope of false allegations that Ronaldo’s case most contributed to the perception of #MeToo as a movement prone to the dissemination of unchecked accusations. In this process, key elements disclosed by Spiegel (the medical examination and the complaint filed by Mayorga in 2009) were sidelined in favor of a focus on her testimony in 2017, i.e. the case tended to be discussed as “credibility of words.” Key issues associated with #MeToo (sexual harassment at the workplace) were effaced while the movement was framed by Ronaldo’s debate on “what should (not) count as evidence in a rape trial.” Detractors of #MeToo’s used Ronaldo’s case precisely to structure their argumentation on the claim that the movement was counterproductive in the combat against “real rape.” Nunes[25] argued for the need to strictly distinguish between victims like the Nobel Prize laureate Nadja Murat, who went through the “horror of horrors,” and those he ironically calls “survivors of CR7,” whom he describes as women who got money by claiming rape. In this text resonates a widespread rumor circulating in Portuguese social media and blogosphere: the assumption that Mayorga was a luxury prostitute, who capitalized the #MeToo moment to get “even more money” from her sexual transaction with Ronaldo.
The popular TV show Prós e Contras contributed to the reinforcement of some of these anti-#MeToo arguments circulating in the press by granting them a considerable audience.[26] The show was pervaded by a performative tension between Ronaldo’s omnipresence and absence: omnipresence, because the show was aired on October 15, two weeks after Spiegel’s interview, when Portuguese society was fiercely discussing Ronaldo’s case; absence, because the theme of the show was not the rape allegations against the player (which were referred only briefly in the second part), but the question “Is #MeToo contributing to gender equality?” The structure of the show opposes three guests who defend the “yes” to three who are for the “No,” while guests in the audience give shorter inputs to the debate. The guests for the show on #MeToo were comprised of media personalities and/or academics; the absence of women engaged in hashtag activism, activists, lawyers and experts on sexual violence stood out.
The defenders of the “No,” History Professor and media personality Raquel Varela, presented as a “woman of the left,” psychiatrist António Coimbra de Matos, and scientist David Marçal, rebuked the idea that #MeToo contributed to the emancipation of women. Varela insisted on the need to persecute “real rape,” demanding harsher sentences for rapists, but also the conviction of women who make false allegations. She accused #MeToo of “conflating everything” (rape, harassment, seduction) and being no more than an expression of American puritanism in the promotion of conservatism and sex panic. Varela and Matos also accused the movement of being a weapon of alienation from the “real issues:” by creating a harsh environment for men—it was complicating the combat for socioeconomic justice against the high-finance. #MeToo was hence dismissed from a perspective that self-presented itself as liberal sex positive and sensitive to social justice and left-wing agendas. At one point, Varela asserted that she did not need Hollywood actresses to teach her how to expose rapists; Portuguese female workers had already done that in the aftermath of the 1974 revolution.
The backlash against #MeToo in the show also operated through the discussion of social media. Two guests who were supposed to endorse the “Yes” came forward with arguments which actually reinforced the “No.” Political Science Professor Paulo Sande dismissed hashtag feminism by warning about the dangers of social media in the promotion of populism, fake news, and mob justice. Economics Professor Rita Vale questioned not only the credibility of women who did not report at the time of the alleged events, but also their morals as accomplices of predators. By successfully conflating Ronaldo’s case with the movement through such aggregating discursive strategies, the show, or more precisely the majority of the invited guests, chiefly contributed to the validation of the narrative about #MeToo as a movement prone to the dissemination of false allegations, conservative attitudes towards sexuality, mob justice and/or character assassination.
Ronaldo as the body of the nation
Although the media construction of narrative immunity for sports celebrities confronted with allegations of sexual assault is certainly a widespread phenomenon (e.g. Waterhouse-Watson, 2013), in the context of #MeToo there were, nonetheless, cases where the popularity of the alleged aggressors did not prevent large sectors of society from empathizing with the alleged victims.[27] As the critical examination of the nineteen opinion articles and the TV-show suggests, that was not the case in Portugal in the context of allegations against Ronaldo. Looking closer at the emotional support for the sports star in his home country obliges us to pay attention to the role of football in the country and the media construction of Ronaldo as an embodiment of the nation through football. One of the many memes that were shared among Portuguese Facebook users in the days following the interview consisted of a close-up photo of Ronaldo wearing the Portuguese national team outfit and the printed words “He has always supported us. The time has come for us to support him. I support Ronaldo.” The combination of meanings between the words of support and the iconography of the picture—Ronaldo is wearing the Portuguese national team outfit, not the outfit of one of the teams that made him worldwide famous—exposes emblematically how Portuguese solidarity with Ronaldo against the rape allegations was framed as a national issue. This meme hints emblematically at the role of football in forging perceptions of national belonging and national identity in contemporary Portugal, a phenomenon which obliges to look at the broader history of football in the country.
The Portuguese dictatorship that was overthrown by the Carnation Revolution in 1974 and that lasted nearly half a century is often associated with the expression “three F’s”—referring to Football, Fado (traditional Portuguese music) and Fátima (Catholic pilgrimage site). It assumed that the enthusiasm shared by large sectors of the society for football was among the key pillars in the pacification and political alienation of the Portuguese society during that period. The expression continues to erupt as a referential in the discussion on the lack of political engagement among large sectors of the Portuguese society today. This becomes even more vivid when confronted with the euphoria and passion which surrounds sporting events, particularly football. Concerning sports and nationalism in Portugal, as in many other countries, the football national team prompts the most vigorous enthusiasm and national euphoria embodying emblematic performances of a shared sense of national belonging through masculinity. As Nagel argues, the idea of “the nation” is a political construction based upon a hegemonic understanding of masculinity, which becomes thus “an essentially (…) masculine institution” (1998, 251) and whose imaginary legitimizes patriarchal gender relations (Enloe, 1990), making them acceptable and/or even cumulatively reinforced.
The Portuguese team participations in the World Cups and the Europe Cups—especially after the 2004 Euro Cup, when the public exhibition of flags and a paraphernalia of props with the national team iconography became widespread[28] – are probably the strongest expressions of “banal nationalism” in contemporary Portugal, i.e. these events offer symbols and a language through which nationalism is consistently and invisibly vivid in society’s routines (Billig, 1995). Weak performances of the Portuguese team are experienced as national defeats, while their victories are celebrated as the accomplishment of a national goal. When a team composed mostly of football players of the so-called “golden generation” did not get through to the round of 16 in the 2002 World Cup, the cover of the center-left reference newspaper Público (15-06-2002)[29] depicted a fallen flag with the title “No glory, no flame.” The President of the Republic declared that the defeat should not be regarded as a “national drama”[30] and encouraged the disappointed and angry supporters to welcome the team back home. In 2016, when Portugal won its first Euro Cup, the cover of the same newspaper had a photo of Éder, the player who scored the victory goal, and the title “10th July, Day of Portugal.”[31] The victory match had taken place precisely one month after the Portuguese national holiday that also celebrates the death of Luiz Vaz de Camões,[32] of the Portuguese diaspora and the Portuguese language. Back in Portugal, where they were welcomed as heroes, the players were awarded by the President of the Republic the Commander, a title of honor to officially acknowledge those who contribute to the enhancement of society. The team’s parade in Lisbon was attended by hundreds of thousands of people.
Against this backdrop of national celebration and identity construction through football, Cristiano Ronaldo stands out as the most accomplished icon. This embodiment of national pride is gendered and based upon class and race assumptions and imaginaries. The mediatization of some traits of his biography made him a hero of a “rags to riches” narrative.[33] As the fourth son of an impoverished family from one of the most deprived regions in Portugal, the isle of Madeira, Ronaldo left his family at the age of twelve to live at a football academy in Lisbon, where he was no more than a football promise among many other promises. His professionalism and ambition in relentlessly improving his performance, the rigor in taking care of his body and his health, are widely perceived as being the keys which made him the best player of his generation and one of the greatest players of all time. Media attention, especially in the context of the yellow press and social media, praises his charity work, his close relation with his mother and his role as the generous provider for his large family.[34] Memes confronting pictures of him as an “ugly boy with irregular teeth” and as an good-looking man with a “perfect smile” and the inscription “You were not born ugly, you were just born poor” expose emblematically how Ronaldo embodies dreams of social mobility and consumerism in a country marked by deep social inequalities and persisting patterns of social reproduction, which were aggravated in the period 2010-14 by the Euro-crisis and the austerity measures imposed by the 2011-Troika[35] intervention.
Alongside this imaginary of Ronaldo embodying the self-made man that pulled himself by the bootstraps of today’s neoliberal age, there is also a dimension of post-imperial nostalgia framing the subjectivities around football. The reality of Portugal as a peripheric EU-member, whose socio-economic policies are mostly decided in the framework of the EU, often contrasts with ongoing History discourses and practices of remembrance indebted to colonial imaginaries of grandeur (e.g. Cardina, 2016). In a country which persists in celebrating the Colonial Expansion as Discoveries, more precisely as the accomplishment of a country of “brave sailors” who conquered the seas and the oceans, the decision to name the Portuguese national team in the World Cup 2010 in South Africa as “Navigators”[36] definitely echoes a persisting imperial nostalgia.
The public image of Ronaldo embodies dreams of national grandeur, not only because his exploits in top-rank foreign football clubs are perceived as contributing to the good reputation of Portugal, but also because his performance is perceived as being crucial for the outcome of the matches by the Portuguese national team in international competitions. Sports media coverage tends to single out his performance, often sparing him from criticism targeting the whole team, and to present him as the providential man, the player who makes all the difference in difficult matches because, through his individual talent and quality, can push his colleagues, team and country above and beyond. In sum, in Portugal, Ronaldo is more than the handsome captain of the national team; he embodies an ideal of protective masculinity in the neoliberal age. Within the structural social inequalities pervading Portuguese society and the marginalization of Portugal as a peripheric member State, Ronaldo’s economic success and international notoriety offer a model of national identification and pride. This cultural background is crucial to understand why the claims of rape made against Ronaldo were perceived among many Portuguese as an attack against the community itself. Certainly, public perceptions of Ronaldo as the embodiment of positive masculinity simply collided with pervasive imaginaries of what a rapist looks like and acts like. However, the decisive element framing the visibility of Ronaldo as a role model, which was decisive for the general support in his home country, relies on the key bond between Ronaldo and the Portuguese society through football as a lived experience and performance of “banal nationalism” (Billig, 1995).
Ronaldo’s popularity as a sex symbol and national icon—an ideal of masculinity, which is incompatible with the dominant imaginaries of rape—paved the way for the reversal of the equation: Mayorga became the accused and through her the context of her accusation, the #MeToo environment, was framed as a space of suspicion. Surely, feminists and journalists engaged in anti-sexual violence and harassment agendas were very active in the press trying to rebuke the sexism activated by the debates on Ronaldo’s case. However, by focusing their argumentation on the issue of false allegations, detractors of the movement successfully put forward perceptions favorable to the dismissal of hashtag feminism and to the activation of pervasive rape myths. Largely sidelined from the discussion were key issues addressed by #MeToo: sexual harassment at the workplace, the “gray zones” of sexual abuse, the complex reasons that discourage victims from reporting. The debate also exposed the pertinence of Ventura’s insights regarding the dominant understanding of rape in Portugal. In her seminal work about the prosecution of sexual violence, Ventura (2018) identified a pervasive imaginary that perceives rape as something that should be corroborated by material evidence and which is attributed to social marginality and economic deprivation, rather than as a crime largely framed by power inequalities.
After Ronaldo’s case there was no other peak of engagement with #MeToo. The most influential opinion article in mainstream media was “Why #MeToo and its variants are reactionary and puritan” by Pacheco Pereira,[37] a center-right politician whose columns are praised by wide sectors among the left as well. He depicted the movement as a forum for sexual misunderstandings and the persecution of sexuality. The positive reaction to Pereira’s article (almost a thousand Facebook shares) reinforces a key argument of this essay: the inexistence of a strong local expression of #MeToo was concomitant with a strong backlash against the movement. In that sense, Portugal comes closer to countries like Italy, where the movement “caused public apathy and the survivors have been virulently attacked in social media” (Zacchia, Corsi, & Botti, 2019, 28). In sum, the inequalities of class, gender and race, which Tarana Burke’s grassroots activism identified as being at the core of sexual violence, and the potentialities of hashtag feminism for the empowerment of abused women through empathy remain sidelined in the Portuguese mainstream public engagement with #MeToo.
Júlia Garraio is a researcher at the Center for Social Studies/University of Coimbra and research member of the project DeCode/M. She is co-founder and member of the international research group SVAC – Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict (http://warandgender.net/about/).
Sofia José Santos is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra and researcher at the Centre for Social Studies where she leads as Principal Investigator the research project DeCode/M.
Inês Amaral is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra and researcher at the Centre for Studies in Communication and Society. Researcher member of DeCode/M project at CES-UC.
Alexandre de Sousa Carvalho is Guest Assistant Lecturer at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra.Research member of DeCode/M at CES-UC. PhD Candidate in Political Science at ISCTE-IUL.
This essay results from research undertaken within the project “DeCodeM (De)Coding Masculinities: Towards an enhanced understanding of media’s role in shaping perceptions of masculinities in Portugal”, which is supported by the Foundation for Science and Technology (Portugal) under Grant PTDC/COM-CSS/31740/2017. Learn more here.
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[1] The critical examination of the rape allegations against Cristiano Ronaldo is outside the scope of our analysis, i.e., the present essay is not about whether Ronaldo is guilty of a crime (an issue that is up to the judicial system), but about the discourses and subjectivities that the rape allegations against him triggered in his home country.
[2] “Marcella taped papers in college bathrooms to show that victims of sexual violence are not alone”. Retrieved from http://bit.do/fbqb7.
[3] “Diogo Faro launched a challenge and almost two thousand people told them their story of sexual harassment”. Retrieved from http://bit.do/fbqcM.
[4] The Gaia rape case dates back to the 27th November 2016. The court ruled for a suspended penalty for the two defendants invoking the alleged environment of mutual seduction, the use of alcohol consumption, and the lack of serious injuries on the victim. The complete court decision is available at http://bit.ly/2UWTy0S
[5] These articles are precisely the object of study of this essay.
[6] “Marcelo on the alleged rape by Ronaldo «I don’t change my mind regarding his role in sports”. 05.10.2018. Retrieved from https://bit.ly/2UZSr0g. Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa is the President.
[7] “António Costa defends Ronaldo’s presumption of innocence”. 06.10.2018. Retrieved from https://bit.ly/38Fxlsc. António Costa is the Prime Minister.
[8] Episode 30 “#MeToo”. Retrieved from http://bit.do/fbqdq.
[9] “Witch hunt”. 12-10-2018. Retrieved from http://bit.do/fbqd3.
[10] “The survivors of CR7 and Nadia Murad”. 13-10-2018. Retrieved from http://bit.do/fbqex.
[11] “In defense of Ronaldo”. 09-10-2018. Retrieved from http://bit.do/fbqe6.
[12] “Rape without rapist”. 12-10-2018. Retrieved from http://bit.do/fbqfM.
[13] “Fight of the sexes, the new feminism”. 09-10-2018. Retrieved from http://bit.do/fbqga.
[14] 04-10-2018. Retrieved from http://bit.do/fbwxn.
[15] “That big tart and our Cristiano”. 07-10-2018. Retrieved from http://bit.do/fbrtT.
[16] “Lesson of the week: victims of sexual abuse, keep quiet”. 11-10-2018. Retrieved from http://bit.do/fbrun.
[17] “But we are the “offended virgins””. 16-10-2018. Retrieved from http://bit.do/fbrvx.
[18] “Ronaldo above good and evil”. 08-10-2018. Retrieved from http://bit.do/fbrwe.
[19] “The mask that fell with Ronaldo”. 11-10-2018. Retrieved from http://bit.do/fbrwz.
[20] “Saint Ronaldo and the prostitutes”. 07-10-2018. Retrieved from http://bit.do/fbrwX.
[21] “This country is not for women”. 10.10.2018. Retrieved from http://bit.do/fbrxd.
[22] “Women who hate women”. 12-10-2018. Retrieved from http://bit.do/fbrxn.
[23] “Long live Metoo (unless it reaches CR7)”. 04-10-2018. Retrieved from http://bit.do/fbrxE.
[24] “Raquel Varela and Teresa Rita Lopes chatting over coffee”. 09-10-2018. Retrieved from http://bit.do/fbryr.
[25] “The survivors of CR7 and Nadia Murad”. 13-10-2018. Retrieved from http://bit.do/fbqex.
[26] Prós e Contras is a plural forum of opinions in the public television service with the participation of the public. It should be emphasized that it is the only program of debate as a forum in Portuguese public television service. According to Marktest data, it has a consistent rating of 2% to 3% and 6% to 7% share, which means a broad audience range, with between 250,000 and 550,000 viewers. Although the show does not have a high rating, it has a considerable audience for informational debate programs.
[27] See, for instance, the 2018 “rugby rape trial” in Ireland: “How the ‘rugby rape trial” divided Ireland”. 04.12.2018. Retrieved from https://bit.ly/321fTvT.
[28] “Scolari managed to fill the streets with flags at Euro 2004”. 13.08.2009. Retrieved from https://bit.ly/2UYJdBB.
[29] “No glory, no flame”. Retrieved from http://bit.do/fbqaS.
[30] “No national drama with leave of the selection, says Sampaio”. Retrieved from http://bit.do/fbqbi.
[31] http://bit.do/fbqbx.
[32] Camões is one of the most celebrated figures in Portugal and the author of the most famous pieces of Portuguese literature, the nationalist epic poem Os Lusíadas, to the point of the Portuguese language is sometimes referred to as “the language of Camões”.
[33] “The poor and unknown childhood of Cristiano Ronaldo”. 05.02.2015. Retrieved from https://bit.ly/37Cn9PT.
[34] “9 reasons to love Cristiano Ronaldo beyond his football skills”, Retrieved from https://bit.ly/2HtsVZB; “The ‘owner’ of his heart”. 11.07.2009. Retrieved from https://bit.ly/2PhwIO3.
[35] The Troika is comprised of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European Commission (EC).
[36] “Navigators is the chosen name”. 05.06.2010. Retrieved from https://bit.ly/37BQ3Qf.
[37] “Why #MeToo and its variants are reactionary and puritanical”. 06-04-2019. Retrieved from http://bit.do/fbrzQ.
Published on March 10, 2020.
