PORTUGAL is no country for young men. A third of the under-25s are out of work. Of graduates under 35 with a job, almost half earn less than €900 ($1,000) a month. This is “the 500 generation”, referring to the minimum monthly wage that many earn on short-term contracts in call-centres or supermarkets. Emigration is at levels unseen since the 1960s. Greece and Spain, where youth unemployment is even higher, have also suffered in the euro crisis. Yet Portuguese voters are at odds with their fellows. In January Greeks elected a government led by a left-wing populist party, Syriza. Radical anti-austerity parties like Podemos in Spain pose a threat to the big established parties. In Portugal, by contrast, a naturally conservative electorate has stuck with the political establishment: there is no sign of any big populist upstart party. In polls ahead of the general election due this autumn, the two right-of-centre ruling parties that have presided over four years of austerity are neck-and-neck with the main opposition centre-left Socialists (PS). One poll puts the centre-right Social Democrats (PSD) of Pedro Passos Coelho, the prime minister, and his smaller coalition partners, the People’s Party (CDS-PP), just a tenth of a point behind the PS. After four years of spending cuts and tax rises that sparked Portugal’s worst recession in 40 years, most...
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