Portugal has just won an unwanted title: the epicentre of Europe’s immigration disinformation. According to the European Digital Media Observatory, no other country is pumping out and amplifying as many false claims about migrants as this small Atlantic nation.

The lies aren’t subtle. Immigrants supposedly get first dibs on school places. Foreigners are draining public services. Migrant families are jumping the queue while Portuguese parents are left behind. None of it is true. All of it spreads faster than any correction ever could.

At the heart of this machinery sits Chega, the far-right party that has turned scapegoating into a political brand. Its leader, André Ventura, and his allies recycle the same fabrications week after week. Post a list of immigrant children in a school, insinuate they’re “taking spaces from Portuguese kids,” and watch the comments explode. It’s a cynical play: easy outrage, ready votes.

What’s new is the scale. Out of 1,433 pieces of disinformation tracked across Europe in July, 164 were about immigration—an unprecedented share. Portugal is no longer just participating in Europe’s culture wars. It’s leading them.

And that should set off alarm bells. Because disinformation is not about truth. It’s about power. It doesn’t matter that Portugal’s economy needs immigrants, or that hospitals and cafés would collapse without them. What matters is who gets to control the story. When fear and resentment are weaponised, politics follows suit.

The danger is that once these falsehoods settle into the bloodstream of public debate, they harden. They become assumptions. They become “common sense.” And by the time fact-checkers or NGOs step in, the damage is already done.

So the question is not just how to debunk lies, but how to stop them from becoming the air we breathe. Portugal still has a chance to resist the cycle that has reshaped politics in Italy, France, and beyond. But only if mainstream parties confront the problem head-on instead of tiptoeing around it, and only if society stops mistaking disinformation for “just another opinion.”

Because this isn’t about immigrants at all. It’s about whether truth can still hold power in a democracy.