Rita Matias

Rita Matias started her political activity as a member of the People's Youth (Juventude Popular), an organ of the CDS – People's Party, a conservative, Christian democratic party. Through her father, she came into contact with Chega, but initially considered it too populist. Changing her views, she joined the party and at its second congress, at the age of 22, was invited to join its seven-person leadership board by the party's leader André Ventura. She took on responsibility for Chega's social networking. In 2021, Matias was a candidate in the municipal elections in Alcochete, to the east of the capital, Lisbon, but was not elected.^[4][5][7][6]

Matias has described her political inspiration as coming from the right-wing female politicians, Giorgia Meloni in Italy and Rocío Monasterio in Spain. She leads Chega's youth group, called Juventude Chega. The first attempt to develop this failed as a result of entryism by Neo National Socialism groups. Matias was Chega's spokesperson on youth matters in the 2022 Portuguese legislative election, when she was elected to the National Assembly to represent the Lisbon constituency. She was third on the Chega list of candidates for Lisbon, and the party won four seats in that constituency and 12 overall, making it the third largest party. In her first speech to the Assembly, she focused on issues concerning young people and the cost of student housing in Lisbon. In parliament, she was appointed to the committee on energy and the environment.^[8][4]

On 16 June 2024, at a press conference prior to a match in the UEFA Euro 2024 football (soccer) championship, the French footballer Kylian Mbappé, who has Cameroonian and Algerian parents, encouraged young people in France to vote in the 2024 French legislative election in order to combat extremism, saying "I want to be proud to represent France; I don’t want to represent a country that doesn’t correspond to my values, or our values." Playing in France's first match of the tournament, Mbappé broke his nose. Matias responded to this by writing on X (formerly Twitter) "France for the French" and by suggesting that Mbappé had put his nose where it did not belong.^{[9][10][11][12]}