Adolfo Mesquita Nunes

Adolfo Mesquita Nunes was born in Lisbon but raised in Covilhã with his paternal family. He earned his bachelor's degree in Law from the Catholic University of Portugal, and later a master's degree in Legal and Political Sciences in 2008 from the University of Lisbon.

He became a member of CDS – People's Party in 1997. As a Member of Parliament, he became notable for being the only in the CDS caucus who voted for adoption by same-sex couples in 2012, and for being a member of the parliamentary committee on the international bailout programme in the wake of the 2010–2014 Portuguese financial crisis.[2] As Secretary of State for Tourism under Minister of Economy António Pires de Lima, he promoted deregulation of the sector.[2]

In 2020, Adolfo Mesquita Nunes was put forward as a potential candidate in the 2021 Portuguese presidential election, with the support of some in the moderate right-wing of the Social Democratic Party and the Liberal Initiative, as well as his own party.[3] Citing lack of support from his party's leadership and refusing to run "just to oppose someone", Mesquita Nunes declined entering the race.[4]

In January 2021, following the presidential election, Mesquita Nunes called for an extraordinary congress of his party so that he could challenge the leader, Francisco Rodrigues dos Santos, who he accused of having been steering the party toward political irrelevance.[5] After Rodrigues dos Santos succeeded in having the party structure approve a motion of confidence, by a slim margin, Mesquita Nunes gave up the leadership challenge.[6]

On 30 October 2021, Mesquita Nunes announced his decision to give up his CDS-PP party affiliation, following the controversial internal decision to postpone a party leadership election so that it would only take place after the snap legislative election that will take place because of the parliamentary rejection of the Socialist minority government budget for 2022.[1] On his public announcement, Mesquita Nunes called the decision "illegal", and accused leader Francisco Rodrigues dos Santos of having turned the party into a conservative monolith with a lack of real internal diversity, and denounced the "party's new priorities" of being an "accusatory finger" of "so-called Christian purity".[1]

Mesquita Nunes publicly came out in an interview to the newspaper Expresso in 2018, saying he had not done so before because he found such an announcement unnecessary; while calling it as a private matter, he also said he had never made any attempt to conceal it, citing an incident during the campaign for the 2017 local elections in which one of his political campaign billboards in Covilhã was spray painted with the word "gay" and he specifically asked for it not to be taken down as it wasn't calumnious.[7]