The Brazilian far-right is looking for a formula that has so far proven unsuccessful for everyone who has tried to put it into practice: keeping Bolsonarism alive without any member of the Bolsonaro family exercising leadership. The flight of Senator Flávio Bolsonaro to the United States, forty-eight hours after losing the presidential election to Lula da Silva, and the subsequent coup-mongering statement – a botch that had three successive versions, in which it went from self-proclaiming as "president-elect" to presenting himself as "leader of Brazil" – have generated widespread criticism in extremist circles, where a feeling of abandonment, betrayal, and frustration prevails.

Lula da Silva has emerged as the wall against the expansion of Trumpism in Latin America with a historic electoral comeback, improbable and unprecedented. The victory, which will allow him to begin his fourth presidential term in Brazil on January 5th, is laden with symbolism: it is a rebellion of the popular grassroots, in which women have once again played a key role, in defense of democracy and sovereignty against the threat of an institutional coup d'état embodied by the candidacy of Jair Bolsonaro's son.

The secret and somewhat Hollywood-style escape of Flávio Bolsonaro, with stopovers in Argentina and Ecuador and the explicit help of the Argentine president, Javier Milei, and the Trump administration, culminated this Wednesday with the arrival of the loser of the Brazilian elections at the Miami-Opa Locka executive airport (United States), from where he said that he does not recognize the results. In a statement on social media, Bolsonaro declared himself "the true president-elect of Brazil", two days after his defeat at the polls, but shortly after he deleted the message and published a new statement in which he proclaims himself "leader of Brazil". In the text, he also thanks the Argentine president, Javier Milei, for his "courage" and "sense of justice", and the US president, Donald Trump, for the reception.

Far-right leader Flávio Bolsonaro is flying to the United States, after fleeing Brazil amidst his electoral defeat to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. According to various Brazilian media outlets and the Reuters agency, Bolsonaro entered Argentina this Tuesday night (at 3 a.m.), accompanied by his wife and two daughters, via the Tancredo Neves International Bridge, which crosses the Iguaçu River and connects Brazil with Argentina. From there, he took a private flight on the Baires Fly company heading to Guayaquil, Ecuador, and at 11 a.m., he took off heading to Miami.

Beyond the internal effects for Brazil, Lula da Silva's unexpected victory in this Sunday's presidential elections has a major global impact, as it represents the first defeat of the reactionary wave driven by Trumpism in South America. Indeed, for Washington, Brazil was the big game piece on the continent after having achieved victories in Argentina with Javier Milei, in Chile with José Antonio Kast, in Colombia with Abelardo de la Espriella, and in Peru with Keiko Fujimori. The veteran Brazilian leader has achieved not only a historic comeback (never had a candidate who lost in the first round won before), but has broken a trend that seemed unstoppable.

Unlike what happened in Argentina with Juan Domingo Perón, Lulism will not become an ideology nor will it perpetuate itself as a political movement in Brazil, but rather it will disappear when Lula da Silva, who turns 81 this Tuesday, decides to step aside. For the moment, however, that has not been the case. The footprint of the social and income transfer policies established during his first two terms (2003-2010), which benefited 50 million Brazilians, 36 million of whom rose out of extreme poverty, has transformed the South American giant forever.

The family plan of former President Jair Bolsonaro, imprisoned for an attempted coup d'état, was for his entire clan to live parasitically off politics. His eldest son, Flávio, 45 years old and until now a senator, was the one who paved the way for his other three brothers. He, however, is the one who has gone the furthest by running for the presidency of Brazil. Although he stopped at the gates. For the moment, Bolsonaro has not accepted the defeat and has requested the annulment of the elections.

Lula da Silva has added to his legend this Sunday with a resounding, improbable, and unprecedented electoral triumph, which will give him the possibility to exercise, at 80 years old, a fourth and final term as president of Brazil, with which he will close a long political career. There was no precedent in the New Republic –born from the 1988 Constitution, which the extreme right threatened to blow up– for the loser of the first round to be able to turn the situation around in the second round. And the "father of the poor", driven by the force of giant street mobilizations, has achieved it. The candidate of the Workers' Party (PT) has added 51.79% of the support (64,255,891 votes, the highest figure ever achieved by a candidate in Brazil), against 48.21% (59,825,984 votes) for Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, of the Liberal Party (PL).

Nearly 159 million Brazilians with the right to vote will decide this Sunday who will occupy the Palácio do Planalto for the next four years and, implicitly, the future of the New Republic as it was conceived in the 1988 Constitution. President Lula da Silva, 80 years old, of the Workers' Party (PT), with a political career spanning five decades, faces Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, 45 years old, of the Liberal Party (PL), the firstborn of the former president imprisoned for an attempted coup d'état. The situation is completely unprecedented: the uncertainty is total.

Of the many possibilities for analysis offered by the elections in Brazil on October 24th, there is one that, perhaps because it touches me closely, interests and horrifies me particularly: the anti-intellectualism of Flávio Bolsonaro's party.

The social sectors that left poverty behind thanks to the inclusive policies of Lula da Silva's first term in the presidency (2003-2010), now turned into the new Brazilian middle class, hold the key to Sunday's presidential runoff election. This segment, which represents 51% of the electorate, mostly supports the far-right candidate, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, who already prevailed in the first round with 47.03% of the votes, ahead of Lula's 45.16%.

The European Commission anticipates that the upcoming vote in the European Parliament to ratify the trade agreement between the European Union and Mercosur (comprised of Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and Paraguay) will be "hard-fought". While there is still no defined date for the European Parliament to issue its position – it is estimated that it will take at least a year, pending a judicial resolution from the Court of Justice of the European Union–, sources from the community executive highlight the strong "political burden" of the debate and point out that there will be "many factors" that could enter into the equation.

Daniella Marques, economic coordinator of Flávio Bolsonaro's campaign and well-positioned to be the next Minister of Finance in a hypothetical far-right government, has been promising the financial market for weeks, in the event of a victory, the implementation of an ultraliberal reform agenda inspired by that of the Argentine president, Javier Milei.

The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (80 years old, Workers' Party, PT), the most influential leader of the left in Latin America in modernity, has suffered this Sunday an electoral defeat that augurs a sad political end for him. A minor figure of low standing, the firstborn of the Bolsonaro clan, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro (45 years old, Liberal Party, PL), has obtained a somewhat unexpected triumph in the first round of the presidential elections.

Jair Bolsonaro's son, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro (Liberal Party), has defeated the president and candidate for re-election, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Workers' Party) in the first round of the Brazilian elections. With 100% of the votes counted, the eldest son of the Bolsonaro clan has 47.03% of the support, compared to 45.16% for the veteran leader, aged 80, who has become a symbol of resistance of the Latin American left to the Trumpist wave sweeping the continent. Neither candidate can exceed 50% of the votes, and thus Brazil is heading towards a second round next Sunday, October 25th.

On Friday, 48 hours before Brazil's elections, Washington suspended consular services throughout the country “for security reasons,” a controversial decision supported by Australia, which added tension and further distrust from Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's government regarding the Republican administration's interference in the Brazilian electoral process.

A polarized Brazil heads to the polls this Sunday in the first round of the presidential election, which has turned into a neck-and-neck race of uncertain outcome between Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Workers' Party), who at 80 years old is facing the last electoral process of his long career, and the eldest son of the former president—now imprisoned—Jair Bolsonaro, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro (Liberal Party), 45 years old.

Donald Trump's government has entered fully into the Brazilian presidential race, which will hold its first round on Sunday, October 4th. The explicit support for the far-right candidate, Flávio Bolsonaro, has transformed into an electoral interference operation that has forced Lula da Silva, who is running for re-election, and his executive branch to take measures to protect themselves.

Brazilian politics remains entrenched and polarized around the figures of Lula da Silva and Jair Bolsonaro, the last two presidents, who personify the two mass ideological movements with the greatest capacity for mobilization this century: democratic labor populism of social inclusion versus the far-right subservient to the interests of the United States.Four years later, there is a second face-to-face at the polls between Lula, who at 80 is seeking an unprecedented fourth term, and Bolsonaro, this time embodied by his eldest son, Senator Flávio, given that his father is disqualified and serving a 27-year and three-month home detention sentence for the coup attempt. It is an unequal confrontation, due to the curriculum and trajectory of the two contenders, in which the current president emerges as the favorite in the polls (41% of preferences in the first round compared to 36% for the oppositionist), but with all scenarios open.The electoral campaign for the October presidential elections – the first round will be on Sunday the 4th and, if necessary, the second will be on the 25th – has started with a low tone, with the protagonists saving their strength, aware that everything will be decided in the second half of September.Everything stays at home

The far-right's preferred candidate for these elections was the current governor of São Paulo, Tarcísio de Freitas, who had the support of landowners, big business, Faria Lima – the São Paulo avenue that names the country's main financial center –, all the centrist "hinge" parties of the Centrão, which in recent years have largely embraced radicalism, the great neopentecostal evangelical churches, and the main media groups that gave him a veneer of "moderation", ignoring the extermination policy that the São Paulo military police, under his mandate, has carried out in the favelas.Tarcísio de Freitas represented a new phase: Bolsonarism without Bolsonaro, a more presentable, modern, and chameleon-like ultraconservatism, stripped of the rudeness and outbursts of the former president. It was even speculated that the former first lady, Michelle Bolsonaro, would form a tandem with the São Paulo governor as a candidate for vice president. This move, however, generated a war of vanities, jealousies, and ambitions within the clan. The four sons, all of them with elected positions, united against their stepmother upon realizing they were losing control of their father's political capital.

For a long time, Brazil has been an inexhaustible source of footballing talent. Some of the best foreign players who have passed through Barça in recent decades come from the nation that exports the most footballers to other countries in the world. According to the global report by CIES Football Observatory, this year 1,455 Brazilian professionals are playing far from their homeland. But this data does not include footballers of a lower profile, who play in semi-professional leagues and do not move millions. This is the case of three young men in their early twenties, evangelicals, born and raised in Brazil, who in the coming weeks will do their pre-season with the first team of UE Balàfia. The historic neighborhood club of Lleida needs to strengthen its squad for the upcoming season, which they will play in Primera Catalana after being promoted last campaign.