Adolfo Mesquita Nunes
Adolfo Mesquita Nunes (born 29 November 1977) is a Portuguese lawyer and politician. He was a member of the CDS – People’s Party (CDS-PP) from 1997 until 2021 and has been independent since then.
He served as a Member of the Assembly of the Republic for Lisbon from June 2011 to February 2013. He was Secretary of State for Tourism from February 2013 to November 2015 in Pedro Passos Coelho’s government, working under the Economy Minister António Pires de Lima and promoting deregulation in the tourism sector.
Education-wise, he earned a law degree from the Catholic University of Portugal and a Master’s in Legal and Political Sciences in 2008 from the University of Lisbon.
In 2012, he was the only CDS-PP member in his party’s parliamentary group to vote in favor of same-sex couple adoption. He also participated in the parliamentary committee on the international bailout program during Portugal’s financial crisis (2010–2014).
In 2020, he was considered a potential candidate for the 2021 Portuguese presidential election with support from some moderate-right groups, but he declined to run. In January 2021, he sought to challenge the CDS-PP leader, Francisco Rodrigues dos Santos, but after a narrow confidence vote, he stepped back.
On 30 October 2021, Mesquita Nunes left CDS-PP, citing a controversial decision to postpone the party leadership election and calling the move illegal. He criticized the party as turning into a conservative, less diverse group.
Personal life: He publicly came out as gay in 2018, explaining that there was no need to hide it. He had previously addressed an incident in 2017 when a campaign billboard in Covilhã was spray-painted with the word “gay.”
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 18:26 (CET).