The president of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, has sparked a new controversy following his comments about the cleavage of a compatriot with whom he met in the middle of the street during a visit to Canada.

“The daughter still catches the flu. “Have you seen the neckline she's wearing?” said the Portuguese president last Thursday to two Portuguese emigrants, mother and daughter, with whom he spoke in Toronto.. The moment was recorded by public television.

Rebelo de Sousa himself has come out against this controversy: “It was not a sexist comment. I had not thought of it. Neither for the young nor for the old women. “It hasn't been sexist at all,” he responded when questioned by the press.

“At the end of the walk through the Portuguese part of Montreal it started to rain, it was cold” and that's why he warned “several older ladies, one of them with white hair and others who were younger,” he explained this Sunday. “I told several people, but apparently only one young woman was recorded: be careful, they still get constipated.”. “I got constipated,” he added.

Criticism of Rebelo de Sousa's words has come from various political parties, including the ruling Socalist Party (PS), and from the far-right ¡Basta!, the liberal Libre or the environmentalist People-Animals-Nature (PAN).

The national secretary of the PS, Isabel Moreira, has called on the head of state to apologize. “We are in 2023. You don't treat a woman you don't know making a joke about her weight.. You don't make a joke about a neckline (…). and apologize. Sexism kills us. It's not funny,” he declared, according to the Portuguese newspaper 'Público'.

“In the 21st century we have to see the normalization of this type of comments,” said PAN deputy Inês de Sousa Real, who has asked the head of state to “reinforce the importance of not normalizing these comments.”

We recently had the Rubiales case in Spain and the international community has mobilized

“We recently had the Rubiales case in Spain and the international community has mobilized. We are not going to equate the seriousness of the two situations, but the truth is that we cannot forget that we live in a world in which there is domestic violence and a quite accentuated siege where many times words uttered without malice can legitimize behaviors with other intentions,” he added.

The leader of ¡Basta!, André Ventura, has commented on Twitter that if it had been him who had uttered those phrases there would already be dozens of complaints “and I don't know how many associations and observatories for the defense of gender equality” mobilized.

Just a week ago Rebelo de Sousa was involved in another controversy when a woman sat on a bench next to the president to take a photo and he asked her if “the bank can hold?” in reference to his overweight. He had previously described Luis Rubiales's kiss as a “minor issue” compared to the war in Ukraine.