Rodrigues dos Santos is the eldest of three sons from
Coimbra, born to an army officer father and lawyer mother. When he was five, the family moved to
Vila Nova da Barquinha in the
Santarém District due to his father's work. He now presents himself as the "young conservative". In the
2013 local elections, he led the
PSD-CDS-
MPT coalition in the Lisbon parish of
Carnide, and was elected.
Four years later, he was voted onto the city's municipal assembly as the lead candidate of a CDS-MPT-
PPM coalition, and resigned in February 2020. After his party was unable to elect a single deputy in the
2022 Portuguese legislative election, Francisco Rodrigues dos Santos announced his resignation from CDS-PP's leadership. He was succeeded by
MEP Nuno Melo in April 2022. During the 2022 election campaign, Rodrigues dos Santos made headlines for a video in which he made an allegory between Christmas dinner and the parties of the Portuguese right:
Liberal Initiative was a hipster cousin who shares different values from the rest of the family,
Chega was a cousin with poor table manners, and
PSD was an absent brother, spending the holiday with his left-wing family. ==Personal life==