Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro accused Portugal of sabotaging Christmas as a shorage of pork led to anti-government protests spilling onto the streets.

According to Mr Maduro and his socialist government, the Portuguese authorities were pressured into preventing the delivery of two “giant boats” laden with government-subsidized ham, a favoured seasonal meat, due to an international conspiracy led by the United States.

“So, what happened to the ham?” Mr Maduro asked in a televised Christmas address on Wednesday after hundreds of people took to the streets in poor parts of Caracas on Wednesday night in protest at the shortage.

“We were sabotaged. I can name one country: Portugal. Everything was ready because we bought up all the ham there was in Venezuela, but we had to import [more] so I gave the order and signed off on the payments.”

Some pockets of protests continued on Thursday morning, in what some social media users dubbed the “pork revolution”.