Republican Portugal

Portugal

Living habitually?

From the First Republic to the Cold War

António de Oliveira Salazar

Salazar was appointed Minister of Finance in April 1928. His immediate task was to rescue the Portuguese economy in order to allow the dictatorship to restore order and the rule of law.

“People change little, and the Portuguese not at all. I want them to act habitually”

Salazar in an interview with António Ferro, Salazar: Portugal and her leader, London: Faber & Faber

WHY SALAZAR?

• Technocrat• Catholic• Rural• He had a plan

HOW DID IT GET TO THIS?

Implantation of the Republic

In early October 1910, units of the armed forces and armed civilians in Lisbon and a few other urban centres rose and overthrew the Portuguese monarchy. The Republic was proclaimed on 5 October.

The problem with the First Republic, 1910-1926...

1. Urban2. Intellectual3. Foreign4. Anti-clerical5. Legitimacy

Monarchist incursions, 1910-12

During the first two years in the life of the Republic, monarchist forces regrouped in Spain under the leadership of Commander Paiva Couceiroand staged a number of failed incursions into northern Portugal.

Movimento das Espadas, January 1915

On the pretext of a corporate grievance by army officers against the government, President Arriaga dismissed the government and asked General Pimenta de Castro (pictured) to form a new ministry.

Portugal at war, 1916-1918

General Douglas Haig (Britain, left) with General Fernando Tamagnini, commander of the Portuguese Expeditionary Force, on the Western Front, France, June 1917.

The Fátima visions, May-October 1917

The three shepherd children, Lúcia dos Santos and Jacinta and Francisco Marto, who are said to have seen the Virgin Mary on the 13th of each month between May and October 1917.

Sidonismo, December 1917-December 1918

Major Sidónio Pais, who had been a member of the first republican government in 1910 and Portugal’s minister in Berlin in 1912, led a coup against the Democratic government on 5 December 1917.

Monarchy of the North, January 1919

Following the assassination of Sidónio Pais, the military juntas that had been established in the north of the country, proclaimed the monarchy. Forces loyal to the Republic moved swiftly to quell the uprising.

The rise and fall of the GNR, 1920-21

The Democratic Party began strengthening the GNR as a military force capable of standing toe-to-toe with the army. Its leader, Col Liberato Pinto, was Prime Minister in 1920 and 1921. After Pinto was removed from office the GNR was placed under military command.

Noite Sangrenta (Bloody Night), 19 October 1921

There is very little definitive knowledge about the events of the Noite Sangrenta in which the prime minister, António Granjo (above) and several other leading politicians were murdered.

18 April 1925: Golpe dos generais

Sinel de Cordes (above) led a failed coup attempt against the government.

28 May 1926: the March on Lisbon

In a piece of theatre inspired by events in Rome four years earlier, the victorious rebel generals and their troops marched into Lisbon to seize power from the fleeing democratic politicians.

The end of the First Republic?

• Turbulent beginnings• Conflict between urban and rural• Conflict between Catholicism and laicism• Conflict between urban middle class and organised working class

Salazar’s lesson

Basically, to stop spending money the country didn’t have; to follow the example of the good housewife and to stop “living in hope” and begin a “policy of truth”.

“I know quite well what I want and where I am going, but let it not be insisted that I shall

reach the goal in a few months. For the rest, let the country study, let it object and let it discuss, but when the time comes for me to

give orders I shall expect it to obey.”

Salazar, 27 April 1927

Salazar’s lesson

God, country, family. Living habitually.

The need for a new vision

1. Restore the nation’s finances2. End the infatuation with

materialism3. Democracy = disorder

The new vision

• Rejected materialist fascist ideals• Based on teachings of social Catholicism• Papal encyclicals (Catholic corporatism):

• Rerum Novarum (Leo XIII, 1891)• Quadragesimo Ano (Pius XI, 1931)

•

“During the long years which comprised the opening decades of the present century, materialism — either in theory or in practice — had pre-eminently made politics, science, inventions, education, individual and collective life, subservient to the acquisition of wealth or to the enjoyment of pleasures. If materialism has not been able to eradicate entirely every influence that tends to develop the highest spiritual aims in the individual, in the family, and in society, it is not because it has not attempted to destroy those influences or to emphasise our physical needs to the exclusion of all others. Experience has sadly shown us that this has been the best way of inducing people to make demands with which no ordinary government could comply; of promoting internal and external strife; and of provoking upheavals of violence that have never been surpassed, threatening to engulf mankind in a new barbarism.”

Salazar, 26 May 1934

“There will be no definite progress unless it is accompanied by a revolution in the mental and moral outlook of the Portuguese people of the present day, and by a careful education of our future generations”

Salazar

DOMESTIC DEALINGS

Football

Or as you know it, soccer...

Fado

Traditional popular Portuguese music

Fátima

Religion, more precisely, Catholicism, which provided a moral basis for the Portuguese people.

DEALING WITH THE NEIGHBOURS

The Spanish Civil War, 1936-39

While not officially supporting Franco’s Nationalists in the Spanish conflict, Salazar allowed a “volunteer” force, Os Viriatos to fight on the side of the Nationalists.

Staying out of the Second World War

Portugal remained neutral, kept Spain neutral, while all the time favouring the Allies during the Second World War... Even to the extent of allowing the UK to invoke the 1386 Treaty of Windsor to secure Allied use of the Azores archipelago.

AFTER THE WAR

False democracy

The Allied victory meant Salazar could no longer dismiss democracy. So he created a false democratic process for electing candidates to a powerless parliament.

Delgado and the 1958 Presidential Election

General Humberto Delgado stood against the regime’s candidate in the 1958 Presidential Election, and is widely believed to have won were it not for fraud on the part of the regime.

Obviamente demiti-lo-ei

When asked what he would do about Salazar should he become President, Delgado responded: “Obviously I will dismiss him”.

Death of the general ‘sem medo’

Delgado , the ‘General without fear’, the first to openly stand against Salazar, was assassinated near Badajoz, Spain, on 13 February 1965 by the regime’s secret police, the PIDE.

“I don’t believe in equality: I believe in hierarchy. In my opinion all men must be equal before the law, but I think it is dangerous to give all men the same political rights.”

Salazar, Figaro, 3 September 1958.