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Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses
Salazar
A Political Biography
Enigma Books
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Copyright Conventions.
Published by Enigma Books
New York
Copyright © 2009 by Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise without the written permission of Enigma Books.
ISBN 978-1-929631-90-2
First Edition
Publisher’s Cataloging-In-Publication Data
De Meneses, Filipe Ribeiro, 1969–

Salazar : a political biography / Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses. -- 1st ed.
p. : ill. ; cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN: 978-1-929631-90-2
1. Salazar, António de Oliveira, 1889–1970. 2. Prime ministers--Portugal--

Biography. 3. Portugal--Politics and government--1910-1974. I. Title.
DP676.S25 D46 2009

946.9/04/2/092 [B]
Contents
Introduction vii
Chapter I From Santa Comba Dão to São Bento 3
Chapter II The New State in the Age of Totalitarianism 83
Chapter III The Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939 190
Chapter IV World War II: The Axis Threat, 1939–1942 223
Chapter V World War II: The Allied Threat, 1943–1945 275
Chapter VI The Postwar World 334
Chapter VII Salazar and the Politics of the New State,

1945–1958 375
Chapter VIII A New Opposition: Humberto Delgado and

the Bishop of Oporto 422
Chapter IX The Colonial Reckoning I: Angola, 1961 451
Chapter X The Colonial Reckoning II: Salazar’s Defiance 495
Chapter XI Portugal at War: The 1960s 544
Chapter XII Illness, Retirement, and Death 598
Chapter XIII Conclusion 611
Bibliography 624
Index 636
Introduction
I n this age where competition for sometimes scant resources has become an in-
built part of academic life, it is not unusual to see bold claims of startling dis-
coveries or radically innovative interpretations made in relation to research
projects and their traditional outcome, books. Such claims are most frequently
made in Introductions, which can sometimes read like adaptations of successful
funding applications. As I pored over the lines of this book, written over a period
of seven years, I understood that my Introduction would not be credible if it
followed such a model. This is neither self-deprecation nor the kind of false
modesty that the subject of this biography perfected over the course of his long
political career. I simply realized that my original idea had perhaps been overly
ambitious. Words of encouragement from a well-wisher some months before I
had finished writing—‘I can’t wait to find out what went on inside Salazar’s
mind’—brought on this realization. The gap between what some—even those
closest to me—seemed to expect from my work and what I was in the process of
delivering was immense. I had caught glimpses, I thought, of ‘what went on inside
Salazar’s mind’: but only just. It was now far too late, however, to change course.
In the Prologue to his remarkable biography of Franco, Paul Preston wrote
that ‘despite fifty years of public prominence and a life lived well into the
television age, Francisco Franco remains the least known of the great dictators of
the twentieth century.’1 The definition of a dictator’s ‘greatness’ is, at best, elusive:
but for sheer length of time in power, people and square miles ruled over, and the
creation of a distinctive ethos, or even ideology, António de Oliveira Salazar is no
less ‘great’ than his neighbor and frequent collaborator, Franco. Whereas Franco’s
life and action was circumscribed to Spain and its Moroccan protectorate, the
consequences of Salazar’s decisions were felt by people in Europe, Africa, and
1. Paul Preston, Franco: A Biography (London: Harper Collins, 1993), xvii.

viii Salazar: A Political Biography
Asia. When he was appointed Finance Minister, in 1928, Calvin Coolidge was
President of the United States; by the time he abandoned power, in 1968, the
Johnson administration was coming to a close. Salazar refashioned Portuguese
politics, despite not having a personal following and being unwilling to court
popular opinion to secure one. He guided his country through the diplomatic and
political minefields of the Spanish Civil War and World War II, emerging
unscathed from the latter despite his idiosyncratic political allegiances and his
wartime neutrality. Portugal, under Salazar, was a founding member of NATO and
of EFTA, and worked towards association status with the EEC. At the same time,
Portugal refused to accept the inevitability of decolonization, hanging on to its
African and Asian colonies and developing a flexible alliance with Rhodesia and
South Africa to protect its prized possessions, Angola and Mozambique. By the
time of Salazar’s retirement, Portugal had been the subject of endless criticism at
the United Nations, and had lost the grandly titled ‘Portuguese State of India’ to
the Indian Union, but it remained defiant in its stance.
Like Franco before Preston’s detailed book, Salazar remains a mystery in the
English-speaking world, a figure touched on in accounts of European events but
never adequately explained. There are mentions of him in discussions of fascism as
an international phenomenon, and of the Spanish Civil War. He has a walk-on part
in World War II, usually as an obdurate and narrow-minded man who had to be
bullied into providing the Allies with access to bases in the Azores; he pops up as
an increasingly embarrassing ally in the Cold War, a necessary evil in the fight
against the USSR; and is then held up to ridicule, or indignation, for his African
policy. Few are the attempts to connect these very disparate dots. Existing biogra-
phies in English all date back to his lifetime, and were produced at the behest, or
with the support, of his propaganda machinery. More surprisingly, there is also a
dearth of academic biographies in Portuguese. There are many reasons for this.
Dominated by Marxist and Annales models, Portuguese historiography had little
place for biography—and political history—for far too long. Moreover, it was felt,
in a country emerging from forty-eight years of authoritarian rule, that a biographi-
cal study of the dictator was out of place: any sign of empathy with, or attempt to
contextualize, and ‘understand’, Salazar, would be an insult to his victims. There
was, finally, the daunting task of having to compete with the one existing
thorough, if un-academic, biography of Salazar. This six-volume behemoth was
written by his last Foreign Minister, Franco Nogueira, who enjoyed early and
privileged access to the Salazar archive after his death, in addition, of course, to
having worked closely with his subject from 1961 to 1968. Although recent years
have seen a spate of New State-era political biographies emerging from a new
generation of historians, no-one has yet taken on the most obvious subject of all—
Salazar himself.
Introduction ix
Portugal, thirty-eight years after Salazar’s death, and thirty-four years after the
military coup which overthrew his successor, Marcelo Caetano, is a very different
country to then one Salazar left in place. It has made the transition from
‘corporative’ regime to parliamentary democracy, and from colonial power to
member of the European Union, in remarkably peaceful fashion. No-one under
the age of forty really remembers what it meant to put up with a secret police, or
censorship of the press. Even the heady revolutionary period of 1974-5 seems like
an in-creasingly distant memory, a deserved break from responsibilities after
decades of paternalistic and overbearing government. Political passions have now
abated sufficiently for some excellent historical research to be conducted into the
structures and workings of the New State. Without such research this book could
never have been written. I relied on much of this on-going work, using it as a
background to the examination of Salazar’s papers, now open to the public. In
some areas, in fact, I have been happy to defer to other authors’ findings, rather
than continuously reinventing the wheel.
The changing mood in Portugal towards its recent past is best illustrated by
Salazar’s victory on the television show Os Grandes Portugueses (The Great
Portuguese), shown on RTP, the State broadcaster. Working to a tried and tested
BBC formula exported to a number countries, the viewing public was first invited
to nominate, and then select from a shortlist of ten names, the greatest ever
Portuguese (the program’s website had a selection of 100 individuals, just in case
potential viewers needed some reminding). Although viewing figures for the
program were low, and only some 160,000 votes were deemed valid, the result was
still surprising: Salazar had won hands down, with 41% of votes cast. As can be
imagined this episode caused quite a stir in Portugal, with the historical profession
being especially vehement in its protests about the nature of the program and the
way it was conducted. For many, the program had produced the ‘wrong’ result.
There were many reasons for Salazar’s victory, including the desire to ward off the
election of the historic leader of Portuguese communism, Álvaro Cunhal (who
came in a distant second) and, of course, to embarrass the sitting government.
More important than the result, and the (sometimes anguished) debate that
followed, was the ease with which it passed from the public’s consciousness.
Ultimately, it was generally thought to have mattered little, and it did matter little.
Unlike the other ‘great dictators’ of the twentieth century, Salazar immersed
himself in the minutiae of government and administration, maintaining a pro-
digious work rate throughout his forty years in power. There was some respite in
his village home, with its garden, and, later in life, in a seaside fort close to Lisbon.
An ersatz family surrounded and distracted him. He read when he could, enter-
tained a small, even minute, circle of friends, and had a secretive love life: but gov-
ernment and administrative work was his principal activity. There are very few
x Salazar: A Political Biography
entries in his diary not taken up by official matters. For his biographer, the result is
two-fold. If, on the one hand, his political activity is extremely well documented
(his private life being quite another matter), then, on the other, the scale of the
material available is, to put it mildly, daunting. Franco Nogueira tried to order
writings, letters, interviews and speeches, as well as others’ recollections of
Salazar’s actions and thoughts, in a strict chronological order, trying to cover the
dictator’s decisions at every turn; the inordinate length of his biography was the
result. Neither the commercial strictures of the publishing world nor the in-
creasingly demanding publication schedules imposed on academics could tolerate
such an approach being followed. A selection of subjects, and constant com-
pression, was necessary. I wish I could have written a longer book and taken more
time to do so.
The amount of material to be covered is not the only difficulty facing a biog-
rapher of Salazar. Above all others stands the secretive nature of the New State,
wherein the flow of information was restricted. The press and other publications
were censored; as a result, very few were actually in the know of what was truly
happening across the country, and outside it. Even the parliament, essentially a
hand-picked rubber-stamping body, was closely controlled, so that deputies could
not give voice to popular discontent. From time to time the government—usually
Salazar himself—would compose a note to be published in all newspapers, as part
of what was called a ‘policy of truth’. These official communiqués were not only
paternalistic in tone, but also limited in scope and content. Occasionally there are
glimpses of Salazar’s innermost thoughts in his correspondence with leading
figures of the regime, in office or otherwise: but these are necessarily fractured and
fragmented. Salazar relied on direct verbal communication with ministers and
other notables, and was careful with what he put down on paper. Correspondence
between him and ministers, ambassadors, and confidants in general was composed
of both official documents, very formal and essentially attuned to the question at
hand, and a semi-official correspondence, where the reasons for decisions taken
were explained more thoroughly and with greater freedom of expression. To these
were added direct conversations, of which no records were kept, but wherein the
participants spoke freely and Salazar permitted himself to give rein to personal
judgments about third parties, private views and concerns, etc. There are few
memoirs, or diaries, of those who had direct access to Salazar, so that, for the
most part, these conversations are lost. It is significant that Salazar’s notorious
break with his wartime ambassador in London, and former cabinet member,
Armindo Monteiro, came about because Monteiro, in an official and numbered
communication with Salazar (who at the time was acting as Foreign Minister), gave
vent to his criticism of government policy. As Salazar famously replied, on the
same piece of paper in which Monteiro had written his views, the ambassador in
Introduction xi
London ‘seemed to be writing for the benefit of History’: and if his views
survived, so too would Salazar’s reply. In Salazar’s bureaucratic view of the world,
an official and numbered document could not be made to disappear—but for that
very reason, maximum care should be taken with what was put down on it.
The difficulties in coming to grips with Salazar’s private views are made worse
by the control exercised by Salazar and his close followers over Salazar’s image. A
very selective biographical account, which revolved around a number of core
issues, was devised by the Portuguese New State’s propagandists, and heedlessly
reproduced by domestic and foreign commentators. This was nothing new for a
European dictator, since much of the legitimacy of a dictatorship is closely bound
up with the special genius of its leader. However, Salazar’s academic background
gave the claims advanced on his behalf, and the rewritten episodes, a veneer of
credibility which lasted, unchallenged, for decades. From a humble background,
Salazar had risen to prominence not through bravery on the battlefield, or dema-
gogic oratory, but rather through academic achievement; this fact, which imme-
diately sets him apart from Franco, Hitler and Mussolini, made it easier to believe
the claims advanced on his behalf, since it was almost unthinkable to believe that a
professor from the ancient University of Coimbra would engage willingly in the
distortion of his own life story for political gain. But the very opposite was true.
The present volume was never envisaged, as a result of these difficulties, as an
exhaustive biography of Salazar, something that would require a lifetime’s work,
and the experience and wisdom of a lifetime, to produce. Still, it aspires to much
more than a simple introductory tour of his political life, resting as it does,
primarily, on the examination of the material housed in the Arquivo Oliveira Salazar,
Salazar’s private and political papers, kept in the Portuguese National Archives in
Lisbon. Some areas, such as the nature of the New State in the 1930s and foreign
and colonial affairs, receive more attention than others in its pages, because these
are the areas in which Salazar is most often inserted in international discussions;
but I hope to have shed some light on his other policies. I hope as well to have
shown that some preoccupations remained a constant, and must be kept in mind
when interpreting Salazar’s decision-making process. Of these, the desire to
remain in power was most important; very often this meant reading, and reacting
to, the army’s variable moods. It was the army that brought Salazar into
government, and many within its ranks believed that the army could and, at times,
should dismiss him; keeping these officers in check was a constant preoccupation.
There were others, though, notably the defense of a world order built on
European authority which, to his intense frustration, Europeans seemed intent on
wrecking, either through internecine wars, flirtations with dangerous ideologies, or
the abandonment of colonial responsibilities.
xii Salazar: A Political Biography
I have modernized and standardized Portuguese names and surnames,
notoriously long, in the course of this book. I apologize for any confusion and
offense this may cause.
I must thank a number of people and institutions for their help with this
book. I begin with my family: my wife Alison, my parents Pedro and Maria
Fernanda, and my brother Francisco. Their support has been constant, and their
material contribution to this volume immense. My late godfather, Carlos Manuel
Oliveira, was greatly interested in the project, and was able to answer a number of
my queries, especially in relation to his native Angola. He is missed by all who
knew him. Dr Carlos Gomes da Costa kindly decoded for me pages and pages of
Salazar’s medical records, while Dr Isabel Fevereiro of the Arquivo Histórico
Diplomático in Lisbon was extremely helpful, as ever, when it came to securing
photographs. I am privileged to work in a Department where research is truly
valued and encouraged. The efforts of its head, Professor R. V. Comerford, must
therefore be acknowledged. The Irish Research Council for the Humanities and
Social Sciences backed this project with one of its Research Fellowships, and the
Instituto de Ciências Sociais, at the University of Lisbon, accepted me as a Visiting
Scholar. The year spent there was the most fruitful of my professional life, for
which I thank its directors and staff. From within their ranks I am especially
grateful to Professor António Costa Pinto, whose encouragement has been a great
source of confidence for many years now, and Nicolau Andresen Leitão, for the
friendship and welcome extended to my family in Lisbon. Other Portuguese
scholars and scholars of Portugal have played a part with advice and answers:
Pedro Aires Oliveira, Fernando Martins, Manuel Baiôa, Nuno Estêvão Ferreira,
Paulo Jorge Fernandes, and the membership of the Association of British and
Irish Lusitanists. To all of them goes my gratitude, along with apologies for any
shortcomings to be found in this volume.
This book, and all the effort that went into it, is dedicated to David, Francisco,
Sofia, and Vasco.
Maynooth, August 2009.
Salazar
A Political Biography
Chapter I
From Santa Comba Dão to São Bento
S alazar was unique among the ‘great dictators’ of the twentieth century inso-
far as his public prominence rested on academic merit. That this merit had
been allowed to manifest itself was the result of a number of choices made on
his behalf by an industrious and savvy family, which took advantage of all
opportunities to further Salazar’s education. Having risen rapidly through the
ranks at the University of Coimbra, a politically ambitious Salazar was forced to
tread water until 1926, since his Catholic brand of politics was out of favor in
the context of the Portuguese First Republic. That year, the army overthrew
the ailing regime, seeking then to employ a team of civilian experts to help it
right Portuguese finances and economic life, and to frame new political institu-
tions. Salazar took full advantage of the new situation. In 1928, at the age of
thirty-nine, he became the country’s ‘financial dictator’, taking over the
Ministry of Finance, in the riverside square the people of Lisbon still call the
Terreiro do Paço; four years later he moved uptown to the Palace of São
Bento, having been appointed President of the Council of Ministers, a position
he would keep for the next thirty-six years.
Childhood: Santa Comba Dão
Shortly before he turned sixty, António de Oliveira Salazar, in one of his

most famous speeches, would publicly thank Providence, an entity he often
4 Salazar: A Political Biography
sought to bind to his person, for having been born poor.1 There was some
exaggeration in this statement. He was born on 28 April 1889 in the hamlet of
Vimieiro, outside the town of Santa Comba Dão, to António de Oliveira and
Maria do Resgate Salazar. His surname, like most in Portugal a composite of
maternal and paternal surnames, did not follow the usual pattern of father’s
name coming last. This accidental occurrence ensured that in the future he
would be known by his mother’s more unusual and sonorous surname, Spanish
in origin.2 The more common Oliveira, or ‘olive tree’, might not have served
his future political purposes so well; certainly it is hard to imagine the ranks of
an armed militia replying in unison ‘Oliveira, Oliveira, Oliveira’, to the ques-
tion, ‘who commands?’ Perhaps this is just a trick played by hindsight—and
Salazar never did care much for his loyal militia. In the lush hilly landscape of
the Dão region, best known for its wines, the Oliveira family was, through hard
work and the exploitation of personal connections, improving its prospects. It
had a small plot of land but, more importantly, António de Oliveira worked as
the overseer in a local estate, one of various properties owned by the Perestrelo
family. António Xavier Perestrelo Corte Real and his daughter, Maria de Pina
Perestrelo, would act—by proxy—as Salazar’s godparents at his christening, on
16 May. With time, the Oliveira family opened up part of its house as an inn,
providing meals for the town’s workers and renting out rooms. The fact that
the house lay on the road between Santa Comba Dão and its train station
helped in this regard. Later still, António de Oliveira would act as middleman
in local property deals. Santa Comba Dão was one of the stations that lay on
the route of the Sud-Express, the train connecting Lisbon to Paris. The trains
that trundled through were a regular reminder that there was more to the world
than what the naked eye could discern.
António de Oliveira Salazar, born late in his parents’ life,3 was also born
into greater financial security than his four older sisters, Marta, Elisa, Leo-
poldina, and Laura. In any case, conditions were sufficiently good for the
Oliveiras to allow their children to be educated. The eldest daughter, Marta,
would train to be a primary school teacher. Their fifth and last child, and first
son, would go considerably further. Salazar was educated by José Duarte, a
local teacher who prepared his young charges for the national examinations in
1. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘O meu depoimento’ in Discursos e notas políticas vol. 4 (1943–1950) (Coimbra:
Coimbra Editora, 1951), 351.
2. In 1960 the Portuguese news agency ANI was caught in a bind, uncertain whether to circulate a report that
researchers in Spain had located the origins of the Salazar family in the town of Aranda del Duero, near
Burgos. According to this report, the Salazars were one of the oldest and most aristocratic families of Old
Castile—a far cry, it must be said, from Salazar’s situation. Arquivo Oliveira Salazar (AOS) Correspondência
Oficial (CO) Presidência do Conselho (PC) 61, letter, Lisbon 6 September 1960, Agência de Notícias e
Informações.
3. When Salazar was born, Maria do Resgate was already forty-four years old. She had married in 1881.
From Santa Comba Dão to São Bento 5
his own home, there being no dedicated school building in Vimieiro.4 It is
hard, and a potential minefield, to construct a portrait of Salazar as a young
child, since few who knew him then would rise to prominence, and all sought
to defend him. Nevertheless, decades later, his sister Marta would recall that
he played little. He preferred to walk, for hours, in the company of his dog, Dão.
He was shy and affectionate. Mother liked him more than she liked us. She was
never cross with him, not even on the day that, sliding down a pile of sand with
the future Dr Pais de Sousa, he tore his velvet shorts. When she punished us he
would rush to her, kissing her so that she might forgive us. He could not bear to
see us cry. Yes, kindness was possibly his most obvious quality.5
Others were less sympathetic, describing him as timid and generally fearful
of boys his age. Franco Nogueira wrote of Salazar’s love of animals, especially
birds, as well as of trees and flowers. Everyone agrees on his devotion to his
mother. From a family devoted to work, and, as was typical of the region,
strong in its Catholic faith, Salazar showed himself to be a bright student,
receiving a commendable mark in his national examinations. One devoted
biographer noted how disappointed the ten-year-old Salazar was in the results
obtained: the written examination had gone badly, earning him the lowest
passing mark (ten out of twenty); he had excelled, however, in the oral test,
earning a remarkable eighteen out of twenty, for an overall average of fourteen:
the most interesting aspect of the story was the child’s face, when he found out
about the eighteen of the second test and the ten of the first.
“I could have earned a distinction”, he repeated as a pained refrain. “Don’t

worry”, he was told by someone trying to console him, “you have plenty of time
to earn distinctions, since you will continue your studies”. “But I could have
earned a distinction” …6
4. According to Ápio Garcia, in his Um homem chamado Salazar (Lisbon: António Francisco Barata, 1968), a
teacher named José Ribeiro settled in Vimieiro, but his health declined. It was the decline in this educator’s
health that led to Salazar’s dispatch to Viseu, to board with a priest, Reverend João Pimentel, who prepared
him for the national examinations. Christine Garnier, who interviewed Salazar and his sisters, wrote that he
had initially attended the school in Santa Comba Dão, but that he made little progress there, as a result of
which his father entrusted him to José Duarte. Christine Garnier, Férias com Salazar, Portuguese edition,
(Lisbon: Fernando Pereira, n.d.), p. 24. This ties in with Salazar’s account of events: ‘When I came to the
proper age to learn to read […] I was sent to the elementary school at Santa Comba. But there were too
many children for the teacher to be often able to give me a lesson. So my father, not pleased because I didn’t
seem to be getting on, took me away from that school and sent me to be taught by a little man who gave
private lessons in a corner of his cottage. There were perhaps thirty of us children, and each paid at most
one-and-threepence a month […]’. António Ferro, Salazar: Portugal and Her Leader (London: Faber and Faber,
1939), p. 208.
5. Garnier, Férias, p. 22.
6. This episode is taken from Garcia, Um homem, pp. 51–52. Garcia borrowed it from another early biogra-
phy, neglecting to state which.
His case attracted the attention of the local curate, who suggested a solution to
both the financial problem of the furthering of the child’s education and the
sentimental problem of the reluctance to part with a son: the young Salazar
should become a seminarist.
Portuguese seminaries provided secondary education to many children
who could not otherwise afford it, taking them in as boarders, in the hope that
some would remain in the priesthood. At the end of the nineteenth century,
there were, in Portugal, some 2,000 seminarians, but never more than 110
ordinations per year, a number manifestly insufficient to cover the needs of
metropolitan Portugal, not to mention the country’s colonial empire.7 The
Church was, thus, an agent for social mobility, seminaries working in such a
way as to reward academic merit with a lifelong, secure, career as a priest—and
in the latter years of the constitutional monarchy in Portugal, with salaries paid
by the State, the priesthood was fast becoming a branch of the civil service.
Social promotion thanks to a seminary education was the opportunity that was
offered to the young Salazar, who traded the security and pampering of
Vimieiro, and especially of his mother, for the seminary in the district capital,
Viseu, his studies there beginning in 1900.
In a speech that does not figure in the official collection of his interven-
tions, whose selection he himself oversaw, and whose six volumes began to be
published in 1935, Salazar, addressing a working-class audience, spoke of the
importance of education, and recounted, briefly, his own experiences, shedding
some added light to how the decisions that would affect his future were made:
I am the son of a very poor family. My relatives, all of them poor, are still in my
village, working the land, digging and watering it. I have done nothing, and will do
nothing, to take them from there, from their environment, where they are as use-
ful to the Nation as I am in government. Ever since a child I wanted to study; but
I did not have the means. My parents thought of finding a place for me in the
retail trade. Had they gone ahead with this idea, today I would be small shop-
keeper, in my village…My godfather, however, came to my rescue, and was able to
place me in a seminary—because seminaries have replaced, to a certain extent, the
old convents, where the poor used to be taught and educated. I finished the semi-
nary, which allowed me to frequent University. And I went to Coimbra. Working,
and tutoring others, I earned by degree. Then I became a lecturer […] But how
many minds of real value have been, among those of my age, lost, or underused?8
The friendships forged by the young Salazar were to last, remarkably, well
into his adulthood. Childhood friends from Vimiero, such as Mário and Abel
7. Rui Ramos, D. Carlos 1863–1908 (Lisbon: Temas & Debates, 2007), p. 162.
8. ‘Na Liga 28 de Maio—Casa do Povo da União Nacional’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 12 May 1935.
Pais de Sousa (who would marry Salazar’s sister Laura in 1907), and seminary
friends, like Mário de Figueiredo, would remain at his side for decades to
come. Mário Pais de Sousa, for example, preceded Salazar in Coimbra Univer-
sity (he graduated in 1911) having become involved, like Salazar, in Catholic
politics; a conservative republican, he was named civil governor of Coimbra in
1926, and Minister of the Interior in 1931. Deemed too liberal by many, Salazar
would leave him out of his first government, formed in 1932, but would
nevertheless include him in the first of his parliaments, and then recall him to
the Ministry of the Interior, where he served until 1944. Mário de Figueiredo, a
year younger than Salazar, met him in the seminary, and followed him to
Coimbra, also joining its teaching staff. Salazar brought him into cabinet in
1928 as Minister of Justice and then, after a number of other services, asked
Figueiredo to serve as Minister of National Education in 1940; from 1945 on-
wards his parliamentary activity would increase, becoming president of the
National Assembly in 1961. Another important figure from his Viseu years was
Felismina de Oliveira, whom Salazar met through his sister Marta, and who
was his first love;9 the two would eventually go their separate ways, but their
correspondence would continue for decades to come, Felismina working as a
good indicator of the mood among primary-school teachers. These early
friendships were more enduring than the links with his sisters, which were not
kept up very assiduously in future decades.
Adolescence: Viseu
In Viseu the adolescent Salazar lived up to his earlier academic promise

and in 1905, never having taken a step out of line, he finished what was known
as the preparatory cycle. Salazar had shown himself to be stronger in the Arts
(Portuguese, French, and History) than in the Sciences (Geography and
Mathematics). Theological studies, dominated by the prevailing Thomist views,
were now embarked on, Salazar quickly rising to the top of his class; he
finished the theology course in 1908 first among his peers, with an average
mark of sixteen out of twenty. One of his earliest surviving writings dates from
his final year at the seminary; it is called ‘Prayer: Its efficiency and conditions’,
and is a reflection on chapters six and seven of the Gospel According to
9. Salazar, according to Felismina de Oliveira’s own recollection of events, conquered the affections the
slightly older Felismina’s by an act of charity, giving all he had on his person to a mother and son who were
begging on the street. Years later Felismina produced a poem which would be reproduced in third-grade
reading books all over the country: ‘Knowest thou who was that good young man / that practiced the pure
law of Love / and whose true story I tell / The one that offered himself completely to the Pátria […] It is not
hard to guess…/ Knowest thou who it was / It was Salazar!’ Felícia Cabrita, Mulheres de Salazar (Lisbon:
Notícias Editorial, 1999), p. 22.
Matthew. No scene in Jesus’s life, Salazar wrote, was as touching as the
following:
Jesus, the son of God, on the silent shores off the Jordan, in the dear and infinitely
beautiful hour of the sunset, teaches the blond children of Judea to pray! And the
beautiful innocents, with their very blue eyes fixed on the adorable and serene face
of the Master, recite, with angelical fervor, the sublime oration, the Lord’s Prayer
[…]10
Written some two weeks after the murder of King Dom Carlos and his eldest
son, Crown Prince Dom Luís Filipe, this meditation on the power of prayer
finished in apocalyptic fashion:
Look, Lord, […] at the sons of darkness, who, it seems, are vanquishing the sons
of light; look at the calamities that afflict us! Look at the pátria, which expires; look
at Portugal’s agony! […] heed, Lord, the prayers of so many souls who are dear to
you; listen to their pained cry, their fervent plea, which ascends to your throne, of
all Portuguese hearts: “Lord! Lord! Save Portugal!”
Upon concluding his theological studies Salazar received minor orders. He

was not old enough to be fully ordained—he could not say Mass or administer
the Sacraments—but he was already called ‘Father Salazar’ by his townsfolk.
What Salazar’s father thought of his only son, for whose well-being many
material sacrifices had been made, becoming a priest is not clear (in truth, he
figures little in most accounts of Salazar’s life); his devout mother, though, was
delighted, and Salazar himself believed, while a seminarian, that the priesthood
did indeed beckon. Life, though, got in the way. Attention has focused, of late,
on Salazar’s romantic life; whether his early trysts with Felismina de Oliveira
and, it seems, other young women, were the motivating factor, or whether the
sudden loss of vocation was due to some other set of circumstances, is not
clear. Whatever the reasons for not entering the priesthood, it seems clear that
Salazar was thankful to his educators at the Viseu seminary. Later in life he
would write,
Poor, and son of poor parents, I owe that house a great part of my education
which I could not have received by other means; and even if I lost the faith in
which I was taught there, I would never forget the good priests who for so many
10. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘Oração. Sua eficácia e condições’, in Inéditos e dispersos I, Escritos político-sociais
e doutrinários (1908–1928) (Venda Nova: Bertrand, 1997), pp. 31–43.
years looked after me, for next to nothing, and to whom I owe, on top of every-
thing else, my intellectual formation and discipline.11
Salazar’s clerical background would henceforth be kept in mind by those who

had to deal with him, and was constantly used as an explanation for his
behavior. A foreign diplomat would write, during World War II, that Salazar
was ‘a throwback among Twentieth-Century statesmen to those ecclesiastical
dignitaries of past epochs who, not withstanding their humble origin, attained
secular eminence’. The portrait continued in similar fashion:
Brought up as the son of a small freeholder […], and originally destined for Holy
Orders, Dr Salazar, whom nature has endowed with the stubborn weariness of the
peasant, and in whom a genuine kindliness exists side by side with an implacable
refusal to condone the moral failings of his fellow men, approaches the business
of statecraft with the cold detachment of the scholastic churchman who has been
taught to view the puppet-show of human endeavor sub specie aeternitatis.12
The seminarian label proved hard, even impossible, to shrug off; it would pro-
vide generations of critics with easy ammunition, as well as an obvious initial
handle on Salazar’s mind and actions. Having called a halt to his priestly voca-
tion, but still enjoying the benefits of contacts established within the seminary’s
walls, and while waiting to sit national examinations, Salazar became a teacher
in a Viseu religious secondary school, Via Sacra, located a short walk from the
seminary. Its director, it seems, was keen to introduce the latest educational
methods, a stance with which Salazar agreed: he would later write,
I worked at the time in a college which was an attempt to adapt to Portugal the
methods and ends of English education, already introduced and practiced in
France in the École des Roches of E. Demolins […] I was convinced that the
national problem—as in France, as in Italy, as in Spain—was a problem of
education or that, at least, at the root of all problems we would find the deficient
formation of each Portuguese, as a result of which there would be little point in
changing regimes if we did not first take care of changing the men. Men were
needed: it was necessary to educate them.13
There might be some retroactive rewriting on Salazar’s part here, giving his
thought more consistency over time; but it is important to note that Salazar
11. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘A minha resposta (No processo de sindicância à Universidade de Coimbra)’
in Inéditos e dispersos I, p. 242.
12. National Archives, London (NA), Foreign Office (FO) 371/34641 C 1736, Review of Events in Portugal
during 1942.
13. Salazar, ‘A minha resposta’, p. 243.
wanted to be seen, as his professional (and political) life was starting out, as a
reformer, a man who believed that people could be changed for the better, and
a nation rescued, through a renewed focus on education. Salazar believed that
as the ‘Anglo-Saxons’ moved centre-stage in world affairs, they did so because
of their practical education, which prepared them for life’s challenges. It was
his belief, moreover, that the practical application of what was being taught
must always be stressed to students. During this year, Salazar learned English
and German, and perfected his French; he also turned his attention to political
matters, reading above all the political works of conservative and Catholic
writers. First and foremost Salazar developed an admiration for Pope Leo XIII,
seeing in his encyclicals, especially De Rerum Novarum, Quod Apostolici Muneris,
and Graves de Communi Re, an over-arching solution for the problems of the age.
Nineteen eight saw an increasingly politicized Salazar first using the
regional press to put forward his views. His earliest newspaper articles were
published in the Viseu newspaper A Folha at a time when Portugal was still
deeply shaken by the February regicide. The monarchy, lacking a solid support
base, was in its last days, succumbing before the relentless attacks of the anti-
clerical republicans; for the young Salazar the defense of the Church was the
paramount consideration. On 12 April 1908, in an article entitled ‘Vergonhoso
Contraste’ (Shameful Contrast), Salazar bemoaned the fact that many Catholics
were still subscribing to republican newspapers, when republicans ignored the
Catholic press. Salazar added, ‘the country’s Catholic press is the most serious,
the most prudent, the only clean and decent press, which is ready to enter
every home without feeding the unwary damsel the poison of the dangerous
novel, and without weaving, beneath an appealing façade, the praise of crimi-
nals […]’. On 4 June another article appeared: ‘Conversando’ (In Conversa-
tion). This contained words of condescending advice to a republican youth,
laced with more serious points: ‘I have nothing to do with your political
opinions, all the more since religion is not incompatible with any form of gov-
ernment. Religion is far superior to politics, it hovers in other, higher, regions.
But take note: I do not mean by this that religion should not inform and direct
political actions. No-one can be religious in church and an atheist before the
ballot-box’.
In March 1909 Salazar returned, this time more forcefully, to the nature of
journalism in Portugal and the power wielded by the country’s newspapers:
There is a press that builds and a press that destroys: there is a press that educates
and there is a press that perverts. There is a press that upholds morality and a
press that turns men into beasts; there is a press that discusses and a press that,
rather than discussing, insults; instead of forming characters, it forms assassins
[…] War without quarter to that press, war without quarter to that morbid element
which wants to destroy everything. […] The people are blind, the people do not
see. Or, rather, the people see, but pretend they are blind, the people listen, but
pretend they are deaf. Such blindness will cost them dear; such deafness will cost
them dear.14
In 1909, at the age of twenty, and a teacher in Via Sacra, Salazar was asked
by the school’s director to give a public lecture on 1 December, the anniversary
of the 1640 rising that restored Portugal’s full independence. Salazar pinned
down his thoughts about the future of Portugal. Education was the key, and
Demolins the model to follow. Too many educational reforms had come and
gone, since they had focused only on the content of the curricula, not the
method of teaching. Students thus emerged from school totally unprepared for
the real world, and could not be of use to their country. What Portugal needed,
to ensure its survival, was ingenuity, initiative, and the willingness to take a risk;
it needed businessmen, industrialists, and enterprising farmers, not more civil
servants. It could never be a first-rate industrial power, but it could do much
more with the resources at its disposal; much of its land, for example, was not
being cultivated. This willingness to take risks had to be rooted in a strong
national consciousness and patriotism, and this could only be ensured through
the teaching of geography and history, the two forces that molded, for the
young Salazar, the individual peoples. Tellingly, he stressed the importance of
the Middle Ages, which should be studied in a new light, not just a prequel to
the age of Discovery, usually described as Portugal’s Golden Age. The conclu-
sion was epic, if still rather clumsy:
No! Portugal must not die! It must live on for the worlds it discovered, for the
nations it amazed with the splendor of its greatness and its heroism.
There are no more new worlds to discover, nor strange nations to fight: but there
is a grandiose peaceful work to accomplish, there is the need to shape citizens who
will be as good Portuguese as the Portuguese of the Seventeenth Century were.
There is a need for the Portuguese of yesterday to turn our youth into the glorious
Portugal of tomorrow—a strong Portugal, an educated Portugal, a confident
Portugal, a hard-working and progressive Portugal! Must we love our pátria very
much to achieve this? Oh! We must always love our pátria, and just as we love our
mothers so very much, let us also love our pátria, who is like a mother to us all.15
1909 seems to have been a key year in Salazar’s life. It marked the start of
his intellectual and personal freedom, and gave him, albeit in a provincial
14. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘Guerra à má imprensa’ in Inéditos e dispersos I, pp. 66–67.
15. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘Conferência sobre a Restauração’ in Inéditos e dispersos I, p. 82.
setting, the first taste of public notoriety. There was an undoubted delight in
being singled out for his talents, and having those talents recognized publicly.
The distance separating him from the priesthood—if not the Church—grew.
He sat the official state exams, earning excellent results which made attending
university more than possible. Over the course of the summer of 1910 Salazar
decided his future—he would enroll in the University of Coimbra, which some
of his friends were attending and where he had some professional connections,
namely through the director of the Viseu seminary. Coimbra was also where
the Perestrelo family usually resided, and they could be counted on for
logistical and personal support. More importantly, Salazar’s mother continued
to back his studies, accepting the move to Coimbra, which essentially meant
the demise of his putative clerical career.
Adulthood: Coimbra
Salazar began his university education in the fall term of 1910. He arrived
in Coimbra, still, after centuries, the sole university in Portugal, slightly older,
and more mature, than the majority of his contemporaries, with emerging
political ideas—many of them of a reformist nature—and, as well, a strong
faith and a clear desire to succeed. At the time Coimbra, in its entirety, had less
than 500 registered students; to attend it, thus, was to enter a very narrow elite
which was guaranteed a leading role in the direction of Portugal. All students
knew each other, and would carry their common acquaintance and friendships
for the rest of their lives, creating an ‘old-boy network’ that allowed its mem-
bers to draw on the shared experience of youth in order to help each other
overcome life’s obstacles. Salazar’s time in Coimbra would be a smooth climb
to the top of the academic pole, but it would be much more than that since, on
5 October 1910, the Portuguese monarchy was overthrown, a Republic being
declared in Lisbon. The young monarch, Dom Manuel II, who had two years
earlier witnessed the murder of his father and his older brother, and who could
trace his lineage to the country’s first ruler, Dom Afonso Henriques, was forced
to flee, never returning to Portugal in his lifetime.
That this had happened was not necessarily a surprise. The constitutional
monarchy of the 19th Century had simply run out of steam and support.
Portugal had become largely ungovernable, given the personal quarrels which
dominated the life of its two largest ‘dynastic’ parties, and the enormous gulf
that separated the Lisbon political class from the life and concerns of the
country; those outside this protected bubble expected little or nothing from
their self-appointed leaders. Whatever political commitment existed in Portugal
was in the republican camp. In a last-ditch attempt to breathe some life into
the ailing regime, by allowing for a reconstitution of the parties that might
guarantee some stability, Dom Carlos had allowed his energetic and reform-
minded Prime Minister, João Franco, to govern ‘in dictatorship’ (with parlia-
ment closed), a frequently used device which the king had recently denied
Franco’s rivals. Fearing that the upstart Franco might succeed both in forging a
new party with the king’s blessing and in reforming political life, the rest of the
political establishment, from the ‘dynastic’ parties to the republicans, turned on
the government. Dom Carlos thought he could ride out the storm, but he was
wrong, and paid for his mistake with his life and that of his first-born. All that
Dom Manuel II could do was appeal to the warring political factions still
nominally loyal to him to gather around his person to save the monarchy, and
hope that his naivety, goodwill, and youth might count for something.
If the fall of the monarchy was not necessarily unexpected, the nature of
what replaced it came as a shock to much of the country. The Republic’s most
significant leaders, while financially and economically orthodox, and un-
doubtedly nationalist and committed to the defense of Portugal’s colonial
empire, were steeped in a virulent anti-clericalism. Their hatred for the Church
was dramatically at odds with the institution’s real importance after decades of
persistent attacks by the liberal monarchy. Republicans saw the Church as part
of the establishment which they were overthrowing, an ally of the monarchy
and its supporting aristocracy, and thus a political enemy, whose powerful
weapons were of both a material and an ideological nature. The scope of the
Church’s actions, republicans believed, had to be severely curtailed if the
‘revolution’ they were carrying out was to mean anything to the Portuguese
people—if it was to free them from the shackles of an outdated Jesuitical mode
of thinking. Overthrowing the monarchy had been relatively easy; dealing with
the Church would be another matter for the republicans, who soon fell out
with one another over the spoils of power. The Church did not reject the
republican regime from the word go; indeed, at no stage did its leaders ever
speak out openly against it. Slowly it began to assert what it believed to be its
prerogatives, and the Church’s followers began to mobilize in its defense. They
were aided by Pope Pius X, who, in response to the Portuguese bishops’ pro-
test against the Church’s plight, issued an encyclical, Jamdudum in Lusitania.
Salazar’s early public action inserted itself into this religious mobilization, and it
was in this campaign that he would cut his political teeth.
It is interesting to compare Salazar with the leading light of the Republi-
cans, the man who would dominate Portuguese politics between 1910 and
1917: Afonso Costa. Both were beirões, provincial men transformed by their
experience of life in Coimbra, where they became involved in politics, and
where they demonstrated their intellectual ability. Yet their political views, as
they concluded their studies, were worlds apart. For Costa, privilege must be
destroyed in order to make way for talent; for Salazar, the product of a later
generation, order was necessary in order for true talent to be properly
recognized.
Upon his arrival at Coimbra, and perhaps still under the influence of his
experience as an educator, Salazar matriculated as an Arts student; however, he
quickly changed to Law. He did not take long to join the Centro Académico da
Democracia Cristã (CADC, Christian Democrat Academic Center), a ten-year-old
movement designed to uphold the political and social principles of Leo XIII.
In its ranks Salazar found most of his university friends, most notably a priest
from the province of Minho, in northwest Portugal, who had followed the
reverse academic path, from Law to Arts: Manuel Cerejeira. Cerejeira would
rise quickly through the Church’s hierarchy to become, in 1929, the Patriarch
of Lisbon, head of the Portuguese Church. In 1912 Cerejeira founded a news-
paper—O Imparcial—designed to strike at the anti-clericalism prevalent in the
University. Salazar, who contributed regularly to O Imparcial, did not fall into
the trap of equating the defense of religion with that of the monarchy, re-
maining loyal to the Church’s stated neutrality on the question of the regime. It
did not matter whether Portugal was a republic or a monarchy; what mattered
was how the regime positioned itself in relation to the Catholic Church and its
rights. Salazar, who signed his articles Alves da Silva (the surname of the man
who had deputized for Salazar’s godfather at his christening), also addressed
issues of educational reform and university life in these columns.
The Imparcial articles are, in stylistic terms, unremarkable. The prose is at
times tortuous, groaning under heavy imagery, complicated sentence structure,
and constant attempts to prove erudition—all typical, it must be said, of Portu-
guese journalism at the time, and at odds with Salazar’s later writings. On 14
March 1912, in a piece entitled ‘Tristezas que pagam dívidas’ (Disappointments
That Pay Off Debts) Salazar contrasted the high principles and clear vision of
Leo XIII, and thus the ideals which animated the CADC, with the reality of
republican-run Portugal:
When contemplated in the light of these high principles, the present situation of
our country does not encourage wishful thinking or reawaken in the patriotic soul
the impetuous stirrings which, in the Olympian trajectory of our race, created
eloquent demonstrations of an epic quality. […] Portugal is, at this very moment, a
cataclysm in motion. Will we wake up? Will we save ourselves?
This is the great, the tremendous future unknown, whose responsibilities—all of
them!—belong to the directionless tyrants who, their sleeves rolled up, wish to cut
off the most vigorous arms of the Portuguese soul, and to then throw it into the
common grave where the wounded and moribund nations decompose!16
The following month, addressing the nature of education in Portugal,

Salazar again bemoaned the succession of educational reforms that constantly
altered curricula in Portugal, to little effect: if man is not himself reformed,
Salazar argued, there can be no gain from the constant change; after all, man
cannot be changed by decree. He must be led to recognize the errors in his
education, and encouraged to rectify them. ‘To educate is to give God good
Christians, to give society useful citizens, to give families loving sons and
exemplary fathers’.17
The CADC provided Salazar with the stage for his first detailed public
statement on political affairs. On 8 December 1912 Salazar spoke at a session
held to mark the opening of the Center’s activities for the academic year. Using
a device that would become common in his rhetorical and legal armory, Salazar
started from the ground up, focusing in turn on the individual, the family, and
finally the country itself. Man was at the basis of society, and changes in society
could only come about through education. However, such changes could not
be carried out at the expense of the family, the first and most important source
of an individual’s education. The family was, for Salazar, ‘the social cell whose
stability and strength are an essential condition for progress’,18 and its defense
was imperative for the State. Salazar spoke out against divorce, recently intro-
duced by the Republic, and in so doing declared himself to be openly retro-
grade, a ‘fossil’, when it came to women’s rights: ‘For me, the greatest tribute
that can be paid to a woman is still the Roman epitaph: “She was honest; she
tended to the home; she worked with wool”’. The Pátria was the family writ
large. Its members—brothers—had ‘sacred and momentous’ duties towards it.
As Christian Democrats, the members of CADC should want to embrace these
duties, not shirk them, and to do so without falling into the traditional trap
awaiting them in Portugal: a parasitic life led ‘serving’ the State, working little
and creating nothing. Work, Salazar stated, was more than the simple creation
of wealth; it was of itself a school of virtues. From this initial premise, Salazar
went on to discuss the individual Christian’s role in politics. Portugal, argued
Salazar, might now be a Republic, but it was no democracy. The popular
reaction against privilege had gone too far; new privileges and forms of ex-
clusion had been created. In such circumstances, there could be no liberty, no
16. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘Tristezas que pagam dívidas’ in Inéditos e dispersos I, pp. 105–6.
17. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘Cartas a uma Mãe II’ in Inéditos e dispersos I, pp. 110–12.
18. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘Conferência na reabertura do CADC’ in Inéditos e dispersos I, pp. 177–97.
equality, and no fraternity—principles brought into being, Salazar argued, by
Christian teaching:
We may call ourselves, gentlemen, Christian Democrats, but that does not mean
that we should recognize as a true democracy any that is not founded on
Christianity, because we do not understand what liberty, equality, and human fra-
ternity can mean outside Christianity.
The upshot was simple. Catholics should not simply aim to be ‘tolerated’ by
the political class; instead, they should stake a claim at the heart of politics, and
do so by virtue of their labor. It was up to the rest to learn to be tolerant, and
to understand that religion was not an enemy of progress, but rather an essen-
tial ingredient of morality, order, and civilization. As Salazar put it, ‘Chris-
tianity, in its purest and most complete form, is not opposed to public free-
doms or modern institutions. And if between the Church and democracy there
now exists a severe misunderstanding, it is we, Christian Democrats, who must
resolve it.’
The CADC’s vitality was one of many signs that the Republic, while
established politically, was now losing ground among Portugal’s future
governing elite. In the face of the dismal and divisive nature of republican
politics, alternatives began to be explored by the country’s educated youth.
Among these new phenomena, CADC would stand out eventually, thanks to
Salazar’s association with it; but in terms of the overall impact on this post-
1910 generation, CADC would be outstripped by Integralismo Lusitano (Lusi-
tanian Integralism). Integralismo Lusitano was a branch of the Portuguese mon-
archist movement which borrowed heavily from Charles Maurras’ Action
Française for its ideological inspiration and method. Like its French model,
Integralismo Lusitano prided itself on its intellectual prowess, its leaders being
determined to defeat the Republic, and other competitors, in the field of ideas.
The name was coined by Luís de Almeida Braga, a student in Coimbra who
had interrupted his studies to join exiled monarchist leader Paiva Couceiro in
the northwestern Spanish province of Galicia, participating in a failed military
incursion in 1911. His life in exile having taken him to Belgium, Almeida Braga
founded a Portuguese review, Alma Lusitana (Lusitanian Soul), in which he
began to sketch out his views. As Portugal edged closer and closer to the Euro-
pean war raging since 1914, Integralismo Lusitano’s support base developed in the
universities. It was in many ways a generational phenomenon, a rejection of the
prevailing republican ethos: as Marcelo Caetano, Salazar’s eventual successor,
would write,
The young, lacking experience, reject empiricism. As their intelligence opens up to
the world of ideas, they like to acquire certainties resulting from rational thought,
or grounded upon it; they want to be able to structure arguments without flaws,
they need the safety of a well-structured doctrine.
Integralismo Lusitano provided this.19 Of all the monarchist tendencies,

Integralismo Lusitano was best able to provide hope for a restoration, since its
basic message was that the monarchy had not been abolished in 1910 but much
earlier, as far back as 1820, when it had accepted a new liberal order, turning its
back on the realities of Portuguese life: religion, corporations, and munici-
palities. Its leading ideologue was the short-lived António Sardinha, who
collaborated in the newspaper A Monarquia and published a number of doc-
trinal works which stressed the need for a traditional monarchy. As one of his
followers wrote,
Our goal is the national interest. The good institutions are: government by an hereditary
King, ruling in accordance with the national interest, limited by the Church
looking after religious interests, limited by the municipalities and the provinces
looking after local and regional interests, and limited by the corporations, looking
after corporative interests; all of this excluding politicians, parliament, elections,
equality and all the other revolutionary principles.20
As a result of this commitment to the monarchy Integralists were sucked

into the intra-monarchist strife regarding the legitimacy of the rival claimants
on the Portuguese throne, a matter resolved only in 1932, when Dom Manuel II
died without direct heirs. Salazar, by virtue of joining the CADC, was spared
these bloody feuds. Instead, he made friends in his new circle, establishing rela-
tionships he would preserve all his life: José Nosolini, Diogo Pacheco de
Amorim, and two priests, José António Marques and Carneiro de Mesquita.
As the years passed, and he continued to excel in his studies, Salazar’s fame
among Coimbra’s embattled Catholics grew, and he became a star performer in
a hostile country. He spoke often at public sessions; in 1914, for example, he
addressed the Second Catholic Youth Congress, in Oporto, on the subject of
‘Democracy and the Church’.21 The basic message of the 1912 lecture was
repeated, but now fleshed out. Democracy, Salazar pointed out, was coming
under severe attack from figures such as Gustave Le Bon, Maurice Barrès, and
the whole Action Française school: Charles Maurras, Jules Lemaître, Georges
19. Marcelo Caetano, Minhas memórias de Salazar, 4th edition (Lisbon: Verbo, 2006), p. 526.
20. José Pequito Rebelo, ‘Integralismo Lusitano’ in Pela dedução à Monarquia, 2nd edition (Lisbon: Edições
Gama, 1945). This article was originally published in Monarquia (Lisbon), May 1917.
21. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘A democracia e a Igreja’ in Inéditos e dispersos I, pp. 201–33. This lecture was
delivered twice in 1914, once in Oporto and once in Viseu.
Valois, and Paul Bourget. But Christian Democrats, Salazar stressed, need not
follow this radical road; Leo XIII had showed them the way forward, and his
message still held true. ‘We are all with the Pope’, Salazar told his audience,
‘and believe you me, we are not badly off’. Democracy was ‘a historical fact, an
invincible current, a legitimate conquest’—and just because its current visage
was hostile did not mean that Catholics should turn their back on it. However,
without Christianity as a guiding spirit the three great principles of 1789 would
devour each other, being naturally incompatible. All democrats would, in time,
come to accept this. There was a subtle shift between the 1912 and the 1914
lectures, even if some of the passages remained textually the same. A recent
work stresses the growing influence of Gustave Le Bon on Salazar, evident in a
relativization of the actually existing political institutions, as well as Salazar’s
mounting contempt for the intellectual ability of the crowd.22
Since university regulations allowed him to enroll in courses, and sit ex-
aminations, without necessarily attending lectures, Salazar was able to graduate
in four years instead of the usual five. He became, in those years, an exam-
passing machine, the kind of student nicknamed, in Coimbra, a ‘bear’. During
this time he supplemented his meager income with private lessons for second-
ary school pupils and university students. With the Perestrelos, his family’s own
patrons, providing him with a passport to Coimbra society, and with his im-
peccable academic results marking him out from an early stage as a future pro-
fessor, Salazar attracted attention, not least from an increasing number of
young women admirers, despite his humble origins. Cerejeira did not think it
fitting that an aspiring Catholic leader should devote himself to such matters,
but was rebuffed by Salazar, eager to preserve his freedom over personal
affairs. Franco Nogueira was the first to mention this aspect of Salazar’s life, in
his long biography, doing so with few details; more have since emerged.
Poverty, pride, and ambition combined to produce the first, and perhaps most
important, reverse in Salazar’s sentimental life. One of his pupils was Júlia
Perestrelo, daughter of his own godmother, and the darling of this well-
connected and wealthy family. Despite a considerable difference of age—she
was only sixteen, he was in his mid twenties—a romantic bond emerged
between the two, which was quickly sensed by the girl’s mother. After a first
warning to Salazar to know his place went unheeded, his own godmother acted
swiftly, showing him the door. The episode was a sharp reminder of his social
status, and was hard to digest for one whose intellectual self-confidence was so
22. Valentim Alexandre, O roubo das almas: Salazar, a Igreja e os totalitarianismos (1930–1939) (Lisbon: Dom
Quixote, 2006), p. 29.
pronounced. It is clear, however, that Júlia Perestrelo was not his sole romantic
entanglement of his undergraduate years, and his subsequent life in Coimbra.23
António de Oliveira Salazar graduated in 1914. His final mark, nineteen
out of twenty, was a rare achievement, and earned him instant fame in the
academy. There could be no greater evidence of the lecturing staff’s wish to
retain his services. Salazar became a celebrity throughout his home district, and
his academic prowess was mentioned in various newspapers. One cutting, kept
by Salazar, stated that ‘António de Oliveira Salazar has concluded his law
degree, having earned […] the highest mark awarded by that institution. Con-
gratulations to the new graduate and to his excellent family.’24 Despite this
fame he fell prey to serious bouts of depression, which saw him locked up in
his room. It is tempting to see in this emotional crisis the after-effect of the
Perestrelos’ rejection, and the fear of facing Coimbra society in its wake. His
friend Manuel Cerejeira provided a solution, asking Salazar to move into his
house, an old convent on the Rua dos Grilos, from which the residence, Os
Grilos, took its name. Here Salazar had a suite of rooms to himself, and staff to
look after his needs. From its relative comfort he masterminded his ascent
within the University. The first move was to become an assistente, or assistant
lecturer. Eschewing civil or criminal law, Salazar opted for what were termed
Economic and Financial Sciences. In order to secure his intended position,
Salazar had to produce two dissertations. These relatively short pieces,
although elegantly written, seem today to be more a survey of the existing
literature, along with some recommendations, than the systematic working out
of a hypothesis through original research. In ‘Questão cerealífera: O trigo’ (The
Cereals Question: The Case of Wheat) Salazar expressed himself in favor of
agricultural reform, but not in an immediate future. This work is of special
interest considering Salazar’s future relationship with the landowning class of
southern Portugal. Salazar demonstrated how recent governments had wavered
between free trade and protection of Portugal’s wheat producers, and detailed
the constantly altering legislation affecting the production and distribution of
that cereal, increasingly popular in Portugal. With recourse to the available
statistics, and to treatises on Portuguese agriculture, Salazar then demonstrated
the absurdity of growing wheat in Portugal, whose soil and climate were not
suited to such a crop. Other crops could fare much better in Portugal. Some, as
the production of wine showed, had been developed; others, such as
vegetables, fruit, and flowers, were lagging behind. These products existed, and
were sometimes of excellent quality, but were of limited value to the economy,
since they were seen as secondary. There was an enormous opportunity here; a
23. Cabrita, Mulheres, 38–39.

24. Mala da Europa (Lisbon), 15 November 1914. A copy can be found in AOS, Papéis Pessoais (PP), 1.
well thought-out agricultural reform might see Portugal becoming a supplier of
these commodities to the whole of Europe. But matters were not so simple:
This country of vine and olive trees, of magnificent fruit and of precious flowers,
which is able to place the rarest and most expensive products, those for which
there is greatest demand and of which there is the greatest consumption, in the
great markets days in advance [of international competitors], clings to its miserable
production of cereals. Why does it not abandon it?25
The reason, Salazar went on to explain, that wheat was not, and ultimately
could not be, abandoned, was that the conversion to a market agriculture on a
European scale was beyond the ability of the Portuguese farmer and the distri-
bution systems available to him. Fitting the product to the stringent demands
of a European consumer was a notion that escaped him, while the means to
deliver his produce to the tables and sitting rooms of the whole continent,
through specialized rail and maritime transports, were a simple mirage. As
Salazar put it, ‘we don’t know how to produce. And we don’t know how to sell’.26
While an immediate transformation of the situation was out of the question, a
gradual transition was not. To fund such reform, existing types of agriculture
had to be perfected. Thus, despite the adversities posed by both soil and
weather, Portugal should become self-sufficient in cereals, especially in wheat;
to do so was an economic and a financial imperative. Hundreds of years’ worth
of effort and investment in the growing of wheat could not be simply
abandoned; the human characteristics of Portugal’s agriculture could not be
undone by decree; and the geographical distribution of the population could
not be ignored. At the same time, and on the basis of this development,
farmers should be encouraged to diversify. All of this required the aid of the
State. For Salazar, this aid should come in the shape of irrigation schemes, to
make regular the supply of water, especially in the south; of cheap capital,
which had hitherto been impossible to secure; and of education and training to
those who worked on the land—arguably, Salazar pointed out, the most diffi-
cult of all aims, since there was no agrarian elite in the country, no class that
was ‘strong, well constituted, knowledgeable and conscious of its mission’.27
Finally, the State was to facilitate the correction in the absurd, uneconomic
landholding arrangements across the country, a matter again linked to the dis-
tribution of population. All told, this was a tall order for a State with the
economic and technical means of Portugal: progress would necessarily be slow.
25. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘Questão cerealífera: O trigo’ in Inéditos e dispersos II Estudos económico-financeiros
(1916–1928), vol. 1 (Lisbon: Bertrand, 1998), p. 85.
26. Ibid., p. 86.
27. Ibid., p. 90.
In any case, the whole dissertation suggested a preference for agriculture as the
principal source of wealth for the Portuguese economy.
In ‘O ágio do ouro—sua natureza e suas causas (1891–1915)’ (Gold
Speculation: Its Nature and Its Causes [1891–1915]) Salazar made a call for the
rebalancing of external/internal payments. This was a longer, more detailed
work than the first dissertation, and it was backed up by copious statistics. The
conclusion reached was, however, in line with that of ‘Questão cerealífera’:
Portugal could not continue to import more than it exported, especially when
one of its most important sources of hard currency—emigrants’ remittances
from Brazil—were so precarious, given that country’s own financial volatility.
Portugal had to stand on its own two feet, producing what it consumed and
finding markets for its exports, in order to recover its lost international
standing:
It is true that a balanced payment sheet does not guarantee, by itself, in these
countries of inconvertible currency, a favorable rating or even a relative exchange
stability; but such a balance is the sole basis for a lasting and successful stabiliza-
tion, or the return to a metallic currency, keeping the exchange variations within
the rigid limits of the gold points. This is why developing to their fullest extent all
elements of productivity and wealth that might make Portugal a creditor of the
rest of the world is a national program, not a political program.28
Such a strong economic base would not leave the country exposed to the
vagaries of Brazilian finances. Salazar concluded, ‘this is what is deduced from
the principles and what one would very much like to see turned into fact.’29
Upon the death of the sitting professor, Salazar was invited in 1916 to
head the Economic and Social Sciences section by himself, provisionally, with-
out having to sit any examination, or produce any original dissertation—the
first time that this had happened in the history of the Law Faculty in Coimbra.
In March 1918, and in the context of Portugal’s participation in World War I
alongside Great Britain and France, Salazar was deemed unable to perform his
military service, and the following month, as he turned 29, he was promoted to
Professor Ordinário with dispensation of any examination. The following month
he was given the academic title of Doctor of Laws, by common accord of his
peers, again without need to sit an examination or to produce a thesis. In this
he was one of the first to benefit from recently introduced legislation on the
subject, but the fact remains that he was never forced to produce a major, ex-
haustive piece of research. Salazar focused his attention on teaching; he
28. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘O ágio do ouro. Sua natureza e suas causas (1891–1915)’ in Inéditos e dispersos
II, p. 298.
29. Ibid., p. 298.
claimed later to have ended every lecture with the following exhortation to
individual thought:
This is my opinion. You may, having consulted the sources indicated by me, and
having weighed in your spirit the arguments for and against, follow whatever con-
clusion you arrive at.30
Intriguingly, Salazar claimed to have used World War I as a source of

examples for his Political Economy class, enabling his students to understand
each country’s war economy—in an echo of his earlier calls for a practical
demonstration of the theory being taught.31 What his students made of Salazar
the lecturer is not obvious; what survive are mostly compliments by those
students who went on to collaborate with him. Nevertheless one intriguing
document, from late in Salazar’s life, hints at a desire by the audience to rile the
young and serious academic. In 1967 the Justice Minister, João de Matos
Antunes Varela, wrote Salazar, informing him of an incident that might amuse
him:
It seems that when you lectured in Coimbra the students, as a prank,

would steal your walking stick, which you used to leave at the back of the
hall. I heard this story many times in Coimbra, it being said that Dr Salazar
in no way appreciated the boys’ irreverence.
The author of the prank had now, decades later, been revealed: the student in
question had died but, before his end, had asked his wife to return the stolen
object to its rightful owner, and it was now in the possession of the police.32
Cerejeira, in later years, would reveal another side of Salazar as professor—a
man bursting with indignation, his eyes full of tears, describing how one of his
students had been unjustly treated in the awarding of a grade.33
It was Portugal’s failure to produce and purchase sufficient foodstuffs
during the war, causing serious public unrest, that prompted an article by
Salazar, ‘Some Aspects of the Supply Crisis’, published in the Law Faculty’s
own review, Boletim da Faculdade de Direito. This piece was an indication of
Salazar’s beliefs about how best to manage the economy, the threats facing it,
and its subordination to a national interest. The article was also remarkable for
what might be mistaken for a Germanophile sentiment, since praise was

31. Ibid.
32. AOS Correspondência Particular (CP) 274, letter, Lisbon, 15 June 1967, João de Matos Antunes Varela
to António de Oliveira Salazar.
heaped on the social discipline and organization of a country at war with
Portugal. Portugal was singularly unprepared to meet the economic crisis
sparked off by the conflict, Salazar argued, and the time had come to think
seriously about how best to ensure that such a crisis could not occur again. His
priorities were a reduction of consumption, an increase in production, and
improvements in the distribution mechanisms, making the country as self-
sufficient as possible—which would be in keeping with the conditions brought
on by the reduction in merchant shipping and international trade. The
countries that had first understood the new economic climate, and the need to
ensure their self-sufficiency, had conquered an unassailable position. Germany,
Salazar believed, was one such country, since not only had the contingencies of
the war been solved, through the adoption of a national economic strategy,
they had actually stimulated an economic activity that would survive the end of
the conflict. This example should have been followed in Portugal:
It was, for us, the solution of a grave present problem: it was—more importantly
still—the solution to a grave future problem.34
But the solution was never adopted; absorbed by the military situation and
their own survival, the governments of the day had failed to provide the
necessary stimulus to the economic life of the country, and through their badly
thought-out and uncoordinated interventions had only made matters worse.
Salazar was not alone in his criticism, common of conservative forces in the
country, which looked to Spain and envied its wartime economic development.
The young professor believed that Portugal could be self-sufficient, without
much effort, but that a number of factors had prevented this from occurring.
First and foremost was a moral crisis which prevented the Portuguese from
pulling together and making the most of this opportunity for economic
redemption. Describing this crisis, Salazar moved from the world of macro-
economics to the outright political:
The national spirit of decadent peoples weakens, which means that the awareness
of links of solidarity fades or disappears, as if the common interest no longer
existed. […] The sphere which this sentiment encompasses grows ever smaller,
and it’s as if a weakened heart could no longer pump the lifeblood to the furthest
reaches of the body […] It’s the every man for himself of popular parlance. The
nation no longer exists as a living organism, but rather as the inert sum of its
almost independent elements […]35
34. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘Alguns aspectos da crise das subsistências’ in Inéditos e dispersos II, p. 331.
35. Ibid., pp. 348–49.
This was what Portugal had become; as evidence, Salazar produced a
number of factors visible in wartime: the population of towns and villages
collaborated in preventing the departure of foodstuffs for other parts of the
country; production statistics were falsified; speculation and hoarding were
common; railway companies acted in their own narrow interest; workers in the
railways, in the countryside, and in the cities constantly struck for higher wages,
triggering inflation. These wages would not, in the future, come down, Salazar
predicted, even if economic conditions returned to the prewar days of com-
parative plenty. Future competitiveness was being endangered. When the State
tried to intervene, it made matters worse, by working in competition with the
private sector, trying to centralize available foodstuffs and then distributing
them—but doing so in such a way as to actually increase the country’s distrust
in its action, while, simultaneously, lacking the required human resources for
such an enterprise. In other words, by failing to spot the opportunity to make
the country self-sufficient (which, Salazar suggested, might be in Portugal ‘an
aspiration and a program’36), and by failing to ensure that each family had
enough to live on—which necessarily meant restricting consumption by others
(difficult where no national sentiment existed) and stimulating the production
of ersatz goods—the State had forsaken hopes of future economic develop-
ment, saddling Portugal with a series of expensive bills that future generations
would have to pay. Was there any solution to the crisis? Salazar seemed to
think that, under present conditions, the task was too great:
Our preparation for the future is already riddled with the vices that stand opposed
to the required virtues: we need low pay, but salaries rise in incredible proportions;
we need a greater productive force, but the labor capacity is diminished by
incessant and numerous strikes; we need cheap foodstuffs, but the increase in
prices seems to have no limits…We will probably feel the full effects of the
war…when Peace comes.
These early academic writings, in contrast to the Imparcial articles, were

written in a curious mixture of discrete erudition and a personal intimacy with
the reader, a complicity made easier by the self-evident (to Salazar) magnitude
of the disaster that was befalling Portugal.
On 14 March 1919, in the wake of the war, the Sidónio Pais presidency,37
and an attempted monarchist restoration, Salazar and three other professors of
36. Ibid., p. 382.

37. Sidónio Pais, Portugal’s minister at the Imperial Court in Berlin until 1916, carried out a successful coup
d’état in December 1917, overthrowing Afonso Costa’s Democratic government. He is generally understood
to have sought to limit Portugal’s involvement in World War I and to have refashioned Portuguese politics
along more authoritarian lines. See Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses, ‘Sidónio Pais, the Portuguese “New Republic”
and the Challenge to Liberalism in Southern Europe’ in European History Quarterly, 28 (1998), 109–130.
the Coimbra Law Faculty—Carneiro Pacheco,38 Fezas Vital,39 and Magalhães
Colaço40—were suspended on charges of spreading monarchist propaganda.
The government was acting, it seems, in response to frantic appeals from the
civil governor of Coimbra.41 With troubling brewing in the University, the gov-
ernment appointed an interim rector whom it could trust politically. For-
tunately for Salazar, the investigation moved quickly. On 24 March a judge was
appointed to carry out the inquiry, and three days later this magistrate began to
hear witnesses. On 7 April, Salazar submitted a written defense against the
unsubstantiated accusations against him. This was a sarcastic and haughty
document, a clear case of overkill given the spurious nature of the case, but
understandable given Salazar’s social and financial status and his justifiable
pride in his achievements. He had nothing to fall back on if the University
closed itself off to him. Salazar thus accounted for his political record. On the
essential question of his alleged monarchism, he was evasive. One witness, a
student, had stated that he did not know whether or not Salazar was a
monarchist. Salazar now wrote,
Mr Rui Gomes does not know whether or not I am a monarchist, and is right to
say so. I know very well what I am, but am not telling him.42
This meant, of course, that he was not telling the judge either. Salazar
admitted to being a member of the Catholic movement, but only as a foot-
soldier, not a leading personality. Having stood for parliament in Viana do
Castelo, he pointed out, he had received zero votes: ‘I believe that in terms of
political influence, I have set a new record.’43 This self-mockery was combined,
however, with devastating criticism of the Republic’s short history:
38. António Faria Carneiro Pacheco (1887–1957) graduated with a degree in Law from the University of
Coimbra and, like Salazar, joined its teaching staff. He was called on by Salazar to reform the Ministry of
Public Instruction in 1936, turning it into the Ministry of National Education, and was largely responsible for
the creation of the regime’s youth movement, the Mocidade Portuguesa; he later served as ambassador to the
Holy See and to Madrid.
39. Domingos Fezas Vital (1888–1953) graduated with a degree in Law from the University of Coimbra,
joining its staff and later serving as the University’s Rector. An expert in constitutional law, he would help
Salazar with the drafting of what became the 1933 Constitution.
40. João Maria Telo de Magalhães Colaço (1893–1931) graduated with a degree in Law from the University
of Coimbra at the age of twenty, and joined its lecturing staff. An immensely prolific writer, Magalhães
Colaço was a liberal monarchist, who welcomed neither the Republic nor the military dictatorship that
followed; his relationship with Salazar, even in Coimbra, was a difficult one.
41. Franco Nogueira, Salazar vol. 1 A mocidade e os princípios (Coimbra: Atlântida Editora, 1977), 203–5.
43. Little is known about this episode. In this text Salazar is ambiguous, for while claiming that he obtained
no votes, he added that his votes were handed over, with his agreement, to a priest, Casimiro Rodrigues de
Sá, standing for the Evolutionist party, a conservative republican formation. Less clear still is who proposed
Salazar’s candidacy, and on what authority.
There has been [on my part] no public demonstration of a political nature that
might allow others to reach a conclusion about my convictions. I have never been
condemned, tried, charged, heard, or arrested: not even arrested, which is a real
demonstration of merit, given that, in a few years’ time, fifty per cent of the Portu-
guese population—monarchists, catholics, democrats, evolutionists, camachistas,
syndicalists, socialists, sidonistas and undecided—will have seen the inside, in
succession, in rotation, and sometimes simultaneously, of the Republic’s forts and
prisons.44
Salazar defended the education received in the Viseu seminary, and ex-
plained the content of the public lectures delivered as a young man in the city:
‘Portugal was ruled by Dom Manuel. There was a monarchy; we were all mon-
archists, including the republicans. But it was not of the monarchy that I spoke
of; it was of education’.45 Salazar explained the nature of those lectures, and the
kind of education he sought to establish in Portugal; he explained as well the
nature of the lecture entitled ‘Democracy and the Church’. He ended by
defending his record and that of his corporation:
In order to know if the Faculty of Law is or is not up to its mission, perfectly inte-
grated in the spirit and the science of its time, there is but one path to follow, only
one thing to do: get to know it […] But who are its accusers? People who do not
go to class, who do not read the books, who do not know us—who do not know us,
they say in their testimony. Be serious. The intellectual training of a professor of
Law is too complex a subject to be dealt with in newspaper articles by failed
students and manqué candidates.46
The investigating magistrate quickly found no proof to substantiate the

charges and threw them out; Salazar and his colleagues returned to work within
a month, their reputation strengthened by victory over intransigent jacobinism.
A struggle then ensued to force the withdrawal of the rector hoisted by the
government on the University, and in this, too, the academics were successful.
Installed as a professor in Coimbra, Salazar’s circle of friends was ex-
tended. Cerejeira was at the heart of this circle, but it included as well older
acquaintances such as Mário Pais de Sousa and Mário de Figueiredo; to these
were added fellow academics Joaquim Mendes dos Remédios and Manuel
Rodrigues,47 and, from the Faculty of Medicine, Bissaia Barreto.48 With
44. Salazar, ‘A minha resposta’, pp. 240–41.

45. Ibid., p. 243.
46. Ibid., p. 247.
47. Manuel Rodrigues Júnior (1889–1946) graduated with a degree in Law from the University of Coimbra. A
conservative republican, and, like Salazar, a former seminarian, he abstained from political activity during the
First Republic. He served as Minister for Justice from 1926 to 1928, under the military dictatorship, and then
again from 1932 until 1940, now under Salazar’s leadership. He is seen as an enemy of the extreme right in
Cerejeira the friendship would, with time, lessen, although in many ways this
was the result of politics, and they tried to resist the parting, with a ritual dinner
on Salazar’s birthday and at Christmas. But the Coimbra (and in the case of
Figueiredo, Viseu) friendships would last a lifetime, even if those who
surrounded him knew that Salazar had to be handled with kid gloves, so sensi-
tive was he, so quick to take offence, and so immovable from his dislikes, once
these had manifested themselves. The humility of his origins, which he, on the
one hand, adopted as a badge of pride, and would use as a weapon of choice
against Lisbon, cosmopolitanism, and all that he deemed un-national, was, on
the other hand, a perpetual source of insecurity for someone who was, in
essence, a conservative, and who did not want to create a new order. But some
have gone too far down this road, seeing in Salazar’s career and tenure of
power a brutal response to a lifetime of social putdowns and humiliations; what
is known about his time in Coimbra, especially, suggests that although he might
have been hurt by the Júlia Perestrelo incident, all around him was proof that
he was rising socially.49 His brilliant university career had transformed his social
prospects.
Ascent in the academy was matched by the ascent in a Catholic political
party, the Centro Católico Português (CCP—Portuguese Catholic Center), although
in the context of the Republic this was, for the moment, a political dead-end.
The CCP had been founded in 1917 in response to the second appeal by the
Portuguese Episcopate—the first had been made in 1913—for the creation of
a political party capable of upholding the Church’s interests in through a
positive engagement with the existing regime. In the midst of by-elections and
local elections, the CCP was forged, albeit with a weak national structure and
no obvious leader. Worse still, for its prospects, many of those responsible for
its future were monarchists, which restricted the party’s room for growth in a
republican setting. A new departure was therefore carried out in November
1919, when the CCP’s first national congress was held. A united leadership
emerged, under António Lino Neto, which committed the party to a pragmatic
approach of practical collaboration with the Republic, the line favored by the
the New State, and was generally believed at the time to see himself as a successor to Salazar, actively plotting
against him.
48. Fernando Baeta Bissaia Barreto Rosa (1886–1974) graduated with degrees in Medicine and Philosophy
from the University of Coimbra, joining its teaching staff. He would complement his academic activities with
an intense charitable activity, notably in the provision of health care for the poor. Bissaia Barreto was
especially active in the fight against tuberculosis. Republican (being elected a deputy to the Constituent
Assembly in 1911), and a Freemason, Bissaia Barreto nevertheless joined the União Nacional and was very
active in its Coimbra branch. His friendship with Salazar would last until the latter’s death.
49. Franco Nogueira has noted the improvements in Salazar’s lifestyle, made possible not only by his salary
but also by the legal opinions he was asked to write. In April 1922 Salazar insured the contents of the
Vimieiro house against fire, for a total of 4,000 escudos. A year and a half later, this was changed to 23,000
escudos. AOS PP 6, Companhia de Seguros Fidelidade, Apólice de seguro sobre mobília, 22 April 1922.
Episcopate and the Holy See. Lino Neto’s stance in parliament, with the CCP
acting as a form of a neutral, collaborative, opposition, helped to heal the
wounds between the Republic and the Church.
The CCP, given the nature of Portuguese politics, was doomed to enjoy
only a small parliamentary representation. Nevertheless its leadership, eager to
demonstrate that the party could field first-rate candidates, sought out suitable
representatives. As has already been mentioned, in 1919 Salazar’s name was put
forward as a candidate in the Viana do Castelo constituency, with no conse-
quences. At Lino Neto’s request Salazar stood again for election in July 1921,
in the equally conservative northern city of Guimarães, and this time he did so
successfully. For once the Democratic party, the mainstay of the regime, was
not in power at the moment of elections—which meant that other formations
were more likely to find themselves elected. Salazar had not wanted to stand,
according to Franco Nogueira, but his will was overridden by the party’s
leadership in Lisbon; the positive result led swiftly to another bout of
depression, so great was the new deputy’s reluctance to have his tranquil aca-
demic life disturbed.50 In a letter to Glória Castanheira, perhaps the most sig-
nificant figure in his coterie of female friends and admirers, Salazar wrote of
the chaos that the move would bring—‘I don’t believe that I shall have to leave
Coimbra. That is surely an exaggeration. Parliament will be closed for many
long months, and it may be the case that it will not last long, as Mário told me
in a letter yesterday’.51
Despite his misgivings, Salazar attended the opening session, on 25 July
1921, and then returned to Coimbra; in his absence, and before parliament
broke for the summer recess, he was elected to a number of commissions,
notably those that dealt with the budget, with statistics, and with higher educa-
tion. He was also chosen to preside over a commission to adjudicate on the
organization of the Ministry of the Colonies. However, the Republic’s fortunes
took a turn for the worse in October, before parliament had reassembled. Frus-
trated by the fact that former enemies—those who had opposed Portugal’s
participation in World War I, and who had backed Sidónio Pais—were in gov-
ernment, the radical fringe of the Democratic party lashed out on the 19th of
that month, leading to the chain of events known as the noite sangrenta (night of
blood), in which, along with other conservative figures, Prime Minister
António Granjo was murdered. The country and the rest of Europe were
aghast, and this violent revolt, although eventually tamed, brought down the
legislature, marking the end of Salazar’s parliamentary career. It was not,
though, the end of his service to the CCP. Tellingly, Salazar would, in later life,
50. Franco Nogueira, A mocidade, pp. 229–30.

51. Ibid., p. 231.
ride roughshod over his political activity in 1921 and beyond, and the New
State propaganda machinery would turn the events of the summer of that year
on their head, stressing that in just one sitting, Salazar had realized his incom-
patibility with the processes of parliamentary democracy. F. C. C. Egerton, in
his Salazar, rebuilder of Portugal, would write,
Two years later, in 1921, three Catholic deputies were elected to parliament.
Salazar was one of them. He made one appearance at the Chamber of Deputies,
and never returned to it. The proceedings of parliament were too futile.52
A similar description of events is to be found in the official sketch of

Salazar’s life produced in 1938 by Luís Teixeira.53 It is worth noting in this
respect that in 1925 Salazar and Cerejeira entered the CCP’s diocesan
commission in Coimbra, and that Salazar stood for parliament again that year,
in Arganil, but was defeated.54 He did not break with the party then, or in the
immediate future. Given the party’s stated willingness to participate in govern-
ment, one can admit the possibility of Salazar, its leading financial expert,
accepting a ministerial brief in a conservative republican government—but no
such entity was ever allowed to survive for long before 1926.
Salazar was a lecturer, but not a researcher; perhaps a devotion to research
was not the role that the University expected of its leading figures. To investi-
gation Salazar preferred writing in the press, speaking at Catholic events, and
returning, whenever possible, to Vimieiro, to an increasingly ill mother who
was at the centre of his preoccupations. One event in which he participated
was the 1922 Congress of the CCP, where he presented his views on the prin-
ciples and organization to adopt. Along with three conferences held in 1925,55
this intervention showed a move away from simple ralliement politics: a more
active re-Christianization of Portugal was his openly avowed aim. The origin of
political power, of sovereignty, lay not with the people, but with God; this
implied, Salazar explained briefly, a hierarchical society. Mankind’s goals could
not be achieved in a society where equality was a precept. Power had to be
52. F.C.C. Egerton, Salazar, Rebuilder of Portugal (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1943), p. 108. Salazar himself
wrote, in the Foreword to his interviews with Ferro, ‘This man who at present is governing Portugal never
asked to govern it. He was a plain Member of Parliament; in that capacity he attended only one debate and
never went back to the House.’ Ferro, Salazar, p. 87.
53. Luís Teixeira, Perfil de Salazar: Elementos para a história da sua vida e da sua época (Lisbon: SPN, 1938), pp. 56–
57.
54. Manuel Braga da Cruz, ‘Centro Católico Português’ in António Barreto & Maria Filomena Mónica (eds),
Dicionário de História de Portugal vol. 7 Suplemento A/E (Lisbon: Figueirinhas, 1999), p. 290.
55. ‘Laicism and Liberty’ (Funchal), ‘Bolshevism and the Congregation’ (Funchal), and ‘The State’s
Aconfessionalism’ (Coimbra). All three are reproduced in António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘Centro Católico
Português: Princípios e organização (Tese apresentada ao II Congresso do Centro Católico Português, 1922)
in Inéditos e dispersos I, pp. 251–82.
wielded to achieve the common good, which should not be confused with the
will of the majority. Provided these principles were respected, Catholics could
give their allegiance to any regime—the regime question (monarchy or
republic) should not really matter to them. As for Catholics in politics, a dis-
tinction had to be made between the pursuit of the Church’s policies and those
of the nation. In the first case, the Holy See’s precepts had to be followed.
Catholics had to involve themselves in politics to allow the Church’s basic
mission—‘the Church wants to save all souls and desires the State not to stand
in the way of this salvation’56—and to do so in a united front, an entity capable
of putting religion first and politics second. Nothing about the Republic made
it theoretically incompatible with the practice of religion or the pursuit of the
common good. More important than the nature of an existing regime were the
moral and civic virtues of its leaders. Catholics should thus follow Rome’s
advice—and Salazar stressed that it was advice, not an order—and come
together politically to stake their claim to the regime:
[…] The Catholic Center should be the organization of Catholics who, in

accordance with the wishes of the Holy See, sacrifice momentarily their political
demands, notably in relation to the nature of the regime, uniting themselves to
carry out, constitutionally, a political activity designed to conquer, and earn recog-
nition for, the liberties and rights of the Church. Either the Center is this, or it is
nothing.57
The speech was thus a plea for all Catholics to put aside existing political
loyalties, place the Church’s interests first, and join the Center, helping it in
future electoral battles. A strong Center would ensure that the basic aim of the
Church could be carried out, and contribute to ‘the Christianization of institu-
tions and laws, making then informed by the principles of religion.’58 The fact
that there was much in political life which could not be addressed by Catholic
doctrine should not deter Catholics from having an organized political force:
the way such issues were resolved by political parties tended to be dictated not
by programs and manifestos, but rather by the opinions of their parliamentary
membership, arrived at as each problem arose.
These, then, were Salazar’s views as the First Republic entered its final
years. Although he had moved to the right, as the insistence on hierarchy and
order showed, such views were by no means outlandish. They were still in
keeping with current Catholic doctrine, which was itself moving to the right as
56. Salazar, ‘Centro Católico Português’, p. 260.

57. Ibid., p. 271.
58. Ibid., p. 275.
a result of the Bolshevik revolution. Pope Pius XI, in his first encyclical—Ubi
Arcano Dei, of 23 December 1922—urged re-Christianization as the sole means
to overcome the present difficulties facing the nations and individuals:
We have already seen and come to the conclusion that the principal cause of the
confusion, restlessness and dangers which are so prominent a characteristic of
false peace is the weakening of the binding force of law and lack of respect for
authority, effects which logically follow upon denial of the truth that authority
comes from God, the Creator and Universal Law-giver.
Lisbon: The ‘National Revolution’ Begins
On 28 May 1926, the army staged a coup against the ailing Republic, which
had never recovered from the self-inflicted wounds of the first years of its
existence. The nature and aims of the coup—or rather, the lack of them—were
to set the scene for Portugal’s political evolution in decades to come. There
were all kinds of tensions among the officers who carried out the rising:
between staid senior officers and their more radical junior counterparts;
between career men and those commissioned during the war; and between
rival political factions: reformist republicans who despised what the Demo-
cratic party had done to the country, but who wanted to save the regime, mon-
archists of different varieties (among whom the Integralists stood out for their
ambition), and more than a sprinkling of fascists. They professed to know what
they stood against—what the Republic had become—but had no idea of what
they collectively stood for: only that they had to try their best to bring it about
in a collegial form. That being the case, open and transparent politics dis-
appeared from the scene, leaving major decisions to be taken at meetings
attended only by officers, who quietly gauged the strengths of their respective
factions, and who shared out many of the top jobs in the country’s administra-
tion among themselves.
After the 28 May rising, which he launched from the northern city of
Braga, and his slow ‘march on Lisbon’ (most of which was in fact carried out
by train from Oporto), General Gomes da Costa entered Lisbon at the head of
significant numbers of troops on 6 June. By that time he had already estab-
lished a triumvirate with two navy officers: Mendes Cabeçadas, whom Presi-
dent Bernardino Machado, hoping to throw a spanner into the coup’s works,
had asked to form a government, and Armando Ochoa. These two men were
of a distinctly more democratic frame of mind than Gomes da Costa, and
many within the republican elite saw them as their saviors. Tensions were evi-
dent from the start. When, on 17 June, younger and more radical army officers
forced the resignation of Mendes Cabeçadas, whom they did not trust, the way
was open for Gomes da Costa to form his own cabinet: but, like Cabeçadas, he
too was distrusted by many of his supposed subordinates, who, on 9 July,
removed him from power, banishing him to the Azores. General Carmona,
whom he had tried to remove from the Foreign Affairs portfolio, then became
Prime Minister, with General Sinel de Cordes, the master tactician behind the
original coup, as his Finance Minister.
Gomes da Costa and Cabeçadas, while still working together, if at cross-
purposes, made an interesting choice as their Finance Minister: Salazar. This
first experience of government remains, even for historians, a confused epi-
sode. Salazar’s subsequent propaganda machine did not clarify or even like to
dwell on what had happened in 1926 since, like his earlier stint as a deputy, it
called into question Salazar’s stated lack of desire for political power. The list
of the proposed cabinet—a mix of senior officers and civilian experts, mostly
drawn from Coimbra University—was made public by decree on 3 June.
Franco Nogueira suggests that this cabinet had been a compromise reached by
the two rival commanders of the revolutionary movement at a meeting in
Santarém, but that some names—including Salazar’s—had already been floated
at an earlier meeting in Coimbra, where the triumvirate had been hammered
out, after which some soundings were taken. Who had taken them, and what
reply had been given, is not clear. The following day, 4 June, Salazar and two
Coimbra colleagues, Mendes dos Remédios (Public Instruction) and Manuel
Rodrigues (Justice) arrived in Lisbon by train, quickly making the car journey to
the capital’s outskirts, where Gomes da Costa and Mendes Cabeçadas were
based, awaiting the former’s triumphal entry into the capital. Salazar, unlike his
colleagues who were quickly sworn in, did not like what he saw, and returned
quickly to Coimbra, hiding behind allegations of ill health. The absence of a
Finance Minister, and the embarrassment provoked by his nomination and
subsequent disappearance, undermined the proposed government, but Salazar,
in Coimbra, refused to budge. Mendes dos Remédios went to the university
town on 10 June, to try to change his mind, and succeeded, returning to the
capital two days later with Salazar in tow. A large delegation awaited them in
Lisbon, and after an interview with Mendes Cabeçadas, Salazar went to the
Finance Ministry, where, behind closed doors, he was sworn in.
What did he stand for? What was his reputation built on? By seeking to
make use of Salazar, what did the military, at this point, hope to gain? Given
Portugal’s small academic elite, to reach professorial status was to risk, at some
time or another, being called to government. Salazar, as a prominent Catholic
politician, represented a potentially important section of the Right, a quiet,
non-militant conservatism that was more numerous across the country than its
votes suggested, and which was endowed with an intellectual depth and
breadth that other currents lacked. The CCP’s attitude to politics had not
changed; it was willing to deal with the dictatorship, as it had dealt with the
Republic before it, provided the interests of the Church were respected.
Acceptance of public posts had long been one of its planks; here, at last, was a
chance for two CCP members—Salazar and Mendes dos Remédios—to show
what they could do if given the chance. But Salazar was more than just a
Christian-Democrat; as his technical writings had shown, he was a reformer as
well, someone who envisaged ‘profound economic transformations, which pre-
supposed, or would provoke others, of a demographic, social, cultural, and
political nature’.59 This was what his followers believed he would attempt, piece
by piece, to implement. Breathing life into the decades-old cry of ‘Vida Nova!’
(New Life!), he would work to develop the country, to, in a strictly technical
sense, modernize it, allowing it to thrive among its competitors, while at the
same time recuperating, enshrining, and protecting values which he associated
with Portugal and its past glories, and which were threatened by the uncon-
trolled quest for the modern: religion, patriotism, and family. The sole agent
capable of bringing about this difficult task—balancing development and the
preservation (if not actually the resuscitation) of tradition—was the State.
Salazar seems to have had no doubts about his essential beliefs, his recipe for
‘saving’ Portugal from the worst traits of its people, and from the recent past.
But for the moment, he was unable to build on these certainties.
We know next to nothing about what, if anything, Salazar managed to
achieve in these few days as Finance Minister. In a newspaper article published
on 30 November 1927, Salazar, critical of the country’s financial situation, was
to remark that at least, and unusually, the actual tax take for the previous fiscal
year had been greater than predicted, which suggested that the budget had been
a prudent and serious document: ‘and I will not add to this praise, because it
seems to me that I have some personal responsibility over the matter’.60 The
ever-faithful Egerton would later write,
What happened in those few days is a secret which, so far as I know, he has kept
to himself, but it is not difficult to surmise that he proposed measures which were
more than unpalatable to his colleagues. He would not compromise on essentials,
and the very strictest economy was the first essential. There is a story that, one
morning, he telephoned to his Ministry and heard a strange voice at the other end.
When he asked who was speaking, he was told that it was the Minister of Finance.
59. António Barreto, ‘António de Oliveira Salazar’ in Barreto & Mónica (eds), Dicionário de História de Portugal
vol. 7 Suplemento P/Z (Oporto: Figueirinhas, 2000), pp. 283–84.
60. Novidades (Lisbon), 30 November 1927. Reprinted in António de Oliveira Salazar, Inéditos e dispersos II
Estudos económico-financeiros (1916–1928), vol. 2 (Lisbon: Bertrand, 1998), p. 211.
“Oh”, he said quietly, “I was under the impression that I was the Minister of
Finance”. He hung up the receiver, packed his bag, and went back to Coimbra by
the night train.61
Not surprisingly, then, long after the minute intricacies of the summer of
1926 had been forgotten, Salazar’s defenders argued that their man had chosen
his moment to depart. Poor health was the shield behind Salazar hid in
public,62 but, in reality, he had been worried by the growing rift between
Cabeçadas, last hope of the republican parties, and Gomes da Costa, who
seemed to stand for something new, and dramatic, but as yet unclear. The dust
had not yet settled on the post-revolutionary situation, and Salazar did not
want to be left on the losing side, or tainted by participation in a doomed gov-
ernment. Events would show that he was right. On 17 June, with impatience
over the slow pace of change among the junior ranks rising, Gomes da Costa
carried out a coup within the coup and forced Mendes Cabeçadas out. All three
civilian ministers resigned together, through a letter usually believed to have
been drafted by Salazar, and Salazar returned to Coimbra. Manuel Rodrigues, a
great survivor, would be part of the next cabinet, and Gomes da Costa, it
seems, tried to convince Salazar to remain: but to the despair of friends and
family, he did not. If the military had come for him once, trusting in the
University to provide it with experts, then it would come again, at a time when
it was more united. Until then he would sit in judgment of his successors. Sinel
de Cordes, who made the transition from the shadows to the cabinet table
once Gomes da Costa had been removed, would now face the constant
scrutiny of the military dictatorship’s first, if short-lived, Minister of Finance,
and would be found wanting.
Until 1926 Salazar had shied, in the main, from the national stage, being
content to help, as best he could, the CCP. From his first experience—albeit
brief—of government onwards, he altered his behavior.63 A new drive was to
be found, as if in the new circumstances, still provisional but definitely moving
in his direction, anything was possible. He cooperated with Sinel de Cordes,
but simultaneously worked to undermine him. Cooperation was achieved
through accepting the presidency of a commission designed to review the
sources and nature of the State’s tax intake; undermining Sinel de Cordes was
61. Egerton, Salazar, p. 114.

62. See Diário de Notícias (Lisbon), 14 July 1927: ‘He passed like a meteor through the Finance portfolio after
28 May, because the state of his health did not allow for very hard work, but in those brief days he had the
chance to reveal both his uniquely special competence for the administration of that portfolio and the
highest managerial qualities.’
63. Salazar would have the public believe otherwise. Writing of himself in the third person singular, Salazar
explained that ‘he was a minister—for five days. And again he went away without the faintest desire to come
back.’ Ferro, Salazar, p. 87.
done, cruelly, in the press. Before his assault on power began, Salazar had to
overcome one final hurdle: the death of his mother, whose health had long
been a source of worry, being the cause of regular trips from Coimbra to
Vimieiro. On 17 November 1926 Maria do Resgate died; Salazar’s circle of
male friends traveled to his house for the funeral. Salazar himself had in-
terrupted all of his work, both for the University and the Revenue
Commission, to accompany her last days. His sister would later say of their
mother that
She convinced herself, in the last days of her life, that only her son knew
how to lessen her pain and her worries. In truth, the tender words with
which he cared for her did not belong to this world, and made us cry. He
spent the nine nights of her agony on his feet, by the side of her bed.
When she died, his feet were so swollen that only with much difficulty did
he attend her funeral.64
Salazar was nevertheless back at work by the end of the month. There was
now one less thing holding him back, although, according to Franco Nogueira,
Maria do Resgate’s pride in his achievements had understandably been great,
and she had encouraged him in 1926 to enter the government. In Coimbra,
Salazar continued to work quietly through some of the more troubled months
of the military dictatorship. In February 1927, for example, it had to fight for
its life, faced with a major, if uncoordinated, revolt, which broke out first in
Oporto and then in Lisbon. This was the first of many attempts by which
republicans tried to return to the driving seat in Portugal. But General
Carmona, who now styled himself President of the Republic, and his govern-
ment held firm, and the revolt was crushed. Thanks to his work with the
Commission, Salazar now made regular trips to Lisbon, widening his circle of
acquaintances. His report was submitted on 30 June 1927. This was an
interesting and telling document, the work of a mind devoted to order and
exasperated by the inability of the State to so much as know its own affairs.
Salazar complained that there were no reliable statistics to work with, and that
the revenue service could not collect taxes, of which there were too many, on
time. The whole revenue machinery was too large and inefficient; there was far
too much bureaucracy; and the tax burden was unfairly divided. In this
situation, Salazar argued, it was impossible to start from scratch. It was better
to correct existing mistakes, which would be made clear through consultation
with economic groups. Only then, once correct information had been amassed

and the system was working well, could large-scale reform go ahead. The
report’s author kept in mind, however, the main recommendation made by the
Finance Minister: that the tax-take should not be reduced.
What was contained in the ten proposed decrees included in the package?
Aside from a reform of the mechanisms for collecting taxes, Salazar called for a
lightening of the fiscal load on agriculture. This was to be compensated by
heavier taxes on urban property (which implied the gradual return of market
freedom to the rented property sector, subject to government intervention
since World War I). Salazar was also in favor of finding an alternative to pro-
gressive income tax, which hurt what he called the ‘best contributors’ dispro-
portionately. From the point of view of Salazar’s career, however, the fact that
personal contacts had been established with leading economic interest groups,
who had come away impressed by his ability, was more important than the
contents of the report. Unique praise was heaped on him by the Diário de
Notícias, Lisbon’s leading daily, which interviewed him on the subject of fiscal
reform in July 1927:
His colleagues [in the Commission], none of whom knew him personally,
were captivated, by the correctness and kindness of his demeanor, the wise
and practical orientation he impressed on the Commission’s work, the tact
and tolerance with which he was able to reconcile the most diverging
opinions and the loftiness with which he was able to detach himself from
academic considerations, or individual and class interests, to attend
exclusively to the interests of taxpayers and the State alike.65
Salazar used this interview to publicize his work, again arguing for clarity
and rationality in fiscal matters, both of which had long been absent. Too many
taxes, some of which fell on revenues already taxed; too many settlement dates;
too many rates; too many penalties; too many complaints: this was the situation
that had to be overcome. It is tempting to see in the contacts developed during
the Commission’s lifetime a first step away from a purely theoretical reading of
the economic situation. However, this move towards practical politics was
halted by the Minister. Sinel de Cordes buried the report, to Salazar’s frustra-
tion; Salazar retaliated by stepping up his press intervention, launching a
stinging attack on the man he now wanted to replace.
It was perhaps the increased visibility afforded to him by his presence on
the government Commission that brought about a second request to serve as
Finance Minister, delivered by a junior officer, Lieutenant Assis Gonçalves, on
65. Diário de Notícias (Lisbon), 14 July 1927. Reprinted in António de Oliveira Salazar, Inéditos e dispersos II, vol.
2 (Lisbon: Bertrand, 1998), p. 200.
behalf of a much more senior figure, General Passos e Sousa, the officer who
had put down the February rising and who now saw himself as a potential
political leader. Salazar refused, despite the assurance that he, and not Passos e
Sousa, would be setting the course for the government.66 According to Assis
Gonçalves, Salazar hid behind his respect for authority and hierarchy: he would
not plot to undermine the government. It is clear, then, that we are not before
a Mussolini or a Hitler, who came to the public’s attention through bluster and
violence, or a Franco, a self-publicizing military leader who, like many before
and after, would use a colonial campaign as a launch-pad for political ambi-
tions. Salazar’s appeal, originally restricted to Catholic circles, had been ex-
tended to include the economic elites of the country at a time when the military
dictatorship continued to wander without direction, subject to occasional
coups and rebellions—in August 1927 from the more radical right, an event
known as the Golpe dos Fifis67—and still searching for a way out of the country’s
long-standing financial crisis. Taking a leaf from Primo de Rivera, the dictator-
ship attempted to recruit and structure political support through an organiza-
tion that it would control, the Liga 28 de Maio; but this brought it little peace. In
other words, as the dictatorship stumbled from crisis to crisis, Salazar’s stock
rose.
In August 1927, having refused Passos e Sousa’s subversive invitation,
Salazar embarked on a foreign jaunt with Cerejeira and another academic,
Professor Beleza dos Santos, which took the trio to Paris, Brussels, and Liège.
The choice of cities was not arbitrary. The importance of this trip abroad has
been noted by most historians. It provided a quick immersion into European
Catholic politics at a crucial period, following the Papal attack on Maurras’
Action Française. In Liège, Salazar attended a Congress of the Association
Catholique de la Jeunesse Belge (Belgian Catholic Youth Association). This organi-
zation, set up in 1921 in response to the introduction of universal male suffrage
in Belgium (a decision which broke the Catholic Party’s long-standing mono-
poly on power), had as its mission ‘to provide a movement which would enable
young Belgian Catholics of all social classes to participate more directly in the
life of the Church.’68 Its members viewed themselves as a vanguard, a phalanx
destined to carry out the re-spiritualization of Belgium. According to a recent
study, ‘the visit to Belgium was thus a demonstration of Salazar’s interest and
involvement in the neo-Thomist current, which is not surprising given the
66. Barreto, ‘António de Oliveira Salazar’, p. 328.

67. The Golpe dos Fifis (literally, ‘the Fifis’ coup’) was the derogatory term used to describe an ill-conceived
attempt to seize power; this term derived from the conjunction of the names of two of the leading plotters,
Filomeno da Câmara and Fidelino de Figueiredo.
68. Martin Conway, ‘Building the Christian City: Catholics and Politics in Interwar Francophone Belgium’ in
Past and Present 128 (1990), p. 122.
nature of his writings in previous years.’69 Salazar’s increased notoriety had not
come at the expense of his core political beliefs; he remained an intellectually
alert Christian-Democrat, seeking to keep abreast of developments in Catholic
politics.
Sinel de Cordes, like so many Finance Ministers since 1890, saw in a large
foreign loan the key to anchoring Portuguese finances and investing rationally
in key economic areas. His plans thus rested on the negotiation of just such a
loan, but there was, by 1926, a large distrust of all things Portuguese (indeed a
verb had been coined in French—Portugaliser—meaning to turn upside down,
or bring chaos to a situation). Rejected by international banking circles, Sinel de
Cordes was forced to apply for a loan from the League of Nations. The
projected deal was said to be worth some twelve million pounds sterling. It was
known in Portugal that financial experts were moving from Geneva to Lisbon
and vice-versa, but for a time silence and mystery surrounded the issue.
Eventually, though, the League announced its conditions for the loan: the
budget had to be balanced, and should Portugal default on payments, a team of
experts would go to Lisbon to oversee the repayment process, in essence inter-
fering with budgetary policy in order to safeguard the League’s investment.
Conditions did not differ greatly, it should be stressed, from those attached at
the time to other foreign loans made by the League. However, Sinel de Cordes,
hamstrung by the nationalist credentials of the dictatorship, and hard-pressed
by what remained of an opposition press, which described the League’s terms
as a humiliation, had to turn his back on the offer; all of his efforts had been in
vain. Without such a loan, no major reform program, it was believed, was
possible; Sinel de Cordes’ ambitions were in tatters. The stage was set for
Salazar’s ascent. With the press concentrating on financial affairs, and what
might be done to salvage the situation, Salazar made his move, publishing
articles in Novidades, a Catholic daily run by the Lisbon patriarchate. These
articles were remarkable not only for their criticism of Sinel de Cordes, who
had presided over a mushrooming of the budget deficit with no solution
advanced, but also for the clarity of their language, and the direct link estab-
lished with the reader; they show Salazar trying to connect with a wide audi-
ence, setting out his claim to power through an intelligible demonstration of
theoretical and practical knowledge. The first article, entitled ‘Contas do
Estado: Gerência de 1926–1927’ (‘The State’s Accounts for 1926–1927’), was
published in seven parts, between 30 November and 21 December 1927. The
second part, dated 1 December, began in the following self-deprecating
manner:
69. Alexandre, O roubo, p. 43.

I have a terrible cold. I feel an enormous weight on my head—on the inside, that
is; my eyes are streaming and I cannot see straight. It is impossible for me to
study, or to make out what I am reading; dull and heavy, I am incapable of
examining a problem, of grasping the strength of an argument, of understanding
the nuance of an idea, of keeping to the rules of syntax. In other words, I am in
perfect shape to write for a newspaper.70
This chatty, engaging, tone was preserved throughout, with technical

jargon kept to a minimum. But the verdict was still harsh; despite some
successes in terms of improved revenue collection, the military dictatorship
had shown itself unable to restrict spending, which had generally increased, and
to spend in a constructive manner: more and more money was being spent on
servicing the short-term, high interest, debts which crippled the country. Con-
cluding the final installment of the article, and after a number of charts and
figures, Salazar spelled out the problem, again poking fun at himself and the
reader:
Because the reader most certainly will not have read what preceded this, I will
summarize for him what he would have found, had he read it:
a) an increase of many tens of thousands of contos71 in personnel expenses: more
civil servants, and better paid;
b) a greater provision in materiel (purchases, repairs, works) in the War and
Navy ministries;
c) a very sharp increase in the expenses with internal and external security;
d) a policy of subsidizing the colonies and the companies that serve them;
e) no—or next-to-no—policy of investment;
f) marked tendency supporting university, technical and secondary education.72
There were a series of warnings contained in this quick summary, which

Salazar did not dwell on, but which were clear enough. The army could not be
trusted not to spend on itself; it was too generous with other branches of the
administration; and until a definitive political situation had been found,
allowing the country to return to some form of constitutional normality, there
would be no peace on the streets, and no order in the State’s accounts.
Salazar did not disguise his hostility to the proposed foreign loan, which he
addressed in a new Novidades article, published on 3 January 1928. Whatever
monies were secured through it would be quickly dissipated in the present
70. Novidades (Lisbon), 1 December 1927. Reprinted in António de Oliveira Salazar, Inéditos e dispersos II, vol.
2, p. 213.
71. A conto (short for conto de réis) was the unofficial term for a thousand escudos.
72. Novidades (Lisbon), 21 December 1927. Reprinted in António de Oliveira Salazar, Inéditos e dispersos II, vol.
2, pp. 236–37.
climate, either servicing the existing debt or being spent for little constructive
purpose. What was needed in order to put a foreign loan, or any existing
capital, to good use, was a new policy, a firm financial hand, an administrative
reorganization, and a generalized acceptance of sacrifice. It is impossible not to
read in the article an ambitious politician’s bid for office, proposing the reform
of a country long-neglected:
[…] the deficit will not fall much below 500 thousand contos, which is the same as
spending in two years the remaining ten million pounds, according to the present
exchange.
And this with neither large nor small investments; with no largess in the building
and upkeep of roads; with no works of irrigation or of harnessing hydraulic
resources beyond those attempted by private initiative and capital; with no
noticeable development of the rail network […] All would be spent and consumed
leaving the country no richer, without having solved the financial situation and
without having secured the currency.
Looking around Europe, Salazar listed the countries which had rescued
their postwar finances, and identified the common thread to their efforts: the
ability to make tough decisions, to save, and to endure sacrifice for the greater
good. At the top of the list stood Great Britain, which through the harshest of
cuts in spending and a ‘most violent fiscal effort’, had overturned its calamitous
postwar situation. There was one ingredient in British politics missing in
Portugal—willpower:
Without this miracle of willpower, the Cunliffe plan could not have been imple-
mented by governments of different hues and the pound would no longer be…the
pound.73
Despite the cheerful ending to the article—‘what a foolish idea it is to

sadden people at the New Year! Very good holidays! Very good holidays!’—
Salazar’s message was clear: the Portuguese could run for a time, but they could
not hide from the mounting difficulties that surrounded them, and the govern-
ment—most notably the Minister of Finance—was not in a position to over-
come the situation. Not only had Sinel de Cordes shown himself unable to
curb the rise in State expenditure but, as Salazar would point out in a later
article, he was not able to restore faith in the State as an honest broker, an
entity which met its obligations. Until this was done, Portuguese investors,
timid by nature, would continue to apply their capital elsewhere, while foreign
73. Novidades (Lisbon), 3 January 1928. Reprinted in António de Oliveira Salazar, Inéditos e dispersos II, vol. 2,
p. 245.
capital would simply avoid Portugal. Salazar’s intentions were made clearer
with each passing article. On 10 February, he began the first part of an article
entitled ‘Deficit or Superavit’ with a discussion of the Portuguese character,
and of the responsibilities for its shortcomings, which he defined in the
following terms:
The truth is that we have neither clear reason nor strong will: in criticism we know
only praise or insult; in our ventures despair is only one step away from enthu-
siasm.74
Parents, teachers, even nature, ‘which has given us the wrong dose of
sentimentality’, were all to blame. Salazar, for the benefit of public opinion, was
moving towards first causes, and identifying in greater detail the task that faced
Portugal. The financial crisis could only be solved by fiscal rectitude, self-
denial, and sacrifice. These, in turn, could only be safeguarded if a revolution in
the national character took place. Left unsaid, of course, were the political im-
plications of such a shift. In April 1928, in a series of articles entitled ‘Medidas
de Finanças’ (Financial Measures), Salazar adopted an ‘I-told-you-so’ attitude:
his views had been ignored when he had first proposed them in the Revenue
Commission’s report, but now, it seemed, everyone was calling for reduced
spending and higher taxes in order to balance the budget and attract foreign
investment. Rubbing salt into the government’s wounds, Salazar also pointed
out that his request for the Commission’s report to be published in the official
gazette, the Diário do Governo, so that it might serve as the basis for a national
discussion of financial affairs, had been ignored. Salazar therefore published
large passages from the report in the pages of Novidades in order to demon-
strate that what the government (Sinel de Cordes had, through illness, been
replaced temporarily by another officer, General Ivens Ferraz) was attempting
was doomed to fail. Without major reforms, any piecemeal change would only
cause more injustice and complication. Salazar’s criticism was more trenchant
than ever: addressing the winding down of personal income tax, instead of its
suspension for three years, as the commission had recommended, Salazar
wrote, ‘I consider this measure a grave financial error and one of the biggest
political mistakes the government could have committed’.75 He concluded the
article by stating that certain reforms were now unavoidable, and that it was
better for the Right than the Left to carry them out, since the latter’s ‘natural
violence’ might call into question ‘sacred principles’ that the former would
74. Novidades (Lisbon), 10 February 1928. Reprinted in António de Oliveira Salazar, Inéditos e dispersos II, vol.
2, p. 259.
75. Novidades (Lisbon), 13 April 1928. Reprinted in António de Oliveira Salazar, Inéditos e dispersos II, vol. 2, p.
310.
always respect. He concluded—and these were the final words of this crucial
press campaign—‘let us not worry, for things in this country usually turn out
for the best.’
As the press campaign approached its climax, Salazar performed one last
favor for the CCP, addressing the União Operária of Coimbra, on 18 March. His
talk was entitled ‘Duas Economias’ (Two Economies), and represented a
search for a Christian approach to the economy, one that might be in keeping
with the principles of the Gospel. The all-out search for material wealth was a
dead-end, Salazar suggested, since it led to materialism, which brought in turn
corruption and general misery. Against it had stood, historically, another
conception of life, based on low production, contempt for wealth, and the
simplicity of public life. Many societies such as this existed around the world;
in them saving, rather than spending, was the norm; wealth was not meant to
be spent, just to exist and be conserved. In such societies, ‘life [was] simple
because relatively poor, stationary, mediocre’,76 and under-employment did not
lead to progress in the arts and sciences. Both economies, both conceptions of
life, were thus flawed. Another way had to be found: intense labor to create
wealth, tempered by the use of reason to guide the consumption of wealth,
subordinating it to the ‘physical, intellectual and moral development of man’.
All men must be producers, which was not the same as wage-earners, especially
in Portugal:
It is hard for peoples such as our own—among whom too high a percentage have
found refuge in the liberal professions and the civil service, to the detriment of
agriculture and industry, the direct producers of the wealth off which all will live—
to raise their head.77
Salazar then pointed out that mankind had developed all manner of con-
straints, and even a morality, when it came to production, but no such con-
cepts for consumption, which was left totally unregulated and in the hands of
the individual. The only response of the State when it came to consumption
was to tax it, especially in the case of luxury items, ‘with no result safe to make
the items whose use it aimed to restrict even more appealing to the vanity
latent in our nature, because they have become more expensive’. Avoiding this,
by creating a specific morality of consumption, was more a task for the educa-
tor than the legislator. Salazar was thus returning to the notion of willpower
and to his stated desire to reform the people as the basis for any lasting im-
provement in the country’s fortunes. And where, above all else, was the solu-
76. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘Duas economias’ in Inéditos e dispersos II, vol. 2, p. 286.
77. Ibid., pp. 288–89.
tion for the rationalization of expenses to be found? Whose responsibility
should it be to ensure that the family was as economical, or rational, in its ex-
penses as a modern factory was economical and rational in its production? The
Portuguese housewife, who was not for the most part educated in such
matters:
It is often considered that the worker’s quality of life depends exclusively on the
scale of the salary; but we know that an American worker is not always able to live
as well as a French worker who earned, before the war, half of his salary—and
today even less. And that is down, even taking into account differences in the cost
of living, to the French woman’s abilities to economize.78
To be a good housewife, to save, to mend, to repair, to husband the family’s

resources: together, they added up to the supreme mission for a woman. It
should be up to her to anchor the family and reveal where and when to spend
in the best possible way. Any other role came at the expense of the family.
What then, was the Christian’s economic duty? To produce and to save, or,
better still, to produce a lot and spend well—a message which, Salazar pointed
out, was particularly relevant in Portugal.
As he was engaged in the Novidades press campaign, conducted from Os
Grilos, in Coimbra, Salazar made the acquaintance of Fr Mateo Crawley-
Boevey, an apostle of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, who had for years been criss-
crossing Europe, advocating the ‘enthronement’ of the Sacred Heart in every
Catholic home. In December 1927, Fr Mateo finally arrived in Portugal. He
spoke in the archbishoprics of Évora and Braga and then moved on to
Coimbra, where after two retreats with local priests, he was brought by
Cerejeira to stay in Os Grilos. According to Franco Nogueira, Fr Mateo was a
close confidant of Pius XI, whom he kept informed of the political situation,
and of potential Catholic leaders, in diverse countries. Still according to Franco
Nogueira, the three men—Fr Mateo, Cerejeira, and Salazar—engaged in long
political discussions, while Fr Mateo became the confessor and spiritual advisor
of his Portuguese hosts. Sometime in early 1928 Fr Mateo told Salazar,
You can’t fool me. Behind this coolness lies an insatiable ambition. You are a
volcano of ambition.79
A biography of Fr Mateo emphasizes the spiritual nature of the relation-

ship which blossomed in Coimbra: it was this wandering priest who convinced
78. Ibid., p. 293.

79. Franco Nogueira, A mocidade, p. 330. Nogueira claimed that Cerejeira was present, which made him the
sole witness to these words.
Cerejeira to accept the invitation to serve as Auxiliary, and putative successor,
to the Patriarch of Lisbon.80 The same work, referring to the relationship with
Salazar, adds merely that ‘in much the same way, Fr Mateo, it is said, played a
part with the other professor and friend Salazar, who taught political economy,
in the decision made some months later to resign his teaching career and
devote himself to affairs of state.’81 Twice, in future correspondence, Cerejeira
would refer to Fr Mateo’s role in launching (or, as we have seen, relaunching)
Salazar’s political career. On Salazar’s 55th birthday, in 1944, Cerejeira would
write,
Many will utter words of friendship to you today, and I don’t want to absent
myself. My Mass was dedicated to you, and I gave thanks to God for the excep-
tional gifts He gave you, for the historical mission He entrusted you with, and for
the good you have carried out. I asked for the graces of light, strength, humility
and consolation so that you may remain true to all that God and men expect from
you. Remember, on this happy day, what Fr Mateo would say if he were here (as
he did sixteen years ago in Coimbra).82
The other reference was of a less practical nature, focusing on the mystical
side of Fr Mateo Crawley-Boevey’s action. Cerejeira wrote Salazar, on 26 May
1945, suggesting, among other things, that, even if privately, Salazar should
consecrate Portugal to the Sacred Heart of Mary. He added, referring to the
surviving Fátima seer,
If, as Lúcia told the Holy Father at the start of the war, the Consecration made by
the Bishops would spare Portugal the war—what then would not be achieved by
the consecration made by you in the grace of light, of strength, of glory?
Are you not at the heart of so many graces bestowed on us by the Consecration to
the Heart of Jesus? Fr Mateo thought that you and your work were precisely one
of them.83
Fr Mateo Crawley-Boevey thus seems to have attempted to imbue Salazar

with a spirit of mission, urging him to accept a political role on behalf of the
Church in order to carry out the goal or re-Christianizing Portugal. In years to
come Cerejeira would make frequent appeals to this mission, although, as we
will see, he would be fighting a losing battle.
80. Marcel Bocquet, SS.CC., The Firebrand: The Life of Father Mateo Crawley-Bovey, SS.CC. Tr. by Father Francis
Larkin, SS.CC. (Washington, D.C.: Corda Press, 1966).
81. Ibid., p. 163.
82. AOS CP 49, letter, 28 April 1944, Cardinal Patriarch Manuel Cerejeira to António de Oliveira Salazar.
83. AOS CP 49, letter, Lisbon, 26 May 1945, Cardinal Patriarch Manuel Cerejeira to António de Oliveira
Salazar.
The time to satisfy his ‘insatiable ambition’ would come soon enough for
Salazar. In order to shore itself up, the military dictatorship decided to obtain a
popular mandate by holding presidential elections. General Carmona was the
sole candidate, and, it was claimed, he received 750,000 votes.84 He named a
new Prime Minister, Colonel José Vicente de Freitas, who formed a cabinet,
keeping, as a temporary measure, the Finance portfolio. But that Salazar’s
reputation had steadily gained ground there could be no doubt; on 19 April,
explaining his intentions to the press, Vicente de Freitas spoke of his intended
Finance Minister as ‘someone of the highest competence, whom the entire
country considers one of its greatest intellectual and technical assets in financial
matters.’85 Duarte Pacheco, at the time Minister of Public Instruction, was dis-
patched to Coimbra to recruit Salazar. Cerejeira, recounting the event decades
later, stated that Duarte Pacheco had made Salazar a ‘brief and loyal’ proposal:
‘“We consider you the right man. We were told you are competent. Will you
come to Lisbon, to put the State’s finances in order? If not, we shall have to
return power to the politicians.”’86 After a day’s hesitation, and much dis-
cussion with his closest friends—Cerejeira, Mário de Figueiredo, Bissaia
Barreto—and after Mass said by Fr Mateo Crawley-Boevey, Salazar phoned
Lisbon, to say that, should certain conditions be met, he would agree to
become Finance Minister for the second time. Later in life he would say of that
moment,
I hesitated all night […] I did not know if I should accept the proposals before
me. I was seized by a deep sadness, before the idea of leaving behind my pro-
fessorial Chair, and I did not ignore the dangerous gap that separates the man of
thought from the man of action. And, of course, I was afraid […] Imagine if I
failed to right the State’s finances. What would my students think of me?87
He was sworn in on 27 April 1928, the eve of his 39th birthday. To the Catho-
lic readers of Novidades, who would naturally enough consider themselves his
power base, he had words of warning:
Tell the Catholics that my sacrifice gives me the right to expect of them that they
be, of all Portuguese, the first to make the sacrifices I ask for, and the last to ask
for favors I cannot grant.
84. This was a largely fanciful number, probably designed to top Sidónio Pais’ also fanciful 500,000 votes in
the presidential election of 1918, in which he had, like Carmona in 1928, stood unopposed.
85. Franco Nogueira, A mocidade, p. 336.
87. Ibid., p. 43.
Tellingly, acceptance of ministerial office was presented as a sacrifice, a
stance which had been sketched out before, and which would be carefully pre-
served over the course of the next forty years.88 Santa Comba Dão and
Coimbra, the twin alternatives to Lisbon and government, would remain a con-
stant on Salazar’s lips, an option to be waved before the country when doubts
were expressed about his actions.
Terreiro do Paço, 1928–1932: National and International Recognition
On 13 March 1935 The Times of London, in a verdict which would be

picked up and often repeated by Salazar’s supporters, wrote, of his achieve-
ments as Minister of Finance, that ‘this is surely a record of which any country
might be proud, and which marks Senhor Salazar as one of the greatest
Finance Ministers of modern times.’ There were few dissenting voices. We
have seen how comparisons with other European dictators are of relatively
little value in understanding of Salazar’s trajectory, and indeed his mind. His
first four years in government reinforce the sense of peculiarity, or uniqueness,
of the Portuguese case. For all the power he enjoyed as minister (not too far
removed from the basic powers of a Minister of Finance today, it must be
said), Salazar remained in a relatively precarious position, one which rested,
ultimately, on the whim of a corporation and a caste he did not belong to and
could not control: the army. A civilian expert in a military government, he was
essentially welcomed for his expertise but looked on with suspicion by his
peers. Salazar’s political base in 1928, Portugal’s Christian-Democrats, had
never amounted to much in terms of numbers and resources. His immediate
priority, in political terms, was therefore to make himself indispensable,
generating a consensus of appreciation around his person which would protect
him from the whims of the military. Salazar had to stress continuously the
importance of Finance over other areas of government; assert himself as the
only viable man for the job; and demonstrate that he could lead the country,
through sacrifice, abnegation, and undoubted pain, from the edge of the
precipice to a promised land of prosperity. His first task, therefore, was to
balance the budget, deemed to be an impossible feat, a Holy Grail of sorts.
It is a testament to Salazar’s skill as a politician that he was able to impose
his agenda on the country and above all on the army. As we have seen from his
early writings, Salazar posited the view that Portugal’s decline was the result of
88. Salazar, after his retirement, would tell one of his physicians, ‘You cannot imagine how much of a
sacrifice it was for me to take over at Finance and later to lead the government.’ Eduardo Coelho & António
Macieira Coelho, Salazar, o fim e a morte: História de uma mistificação (Lisbon: Publicações Dom Quixote, 1995),
p. 64.
many factors: financial, economic, political, and moral. We have also seen that
he believed the State—a well-run State, capable of identifying the national
interest and closing its ears to special interests—to be the agency which, given
time, space, and peace, could overturn all of these factors. To believe in
Salazar’s assurances of redemption for Portugal was to make a leap of faith,
accepting his ability to divine and pursue a hitherto elusive national interest.
Salazar called for the time, space, and peace necessary to carry out his goal. As
he put it again and again in the speeches of the period, financial reforms could
not last if political life returned to what it had been during the First Republic, a
form of warfare between different factions hungry for power. Despite the
ambition readily evident in such words, Salazar won over enough of the army
to survive, and, eventually, to supplant the military dictatorship, being given
room to create his own regime: the New State. The key to his success, how-
ever, was the battle of the budget, to which he dedicated himself fully, from
April 1928 onwards.
As we have seen, Sinel de Cordes had failed to restrict spending by the
State on itself, especially on matters of defense, unsurprising, perhaps, in a
military dictatorship. He had also made a number of unwise grants to
businesses, hoping to kickstart an economic revival. Lastly, Sinel de Cordes had
failed to secure the foreign loan which, since 1890, had been identified as the
way out of Portugal’s difficulties. Although Salazar would not, as we will see,
abandon hope of just such a loan, to be granted in less onerous conditions than
the ones offered to Sinel de Cordes, it was on the bread-and-butter issues of
the State’s income and expenditure that he concentrated. The power to curb
spending and to bring it within the bounds of the country’s possibilities was
part of the political bargain struck by Salazar in April 1928. In return for
leaving ‘the charming quietness of Coimbra to come and apply as Minister the
principles he had long taught at the Chair of Finance in the old University of
that town’,89 Salazar extracted four guarantees from the army’s leadership.
These conditions, highlighted as a masterpiece of foresight in the official
accounts of his career, henceforth acquired totemic status. Eighty years later
they seem to be plain common sense. They were, briefly, that each government
department live within the budget allotted to it by the Ministry of Finance; that
all measures liable to affect the State’s revenue or expenses first be discussed
with the Ministry of Finance; that the Ministry of Finance have the power to
veto any proposed increases in expenditure; and that the cooperation of all
government departments be given to the Ministry of Finance for the purposes
of reducing expenditure and collecting revenue.
89. Tomaz Wylie Fernandes, Professor Oliveira Salazar’s Record (Lisbon: SPN, 1939), p. 10.
How these terms were going to be obeyed was not immediately clear in
April 1928, especially given Salazar’s civilian status. That he could announce
them publicly seemed to suggest that the army had given him primacy over its
own wishes—but the army was too divided to speak with one voice, especially
in a crisis moment. The press dubbed Salazar o ditador das finanças (the financial
dictator), and the term stuck; he was the outstanding figure in the cabinet, the
sole man with a vision for turning Portugal around, and all concerned realized
this. He also possessed a bullet-proof confidence in his abilities, and in the
correctness of the medicine he was prescribing Portugal. On 8 May, at a
Council of Ministers, Salazar informed his colleagues of the steps he intended
to take, and the next day he met with the press. It soon became clear that a
period of sacrifice for all Portuguese was about to be entered into. Salazar hit
the ground running and immediately began to apply his policies. 20 May saw
the first meeting of a Council for Budget Reform, a cost-cutting body drawn
from across the administration. A budget, presented on 31 July, predicted a
surplus of 1,576 contos, or some 14,500 pounds sterling. Looking back to that
moment, António Ferro would write,
The first public reaction to his commonplace housewife’s budget was one of
absolute unbelief. It couldn’t be as simple as all that! If that was all there was in it,
one needn’t have gone to Coimbra University, one needn’t be a learned professor!
The second reaction, however, was of pain […]90
Pain was involved because this was a budget that would have been unthinkable
in a working democracy; Salazar cut spending by 140,000 contos (£1,292,700)
and increased revenue by 200,000 contos (£1,846,000). New taxes were intro-
duced, while existing levies, including the sinister-sounding Public Salvation
Tax, were increased. Civil servants, army officers, and old-age pensioners were
all hit. Taxes on property were also increased, notably in urban areas. After a
year of enforced savings on the part of the State, official figures were released,
and the result seemed astounding: the predicted surplus had mushroomed to
£2.6 million. Less money than predicted had been spent, while a lot more had
been collected than initially forecast. With some ups and downs, a line of
balanced budgets would be kept unbroken until the coming of the war; they
were the first priority, as far as the austere and discrete Minister of Finance was
concerned, of the regime, its sine qua non. By 1940, the total budget surpluses
over the past twelve years amounted to over £20 million—much more, as F. C.
90. Ferro, Salazar, p. 114.

C. Egerton pointed out, than Sinel de Cordes’ intended loan from the League
of Nations.91
Accumulating, through hard graft and sacrifice, such a sum might be seen
as a triumph, but its importance is reduced by the fact that Salazar did attempt
to secure a new international loan. In 1928 one of his most trusted confidants,
Mário de Figueiredo, was dispatched to London with a double mission; the
first, public, was to negotiate the complete end of Portugal’s war debt to Great
Britain; the second, confidential, was to secure a loan. While the public side of
the visit was a success, its confidential aspect was not; Portugal’s traditional
bankers in the City of London, Baring Brothers, were still wary of political
instability in Lisbon, and feared that a revolution might bring to power those
who would not honor this new loan. When they suggested that a national
plebiscite on the foreign loan might be held in Portugal, Salazar called a halt to
the negotiations. The failure to secure the loan on favorable terms undoubtedly
slowed down the pace of Salazar’s program; financial regeneration would have
to be achieved by husbanding Portugal’s limited means. Political capital could
be gained from this self-reliance, but only by reinforcing the nationalist
dimension of Salazar’s policies, and their autarkic flavor: by taking, in other
words, a step to the right. This step, in turn, made the regime more authori-
tarian, since not all could accommodate themselves to the ongoing financial
sacrifices. Financial savings meant, at the end of the day, increased hardship in
an already impoverished country, with social strife being the natural outcome.
Balanced budgets and order on the streets would, it was hoped, lure
Portuguese capital back into the country, where it might accumulate and then
serve as the engine for economic reconstruction. As Salazar explained, the
sacrifice being endured by the country had to be spread out in such a way as to
protect capital, which would power the country’s development.92 For this to
occur, there had to be confidence in the escudo’s stability and, as far as
monetary policy was concerned, Salazar had only one goal in mind: returning
the national currency to the gold standard from which it had been removed, as
a provisional measure, some forty years before. This was attempted, success-
fully, in July 1931, when confidence had been restored and sufficient gold
reserves amassed.93 That month, the Portuguese currency regained a status lost
91. Egerton, Salazar, p. 125.

92. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘Política de verdade/Política de sacrifício/Política nacional’ in Discursos, vol.
1 1928–1934, 3rd edition (Coimbra: Coimbra Editora, 1939), pp. 32–33.
93. This important step was preceded by a very long exposition by Salazar, through an official note, detailing
the stabilization of the escudo and reforms in the Bank of Portugal. See ‘A estabilização da moeda e a
reforma do Banco de Portugal’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 31 May 1931. Salazar concluded this long and
detailed technical exposition by writing, ‘We do not even have the right to congratulate ourselves with the
fact that, little by little, through all the difficulties, through all the sacrifices, through all the acts of fate, and
even through all the policies, the Bank of Portugal and the State were able to accumulate the sums and the
in 1891. However, and in a possible sign that Salazar’s thinking was in-
creasingly outdated, the British government itself abandoned the gold standard
two months later. Salazar’s response, amidst much public consternation, was to
follow suit in order to preserve currency conversion with sterling, a link which
was to be broken only during World War II. Such an important step was taken
after wide consultation with financial and industrial circles. To have remained
on the gold standard while sterling was devalued would have had catastrophic
results for Portuguese exports. The Times appreciated the gesture, and was, as
usual, highly complimentary of the Portuguese authorities, who had ‘succeeded
in managing their financial affairs with no small success during the period
caused by the depression in world trade and the fairly widespread abandon-
ment of the gold standard.’94 In Portugal there was apprehension, exploited by
the opposition, but with little effect; by January 1932 the loyal Diário da Manhã
could gloat with an article called ‘The financial ascetic and the victory of his
apostolate’.95
One of the aims of the desired loan had been to fund the restructuring of
Portugal’s national debt, which had been aggravated in wartime and weighed
heavily on the Portuguese economy. Much of each annual budget was dedi-
cated to servicing the debt by which, for decades, the Portuguese State had
kept itself in operation. Now, with a surplus at the end of each fiscal year,
Salazar was in a position to tackle this running sore. Foreign floating debt was
the first to be wiped out, something done in a year. Within another four years,
the domestic floating debt had also been resolved. A Consolidated Loan was
introduced in 1939 to unify and simplify repayments of four outstanding loans;
from then on all other outstanding foreign loans were systematically dealt with
in a similar fashion, with those bondholders who did not agree to the terms (a
minority) being bought out by the State. A significant factor was that much of
reserves necessary for the stabilization of the currency, without having recourse to foreign aid. It can instead
be said that all who contributed, through the long period which now comes to a close, to such a result, even
if they were unaware of it, have played their part in this reform.’ It is also worth noting that the Portuguese
government had long demanded that exporters provide it with three-quarters, and then, after Salazar’s arrival,
half, of their hard-currency earnings, in return for escudos, at the official rate of exchange, which was, in the
words of The Times, ‘substantially less than the prevailing in the open market.’ As the London newspaper
explained, ‘this change was equivalent to a 4 per cent tax on exports.’ The return to the gold standard
relieved exporters of this burden. See ‘Stabilized Currency in Portugal: End of a “Little War”’ in The Times
(London), 30 June 1931.
94. ‘City Notes: Financial Policy of Portugal’ in The Times (London), 25 April 1932.
95. Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 3 January 1932. In September 1931, on the eve of elections in Great Britain,
José Caeiro da Mata wrote Salazar from London saying that there was a general expectation of a Conserva-
tive landslide, which was ‘an indispensable condition for the economic resurgence of England and the return
to a stable currency and gold convertibility. This is more than enough reason for us Portuguese to be
interested in tomorrow’s events.’ AOS CP 173, letter, London, 26 October 1931, José Caeiro da Mata to
António de Oliveira Salazar.
the national debt was taken over by increasingly confident Portuguese inves-
tors, who bought out foreign bond-holders.
Salazar’s activity was felt on other fronts. Before the unveiling of his
second budget, Salazar embarked on fiscal reform, largely implementing the
recommendations of his 1926 report. The aim was to increase the State’s tax
take, which was still, by European standards, low. If the State was to act as the
agent of reform and modernization, then it would need the funds with which
to operate. Taxation of businesses was carried out on the basis of average
yields, not actual yearly returns, a device which, Salazar explained, encouraged
innovation and better performance, while punishing systematic failure. Salazar’s
performance in righting the financial situation received the applause of many,
who saw it as a triumph of orthodox financial thought, based on great courage.
Foreign observers quickly identified his key position in the cabinet. The Times
wrote, in November 1928, that ‘Colonel Freitas, the Prime Minister, maintains
law and order, but it is the Finance Minister who is the real reformer. General
Carmona, the figure head of the dictatorship and President of the Republic,
looks on, holding, as it were, a watching brief for the Army.’96 In February of
the following year, in its ‘Annual Financial and Commercial Review’, The Times
was again unflinching in its praise: having taken over a situation in which the
escudo was in free fall against sterling on the open (if illegal) market, Salazar,
by virtue of his budget and the underlying ‘drastic measure of economy and ad-
ministrative reform’, had re-established confidence in the Portuguese currency.
The newspaper concluded, ‘the energetic manner in which the present govern-
ment tackled its problems was the outstanding feature of Portuguese admini-
stration, and augurs well for its future.’97 Some months later, the praise was
even more fulsome:
[Salazar] has so far achieved a good measure of success. He has been able to
balance the budget, reorganize taxation, relieve the Treasury situation, increase the
gold reserve, peg the exchange, bring down the Bank rate one per cent, and tackle
the problem of colonial finance, all within a year […] All things considered, it may
be said that the outlook for reconstruction in Portugal is brighter than it has been
for many years.98
It might seem incredible that, given the difficulties attached to the

balancing of the budget, Salazar might have achieved it so quickly: that, in
96. ‘No Dictatorship in Portugal: Spanish View of Recent Discussions’ in The Times (London), 13 November
1928.
97. ‘Portugal: Exchange Difficulties’ in The Times (London), ‘Annual Financial and Commercial Review’, 5
February 1929.
98. ‘Financial Reform in Portugal: New Minister’s Work’ in The Times (London), 7 May 1929.
other words, in the space of fifteen months he had succeeded where so many
before him had failed. However, Salazar had a plan which he could apply, did
not have to answer to an electorate or a parliament, being, for the moment,
backed by the Army, and was actually reaping the benefits of an improving
financial and economic situation, as a number of commentators have pointed
out. Most economic historians now agree that a number of reforms imple-
mented from 1923 onwards had had a significant effect in shoring up the
country’s finances, notably by increasing the tax take and ensuring the value of
the escudo; it was the military dictatorship’s actions that put a halt to this
recovery. While these historians may be correct, it is, on the whole, fair to say
that the First Republic did not offer the guarantees of stability necessary to
oversee the transformation of a more secure financial footing into the basis for
an economic recovery, for great social improvement, or even for the normal
operation of its political life. Salazar must also be given credit insofar as his
reforms were able to withstand a number of shocks, shielding Portugal from
the effects of the Great Depression. The drop in emigrants’ remittances and
the drop in value of colonial goods did not prove catastrophic as they might
well have done in differing circumstances.
With the passing of time, Salazar’s concerns moved beyond the financial
and into the economic realm. Financial stability was a necessary part of
economic recovery; such recovery, by reducing the country’s dependency on
foreign imports, and by providing more goods for export, would in turn ensure
the continuation of financial solvency. Salazar, even in his University days, had
viewed the State as the agency best suited to coordinate this economic relaunch
of the country. This was to be carried out in a number of ways: protectionism
(always described, internationally, as prudent, in order not to invite retaliatory
tariffs against Portuguese exports), availability of credit, and investment in vital
infrastructure. These principles were adopted during Salazar’s initial stay in
power, and would be preserved until World War II. Reliance on protectionism
was confirmed by the customs reform of December 1929, which increased the
number of items subjected to tariffs; according to Tomás Wylie Fernandes, an
economic expert within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ‘additional protection’
was reserved for ‘manufactured articles which can be produced in Portugal on
fairly good economic conditions.’99 A more recent assessment is that this
reform ‘substantially reinforced the tariff barriers which protected Portuguese
industry against foreign competition.’100 In 1932, subsequent legislation in-
creased tariffs on all products by an extra 20%, stipulating that this could be in-
99. Wylie Fernandes, Professor Oliveira Salazar’s Record, p. 17.

100. J. Silva Lopes, ‘Protecionismo económico’ in Barreto & Mónica (eds), Dicionário de História de Portugal
vol. 9 Suplemento P/Z, (Lisbon: Figueirinhas, 2000), p. 188.
creased to 100%, or reduced to 5%, in the case of key raw materials and vital
machinery; this decree also empowered the government ‘to fix a maximum for
merchandise imports over fixed periods, to make provisional treaties for most-
favored nation treatment, and when necessary to denounce existing commer-
cial treaties.’101
If protectionism went some way towards stimulating domestic production,
then the availability of cheap credit, especially in the countryside, was another
key component in Salazar’s economic vision. To that end the Caixa Geral dos
Depósitos, a State-owned financial institution originally conceived to receive
obligatory payments to the State, was reformed, and its role expanded. The
Caixa Geral de Depósitos bankrolled the wave of public-works projects which
began to change the face of the country. These were hailed by the emerging
Salazarist regime as proof that a new era of concrete and tangible achievements
and improvements had been entered into; each inauguration—of a neighbor-
hood, of a road, of a school, of Caixa Geral de Depósitos agency, of a post office
and, more spectacularly, of a bridge, dam, or revamped port—was celebrated
as a victory over the nay-sayers and the remaining republican opposition.
Lisbon was dotted with landmark buildings; within walking distance of each
other could be found the campus of the Instituto Superior Técnico, the first
purpose-built university complex in the capital; the headquarters of the Instituto
Nacional de Estatística; and the national mint, the Casa da Moeda. Running along-
side the axis formed by these three buildings was perhaps the sweetest victory
of all, the Bairro Social do Arco do Cego, a long-planned neighborhood of afford-
able houses destined for the city’s working class, which had become a running
joke in the country, the ultimate proof of the corruption, delay, and lack of
executive ability that had characterized the First Republic.102 The Caixa Geral de
Depósitos was also given the mission of supporting investment in agriculture
through a new agency, the Caixa Nacional de Crédito. Meanwhile, a Junta
Autónoma de Estradas was created, to plan, invest in, and maintain a new net-
work of roads. It is customary nowadays to stress the political dimension of the
public-works project, and to describe the on-going battles for control of the
aesthetic nature of the projects themselves. Important as these themes are,
what mattered most at the time, of course, was that the projects were coming
to fruition—the country was being modernized after years of neglect, while the
State was equipping itself with the tools necessary for further transformations.
101. ‘Portuguese tariff change: General increase’ in The Times (London), 4 March 1932. The actual decree in
question was Decree 20.935, of 26 February 1932.
102. This new area of Lisbon received pride of place in the roving interview of Salazar conducted by António
Ferro in December 1938, which became the Introduction of Ferro’s already cited Salazar: Portugal and Her
Leader (London: Faber and Faber, 1939). The Bairro Social was inaugurated in 10 March 1935 by Salazar and
Carmona.
These plans, too, Salazar had long called for, as part and parcel of making the
Portuguese economy, especially its agriculture, more competitive: produce,
once harvested, had to be able to make it onto European markets as quickly as
possible.
Salazar was not alone in the planning of the physical transformation of the
country. Ezequiel de Campos, an engineer who had previously served as
deputy and Minister of Agriculture during the republican period, was one
mentor.103 A believer in Portugal’s economic possibilities, Campos, whose
political past prevented him from assuming a more public role (he would serve
in the Corporative Chamber, but was never given a ministerial position again),
egged Salazar onwards, pushing for the electrification of the countryside, large-
scale investment in irrigation and reforestation, and the resettling of population
away from the crowded north of Portugal into the empty south. Campos was
relentless in his prodding, seemingly unaware of the political constraints on
Salazar, and his criticism of slow economic transformation of the country
could be brutal: but because it was carried out in private, Salazar did not drive
him away. In November 1931, for example, Ezequiel de Campos congratulated
Salazar for the report on the application of the 1930-1931 budget. His praise
carried a considerable sting in the tail: ‘I feel sad, not to mention indignant, by
the slow pace of economic reform […] Essentially, the superavit is a measure of
the government’s incapacity to build’. He added that
This historical moment, with you holding the Finance portfolio, is unique for
Portugal, but three years have already been wasted, for lack of vision and courage;
woe is me, an old man of figures, for in the future’s computations I do not divine,
with such men, the coordination of sufficient activity to lead Portugal to
prosperity for its people through the best application of its capital, its land, and its
labor.104
Financial and economic considerations came together in the shape of

perhaps the most emblematic policy of the period, the Campanha do Trigo
(Wheat Campaign). Evidently borrowing its name and presentation from Italy,
the Campanha do Trigo applied some, but not all, of the solutions identified by
Salazar in his first academic dissertation, ‘A questão cerealífera: O trigo’. A call
103. Fernando Rosas includes Ezequiel de Campos in the category of ‘neo-physiocrats’, that is, the
‘defenders of a philosophy of economic development which rested on the modernization and reform of, and
re-investment in, agriculture’. Rosas, Salazarismo e fomento económico (Lisbon: Editorial Notícias, 2000).
104. AOS CP 45, letter, 2 November 1931, Ezequiel de Campos to António de Oliveira Salazar. Ezequiel de
Campos would not let up. Nearly nine years later he informed Salazar that, on a visit to his farm in Alentejo,
he had found a tortoise, and had shown it to his granddaughter. ‘“Grandad, what is this lazy creature which
pretends to walk?” “It’s the National Electrification Junta” (Compare it with Italy).’ AOS CP 45, letter, 24
April 1940, Ezequiel de Campos to António de Oliveira Salazar.
went out to make Portugal self-sufficient in wheat, so that no longer would the
importation of such a basic foodstuff harm the balance of trade in what was,
after all, an agricultural country. This was to be achieved by a variety of means,
which reconciled the desired end—self-sufficiency in wheat—with the political
needs, unknown to the ‘academic’ Salazar, of working in partnership with
southern landowners, a powerful and loud voice in Portuguese politics. Thus,
the Campanha did not contain any immediate plans for expensive irrigation
schemes, or any thoughts on the vexed questions of land ownership and popu-
lation distribution. The production of wheat was to be increased by devoting
more land to its cultivation and by improving average yields. In order to guar-
antee this, the State flexed its increasingly powerful muscles; there were sub-
sidies for clearing land for cultivation and prizes for the most successful
farmers (although the criteria employed reserved such prizes for large land-
owners). Further subsidies were available in terms of transport and distribution
and, of course, there was a guaranteed sale price for the crop. One estimate is
that, throughout the 1930s, the prices set by the State were some 50% higher
than international market prices.105 The entire country, especially its consumers,
was paying a heavy price for this drive for self-sufficiency. The Campanha was,
however, in line with Salazar’s thinking on the economy, since it involved
restricting spending to essentials, and Portuguese-produced essentials at that.
Another pillar of the campaign was the availability of cheap credit; for
every hectare of land devoted to wheat, the farmer was entitled to borrow 450
escudos, with interest rate set, initially, at 8%;106 once again, conditions favored
the larger landowners, who were able to bring down the costs of production
and who were able to produce the greatest yields from their land, if nothing
else because they could allow much of it to lie fallow for a number of years.
More recent historiography of the period has focused on the other bene-
ficiaries of the Campanha. The fertilizer industry, spearheaded by Portugal’s
most important industrial entity, the Alfredo da Silva-led Companhia União
Fabril, as well as the manufacturers of agricultural tools and machinery, also
profited substantially from the new opportunities. Shortly before the launch of
the Campanha, Alfredo da Silva had invested massively in the development of
the fertilizer division, and had secured from the government increased tariff
protection for his products; as one historian puts it, ‘unless one believes that
Alfredo da Silva guessed the start of the Campanha, the more plausible explana-
tion is that the financial/industrial complex in the country was one of the main
105. Alfredo Marques, Politica económica e desenvolvimento em Portugal (1926-1959) (Lisbon: Livros Horizonte,
1988), p. 77.
106. Marques, Politica económica, p. 78.
proponents of the Campanha.’107 An important economic alliance between large
landowners and industrialists was thus forged by the State through the
Campanha do Trigo. Initial results were more than promising, as production shot
up—so much so, that by 1933, in the face of a real break in the price of wheat,
the campaign had to be reviewed. In truth, though, such increases came at a
price, and not just to the consumer. The land yielded more wheat per acre than
ever before, but soon the fertility of land long fallow was exhausted—so much
so that soil erosion made much of it unusable for any other purpose.108
Ezequiel de Campos has been mentioned as an influence in terms of
economic planning; another was Quirino de Jesus, long-time nationalist
ideologue and political conspirator. One historian writes, ‘his reports and
opinions decisively influenced the path of the economic “reconstitution” and
the new colonial policy of the Military Dictatorship and the New State.’109
Some of Salazar’s key speeches from his early days in office were based on
drafts sent to him by Quirino. Quirino’s vision of the future was apocalyptic,
and influenced Salazar’s reading of the international situation:
The true situation of the world, especially of Europe and America, is defined by a
political, moral, economic and thus financial decadence, even in the countries
where dictatorships have been formed. The influence of the causes for depression
is always greater than the influence of the labors of reconstruction.110
Quirino de Jesus argued that in order to ensure its survival as a colonial

power in a coming war—consolidating the social and public order, preparing
its military, providing jobs for the population, and ensuring its economic self-
sufficiency—Portugal required a ‘continuous general effort’ to oversee the
employment of its remaining assets. Centralization of these assets in the hands
of the State—more specifically, of the Ministry of Finance—was the sole
possible solution. Salazar evidently agreed with this diagnosis, but, in truth,
most of the actual projects which Quirino de Jesus presented Salazar were
ignored by the latter. A final figure, who became the face of the public-works
campaign, was Duarte Pacheco, a brilliant engineering student who, born in
1900, by 1927 was director of the Instituto Superior Técnico, being an avowed
supporter of a moderate republican force, the União Liberal Republicana, led by
107. José Machado Pais, ‘Campanha do Trigo’ in Barreto & Mónica (eds), Dicionário de História de Portugal, vol.
7, pp. 227–29.
108. Fernando Brito Soares, ‘A Agricultura’ in Pedro Lains & Álvaro Ferreira (eds), História Económica de
Portugal (1700–2000) vol. 3 O Século XX (Lisbon: ICS, 2005), p. 179.
109. Fernando Rosas, ‘Quirino Avelino de Jesus’ in Fernando Rosas & J. M. Brandão de Brito (eds),
Dicionário de História do Estado Novo vol. 1 (Lisbon: Bertrand, 1996), p. 497.
110. Cartas e relatórios de Quirino de Jesus a Oliveira Salazar (Lisbon: Comissão do Livro Negro Sobre o Regime
Fascista, 1987), Document 20a, undated letter from Quirino de Jesus to António de Oliveira Salazar, p. 149.
Francisco da Cunha Leal. It was Duarte Pacheco, as we have seen, who, as
Minister of Public Instruction, was dispatched to Coimbra to convince Salazar
to enter the cabinet in 1928—and, in return, when free to form his own gov-
ernment, Salazar invited him to be Minister of Public Works and Communica-
tions, a new portfolio. Duarte Pacheco became the face of the ‘dynamic’ and
‘new’ Portugal, the unstoppable modernizer with direct access to Salazar—but,
as can be expected in such an environment, and given his republican past, one
who had to put up with much intrigue against himself.
During these initial years of government, Salazar was keen to preserve the
common touch he had honed through his Novidades articles. He portrayed him-
self as a ruler who had the duty to listen, but who expected as well to be
obeyed. He demystified his own actions through the frequent comparison with
a ‘good housewife’, pointing out that the principles which should guide the
successful management of a well-run house were no different from the ones he
was employing to regenerate the country. Salazar’s social background was used
to good effect, especially given the inability to resolve the social ills affecting
the country. As he put it in his 28 May 1930 speech,
One need not have risen, like me, from below, from the people, from labor,
from poverty, to feel keenly the inferiority in quality of the life—material and
moral—lived by the Portuguese, in comparison with the rest of Western Europe
[…]111
Salazar also stressed the importance of Catholic support, in an explanation

which bordered on the mystical:
It is natural that many of you should be curious about the Minister of Finance…
Here he is, and he is, as you can see, a very modest person. His health is
precarious, yet he is never ill; his capacity for work is limited, yet he works with no
rest.
How is this miracle possible? Because some very good Portuguese souls pray, and
hope, that he should continue in his present post.112
Technical documents such as budgets were preceded by a report, in which

their contents were explained in relatively simple language. There was a clear
desire to address the people directly, to reassure their faith in him; Salazar
called this his ‘policy of truth’. Just as the statistics had to be reliable, so too the
111. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘Ditadura administrativa e revolução política’ in Discursos, vol. 1, 1928–1934
3rd edition (Coimbra: Coimbra Editora, 1939), p. 58.
112. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘Os problemas nacionais e a ordem da sua solução’ in Discursos, vol. 1, p.
10.
country needed to know what was being done, and why. Herein lay much of
Salazar’s appeal at the time. His position being precarious, the ditador das
finanças argued for time and his countrymen’s trust, using figures to dazzle them
with what had been achieved, and what could be achieved in the future. In the
report accompanying his second budget, for example, Salazar claimed that the
worst was over, and that the nation could now begin to address some of the
long-term problems which faced it. Frequent newspaper interviews served the
same purpose. In Novidades, on 1 May 1929, Salazar stressed the need for
deeper reforms; otherwise, what had been achieved would be lost in due time.
It was his intention to carry out an orderly revolution in order to forestall a dis-
orderly one. This interview was followed five days later by official note which
addressed Salazar’s intended fiscal reform, which was meeting some
opposition. In another Novidades interview, published in 1 January 1930, Salazar
announced that the financial crisis had been overcome, and that it was time to
deal both with the economy and with the country’s deeper spiritual malaise.
The Great Depression would soon lead him to revise this estimate. There was
one exception to the financial stringency of Salazar’s years as Minister of
Finance. This was the modernization program unveiled for the navy, whose
collection of warships, which dated from the Great War and, in some cases,
from before that conflict, had become, more than an embarrassment, a liability
for those called upon to serve in them. In a regime dominated by the army, it
was the navy that was first to be re-equipped, which naturally caused additional
tension.
The outwardly simple life of Coimbra was reproduced, as much as
possible, in Lisbon; one of the maids from Grilos, Maria de Jesus Caetano
Freire, was brought to the capital to organize Salazar’s household. This was a
wandering household, Salazar having rented three houses between 1928 and
1937 when, as we shall see, his private life was dramatically altered. The most
famous of these private residences was number 3, Rua do Funchal. This house
was the stage for one of the November 1932 interviews with journalist
António Ferro.113 A visitor could walk straight from the front door into the
Minister’s study:
Here’s just a sort of sofa with very ordinary cushions, a pile of papers stacked up
on a bit of a table like a sort of Leaning Tower of Pisa. There is a bookcase and
113. The Diário da Manhã (Lisbon) reprinted, on 8 May 1931, an interview with Salazar published by a
Brazilian journalist, Maurício Marques Lisboa, in the Rio newspaper Correio da Manhã. Marques Lisboa wrote,
‘The minister lives in a modest house on the Rua do Funchal, near Arco do Cego. There are no guards at the
door, just as there is none of that attention-seeking bustle so pleasing to many on the rise. It is inside the four
walls of his most modest office that the gravest questions related to the resurrection, the greatness, and the
prosperity of the Pátria are decided.’
there are three pictures; there were only three, so I can remember them very well
indeed.114
To keep himself warm while he worked, Ferro continued, Salazar wore an

overcoat, with a blanket around him. Heating costs were kept to a minimum.
In the summer of 1929 Salazar slipped on a rug in his office, breaking his right
leg. He spent three months in hospital but continued to work; in fact, his room
became a political headquarters, with even a Council of Ministers held there.
The long absence fueled rumors that Salazar’s health was precarious.115
Salazar and his financial reforms were not immune to criticism, and despite
the existing censorship much of this criticism was publicly available. It was fre-
quently asserted that the numbers were fictitious, the balancing of the budget
being thus a hoax perpetrated on the nation. Bernardino Machado, twice-
deposed President of the Republic (in 1917 and in 1926), in a letter to the
League of Nations, described the budget as a lie. The reality, argued Machado,
was that expenditure had increased massively, especially with the military, and
that a foreign loan was still being sought to remedy the situation. This letter
was responded to with an official note, on 12 October 1928, restating the
achievements so far. This note was added to with an interview in the mon-
archist daily A Voz two days later, showing how seriously Salazar, intent on
gaining the financial markets’ confidence, took the accusation. Attacks on the
veracity of Salazar’s figures became standard fare for the republican opposition,
dogging him in this initial period. The most damaging attacks of all were
delivered by the other man who, in living memory, had balanced a budget—
Afonso Costa, leader of the Democratic party until December 1917 and the
Republic’s most influential politician.
Perhaps the most common of all criticisms, and one that would stay with
Salazar for the rest of his political career, was that he was insensitive to the
material plight of the country’s poor. The Portuguese State, under his steward-
ship, was becoming better-off, but its people remained destitute and could see
no way out of their situation. This line began to be heard as early as 1928 and
Salazar realized immediately that it must be countered.116 He attempted to do
114. Ferro, Salazar, p. 200. The pictures were the Sacred Heart of Jesus, ‘a pleasant portrait of an old lady’,
and a print of Christophe Plantin’s sonnet, ‘Le bonheur de ce monde’, in many ways the embodiment of the
quiet, habitual life that Salazar insisted on for his fellow Portuguese.
115. The British chargé d’affaires wrote, on 30 May 1929, that ‘I have been informed, on authority for which
I cannot vouch, that in reality he is suffering from an advanced form of tuberculosis and that he will not be
able to carry on his official duties.’ This diplomat continued, ‘should this be true, it would be a great tragedy,
for it would be very hard indeed to find another Portuguese combining such ability, energy, courage and
disinterested devotion to the interests of the country.’ NA FO, W 5504/62/36, Mr Osborne to Sir Austen
Chamberlain.
116. In June 1928 Salazar received an anonymous letter, which after some gratuitous anti-clerical invective
made a telling point: ‘Imagine, Dr Salazar, that you are no longer a minister, but rather an honest head of a
so through an interview published in Diário de Notícias on 2 February 1929.
This interview was an important part of selling a program of material
development to the Portuguese. In the face of Portuguese capitalism’s timidity,
the State must have money with which to invest: only it could pay for railways
and roads, dams, irrigation schemes, expansion of telephone services, and
ports, all while carrying out further financial reforms and ensuring colonial
development. António Ferro tested Salazar on the issue again in December
1932, and received a simple reply: whatever sacrifices were being endured at
the moment would more than be made up for by the improvements to the
country’s infrastructure, into which so much money was being poured: ‘“It is
obvious that we have got a bad season to live through, just the phase in which
our finance and our economy seem to clash; but we are coming to the time
when they will be reconciled, when they will unite to bring wealth to the nation
and well-being to the individual’”.117 Criticism could be heard as well from
established economic lobbies, notably the powerful pressure group União dos
Interesses Económicos (UIE—Union of the Economic Interests) which had played
a prominent role in denigrating the republican regime through its daily news-
paper O Século. In 1929, for example, the UIE complained about the low avail-
ability of agricultural credit. Again Salazar responded quickly to the accusation,
with public pronouncements on 20 September, 24 September, and 12 October.
Another source of criticism which Salazar had to face from the start
surrounded his colonial policy, or the lack thereof. Salazar was accused of
ignoring Portugal’s imperial dimension and the dangers the country’s under-
developed colonies faced in a hostile world. This was the line of argument
adopted by Cunha Leal, one of the most unsettled politicians of the age. This
criticism was very dangerous, because of both the hopes deposited by the
Portuguese in their colonies and because its author enjoyed a considerable
following within the republican current of the dictatorship. Cunha Leal had a
distinguished past, and had hoped to benefit from the military coup; he was
one of the pin-ups for conservative republicans who hoped the military dic-
tatorship would result in a stable parliamentary regime, purged of the Demo-
crats. As such, Cunha Leal had the allegiance of many officers, including some
cabinet ministers. A member of the Bank of Angola’s board, Cunha Leal
delivered a powerful attack against Salazar in a public speech on 4 January
1930, claiming that Angola, Portugal’s prize colony, needed to be funded
family, and a worker, whose weekly income is 108 escudos, but whose weekly outlay is 140 escudos, while
having to feed seven people: yourself, your wife, and five small children. How would you resolve the
domestic finances, that is, the imbalance between income and expense? According to your criteria as a
Minister, you would throw one, two, or three children into the street to bring down the expenses […]’. AOS
CO PC 3D, anonymous letter to António de Oliveira Salazar, June 1928.
117. Ferro, Salazar, pp. 211–12.
properly, since it was facing economic meltdown. Emergency payments were
needed immediately, giving way, in time, to a regular subsidy. Angola was not a
luxury, as some (and here the target was undoubtedly Salazar) seemed to think.
Cunha Leal’s criticism would increase in tone, with Angola at the center of his
attentions. In May he returned to the fray, with a pamphlet (Salazar, Filomeno da
Câmara e o Império Colonial Português) which added a layer of personal insult,
calling Salazar a ‘willingly castrated monk’. This was too much for Salazar, who
forced the government to banish Cunha Leal to the Azores as part of a crack-
down on the opposition.
Historians have tended to accept that Salazar’s numbers were not fictitious,
a view in line with the international markets’ approval of his actions. They
have, however, questioned the originality of his reforms. American historian
Douglas Wheeler, for example, argued that taxation reforms coupled with
reduced spending had been proposed by Armando Marques Guedes, the last
Finance Minister of the First Republic, and that these proposals had been
largely adopted—but not implemented—by the military dictatorship that
followed.118 Salazar, thus, merely strengthened and implemented, rather than
devised, what was already policy. Other historians also emphasize how certain
men, such as Ezequiel de Campos and Quirino de Jesus, guided much of
Salazar’s thinking on economic matters. Recent economic historians have
stressed that the underlying financial situation had benefited from a series of
key reforms in the mid 1920s, while the economy was, if not charging ahead,
then at least reasonable healthy. Pedro Lains, for example, writes that
The occurrence of an avowed financial crisis and the evident political crises seem
hard to square with the existence of a positive cycle for the Portuguese economy
in the 1920s. The twinning of political instability, during the republican regime,
with the financial difficulties and with possible economic difficulties is a clever
118. Douglas Wheeler, A ditadura militar portuguesa, 1926–1933 (Lisbon: Europa-América, 1986), 38–39.
Marques Guedes, who attempted to tread a fine line between the Republic and the military dictatorship,
launched in 1930 a Grupo de estudos democráticos. In June 1931, after a series of newspaper articles defending his
role as Minister of Finance, Marques Guedes came in for heavy fire from the Diário da Manhã, which denied
him any role in the financial and economic recovery of the country: ‘Mr Marques Guedes’ action as Minister
of Finance was merely the complement of the pernicious work of his predecessors. It did not benefit in any
way the public finances or the national economy.’ ‘Financeiros politicos…’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 16
June 1931. A similar reception was reserved for a conference held in Coimbra: see ‘Estudos
financeiros…democráticos’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 30 June 1931. The basic line adopted in this
article—that Marques Guedes was merely engaging in propaganda for the old Democratic party—would be
kept alive in a series of hostile, or even violent, articles: ‘The lecture given by Mr Marques Guedes yesterday,
in Coimbra, was a complete disappointment—a true disaster which, by itself, would suffice, in any country of
illiterates, to destroy once and for all the prestige of that statesman’. ‘A montanha e o rato…’ in Diário da
Manhã (Lisbon), 1 July 1931.
construct of the 1926 dictatorship. Once in power, the dictatorship itself would
come to benefit from the relative economic prosperity […]119
All of this may be correct, and Salazar may well have benefited from the ideas
and collaboration of others, who went unacknowledged. He was not, however,
the first politician to do, and would not be the last.
From the Terreiro do Paço to São Bento
Salazar, during his long sojourn in Coimbra, had not been immune to
political ambition. Those who knew him best understood that he longed to
serve in government, and in many ways saw it as his due. He also had a
relatively clear understanding of the path which Portugal should follow, and
was one of the leading figures in a political party committed to participating in
government. However, the First Republic made it impossible for someone with
his views to make any sort of lasting imprint. The military dictatorship, begun
in 1926, altered the circumstances dramatically, and by 1928 Salazar was
handed the Finance portfolio with what were, at the time, reinforced powers.
He was not, however, content with this situation, which was both precarious
and potentially self-defeating: success as Finance Minister might lead, once the
country’s accounts had been righted, to a dismissal. Putting the situation in its
simplest terms, how long would officers, in the context of a military dictator-
ship, put up with low pay? While working on the budget, therefore, Salazar was
also mounting what was, in essence, an assault—one historian calls it the
second stage of his climb120—on power. In this process he was greatly aided by
the nature of the regime he was operating in. The military officers who manned
the dictatorship can be divided into three broad currents: the conservative
republicans, who intended to use the period of the military dictatorship to
revise the 1911 Constitution, shore up the executive branch, refashion the
party system, and return the country to constitutional politics; what António
Costa Pinto calls ‘authoritarian conservatives’, who wanted a State-built single
party, corporatist representation (along Catholic lines) and governments in-
spired by ‘technocratic competence’ (those closest, in other words, to Salazar’s
own position); and, finally, the exaltés who made up the radical right, and who
were looking forward to a fascist/totalitarian solution.121 These three factions
119. Pedro Lains, Os progressos do atraso: Uma nova história económica de Portugal (Lisbon: Imprensa de Ciências
Sociais, 2003).
120. Yves Léonard, Salazarismo e fascismo (Lisboa: Editorial Inquérito, 1998), p. 45. Originally published as
Salazarisme et fascisme (Paris: Éditions Chandeigne, 1996).
121. António Costa Pinto, Salazar’s Dictatorship and European Fascism: Problems of Interpretation (Boulder: Social
Science Monographs, 1995), p. 150.
were at war with each other, but there were also plenty of individuals who
crossed seamlessly from one faction to another; these were not watertight
categories.
For Salazar, the greatest initial threat was the conservative republican
faction, whose members were the strongest of his many enemies. Salazar feared
that as his star rose, they might be tempted to make peace with the Democratic
party, as had occurred in the wake of the Sidónio Pais presidency, when both
sides had come together to defeat the monarchist rising of 1919. The conserva-
tive republican group included two of the Prime Ministers whom Salazar
served under, Vicente de Freitas and Ivens Ferraz; they included as well, at an
early stage of the military dictatorship, its power broker, General Carmona.
Carmona’s political stance would change with time, though, and he would,
despite some hiccups, remain committed to Salazar. Armed with successive
balanced budgets, international praise for his action, and a growing number of
acolytes, Salazar began to undermine the cohesion of the military dictatorship.
On the one hand he began to formulate his vision for the future of Portugal;
on the other, Salazar provoked clash after clash among the military factions
until only he was left standing. In a June 1928 speech, Salazar addressed what
he believed should be Portugal’s future course. Portugal had four problems
that must be dealt with sequentially: financial, economic, social, political. Once
its finances had been restored, and the currency had been stabilized, the
economy would begin to recover. Increased production meant more wealth,
whose redistribution would in turn help resolve the social question. The last
problem—the political—could not for the moment be resolved, since it was
hard to find a lasting political solution in the face of such pressing practical
issues. But should it not be resolved in due time, all the effort made in the
other fields would be in vain. For the moment, then, Salazar appealed to the
military’s unity, sense of duty, and spirit of sacrifice, asking its members to
stand behind him in order to help save the country.
Salazar’s arrival in cabinet did not lead to greater government stability, far
from it. Various crises would follow as a result, in which he was anything but a
passive bystander. He became Finance Minister on 27 April 1928. Barely half a
year later, on 7 November, Prime Minister Colonel Vicente de Freitas resigned.
The British ambassador was one of many people trying to make sense of what
had happened; without a free press, and with Lisbon being full ‘of the rumors
in which it delights’, this was hard to do. Vicente de Freitas’ actions were
‘ascribed to a variety of reasons, the majority and most plausible of which
hinge upon the alleged dissatisfaction of the Minister of Finance with circum-
stances or conditions incompatible with his principles or policy.’122 For the
moment, though, Carmona insisted that the two men continue to work
together; the result of this first clash was a draw which pleased neither. The
crisis led to the entry of Salazar’s lifelong friend and collaborator, Mário de
Figueiredo, into the cabinet, as Minister of Justice. In Portuguese politics, the
holder of the Justice portfolio oversaw relations with the Catholic Church. On
26 June, Figueiredo, like Salazar a politically committed Catholic, rolled back
some of the harsher provisions of the law of separation of Church and State.
He made it easier, for example, to organize and carry out religious processions,
and allowed bell-ringing at any time of the day; previously such activities had to
be agreed with local authorities. The decision, which outraged many republic-
cans, led to a full-scale cabinet crisis, with Figueiredo in the firing line; hard-
pressed, he made it clear that he would resign if the measure was overruled.
Salazar advised him against such a stand, but informed his friend that he would
share his political fate. On 2 July a Council of Ministers was held in Salazar’s
hospital room, in which the two men were overruled. Figueiredo, as
announced, quit his portfolio, and indeed Salazar followed suit on 3 July.123
Carmona then acted, not for the first time, to resolve the crisis, going per-
sonally, on the 4th, to Salazar’s hospital room, asking him to change his mind
and refrain from leaving politics. The result was comical: while all around him
the government fell, Salazar remained in place. Learning of Carmona’s actions,
Vicente de Freitas presented the resignation of the cabinet and it was accepted;
a new cabinet had to be built around the increasingly powerful Finance
Minister by Carmona’s appointed candidate, General Ivens Ferraz.124 It is
important to note that Figueiredo was not returned to the cabinet; Salazar did
122. NA FO, Western Europe, Confidential W 11039/490/36 (No. 380), letter, Lisbon, 21 November 1928,
Sir C. Barclay to Lord Cashendun.
123. On 3 July Salazar explained his actions to both Carmona and Vicente de Freitas. To the latter he wrote,
‘Your Excellency knows that I never asked for anything that might improve the legal status of Catholics,
carefully avoiding the complication of those national problems which all of us were called on to resolve with
the greatest possible urgency […] But it is also known—and Your Excellency never forgot it, I must
confess—that for the government to adopt a measure which violated rights already conceded by the law or
by former government to Catholics, or to the Church in Portugal, would be tantamount to reneging on a
commitment made to me.’ AOS CO PC 3C, letter, Lisbon, 3 July 1929, António de Oliveira Salazar to
Colonel Vicente de Freitas.
124. A letter from José Alberto dos Reis to Salazar, with suggestions of names for various ministerial port-
folios, shows that the latter was not a passive bystander in the formation of the cabinet. Alberto dos Reis
added, ‘I have the feeling that your attitude and conduct during the crisis were the ones that most suited your
prestige and the country’s interests. I do not agree with Mário. Letting matters slide towards a new revolu-
tionary adventure was a doubly dangerous step […] I note that your name has emerged enhanced from this
disturbance, because you remain above all intrigue, with your eyes fixed on the high interests of the Pátria.’
AOS CO PC 3C, letter, Coimbra, 9 July 1929, J. Alberto dos Reis to António de Oliveira Salazar. That same
day the German minister in Lisbon, von Baligard, wrote Salazar to congratulate him on his continued
ministerial career.
not insist on total victory over his opponents. A British diplomat tried to make
sense of what had happened in the following manner:
The recent crisis is the long-anticipated culmination of the antagonism between

Colonel de Freitas, the out-going Prime Minister, and Dr Salazar, the Minister of
Finance and the only one of the old government to retain his post. This antago-
nism was due to irreconcilable differences of temperament and political principle.
The Prime Minister was a cavalry officer and a convinced democrat, the Minister
of Finance is a professor and an ardent Catholic, which implies Royalist sym-
pathies and inspires, however unjustly, suspicions of reactionary views. For as long
as the salvation of the country was a vital and immediate problem, they subor-
dinated personal differences to patriotism. Now that their combined efforts have
brought the ship of state into comparatively smooth water, the truce could no
longer be maintained and the break came over a question of Catholic privilege,
involving the basic conflict between the Church and democracy.
For this diplomat, there was no doubt who had won, and what the conse-
quences were:
There are several Royalists in the new Ministry, and it appears to me to indicate a
move towards the Right and a regrettable association of the dictatorship with
ultramontane and Royalist tendencies […] I […] see a serious menace to the
dictatorship in its increasing subordination to Catholic influence and the resultant
awakening of suspicion and hostility in the country […]125
During the crisis, like other ministers, Salazar spoke to the press in an
attempt to explain his side of the story; he conceded a major interview to O
Século on 7 July. During the crisis, moreover, his second budget, again balanced,
appeared, reinforcing the notion of his indispensability. Vicente de Freitas, for
his part, did not disappear from the scene, serving as mayor of Lisbon, a posi-
tion of great visibility which angered the more radical supporters of the dicta-
torship.126 The successful resolution of this crisis was followed, on 21 October
1929, by another significant political speech. Salazar now made an appeal for
125. NA FO, Western Europe, Confidential, W 6848/62/36, letter, Lisbon, 9 July 1929, G. Godolphim
Osborne to Mr A. Henderson.
126. See AOS CO PC 3B, letter, 16 May 1932, ‘A group of veterans of 28 May’ to General Domingos de
Oliveira: ‘Is it possible to preserve an Administrative Commission in the first city of the country which, by all
possible means, fought and still fights the situação born on 28 May […]?’ Vicente de Freitas was removed
from this position in February 1933 in the run-up to the publication of the final draft of the 1933
Constitution, which he opposed. Later that year, Vicente de Freitas wrote Carmona denying that he was
involved in any conspiracy: in my quality of disciplined soldier, I know only the path that Your Excellency, as
chief of us all, should mark out.’ AOS CP 122, letter, Lisbon, 24 June 1933, José Vicente de Freitas to Óscar
Fragoso Carmona. His name would continue to be included in possible plots against Salazar, despite this
letter.
the drafting of a new Constitution, capable of creating a stable political order.
There was an added point to the speech: the army must give way, and he,
Salazar must be in position to benefit from this devolution of power to
civilians, in order to pursue the goals he had set out for Portugal. Dictator-
ships, of necessity temporary and volatile, were acceptable, but only if they
prepared, and gave way to, a new order. Salazar’s usual political references—
Leo XIII, Le Bon, Maurras—are clear in this speech:
In the face of the moral and material ruins accumulated by revolutionary in-
dividualism, of the tendencies of collective interest which those ruins provoked
everywhere in the spirit of our time, and of the superior needs of the Portuguese
Pátria, the constitutional reorganization of the State must be based on a solid,
prudent, and conciliatory nationalism which ensures the coexistence and regular
activity of all natural, traditional, and progressive elements in society. Among them
we should specify the family, the moral and economic corporation, the parish, and
the municipality. It seems to me that a Portuguese Constitution must offer politi-
cal guarantees to these primary factors, in order to allow them to influence directly
or indirectly the formation of the supreme bodies of the State. Only then will the
State be the juridical expression of the nation [rooted] in the reality of its collective
life.127
Less than half a year after its appointment, on 13 January 1930, General Ivens
Ferraz quit the government after another crisis at whose heart stood, once
again, Salazar. Ivens Ferraz had developed contacts with republican figures, in-
cluding Armando Marques Guedes, an obvious alternative to Salazar for the
Finance portfolio, having held that position in the cabinet overthrown by the
1926 coup.128 Salazar reacted by flexing his muscle, using Ivens Ferraz’s known
association with Cunha Leal as an excuse. Having been criticized publicly by
Cunha Leal,129 who, as we have seen, was clamoring for a massive financial aid
package to Angola in order to underwrite its economic development, Salazar
retaliated by means of an official note to the press outlining his views on
Angola, only to discover, on 11 January 1930, that the majority of the cabinet
opposed those views. Flanked by Minister of Justice Lopes da Fonseca, Salazar
tendered his resignation. Again Carmona intervened forcefully, informing
Ivens Ferraz that he, Carmona, would not accept a cabinet in which Salazar did
not take part. Ivens Ferraz immediately threw in the towel on behalf of his
whole cabinet. In other words, at a time when doubts about the primacy of the
127. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘Política de verdade’, p. 37.

128. Wheeler, A ditadura, p. 43.
129. According to Franco Nogueira, Salazar obtained from Ivens Ferraz a guarantee that an article by Cunha
Leal on the subject of colonial policy would be approved by the censorship authorities. Franco Nogueira,
Salazar vol. 2 Os tempos áureos (1928–1936) (Coimbra: Atlântida Editora, 1977), pp. 61–62.
financial over the economic were bringing more and more people together
against Salazar, with the argument that his financial conservatism was
strangling the national economy (not to mention that of the colonies), Salazar
demanded increased protection from Carmona; a crisis was the best way was to
obtain it. According to the British ambassador,
this is the third government brought down for apparently trivial reasons by the
minister; and, though he still enjoys the confidence and esteem of a large part of
the army and the general public, it seems incredible that these will not suffer from
his latest exploit.130
The ambassador was wrong. Salazar did survive this latest crisis—in fact,
he emerged stronger than ever, retaining the Finance portfolio and adding to
it—as an interim measure—the Colonies portfolio. The time had come to
settle a number of issues regarding the colonies, forcing them, constitutionally,
to accept the primacy of Lisbon and, above all, of the Ministry of Finance. This
was a decisive moment, since Salazar was moving beyond the financial world
into the irrational and emotional sphere of Portugal’s colonial empire, more
myth than reality. Salazar received support, in drafting the eventual Acto
Colonial (Colonial Act), from Quirino de Jesus and a collaborator whose
importance would quickly grow, Armindo Monteiro. Its centralizing features,
beyond ensuring financial caution, also served to make clear that no outside
interference in the running of the colonies would be acceptable to Lisbon. The
Acto received great support from nationalist circles and army officers who
might be expected to administer the empire. Before he was in a position to act
in these matters, however, Salazar—and the country—was forced to wait. It
proved difficult for Carmona to find a military man willing to work with
Salazar, serving as the latter’s Prime Minister; eventually a cabinet was
announced on 21 January. General Domingos de Oliveira, much closer in
views to Salazar than the two previous prime ministers, was to lead the new
government. Portugal had taken an important step to the right, and Salazar was
the main beneficiary.
As Salazar’s star rose, and his power was consolidated, he began to seek
out collaborators who might replace military officers who were either un-
reliable or simply out of their depth. Such moves, of course, made him
increasingly unpopular among many military circles, since it essentially meant
that officers must get by on their rather limited salaries. Lucrative spots
hitherto available to politically influential officers were denied to them one by
130. NA FO, Western Europe, Confidential W 792/151/36, letter, Lisbon, January 18, 1930, Sir F. Lindley
to Mr. A. Henderson.
one: positions as diplomats, civil governors, or municipal administrators were
reserved for civilians. Salazar argued that this shift was necessary in order to
return the Army to its proper role; it was in the professional interest of officers
to return to the barracks.131 Many officers, of course, had always felt uneasy
with Salazar’s increasing prominence; their numbers were now swollen by
economically disaffected colleagues. A feeling began to grow that the army’s
exclusion was benefiting only Salazar and his narrow circle. This, in many ways,
was natural, given the nature of Portuguese politics in general and the military
dictatorship in particular. As one political solution triumphed over others, a
reaction had to be expected, especially since Salazar’s Catholic background
generated so much hostility. Not surprisingly, the academic world was to prove
the obvious recruitment ground for government collaborators, and would
remain so for the rest of Salazar’s career. Academic success was in many ways
even more important than an unimpeachable political record when it came to
recruitment for the government and other politically appointed positions. One
historian summarizes Salazar’s situation in the following manner:
Unpopular among many officers, notably those of an integralist or fascist

tendency, Salazar multiplies his efforts to transfer power from military men to
civilians, be it in the administration, be it in the government, while continuing to
merit the support of the Head of State, General Carmona. His policy of financial
austerity in no way contributes to making him more popular in military circles,
since these see their budget severely controlled and curtailed.132
This relationship with Carmona, which was to last until the President’s
death in 1951, was in many ways the key to Salazar’s success. There would be
ups and downs, and at times Carmona showed displeasure with the govern-
ment; Salazar could not remove him, having to accept his presence and show
deference to the President of the Republic; but when it mattered most,
Carmona stood by Salazar. At first glance, it was not obvious that the relation-
ship would work. The two men represented different constituencies, and
embodied different legitimacies; they had different core beliefs. Carmona was a
republican, and a free-mason; Salazar, emotionally a monarchist, was above all
a Catholic, and was not entirely convinced of the army’s merit at any level. For
him, the notion of a ‘National Revolution’ begun by the army in 1926, which
entitled this corporation to a special role within the regime, was a bitter but
necessary pill to swallow.

132. Léonard, Salazarismo, p. 49.
Salazar made another landmark speech on 28 May 1930 in the parliament
building’s Sala do Risco, before the rest of the government and representatives
of the officer corps. The purpose of this intervention was to set up a com-
parison between Portugal on the eve of the 28 May revolt and Portugal four
years later. Disorder, he claimed, had been replaced on all fronts (political,
financial, economic, and social) by an order guaranteed by the armed forces.
The pursuit of personal and sectional interest through political intervention
had been replaced by a collective effort to tackle the problems that faced the
country. The country’s finances were again robust, as was its international
reputation; the economy was now in better position, thanks to the availability
of credit, and the work being carried out on roads and ports; interest rates were
down, making investment easier. Future industrial expansion, and agricultural
reform, would be made possible by hydro-electric projects being studied. How-
ever, the State could only create the backdrop to this desired economic growth.
It was up to others to take advantage of these, and investors, of course, would
only act once they were sure that the conditions created since 1926 were per-
manent. That meant that the social question was next on the agenda, and the
government would do its best in this regard with the limited means available to
it. Lastly, of course, there was politics: what was to be done in this regard? As
far as Salazar was concerned, a return to the past was impossible, because
responsibility for the Republic’s failure lay not just with the men who served it,
but, above all, with the system itself, which was deeply flawed. A simple change
of personnel—the replacement of the old Democratic party by more moderate
republicans, such as the ones present within the military dictatorship—was not
enough to make the old institutions work. Yet dictatorship, a form of govern-
ment in which there was no accountability, could not endure. Hence, Salazar
concluded, it was up to the dictatorship to provide a solution for the political
problem in Portugal:
Why should it do so? Because experience has shown that the political formulas we
have employed, exotic imported plants, do not give us the government we need,
and have pitched us against each other, dividing us through hatred, while the
better part of the nation stands before the State, indifferent, displeased, and
inert.133
State and nation had thus to be reconciled to each other, in a way that they
have not been since the dawn of liberalism in Portugal, in 1820. Such a recon-
ciliation, built on trust, has to be achieved through a variety of means—educa-
tion on one hand, and, on the other, a new Constitution, capable of bringing
133. Salazar, ‘Ditadura administrativa’, p. 64.

the country to life by reflecting realistically its active social bodies: family,
parish, municipality, and economic corporation.
Many figures spoke that day, including the Prime Minister, but it was
Salazar’s speech that the media focused on. Shortly after this speech, in June,
there occurred a wave of arrests, following rumors of an impending coup.
Salazar’s most feared scenario, a pan-republican coalition against him, seemed
to be in the making. Significant names were taken in, encompassing those who
straddled the line between republican opposition and qualified support for the
initial military dictatorship. Cunha Leal, João Soares, Moura Pinto, and, later,
Sá Cardoso, Hélder Ribeiro, Augusto Casimiro, Rego Chaves, Ribeiro de
Carvalho, Maia Pinto, all were seized and sent to temporary exile in the Azores.
Censorship prevented the arrests from being announced in the press.
The summer of 1930 saw another significant milestone on Salazar’s road to
personal power: the creation of the União Nacional (National Union), described
as a political movement designed to encompass all those who supported the
military dictatorship and, of course its transition to something new, national,
and permanent. The keynote speech (erroneously referred to by most
commentators as the Sala do Risco speech) at the União Nacional’s launch on 30
July belonged to Salazar, clearly the government’s leading ideologue. Speaking
in the Sala do Conselho de Estado, the Minister of Finance widened his analytical
net, exploring the crisis that seemed to be gripping the whole world in a survey
redolent of Quirino de Jesus. He attributed this crisis both to the decline of
parliamentarianism and the impact of the World War. The simple fact, Salazar
attempted to demonstrate, was that the political machinery of the Nineteenth
Century could no longer operate in the Twentieth. On one side stood the
revolutionary legacy of 1789: individualism, parliamentarianism, and socialism.
In countries which honored this tradition the State had become powerless, and
internationalist aspirations were becoming stronger by the day. On the other
side, the side of reaction, stood violent nationalism combined with anti-in-
dividualism. In both cases, dictatorships of one variety or another would be the
result. The solution must be to allow all forces to participate peacefully in the
nation’s government, without the State being impaired in its strength. Portugal
was no exception, and had already moved a long way away from chaos, thanks
to its own dictatorship. Salazar painted the following portrait of the country at
that precise moment:
There is peace; there is order; the spirit of a new life moves the country; there is
trust and there is credit; the administration has been forced to accept moral
principles which complement, in its execution, the justice of the law; there is a
plan for the life of the State, formulated while taking into account the collective
interest (and all know that once established, the government’s plans are carried
out); the country, free from the atmosphere of partisan hatreds, is less divided and,
although it did not choose its representatives, feels closer to those in power, feels
that the government belongs more to it, trusts in its fairness and in its action.134
Where to from here, then, asked Salazar. Going back to the First Republic
meant giving up all that had been achieved; however, inaction was a choice
unworthy of the Portuguese. Building a ‘new order of things’ was the way to
go. A new order had to rest on a number of essential ingredients. The first was
the nation, with its inalienable right to its overseas possessions. All parts of the
nation had to be subordinated to the common good. Protecting the nation
meant shielding it from international ideologies and interests. Portugal was an
old nation, with no foreign enemies, and with long-established borders; all that
it asked, in the final instance, was to be left alone to develop itself. A second
element of this new order was the State, whose consolidation had to continue.
A strong State, within certain limits, must be the desired goal. As Salazar put it,
Portugal is a State that loves peace, has a civilizing spirit, cooperates in the
strengthening of the universal order, rejects ambitious war, believes in arbitration
as the means to resolve disputes between States, integrates its public law into the
superior goals of mankind, and desires the harmonious and peaceful development
of its citizens’ faculties, for the improvement and progress of the internal and
external relations of the Nation. Its educational system must be dominated by the
principles of moral duty, civil liberty, and human fraternity.135
This being said, the State’s authority had to be protected from the excesses of
individualism and internationalism—and it should be able to ‘promote, har-
monize and investigate all national activities’. Salazar thus unveiled what would
become one of the regime’s mantras: ‘The State should be so strong that it
need not be violent.’ As in the Sala do Risco speech, Salazar addressed the
reconciliation of nation and State. The former had to be better integrated into
the latter than had hitherto been the case. This entailed a rejection of the
‘citizen’, an ideological abstraction, and its replacement at the heart of political
life by concrete social entities, such as the family, moral and economic corpora-
tions, and the organs of local power, like parish councils and municipalities.
Of paramount importance to the proper working of the State was the
executive branch, which had to be strengthened. Parliament, whatever its ulti-
mate form, must not have the power to overthrow governments, or to ob-
struct, through sterile and vindictive discussions, the life of the nation. The
134. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘Princípios fundamentais da revolução política’ in Discursos, vol. 1, p. 75.
135. Salazar, ‘Princípios fundamentais’, p. 80.
executive branch must also be as representative of the nation, and therefore as
legitimate, as the legislative. What was the mission of this new State? To ensure
economic progress and social peace. Here Salazar’s ideas were fleshed out. The
State would no longer create the background conditions for economic recovery
and then step back, allowing the private sector to act. In this increasingly
turbulent world, and in the face of the international crisis afflicting capitalism,
the State had to intervene in a more decisive fashion, pointing the way forward
and coordinating the efforts of all social actors. Economic activity could no
longer be left to the vagaries of the market; it must be subordinated to the
national priorities, thus strengthening the country. In other words, it was the
State’s mission to coordinate the economic life of the country, turning it away
from wasteful competition towards collaboration, and insisting on better con-
ditions for workers—all must have, at the very least, what they needed to
survive.
Salazar thus rejected the prevailing notion that the class struggle was an in-
escapable reality, stressing instead the acceptance of a hierarchical organization
of society, organized not by title, or wealth, but rather by merit. Just as there
was a need to protect, and develop, financial capital, so too there was a need to
nurture, and encourage, human capital—to develop new elites. These elites,
too, had to be subordinated to a leader. Salazar was restating his earlier views
on the need for a hierarchical society. One remarkable aspect of this speech,
apart from the new areas which Salazar was staking out as his territory, was the
change of rhetorical style, as Salazar strove to write for posterity, even for
History, repeatedly having recourse to what were intended to become essential
axioms about Portugal and its empire. There was undoubtedly a greater degree
of demagoguery—‘Portugal can be, if we want it, a great and prosperous
nation. It will be just that’—but, at the same time, it was undoubtedly well
written, and designed to counter any immediate criticism. Regimes founded on
freedom as a guiding principle did not provide more freedom in the end; the
‘sovereign people’ was a mere abstraction, and anything but sovereign; the
realities of parliamentary politics left people further and further away from the
decision-making process. It was hard to argue against this last point, given the
nature of Portuguese politics under the constitutional monarchy and the First
Republic.
The success of this overtly political speech, which would henceforth be
viewed as an ideological litmus test, made Salazar more impatient than ever to
break free from the military tutelage that bound him. Remaining outwardly
loyal, he made his complaints to close confidants such as José Nosolini, Serras
e Silva, and the Diniz da Fonseca brothers.136 The government was stalled, and
conspiracies aplenty bubbled under the surface. Domingos de Oliveira seemed
to be reacting to events, not setting the agenda. Still Salazar could only wait.
The truth was that it was too soon to make an open bid for total power. A sub-
sequent speech on 30 December 1930, in a military setting, saw Salazar
attempting to reassert his bond with the army, while suggesting, respectfully,
that the time had come for it to move aside. He chose not speak of politics, for
Domingos de Oliveira, who had spoken before him had done so already and,
as he put it, ‘I will not tire you this time around with the aridity of financial
problems.’137 Salazar chose instead to deliver a lecture on the ‘military virtues’.
This turned out to be an appeal for unity and discipline within the army, so that
it may represent ‘force’ and not ‘violence’. There could be no army without
patriotism, or without nationalism. An army had to be guided by an ideal, and
should not be dragged down by petty ambitions:
Our civilization, one can say it, is in crisis, because it is forced to reform many of
its institutions under fire from an enemy that wants nothing less than to subvert it.
We view many of its principles as definitive conquests for humanity, necessary
conditions for social coexistence, essential bases for human progress, the fruit of
ancient experience, fundamental political truths. But the institutions which for us
are all of these things are boldly seen by many as outdated historical categories
which arose in previous centuries and which this century will sweep from the face
of the earth. The notions of Pátria, of State, of authority, of law, of family, of
property, of social differentiation are being questioned, and they are the field in
which the great battles of the future will be fought.138
Preserving order, and containing this collective lack of discernment, was the
army’s main function—through it the army defended the nation. To protect,
however, was not to govern. Salazar was able, in this period, to influence a
cabinet reshuffle that brought in Armindo Monteiro, previously Undersecretary
of State at Finance, to the Ministry of the Colonies, hitherto a military preserve.
Nineteen thirty-one went well for Salazar’s ambitions. The need for stable
government, and for a permanent constitutional footing, was driven home by
two military revolts. On 4 April an uprising occurred on the Atlantic island of
Madeira. Given Madeira’s large British expatriate community, and its strategic
value, this incident was closely monitored by the international press, raising
136. Alberto (1884–1962) and Joaquim Dinis da Fonseca (1887–1958) frequented Coimbra at the same time
as Salazar and moved in Catholic political circles. Both represented the CCP in parliament. Joaquim would
also serve as deputy in the New State’s National Assembly and as Undersecretary of State for Social Welfare
from 1940 to 1944.
137. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘Elogio das virtudes militares’ in Discursos, vol. 1, p. 100.
138. Ibid., p. 111.
doubts about the solidity of the Portuguese regime. It was also followed by
coordinated revolts in Azores and Portuguese Guinea; the fear that it would
continue to spread across the empire was great in Lisbon. That the revolt’s
outbreak coincided with the establishment of the Second Republic in Spain
only added to the apprehension felt in Portuguese government circles. The
military dictatorship responded as can be expected to this challenge. There was
a wave of arrests in the large cities in order to clamp down on any expression
of solidarity with the rising. Among those seized were republican leaders within
the armed forces. The fleet has to be sent out to the ‘Atlantic Republic’, as
some had taken to calling Madeira, with loyal troops ready to carry out a
landing—but there was much doubt about the loyalty of the rest, those who
stayed behind in continental Portugal. Fortunately for the government, the
troops and officers on the island were not really ready for a showdown, and did
little to oppose the landings when they occurred. By 2 May the affair was over,
with some twenty-seven killed and 100 wounded on both sides. For his part,
Salazar remained quiet and impassive during Madeira revolt, breaking his
silence only to point out how much all the restoration of order was costing,
through a note which was printed in the press—the Diário da Manhã, for
example, gave it a full front page.139 Some weeks later, at a União Nacional rally,
both the Prime Minister and Salazar spoke, but the latter’s speech was longer,
more detailed, and spelled out in clearer terms than ever what the future held:
It is fitting that the ideological synthesis of the organic and functional transforma-
tion, on which the Dictatorship’s work is converging, should be engraved in the
spirit of those who, like you, will be their national support and fervent apostles. It
must be clear that the end of this great act of renewal is the establishment of a
political, economic, and social nationalism, well understood, and dominated, in the
face of all components of the nation, by the unchallengeable sovereignty of the
State, and impervious to the possibility of being a toy, or a victim, of parties,
factions, groups, classes, sects, and revolutionary machinations.140
139. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘A situação financeira e económica e a ordem pública’ in Diário da Manhã
(Lisbon), 7 May 1931. In this note Salazar, who used the first person singular in the text, put the total cost of
the revolt at somewhere between fifty and sixty thousand contos. Salazar spelled out just what such a sum
represented: ‘this expense is of the same order as the interest on the country’s entire floating debt, in the
shape of Treasury bills, for a year; the cost of the three ports at Aveiro, Setúbal, and Viana do Castelo,
recently adjudicated; the annual bill for the reconstruction of roads and bridges in the entire country […] the
cost of three sloops—two first class and one second class—such as those recently ordered for the
reconstitution of our Navy; finally, such a sum would support the families of 25,000 rural laborers for a year
[…] In other words, disorder is the greatest obstacle to the labor of reconstruction […]’.
140. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘O interesse nacional na política da Ditadura’ in Discursos, vol. 1, pp. 115–
34.
The effects of the revolt did not die down easily. On 11 June the Diário da
Manhã listed the enemies of the dictatorship: ‘Portuguese republicans, social-
ists, libertarians, and communists, living in the country or abroad; Spanish re-
publicans, socialists, anarchists, extremists, and firebrands; Russian Bolsheviks
[…]’ These were aided and orchestrated by ‘secret societies’.141 On 26 August,
Lieutenant Colonel Utra Machado led an aviation officers’ mutiny in Lisbon
with little effect, few other units adhering. The affair lasted a mere twelve
hours before it is put down with considerable violence, some estimates
suggesting that as many as forty men lost their lives, another 200 being
wounded. Such numbers suggest that the dictatorship was no longer willing to
respect its opponents, civilian or military: the collegial solidarity of 1926 had
come to an end. Quietly, among the din of battle, Salazar was reinforcing his
position.142 He was able to include another loyal figure into the cabinet as
Minister of the Interior—Mário Pais de Sousa. A brother of Salazar’s brother
in law, Abel Pais de Sousa (who had married Salazar’s sister Laura), Mário Pais
de Sousa would be charged with using the State’s machinery to breathe life into
the União Nacional, paving the way for the electoral battles of the future, the
plebiscites which would give the new regime legitimacy in the eyes of the
world. Salazar also increased the political pressure on his colleagues. Much was
made of the arrival in Lisbon of three tons of gold ingots for the Bank of
Portugal’s reserves, an unusual sight in Lisbon and a sure sign of the country’s
financial recovery;143 Salazar then toured the country’s important, but troubled,
fish-canning industry, moving beyond his financial brief into economic
waters.144 Then came the master stroke: Salazar controlled the appointments to
141. ‘A Ditadura e os seus inimigos’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 11 June 1931.

142. Favorable coverage of his actions by the international press played an important role in Salazar’s
affirmation at this crucial period. On 19 June 1931, the Diário da Manhã reprinted an article which had
appeared on 6 June in the Frankfurter Zeitung, which stated of Salazar that ‘whatever political opinion one may
have about this minister, the truth is that in the three years of action he has achieved extraordinary results.’
‘A obra do dr Oliveira Salazar é apreciada favoravelmente por um grande jornal financeiro da Alemanha’ in
Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 19 June 1931. Some days later the same newspaper reprinted an article on the same
subject published in the Berliner Boersezeitung of 22 July, which spoke of Salazar’s ‘miracle’.
143. ‘O regresso do ouro’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 6 November 1931. The same newspaper proudly
reprinted an article on the same topic by the Spanish conservative newspaper ABC, which stated, ‘Portugal is
now recovering from chaos and has found in the Dictatorship a horizon of normality… Spain is sinking into
that same chaos, with identical impurities and extremisms. There is still time. The leaders of the Spanish
republic can still avoid that tragedy.’ ‘Uma calorosa apologia da obra do Dr Oliveira Salazar’ in Diário da
Manhã (Lisbon), 8 November 1931.
144. This labor resulted in a long official note: António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘Notas sobre a indústria e o
comércio de conservas de peixe’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 8 December 1931. The article, taking up three
whole pages of the newspaper, was in effect a demonstration of the need for a corporative approach to the
country’s economic problems: ‘To put these ideas, or others which may eventually be thought to be more
conducive to the ends in view, it will be necessary to have recourse to the authority of the State and to avail
of the good will of all those who make a living from the industry and are therefore most interested in its
progress. One feels the need for the collaboration of many minds and many wills, of various public services,
all working in accordance with a single plan towards a known goal.’
a recently created National Political Council, designed as a ‘Council of State’ to
advise Carmona on the coming reforms to the political and administrative
order. This body was thus dominated by civilians, and within that class, friends
of Salazar—besides himself, Armindo Monteiro, Manuel Rodrigues, Martinho
Nobre de Melo,145 Mário de Figueiredo, and José Alberto dos Reis146 were all
members. All these men had different political, social, and professional back-
grounds, but all were resolved to effect the transition from military dictatorship
to a new, Salazar-inspired, State.
By the spring of 1932, the lack of alternatives to Salazar from within the
ranks of the dictatorship had become evident. As the Diário da Manhã put it,
No-one can name another who might replace him as the overseer of the Dictator-
ship’s demise and of Portugal’s destiny.147
In March 1932, during a presidential visit to Oporto, extraordinary compli-

ments were paid to Salazar in the accompanying public demonstrations. The
city’s mayor asked Carmona to deliver into Salazar’s hands (he was in Lisbon,
due to illness) a small relic-box, with a gold bar inside, offered by all the
municipal chambers of Portugal, as a symbol of the mending of the Portuguese
economy.148 Addressing the officers stationed in the city, Carmona asked them
to keep Salazar’s example always before them—‘see how Dr Oliveira Salazar,
in all his actions, is always guided by the good of the nation!’ A wave of tele-
grams of political support and wishes for a speedy recovery now began to be
received by Salazar, resting in Vimieiro, in a clearly orchestrated campaign
designed to show his true status within the evolving regime; the names of their
authors were printed in the front page of the Diário da Manhã. On 27 April, in
commemoration of the fourth anniversary of his action as Minister of Finance,
Salazar was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of the Colonial Empire; a
month later, on 28 May, and in preparation for the forthcoming promotion,
145. Martinho Nobre de Melo (1891–1985) graduated with a degree in Law from the University of Coimbra
in 1911, after which he led a busy career as an academic and a magistrate. He served briefly as Minister of
Justice in 1918 and even more briefly—three days—as Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1926. He served as
Salazar’s ambassador to Rio de Janeiro from 1932 to 1946. After his return from Brazil his journalistic work
increased, and he served as editor of Diário Popular (Lisbon) from 1958 to 1974.
146. José Alberto dos Reis (1875–1955) graduated with a degree in Law from the University of Coimbra in
1897, later joining its teaching staff. He was involved in Catholic politics through the Catholic Center in
Coimbra. Closely involved in legal reforms in the early part of the New State, he would serve as President of
the National Assembly from 1934 to 1945.
147. ‘A política do dia’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 7 March 1932.
148. At the ceremony, Mário Pais de Sousa read out a telegram sent by Salazar, who asked for the piece to be
kept in the city’s municipal museum, adding that ‘I did not object to the offer by the chambers, even if it was
paid out of their budgets, because it seemed to me, setting to one side any consideration for my services, that
one should never frustrate, in the soul of the People, the sentiment of gratitude to those who, without
personal interest, serve the Pátria.’ The whole trip is described in ‘Na apoteótica viagem do Chefe do Estado
ao Porto’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 14 March 1932.
the Minister of Finance was awarded the Great Cross of the Ordem Militar da
Torre e Espada, the military’s highest decoration, being the first civilian to
receive such an honor. That same day, moreover, the latest draft of the pro-
jected Constitution was presented to the public for public discussion (within
the bounds set by censorship).149 The report that accompanied the draft
stressed its eclectic nature, the wide range of sources that inspired it and, above
all, its subordination to the national interest—it was a Portuguese solution to
Portugal’s problems. It thus came as no surprise when Domingos de Oliveira
resigned and Salazar was called on to form a government on 28 June 1932; he
took over Portugal’s destinies on 5 July. Above all else his cause had been
advanced by the way the country had begun to be seen by the rest of Europe.
For Portuguese nationalists used to what they perceived to be humiliations
abroad, Salazar had led them to the promised land of respectability. Armindo
Monteiro, in Paris in November 1931, at the time of the Paris Colonial
Exhibition, wrote,
I have just arrived here after a trip to Belgium, truly exhausting—but consoling. I
was used, when abroad, to having my country treated as a “quantité négligeable”
and my condition of being Portuguese seen with the vague irony reserved for the
Siamese or the Malagasy.
This time I experienced with great pride hearing the name of Portugal treated with
kindness and seeing the representative of its government received with sym-
pathy.150
In his famous critical letter to Salazar, written in July 1959 (see Chapter 8),
Bishop Ferreira Gomes of Oporto would also recall this period with fondness:
149. ‘Projecto de Constituição Política da República Portuguesa’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 28 May 1932.
An initial draft of the document, drawn up with collaborators such as Professor Fezas Vital and Quirino de
Jesus had been presented to the National Political Council. Fernando Rosas, ‘Constituição política de 1933’
in Rosas & Brandão de Brito (eds), Dicionário de História do Estado Novo, vol. 1, pp. 198–205. Quirino de Jesus
published a long essay on the background to the new Constitution, ‘A Constituição Nacional’, in the pages of
Diário da Manhã in early June. In part II of the essay Quirino de Jesus argued that ‘we must leave behind the
basis for the Constitutions of the previous era, elaborated according to criteria exclusive to liberalism and a
less complex historical moment. We are faced by a human edifice damaged in its architecture, threatened in
its foundations, assailed by all lies, mistakes, negations and dangers. The foremost law of the State must,
therefore, embody a school of national renewal. It must lay down solid and positive principles in all areas
where they should rule, build and defend.’ Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 2 June 1932. On 26 May 1932 Pequito
Rebelo, an Integralist who enjoyed a reasonably open relationship with Salazar, urged him to turn his back
on the ‘monster (of a completely parliamentary essence)’ about to be published. According to Pequito
Rebelo, the Portuguese had a right to know that Salazar’s original project had been completely different,
‘correct in its nationalist principles’, having subsequently been ruined by others. AOS CP 235, letter, Gavião,
26 May 1932, José Pequito Rebelo to António de Oliveira Salazar.
150. Fernando Rosas, Júlia Leitão de Barros & Pedro de Oliveira (eds), Armindo Monteiro e Oliveira Salazar:
Correspondência Política, 1926–1955 (Lisbon: Editorial Estampa, 1996), doc. 6, letter, Paris, undated, Armindo
Monteiro to António de Oliveira Salazar, p. 39.
I remember well the commotion and enthusiasm, the rush of hope with which we
accompanied the opening of your career. For those of us who lived outside the
Pátria, more than anyone else, it was a source of rescue and rehabilitation from the
foreigner’s contempt.151
This was especially true, the prelate continued, given Salazar’s political
background. The transition from Domingos de Oliveira was not, however,
seamless. At a Council of Ministers, on 24 June, Domingos de Oliveira
announced his intention to step down. Three days later, having been
summoned by Carmona, the National Political Council assembled in the presi-
dential residence at Belém, and the majority of its members advised Carmona
to ask Salazar to form a new government; two days later, an official announce-
ment to that effect was made. There was then, as far as the public was con-
cerned, a slight delay as the latest budget, preceded, as ever, by a long report
penned by Salazar, was published. The still Minister of Finance predicted a
modest surplus of 1,673 contos.152 Headlines were dominated by news of the
exiled Dom Manuel II’s death, on 2 July. A cabinet was duly assembled on 4
July, taking charge of the country the following day. In his biography of
Salazar, Franco Nogueira claimed that Salazar had met with no difficulties in
the formation of his cabinet.153 Recently published sources cast doubt on this
assertion. Salazar’s chief of cabinet at Finance, the experienced civil servant
Antero Leal Marques, kept a diary for the duration of the crisis, describing
events as they happened—and the tale it tells is very much at odds with the
notion of a smooth transfer of power.
Whatever his own political background and affinities, Salazar was now
working in a republican environment. He was invited to form a cabinet by a
President, on whom he depended; he could not, therefore ‘betray’ the Republic
and part of its heritage. A move, however tentative, towards a restoration of
the monarchy was out of the question. What the diaries show, in fact, is that
many of his older friends and collaborators (José Nosolini, but especially Mário
de Figueiredo, who refused the Foreign Affairs portfolio during the crisis)
never accepted this pragmatic attitude, and resented the inclusion of more
moderate figures in the government. What this suggests, then, is that in the
political situation of the time, with the conservative republican line of the
military dictatorship soundly beaten, Salazar had become a moderate, with little
time for ideological strictures. He had especially little time for the Integralists,
151. Letter, Oporto, 3 July 1958, Dom António Ferreira Gomes, Bishop of Oporto, to António de Oliveira
Salazar. Reprinted from António Teixeira Fernandes, Relações entre a Igreja e o Estado no Estado Novo e no pós 25
de Abril de 1974 (Lisbon: Author’s edition, 2005), p. 77.
152. ‘O Orçamento Geral do Estado’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 1 July 1932.
153. Franco Nogueira, Os tempos áureos, p. 149.
who blocked the whole process, and with whom he occasionally wished for a
showdown.154 Such a move was out of the question, of course, as it meant
taking on a part of the army—but Salazar’s frustration with the whole process
and his opponents was considerable.
Another important point that emerges from the diaries is that apart from
some ministers who were relatively apolitical—such as Armindo Monteiro
(Colonies), César de Sousa Mendes (Foreign Affairs),155 and Sebastião Ramires
(Commerce and Agriculture)156—the bulk of the cabinet was actually relatively
Left-leaning. Manuel Rodrigues (Justice), Duarte Pacheco (Public Works),
Albino dos Reis157 (Interior), and, later, Mesquita Guimarães (Marinha), were
all men that might be considered republicans; all of them wanted national
reconciliation rather than an imposition of far-Right doctrines, and would stay
by Salazar’s side for years to come, even as the New State outwardly drifted to
the Right.158 Carmona’s importance is also highlighted by the Leal Marques
diaries. As ever, he backed Salazar’s plans, but at times even he seemed shaken
by the opposition mounted by the far-Right. Of the putative ministers, Duarte
Pacheco stood out for his active involvement in the crisis, urging Salazar to
name his cabinet publicly, even if it was still incomplete—even if he, Salazar,
had to assume, in passing, the War portfolio, since it was proving difficult to
find an officer willing to take it on. Such refusals severely hampered the forma-
tion of a cabinet and all the while there were rumors of a coup; a potentially ex-
plosive alliance was developing between outgoing Minister of War António
Lopes Mateus,159 Quirino de Jesus, and the young Integralists, all eager to im-
154. This resentment would last a lifetime. Not long after his enforced retirement, due to illness, Salazar
remarked, of the Integralists, ‘that group was characterized by not actually doing anything. Since they were
monarchists and I preserved the Republic, they became my enemies. They never forgave me for not having
proclaimed the Monarchy. Had I done so I wouldn’t have lasted two weeks […] They did not understand the
Rerum Novarum.’ Coelho & Macieira Coelho, Salazar, o fim e a morte, p. 44.
155. César de Sousa Mendes (1885–1955) and his twin brother Aristides both graduated with a degree in Law
from the University of Coimbra in 1907, and then entered the diplomatic corps.
156. Sebastião Garcia Ramires, or Ramirez (1898–1952) was a canning magnate who would serve Salazar in a
number of capacities, be they formal (Minister of Commerce, Industry, and Agriculture) or informal, assuring
a secure line of communication with the military rebels in the first phases of the Spanish Civil War.
157. Albino Soares Pinto dos Reis Júnior (1888–1983) graduated from the University of Coimbra with a
degree in Law, and would combine a career as a magistrate with political activity, having joined the União
Nacional and dominating its Coimbra branch. He was Minister of the Interior in the first Salazar government,
but his liberal background led to mounting criticism, and he was replaced in 1933. Elected to the National
Assembly, he would serve as its President until 1962, and remain one of Salazar’s closest confidants
throughout the New State’s existence.
158. Salazar was keen to move beyond the ‘old-fashioned’ political labels, and downplayed any talk of politi-
cal disunity in his cabinet. He would tell Ferro, as 1932 came to a close, that ‘all direction and political
responsibility of the government rest on two pairs of shoulders. There is the Prime Minister and there is the
Minister of the Interior. All the other ministers are far too busy with the technical affairs of their own offices
to be able to think about the political problem which we must reduce to its simplest expression if we mean to
alter our mode of living.’ Ferro, Salazar, p. 147.
159. António Lopes Mateus (1877–1955) was an army officer who served in Africa during World War I.
During the military dictatorship Lopes Mateus was Minister of the Interior from January 1930 to October
part a more radical edge to the emerging government. The cabinet was indeed
announced before a Minister of War had been found, and for a month Salazar
had hold that position by himself; eventually, the commanders of the Lisbon
garrison imposed their candidate, General Daniel de Sousa, at the time military
governor of the capital.160
It is in fact interesting to compare this newly available source with the pub-
lished correspondence of Quirino de Jesus with Salazar, since Quirino de Jesus
was for so long described as a mentor to Salazar. This seems now to have
occurred largely on the basis of opposition figures who wanted to downplay
Salazar’s originality and vision. In the collection there figure a series of undated
letters obviously referring to the organization of Salazar’s government; these
show the mounting frustration of Quirino as his suggestions were ignored.
Quirino had been doing his best to blacken the prospects for Mário Pais de
Sousa, deemed a liberal within the dictatorship, whose position was described
as ‘unsustainable’,161 and urged Salazar to act by convincing Domingos de
Oliveira to step down and to agree to him, Salazar, as his replacement. Quirino
then advanced a host of candidates to ministerial jobs. In a subsequent letter,
Quirino stated that Mário Pais de Sousa was hoping to get his way by relying
on forces that had been in retreat, within the dictatorship, since 1929. He also
waved the Spanish bogeyman—‘150,000 anarchists and communists moving
towards their extremist revolution’162—in an attempt to secure as rightwing a
cabinet as possible. But when news reached Quirino that the equally liberal
Albino dos Reis was being considered as a successor to Mário Pais de Sousa,
Quirino was greatly alarmed—the effect would be worse than keeping Pais de
Sousa. ‘Systematically putting Coimbra to one side seems to me to be one of
the supreme needs […] your excellent position must not be compromised by
any current, least of all Coimbra’.163 The central point is that Quirino, for all his
supposed influence—posited by those who wanted to deny Salazar any
originality and independence, and designate Salazar the last champion of a long
reactionary current—failed to affect the process of forming a government.
The dictatorship’s press, naturally, was over the moon once Carmona’s
nomination of Salazar was made public:
1931 and from then on, until July 1932, he was Minister of War. He would later serve as governor-general of
Angola and chairman of Diamang, the consortium that enjoyed the monopoly of extracting Angola’s
diamonds.
160. Telmo Faria, Debaixo de Fogo! Salazar e as Forças Armadas (1935–41) (Lisbon: Cosmos, 2000), p. 46.
161. Cartas e relatórios de Quirino de Jesus, p. 25.
162. Ibid., p. 34.
163. Ibid., pp. 55–56.
[…] The whole country will rejoice with us as a result of the honorable request
which General Carmona transmitted to the man who so wisely and in such a dig-
nified manner enhanced Portugal’s prestige in Europe and showed the Dictator-
ship the way to consolidate the glorious work it had begun.164
Delays in forming a government were ascribed to Salazar’s health, not the

first and certainly not the last time this pretext would serve to mask turmoil,
while conveniently adding, of course, to the notion of a patriotic sacrifice being
made.165 There is little point in describing the press’s reaction to each minister,
since, in this censored environment, each had to be praised the moment his
name was announced. Suffice it to say that of Salazar, the Diário da Manhã
wrote,
[He] is the greatest and most complete revelation of a statesman to have come
forth in Portugal in many a decade. His name has crossed borders and is spoken
with the greatest respect in the civilized world. His admirable methods are
recommended by well-known statesmen as the only means to avoid the
catastrophe and the resulting disorder which threaten to subvert the peoples,
caught up in a frightening crisis.166
As has already been pointed out, the last Portuguese King, Dom Manuel II,
died in his British exile on 2 July, during the government crisis. Salazar was
quick to praise him, stressing, however, that he had died with neither
successors nor an heir.167 It is impossible not to read in this passage the hope
164. ‘Foi encarregado de organizar Gabinete o ilustre estadista sr. dr Oliveira Salazar’ in Diário da Manhã
(Lisboa), 29 June 1932.
165. The explanation was not completely devoid of truth, however. Some weeks after the cabinet’s formation
Salazar cabled Armindo Monteiro, who was in Mozambique, asking him to cut short his visit and return as
soon as possible: ‘In virtue of my state of health I am obliged to leave the effective presidency of the cabinet
during the next weeks. There is the greatest convenience in government ministers of the previous executive
being present to ensure administrative continuity and knowledge of current problems.’ Monteiro replied on
13 July that leaving Mozambique would have serious political costs, but on 14 July Salazar overrode these,
insisting on Monteiro’s return to Lisbon by late August at the latest. AOS CO PC 3C, file 5, Formation of
1932 government (1932, May-July), telegrams exchanged between António de Oliveira Salazar and Armindo
Monteiro.
166. Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 5 July 1932.
167. Salazar would develop this point at a major speech in November 1932: ‘The King, deposed in 1910,
lived in exile in London not so much like a prince, but rather like a great Portuguese. He suffered, he studied,
he observed much […] he educated himself and was received on his merits in the world of high intelligence;
he filled his spirit with observations and lessons taken from things and facts, those facts which his position
allowed him to see and which are often different to those which we see; he practiced to the highest degree,
being an example to all, the domestic and social virtues. And lo: when this model of a man, of a prince, and
of a Portuguese, had finished preparing himself, reaching the full vigor of age, of intelligence, of culture, and
of moral energies, when finally one could consider him ready to be King, he was taken by death, without
descendents or heir […] I know the cost, and the worth, of sincere convictions, and have for them absolute
respect; one cannot order one’s intelligence to stop looking at truth where one finds it. But ideas do not
always have the power to create, or a practical use; sometimes they are lost to action, and we must not let
that the monarchist cause had now been deflated, and that while holding on to
certain principles—order above all—its upholders should now adhere whole-
heartedly to the New State being assembled. Matters in this regard would not
be as easy as Salazar hoped, however, and monarchist aspirations would return
to haunt Salazar on many occasions. Sometime later on 28 September, aged 93,
Salazar’s father, tended in his final days by Bissaia Barreto, died. By all
accounts, this was much less of a shock than the death of his mother; Salazar
was nearby, in Caramulo, and not at his bedside, when he finally died. The
Diário da Manhã mourned ‘a good man who always deserved […] the considera-
tion of all who surrounded him.’168
By the time that he was finally appointed President of the Council of
Ministers, Salazar had endured a long and difficult apprenticeship in politics.
His views had unquestionably evolved, and one objective had become para-
mount: to survive politically. For now, survival was tied to the implementation
of a definite program, which he identified as the key to the resolution of the
country’s problems. Only he, Salazar had come to believe, could implement
such a program, preserving the balance between conflicting ideologies and
interest groups. If in order to survive reforms had to be temporarily post-
poned, or toned down, then this was a price worth paying. The struggle to sur-
vive, and to protect his political position, was complimented by other charac-
teristics and opinions that were equally new, or which manifested themselves
for the first time. Salazar had become more devious and secretive, more
cunning and, at times, more spiteful. His patience for contrary views was
strained: he could accept them from his peers, and old friends, but only if
privately put, and not employed to gain advantage. Publicly, he would embrace
a form of nationalism that brooked no opposition, since it spoke for the
totality of the nation; to stand against the nation was a logical impossibility.
More than ever before, lastly, Salazar’s newfound experience and his reading of
the international situation had led him to view the State—the machinery which
he now controlled—as the sole agent capable of transforming the country,
through whatever means were necessary. The moderate and aspirational views
of his time as a Christian Democrat, a defender of Leo XIII’s great encyclicals,
had been replaced by a hard-nosed determination to succeed, even if this came
at the price of using force. As we will see in the next chapter, however, his
actual power was never to match this determination.
men tie themselves to corpses.’ António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘As diferentes forças políticas em face da
Revolução Nacional’ in Discursos, vol. 1, pp. 159–82.
168. ‘António de Oliveira’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 29 September 1932.
Chapter II
The New State in the

Age of Totalitarianism
Ideological Foundations of the New State
I nsofar as the New State had an ideological basis, it was provided by Salazar,
who was not, however, an original thinker (and never claimed to be one),
breaking new theoretical ground. Whatever his qualms about the people he
governed, Salazar had a nationalist reading of Portugal’s history and future, one
which rejected most political trends dominant in Portugal since 1820. As we
have seen, his views were a distillation of Catholic and counter-revolutionary
politics, mostly taken from Papal Encyclicals and from French thinkers such as
Gustave Le Bon and Charles Maurras; there would be updated later by Henri
Massis and Jacques Bainville. One commentator writes of Salazar,
More than the ideas in themselves, what matters to him is to have the means to be
able to mould Portuguese society, through the application of a thought which,
above all, serves as the basis for “principles of action”.1
Salazar’s French ‘masters’ would later oblige him by showering praise on

his action, but there were differences between Salazar and the Action Française
intellectuals. Salazar rejected publicly the Maurrasian notion of la politique
d’abord, or ‘politics first’: his speeches and writings constantly posited the exis-

tence of moral and spiritual limits to the action of the State, areas which were
beyond politics and belonged only to the individual conscience. These pre-
served spheres served, for Salazar, as a theoretical and practical bulwark against
all manner of extreme-right forces, and served as well to keep Catholics onside,
despite the wrapping up of the CCP and the preservation of the separation of
Church and State. They also meant that the New State did not embrace the
most negative side of the Action Française—its xenophobic and anti-Semitic
component—which had manifested itself in some Portuguese Integralist
writings.2 Above all, though, Salazar urged his countrymen not to think too
much about politics, for it was not from politics that the country’s salvation,
and their well-being, would spring. Such salvation would come instead from
working hard and leading a habitual and balanced life. Mobilizing the popula-
tion constantly, as the Fascist states did, was an aberration for Salazar; demobi-
lization was the way forward, so that politics might assume its proper, and rela-
tively minor, place in the life of the nation. As he explained to journalist
António Ferro,
Our country’s past is full of glory, of heroism; but what we’ve needed, and
especially in the last hundred years, has been less brilliance and more staying-
power, something less showy but with more perspective […] That’s the cause of
our being a sad people; we’re removed from the realities of life because we’re
given to living in a sham heroism.3
Salazarism, if it existed as a doctrine, did not represent a clear break with

the fundamentals of Portuguese nationalism of the turn of the century.4
Moving within them, it emphasized a number of concepts. The importance of
the monarchy could not, for tactical reasons, be dwelt on, but Portugal’s
Catholicism could, since it would serve to underpin the coming corporative
revolution. Medieval society was selected as the ideal to aspire to, but this
option itself entailed a partial reading of that period. The Christian reconquista

4. Not surprisingly, the Diário da Manhã believed that it did exist: ‘A political doctrine may be found in the
dead pages of a book, organized and off the rack, like a suit. In this case it is easy to judge it—one just reads
the book. At other time, however, it may happen that a political doctrine results from the actions of a man
who governs his country, who builds his doctrine through deeds, applying the same criteria, the same men-
tality, elaborating his theory through practical applications […] Salazarism belongs to this second category. It
is impossible to study Salazarism by looking at fact A or fact B.’ ‘Salazarismo’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 23
May 1933. It is clear, however, that Salazar himself was unhappy with this ‘ism’, since António Sousa Gomes,
the newspaper’s editor, had to account for the series of articles dedicated to the new ideology: ‘My intention
when speaking of ‘salazarism’ is precisely to find a label that binds dispersed elements and which, at the same
time, as a living doctrine, might exercise a certain disciplinary action in the mental field: I have received en-
treaties, from the rest of the country, precisely because there are so many “ideologies” within the Situação.’
AOS CO Interior (IN) 1, letter, Lisbon, 8 July 1933, António Sousa Gomes to António de Oliveira Salazar.
The New State in the Age of Totalitarianism 85
was a salient feature, but more important still was the sense that during the
Middle Ages there had developed a well ordered and hierarchical society in
which spiritual considerations were understood by ruler and ruled alike to be at
the core of human existence. From the early years of the New State con-
siderable resources were poured into the preservation and restoration of
medieval monuments, living links with an age which, Salazar believed, had im-
portant lessons for the present. If one considers the selection, and celebration,
of heroes, then again the medieval period emerges triumphant.5 This is
surprising, given the importance, to Portugal, and to Salazar’s career, of the
colonies, a legacy of the Discoveries period; but that was a period of un-
certainty, dislocation, and experimentation, of constant crisis and turmoil.6
Salazar’s nationalism was theoretical, and not founded on any belief about the
innate superiority, or even specific qualities, of the Portuguese. The world was
divided into nations; it was through these that an individual could lead a fruitful
life. Protecting one’s nation, therefore, was the first duty of the statesman. The
Portuguese were not, he believed, an easy people to govern. While imbued with
some qualities—they were, for him, ‘kindly, clever, long-suffering, mild, hos-
pitable, hard-working, easily educated, and cultured’—their defects were ‘quite
obvious’:
The Portuguese are excessively sentimental and have a horror of all discipline; they
are individualists perhaps without noticing it, and lack continuity and tenacity in
their actions. The very ease with which they grasp ideas without any great effort
5. Witness, for example, Salazar’s never fulfilled desire to build a large monument in the capital to the first
king of Portugal, Dom Afonso Henriques, first aired on 13 May 1933. ‘O Governo apresentou ontem cumpri-
mentos à cidade’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 14 May 1933. By 1938, when the 1940 commemorations were
announced, it was stated that instead of building a monument to Dom Afonso Henriques, the government
would restore to its medieval lines the castle of St. George, which dominates the skyline of Lisbon, turning it
into one of the city’s main attractions.
6. This is not to say that it was neglected, or hidden away; in 1933 a public competition was launched to
design a suitable monument in Sagres in memory of Prince Henry the Navigator, a competition which ended
in failure: see ‘Infante D. Henrique’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 17 December 1933. A winner was
announced on 1 May 1935, a 120-meter-high sculpture entitled ‘Widening the Faith and the Empire’,
designed by Guilherme and Carlos Rebelo de Andrade in conjunction with Rui Roque Gameiro. It never
went ahead. In the official note that announced the organization of the 1940 commemorations, Salazar
returned to this monument: ‘It is a pity that the monument to Prince Henry, which has been discussed for
years, cannot be ready by this date, depriving us of the chance to witness the marvelous spectacle of a great
naval parade, held at the cape of Sagres, before the monument to the greatest promoter of navigation and
discoveries of the modern age […]’. Never one to forget an idea, Salazar would host just such a naval parade
in 1960, the 500th anniversary of Henry the Navigator’s death (although there was still no monument). In the
meantime, another public competition had been held, in 1956, to select a suitable monument to be built at
Sagres, and again the result was a failure. AOS CO PC 39, file 1, ‘Comemorações do quinto centenário do
Infante Dom Henrique’. The issue occupied more than one Council of Ministers (30 October, 9 November
1956) until it was decided to rebuild the existing monument to the discoveries, erected in Lisbon for the 1940
commemorations, in more durable materials.
induces them to deal superficially with all problems and to rely too much on the
quickness of their apprehension.7
Nationalism was necessary as a means by which Portuguese society might

remain united in the face of difficulty. It was also part of the process by which
the class struggle might be overcome. Addressing a rally of Portuguese workers
in February 1939, Salazar spoke to his audience of the coming day when they
would be able to look upon the images of those who had founded Portugal,
eight centuries before, and tell them ‘we truly are the sons of your blood and
the legitimate continuators of your History!’8 Salazar’s brand of nationalism—
territorially content and by no means aggressive—could also be said to rein-
force Salazar’s position, since he was described as a uniquely gifted reader of
the national interest, thankfully devoid of Mussolini’s bombast. Quirino de
Jesus defined the prevailing nationalism as
A body of principles of public law, of basic politics, of general economics and of

Portuguese colonization. It aims at organizing Nation, State, municipalities,
families, and corporations, with the spirit of Europe’s, and Portugal’s, traditional
civilization, through the co-existence of a strong Power and well understood
individual liberties. It is, moreover, given the state of the world, “a sacred union
imposed by the dangers of the hour and the exceptional magnitude of the
enterprise”.9
Upon assuming the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, on 5 July 1932,

a position which he would not relinquish until 1968, Salazar said a few words.
The personnel had changed, but the government remained the same; it would
conform to the spirit which had animated the military dictatorship. It desired
above all to carry out a national work, rooting all necessary reforms in the
country’s traditions, which might be complemented, when necessary, by
contemporary examples. This first speech as head of government was a call for
union among all Portuguese and widespread support for his actions:
7. Ferro, Salazar, pp. 65–66. Salazar referred Ferro to Count Gonzague de Reynold’s Portugal for a fuller
portrait of the Portuguese. According to this Swiss writer, ‘more sensitive than rational and reasonable, the
Portuguese finds it hard to grasp principles. This explains the weakness of the individual and the nation, and
the difficulty involved in creating a stable order, be it moral or political: the ground is constantly shifting.’
Gonzague de Reynold, Portugal (Paris: Éditions Spes, 1936), p. 135.
8. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘Revolução Corporativa’ in Discursos e notas políticas vol. 3, 1938-1943 2nd
edition (Coimbra: Coimbra Editora, 1959), pp. 129–33. The Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), on 28 February 1939,
claimed an audience of 400,000 Portuguese for this rally, organized by the national syndicates as an
expression of support for Salazar. The figure is absurd—just the day before the same newspaper predicted
that 100,000 workers would march through the streets of the capital.
9. Quirino de Jesus, ‘A Constituição Nacional’.
We want to know absolutely, and in the final instance, on whom we can count to
carry out a national resurgence; to summon to us the best constructive talents in
Portuguese society, and to train, through study, obedience and discipline, the
future leaders.10
This was to be no common government, then: Salazar set the bar for its
success very high indeed, for aims such as the selection of a new elite, and the
refashioning of the ‘national spirit’, could not be achieved in a matter of
months, like the balancing of the budget. The success or failure of Salazar’s
government—should his premises be accepted as valid—could only be deter-
mined after many years, possibly a generation. His demands were, from the
start, considerable.
The subsequent history of the New State consists, it might be argued, of
the pragmatic abandonment of all high-minded ideals, and of much of the
Christian-Democratic political ideology that animated its founder. The New
State built by Salazar was, in fact, relatively apolitical, concerned above all with
its own survival, which it confused with the national interest, and with the
preservation of order and obedience. Its recipe for success was the centraliza-
tion of the decision-making power in a few hands, while a well-defined hier-
archy implemented the decisions made by those at the top. One of the New
State’s most salient features was that for all the rhetoric of a National Revolu-
tion, or of a change of mentality, little of substance was actually done to
achieve such aims. Rather, the power of the State was systematically reinforced.
Only the State—which really meant a handful of men within its structures—
could guide the subordination of all sectors of national life (defined along terri-
torial, generational, and economic lines) to what Salazar deemed to be the
‘national good’. A few safe pairs of hands were needed to guide the ship of
state; such men, ideally, had to earn the allegiance of the rest. If this was not
possible, then tacit support, or even indifference, would do. Corporatism and
nationalism were, in practice, mere concessions to the times, a fad—but their
successful implementation was not at the heart of politics.
Portuguese corporatism was, in the final analysis, an empty, and costly,
vessel. Important at first, it too evolved, after very real stumbling blocks were
set in its way, into a structure designed to ensure Salazar’s ultimate goal—his
own political survival. Salazar arrived in power imbued with a number of theo-
retical ‘truths’, and corporatism was one of them; it promised, on paper, to
reconcile the seemingly contradictory principles of progress and tradition, and
to remove class conflict from the equation of modernization, so that Portugal
might live on at peace with itself. But corporatism, if it is not to be equated
10. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘Os homens são outros: O Governo é o mesmo’ in Discursos, vol. 1, p. 154.
with coercion, must be built from the bottom up; and there is no evidence that
it was desired by anyone with a direct link to the economy, be it employers or
workers. Salazar admitted as much in 1938: ‘It is always difficult to apply novel
principles to old societies with ingrained habits and a different outlook.’11
Corporatism soon showed itself to be an academic solution to a practical
problem, and proved difficult to root in Portugal; it was no more and no less
‘foreign’ than the liberal order it was intended to replace. Independent unions
saw it with enormous distrust, and despite their weakness and fragmentation,
rose once more to mark their opposition to it, paying a heavy price for their
action; employers were also distrustful, seeing in it a form of ‘white bolshe-
vism’ intent on curbing their prerogatives. For Salazar, though, it was vital,
since it represented a programmatic way forward; it could be presented as a
positive solution to class conflict and to the divisions brought about by
liberalism, democracy and communism. With no positive take-up of the cor-
porative challenge from below, corporatism in Portugal became part of the
process by which the State exercised its control over the economy. The ‘pure’
corporatism of Salazar’s arrival in power was transformed, with time, into a
dull, heavy, and ponderous machine, kept alive by the will of the State.
Corporatism would prove to be the New State’s most dismal failure, never
effectively transforming Portugal, and being always over-reliant on the govern-
ment for drive, energy, and organization. Even the government’s attention
seems, at times, to have wandered. As one commentator explains,
Despite the effort to institutionalize a corporative, national and authoritarian State,

the corporatism proclaimed by the regime will fall well short of the stated inten-
tions, despite its omnipresence in official speech.12
Corporatism, however, allowed Salazar to deflect responsibility for the short-

comings of the New State onto others, who were described as not being
wholeheartedly accepting of the new times. Its heavy machinery also mediated
Salazar’s more unpopular decisions before they reached the man on the street.
It is worth noting that committed corporatists within the Portuguese regime—
mainly academic in their background—grew disenchanted with the system’s
operation in Portugal, since the position of the State remained paramount.
Some of them—maybe most—blamed the experience of World War II for the
failings that installed themselves, permanently it seemed, in the corporative
machinery; but they were probably being too generous—or cautious. It is fairer
to say that Salazar, jealous of his still fragile political power, did not want to

allow too much initiative to the economic agents, the ‘living forces’ of the
country. The war did not help, of course, but after the war, when concentration
on the economy became possible, the government continued in control,
adhering—slowly, of course—to the European fashion for planning. It was in
the postwar period that much of Portuguese Catholicism, frustrated by the
nature of Portuguese corporatism, which proclaimed itself to be a product of
Catholic thinking, but which was in reality something very different, began to
distance itself from Salazar.
Politically speaking, corporatism was to have little impact, since its organi-
zations were never able to speak for the ‘nation’; the National Assembly, with
its liberal lineage, was always to remain more important in this regard. The
President of the Republic, also elected, until 1958, along old-fashioned liberal
lines, was also a better embodiment of the abstract nation than any of the cor-
porative bodies, including the Corporative Chamber unveiled in the 1933 Con-
stitution. Economically, Portugal developed into a hybrid mix of corporatism,
liberalism, and statism, with the initial reformist zeal of the 1930s very quickly
halted. Workers were effectively absorbed into the corporative machinery,
through the National Syndicates; this meant, in essence, that they lost their
independence. The same did not really occur for employers, many of whom
were able to resist the process. As one historian puts it,
It is obvious that employers gained much more from Salazarism. There was peace
and social order, wages were kept low, market protection was ensured, particularly
with the colonies, and financial stability was guaranteed. All this was ensured
through the State’s intervention by means of the Organizations of Economic
Coordination as well as the “industrial conditioning” law. The most sensitive areas,
notably agriculture and exports, were governed by “mandatory cartelization”,
while the entry of new companies was conditioned.13
For all the fanfare of the 1930s, the first corporations were only actually
formed in the 1950s, and even then they were to have, in practice, very little
autonomy. Thus, the corporative machinery had as its primary roles social con-
trol, the development of a national capitalism, and the reinforcement of the
role of the State.14
Corporatism was, of course, part of the Catholic political program which
Salazar had long espoused. There were other elements of this inter-war brand
of Christian-Democracy which were to influence the New State as profoundly
as corporatism. Of these, winning back the people for the Church, by allowing
13. Costa Pinto, Salazar’s Dictatorship, p. 186.

14. Ibid., p. 62.
the Church freedom of spiritual action, was the most important. For Salazar,
Catholicism was indistinguishable from Portuguese identity; it was the single-
most important vertebrating element in Portuguese society. Religious belief
was a basic element in the orderly society which Salazar envisaged, a society
wherein respect for authority and hierarchy was axiomatic. In slow stages, in
order not to shock lingering republican sentiment, Salazar allowed the Church
to reach a wider audience. It is impossible not to equate, thanks to hindsight,
Salazar’s defense of religion with the need to shore up his own political posi-
tion: ‘Salazar refers to God in order to better legitimate his power and consoli-
date his authority. In a way, God justifies the blind obedience that every good
Portuguese owes Salazar.’15 The project, however, was also to fail; re-
Christianizing the country was to prove beyond the ability of the Portuguese
Church and its supporting associations.
International Setting: The Great Depression and Unrest in Europe
Salazar’s political education was carried out in a country where political

liberalism was the order of the day. He was therefore out of step with con-
temporary developments, especially when, in 1910, Portugal became a Repub-
lic. With the existing liberal tradition being stiffened by the more urgent and
divisive jacobinism of the Democratic party, engaging in Salazar’s brand of
politics became an act of defiance. World War I, fought by the Western Allies
as a war for democracy, justice, and the rights of small nations, seemed to rein-
force this prevailing trend; but the war’s unexpected duration, with its extra-
ordinary political, social, and cultural consequences, meant that the dream of a
new order founded on democracy and respect for international law never
became reality. As one by one the states of Europe, old and new, turned away
from political liberalism and the legacy of 1789, Salazar found himself more
and more in the continent’s mainstream—so much so, in fact, that for many
his greatest fault, or his greatest virtue, was fast becoming his moderation. It
was not just political liberalism that was in retreat as Salazar’s ascent to power
was played out. In the report that accompanied Salazar’s third budget (1930–
31), the effects of the Great Depression were acknowledged.16 The fall in
prices of agricultural products and raw materials had begun to be felt, even in
Portugal, whose economic backwardness acted as a shield. The global crisis had
come to stay, and its effect on Salazar’s thinking was massive, since it struck at

16. Earlier references to the crisis, as well as to the steps taken to deal with it, can be found in Salazar’s note
on the subject of the Madeira revolt: ‘A situação financeira e económica e a ordem pública’ in Diário da
Manhã (Lisbon), 7 May 1931.
the pillars of a Portuguese economy whose renewal was a necessary precondi-
tion of socio-political reform. Colonial goods, agricultural exports, emigrants’
remittances: all these traditional strong-points of the country’s economic life
were now under threat.
The very least that one can say about the Great Depression is that it rein-
forced Salazar’s belief that Portugal would have to rely on its own resources,
however limited, in order to pull itself out of difficulty. The above-mentioned
report was published in Diário da Manhã, on 28 October 1931—in fact, the
whole of the front page was dedicated to it. In this piece, Salazar claimed that
the world situation, for which no-one in Portugal was responsible, now
threatened to undo all the sacrifices made in three-and-a-half years. Salazar
wrote, in a powerful echo of his article on the failings of wartime economic
policy,
The world’s financial and economic situation sets us, fatally, painful and difficult
conditions, which are, however, suitable for the development of a national and
colonial economy, negotiated and integrated, covering the greatest possible
number of foodstuffs, raw materials, and industrial products of first importance.
Portugal will be obliged to turn inwards, making the most of its population, its
capital, its production and consumption; and it would be a pity to lose this
interesting and historic moment through lack of courage, or of vision.17
For Salazar, only the State could ensure that the national interest was respected,
and only the State could ensure that strategic economic functions were
nurtured and developed in order to safeguard national independence. To this
end, a number of strategies were employed, the most important of which were
protectionism and industrial conditioning. Industrial conditioning has been
described as
a licensing system, by which each new firm needed a government authorization to

enter any market. An old firm also needed a licence to change installed capacity.
The process of getting the necessary license included consultation of the “corpora-
tive institutions” of the interested market.18
Potential competitors could and did object to the appearance of new

factories, or the development of existing ones, with the State having then to
17. ‘Um documento notável: As contas públicas de 1930–1931 fecharam com um saldo de 152.000 contos’ in
Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 28 October 1931.
18. João L. César das Neves, ‘Portuguese postwar growth: a global approach’ in Nicholas Crafts & Gianni
Toniolo (eds), Economic Growth in Europe Since 1945 (Cambridge: CUP, 1996), p. 330. Another historian trans-
lates this practice as ‘industrial licensing’. Eric Baklanoff, The Economic Transformation of Spain and Portugal
(London: Praeger, 1978), p. 104.
adjudicate between the rival parties. The system, looking back, favored already
existing enterprises and companies, and ‘reduced the innovation and the
flexibility of the economy.’19 Moreover, foreign capital had to subject itself to
industrial conditioning and work for the national good (which was hardly a
welcoming stance). Early in 1932, in response to the new set of circumstances,
the government increased existing tariffs on imports by an average of 20%, and
thinking began on the subject of a new development plan. The situation was
also turned to Salazar’s advantage, through an official note, published in the
press, detailing the ongoing struggle to keep the budget balanced in the face of
the drop in income generated by the world crisis: Salazar acknowledged that a
tough battle would be fought until the end of the fiscal year in order to stick to
the budget forecasts, and stressed that the one item which might halt his un-
broken run of balanced budgets was the expense associated with the 1931
revolts in Madeira and in Lisbon: ‘We are too poor a country to allow ourselves
the luxury of expensive revolutions, to be paid for through the ordinary
resources of the nation’.20
The most obvious move to respond to the new circumstances came in the
shape of the Campanha do Trigo (Wheat Campaign), designed to protect cereal
growers from falling international prices with the rest of the population being
sacrificed at the altar of high food costs. The Campanha do Trigo, as we have
seen already, was designed to reduce recourse to imports and increase domestic
production without altering existing structures; consumption of grain was esti-
mated in accordance with the lowest physiological requirements.21 This was in
line with some of Salazar’s earlier writings on consumption; he believed that if
waste and luxury/over-consumption were eliminated, Portugal could look after
its needs. Lower consumption entailed less need for imports, allowed national
wheat production to meet domestic needs (thus reducing the country’s depen-
dence on foreign products), was a means of ‘collective economic education’,
and allowed for the accomplishment of important hygienic goals. State-spon-
sored alternatives to the commercial growing of wheat were not very credible:
domestic and foreign markets were already saturated, while products for which
Portugal was ideally suited and situated, such as flowers and fruit, demanded a
technical competence, a level of reliability, and an availability of water and
efficient transportation that put them beyond the reach of ordinary Portuguese
farmers.
One analysis of the New State’s economic performance suggests that
Portuguese protectionism before World War II was unusual since it did not
19. César das Neves, ‘Portuguese postwar growth’, p. 330.

20. ‘O equilíbrio das contas públicas no ano corrente’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 13 May 1932.
21. Marques, Política económica, p. 73.
seek to allow for the development of an industrial base capable of transforming
the country. Although industrial growth in the period 1928–1947 was some-
what faster than the national economic average of 2.9% year,22 this might well
have resulted from a return to previous indices after some difficult years.
Industrial protectionism was part of a wider strategy of stamping out domestic
competition and shutting out imports in all areas of the economy, not just
industry.23 There was an added advantage to a protectionist policy: increased
tariffs served to raise revenue for the State, thus helping to balance the budget.
As for industrial conditioning, it was initially described as a means of
salvation for the nation’s industry, badly affected by the economic crisis which
aggravated limitations imposed by the small internal market. It soon became
clear that there was a deeper philosophy behind it, since it remained in
existence far longer than the explanations for its introduction had suggested.
One can ask, though, was the Great Depression really so serious, for Portugal,
that industrial conditioning was the best way out? Did it justify such a depar-
ture? It is usually estimated that Portugal was one of the European countries
least-hit by the Depression. Portuguese exports were not as badly affected as
those of other countries, and by 1933, they were, uniquely, on the rise; unem-
ployment was not as serious an issue either, largely because it was harder to
measure unemployment in a rural country. The escudo had been stabilized;
prices were falling, but gently. The country’s conservative financial policy was
not affected. However, industrial conditioning remained in place once the
Depression’s effects began to fade. The limited nature of the internal market
was now used to justify the preservation of conditioning, despite the fact that
the market would increase if conditions improved: more industry would mean
more workers on a regular salary, which in turn would mean a greater demand
for goods. Marques writes, ‘protected by conditioning, firms do not feel the
need to modernize themselves, more specifically through the means of new
technical processes. This is probably why the level of concentration in Portu-
guese industry remains relatively low until the end of the 1950s.’24 Industrial
conditioning was especially useful for the smallest enterprises, which were
spared destruction by aggressive competition. Profits, however backward the
means of production, were guaranteed, as were existing jobs. Industrial condi-
tioning, a mainstay of the New State’s economic policy, was therefore a way—
yet another—of ensuring stability at the expense of dynamic growth: the
economy was forced, if not to stagnate, then at least to grow so slowly that the
22. Ibid., p. 44.

23. Ibid., p. 42.
24. Ibid., p. 61
impact of this growth could be predicted, monitored, and controlled by the
government in order to suit its interests.
Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, then, entrepreneurs and industrialists
might have ideas about expanding their business, but making such ideas come
true required government approval. Theoretically, management of the
economy should have rested on the corporative organizations which reflected
the interests of stakeholders—but this was never allowed to happen. The gov-
ernment had a monopoly on decision-making in the economic sphere. The
State made it difficult for others to invest, and limited its own investment to
the country’s infrastructure. This was not planning as in post-war Europe;
there was no constant search for growth, since that same search for growth
was a problem, just as excessive production and excessive consumption were
problems. Equilibrium was the desired end, not greater wealth. The ultimate
ideological justification for this equilibrium was that material goods did not, of
themselves, enrich lives. Despite the constant advice of those who, like
Ezequiel de Campos, believed that Portugal could successfully, and through its
own resources and initiative, and through courageous reform, develop its
industry to a European standard, Salazar chose not to do so—there were
simply too many imponderables.
It is tempting to see in the Great Depression more than just an immediate
crisis; it was, in fact, an opportunity which Salazar seized and exploited for his
political ends. A country like Portugal—small, militarily weak, and econom-
ically dependent on others—was singularly vulnerable to international turmoil.
In such a country, ideology, theory, and even the best-laid plans might mean, in
the end, relatively little. The Depression contributed to Salazar’s transforma-
tion from the professor to the politician—and its effects would be com-
pounded by those of the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and the develop-
ment of nationalism in Africa and Asia, to finally destroy the vestiges of
Salazar’s political beliefs of the 1920s, leaving little in their place.
The Portuguese Empire in Salazar’s Thinking.
The defense of Portugal’s right to its colonies and the identification of

those colonies as a key to a prosperous future were areas in which the New
State did not have to innovate. All elite groups in Portugal agreed with this
point of view. This colonialist consensus was as solid as anywhere else in
Europe, if not more so. Where there were divisions, however, was in the inter-
pretation of the ideal colonial relationship. Should the colonies, especially
Angola and Mozambique, be allowed to develop at their own pace, using their
own resources and obvious potential in order to attract foreign capital, or
should their development be subordinated to that of the metropolitan
economy? And how much autonomy—political and economic—should
colonial authorities have? As we have seen, in January 1930 Salazar assumed, in
an interim fashion, the Colonies portfolio. Until that moment, he had seldom
spoken of the colonies. It is fair to say that he shared the view that they were,
and should be, Portuguese, and that this fact was not open for discussion; at
the same time, though, he knew them to be a drain on the strained finances of
the country, and looked forward to tightening Lisbon’s control over the
colonies’ financial affairs. This was all the more necessary since the colonies—
notably Angola—had long been the repository of political deportees who, for
lack of skilled white settlers, quickly rose to prominence in Africa. Political
opinion in the colonies was thus harder to control and was often at odds with
prevailing trends in the metropolis. Luanda, the Angolan capital, tended to be
to the left of Lisbon, and its economic players—white or mixed-race—had a
habit of subverting colonial authorities, including governors and high commis-
sioners, to their cause. Looming large over immediate political differences was
the specter of Brazil: the fear that Angolans, whatever their background, if
pushed too far, might be tempted to go their own way, severing the ties with
the mother country.
Salazar could not impose his belief in the strict subordination of colonial
finance and economic development to the will of Lisbon when he first entered
the government in 1928. He had to bide his time, even though the financial
situation of the larger colonies, especially Angola, could potentially derail all his
work in Lisbon. Cunha Leal, who, as we have seen, was Salazar’s nemesis at
this point, was the nominal leader of those who wished to retain as much
autonomy as possible for the colonies, especially Angola. For this current, the
development of Angola’s enormous potential had to be the priority. Salazar,
though, objected: Angola had no right to be exempt from the strictures he had
devised for Portugal. It would take time for Salazar to emerge victorious from
this conflict.
It was not just the development of the wealthy colonies that required
massive investment. Portuguese Guinea and Timor were the archetypal
colonial backwaters, with little economic life of any kind;25 much of Goa’s
population was forced to seek employment in British India, or further afield;
and Macao was economically viable only because of the government’s monop-
oly on the importation of opium. The soil of the São Tomé and Príncipe
islands was exhausted, the production of cocoa being a shadow of its former
25. AOS CO Ultramar (UL) 10, letter, Lisbon, 13 December 1935, José Gomes to the governor of
Portuguese Guinea. Copy of the letter was sent by José Gomes to Salazar the following day.
self.26 Even keeping the population alive in the poorer colonies was often
beyond the ability of the Portuguese State. This was certainly the case in the
archipelago of Cape Verde, prone to prolonged droughts. Famine and death
were a reality of life in Cabo Verde, and this had long been the case, although
few in Portugal were seemingly aware of it. A report written by governor
Amadeu Gomes de Figueiredo, in September 1932, provided figures for some
previous famines:
1774–1775.............................................22,288 deaths
1831–1833.............................................12,000
1863–1865.............................................30,652
1902–1904.............................................15,000
1920–1922.............................................17,00027
Gomes de Figueiredo added that these were conservative estimates, since

at times of famine many deaths went unregistered (and there had of course
been other famines). As Salazar took over the government, Cape Verde was in
the throes of famine, and another one would follow in the early 1940s, with
war already under way. In fact, when the war in the East broke out, in Decem-
ber 1941, and Timor was caught up in Japan’s military expansion, the Portu-
guese Minister for the Colonies, Francisco José Vieira Machado, was in Portu-
guese Guinea and Cabo Verde, trying to find a solution to this latest outbreak
of famine.
The subordination of Angola and the other colonies to the civil servants in
the Terreiro do Paço was made more urgent by the fact that in 1930 the
administration of Angola was headed by Integralist sympathizers Filomeno da
Câmara, as High Commissioner, and Morais Sarmento, as his chef de cabinet. A
previous government had attempted to buy their loyalty—precarious, at best—
by sending them to Luanda. Tensions naturally arose between the white
community, in the grip of economic difficulties and, as we have seen, situated
politically to the left of Lisbon, and these ultra-rightist officers.28 In March of
1930 an outbreak of violence in Luanda, where various plots were being
hatched, led to the death of Morais Sarmento and, later, to the disgrace of
26. For conditions in this once rich colony, see AOS CO UL 10, Report by the Commission charged with
studying the crises in S. Tomé, Lisbon, 12 March 1931.
27. AOS CO UL 10, ‘Colónia de Cabo Verde: Relatório sobre a crise de 1931–1932’, by Governor Amadeu
Gomes de Figueiredo, 1 September 1932.
28. One of the many opponents of the new authorities in Luanda was a cousin of Salazar, Francisco Alves da
Silva, who complained that Filomeno da Câmara and Morais Sarmento (‘who it is said is your representative
in this Colony’) were persecuting his business and who wrote, ‘I must tell you that I have never seen such
disorganization in Angola. I really don’t know where it will end.’ AOS CO PC 3, letter, Luanda, 4 March
1930, Francisco Alves da Silva to António de Oliveira Salazar.
Filomeno da Câmara, who was quickly recalled to Lisbon. These developments
tied in nicely with Salazar’s aims of reinforcing Lisbon’s control over the
colonies, returning order to Angola, and reinforcing his own political reputa-
tion by moving beyond the world of mere figures, over which he had already
stamped his own superiority. The first step for Salazar, not surprisingly, was
balancing the volatile Angolan budget.
The failed revolt in Angola and the turmoil that spawned it provided
Salazar with the opportunity to impose his logic on the colonial sphere, under
the guise of protecting overseas Portugal from the covetous eyes of colonial
rivals old and new. The centre-piece of this effort was the Acto Colonial
(Colonial Act), published on 9 July 1930. This vital piece of legislation was
drafted by Salazar in conjunction with Quirino de Jesus and a rising star in
Portuguese politics, Armindo Monteiro. Seven years younger than Salazar, but
from a far wealthier background, Monteiro had distinguished himself in his
legal studies in the recently created University of Lisbon, where he took his
degree and later produced a doctoral thesis entitled ‘On the Portuguese
Budget’. Monteiro was extraordinarily active, as a lecturer, a lawyer, a journalist
writing in the financial pages of the leading daily Diário de Notícias, and a
businessman, sitting on the board of a bank and of the important Companhia
Industrial de Portugal e Colónias, which controlled much of the country’s bread
production. He had also made many enemies among the business interests
which controlled the Diário de Notícias’ main rival, O Século. This newspaper
delivered ferocious personal attacks against Monteiro before and after the 28
May rising. A recent biography suggests that had Monteiro used his connec-
tions better, exploiting his tribune at the Diário de Notícias to attack Sinel de
Cordes, he might well have been asked to replace him as Minister of
Finance29—but Monteiro, at this crucial moment, was strangely silent, perhaps
because he had enough enemies as it was. As a result it was Salazar who em-
ployed him, and not the other way round: first in charge of the Ministry of
Finance’s statistics division, which Monteiro revolutionized and turned into an
independent organization, the Instituto Nacional de Estatística, and then as Under-
secretary of Finance. It was during this period that the Acto Colonial was drafted
and published.
The nationalist overtones of this piece of legislation were clear, and
language and terminology were changed from the Republican period:
The historic function of possessing and colonizing overseas domains and of

civilizing the indigenous populations that reside in them, as well as exercising the
29. Pedro Aires Oliveira, Armindo Monteiro: Uma biografia política (Lisbon: Bertrand, 1999), p. 63.
moral influence derived from the Padroado do Oriente,30 is part of the organic
essence of the Portuguese Nation.31
The Portuguese Colonial Empire was formally instituted, with the overseas
provinces being renamed ‘colonies’, a departure from Portuguese tradition
which caused some apprehension in colonial circles; the highest authority in
the colonies was the governor-general, who replaced the more independent
high commissioner in place since World War I. Scrutiny by Lisbon of the legis-
lative function of the governors was written into the Act. Section II, ‘Of the
indigenous peoples’, set out the State’s responsibilities for the well-being of the
populations under its charge; colonial authorities were given the mission of
‘preventing and punishing, in accordance with the law, all abuses against the
persons or property of the indígenas.’32 The State was specifically barred from
involving itself in the provision of indigenous workers to economic enter-
prises.33
Subordination to Lisbon undoubtedly acted as a brake on the larger
colonial economies. Foreign currency earned from direct exports to other
countries had to be exchanged in Lisbon for escudos or colonial currency;
foreign currency for direct imports into the colonies from other countries was
only available in Lisbon, which could, of course, reject the request. In practical
terms, one recent author suggests, the Acto Colonial helped to restore the
colonies to their former task of helping to settle the Portuguese balance of
payments:
Between 1892 and 1914 and 1948 and 1975, the African colonies were a
substantial source of foreign currency for the Portuguese economy. The same
probably occurred in the 1930s and 40s, although we do no have sufficient
statistical data to give a definitive conclusion regarding these years. The value of
this source was such that it easily surpassed the military and administrative costs of
colonization […] By contributing in this manner to bankroll foreign payments, the
colonies made governing the country easier, and contributed to its economic
growth.34
Politically, the Acto’s forceful affirmation of Portuguese rights rallied

nationalist opinion to Salazar, breaking the link between Portuguese
nationalism and colonial development—and expense. Strengthened politically
by the positive reception to the Acto, Salazar was free to move against Cunha
30. The power of nomination of religious authorities in part of India.

31. Acto Colonial, Article 2.
32. Ibid., Article 15.
33. Ibid., Article 19.
34. Pedro Lains, Os progressos, p. 213.
Leal, one of his most cogent critics, forcing him into exile. There would be no
discussion of the colonial choices made by the government. What the Acto
Colonial did not contain was any discussion of the future of the empire, or what
the point of Portugal’s colonial activity was. Portugal was responsible for the
indigenous populations: but what did it hope to do with them? Could it
envisage accepting them as full citizens? And, on a grander scale, could Angola
become a Brazil? What would happen on the day that it and Mozambique, not
to mention the smaller colonies, could survive on their own? To these
questions, which addressed the contradiction contained in the very heart of the
broader colonial enterprise, Salazar, for the moment, had no answers. Manuel
de Lucena writes, on the subject of the Acto, that all articles dedicated to
matters of imperial solidarity and administrative decentralization are vague in
content and in calendar, whereas those concerned with issues of sovereignty
are very precise, scheduled for immediate implementation, and designed to
reinforce the hand of Lisbon.35
In the wake of the Acto’s publication Armindo Monteiro was sent to
Angola on a fact-finding mission. His correspondence with Salazar is full of
telling observations, indicative of the relationship between the metropolis and
the colonies. For Monteiro, who would become, in time, Minister of the
Colonies, the governor-general’s palace in Luanda looked like the municipal
buildings of a small Portuguese town;36 of those gathered for the swearing in of
the new governor-general, Monteiro wrote that ‘I had the impression that all
the barbers of Portugal’s villages had gathered here’.37 And of Luanda itself,
Monteiro wrote,
[…] when one passes by an avenue with good houses, a well planned building, a
well arranged street, and asks—who had this built?—the answer is, inevitably:
Norton.
In other words, General Norton de Matos, a leading figure in republican

politics who had served as the first postwar High Commissioner in Luanda.
Norton de Matos may have lost control of Angola’s finances, but the scale of
his ambition suited Angolan economic interests far better than Salazar’s. The
new colonial order was streamlined by a series of decrees that imposed serious
sacrifices on Angolan civil servants and which, to a chorus of protests from
local business interests, began to put in place a system of imperial autarky,
35. Manuel de Lucena, ‘Armindo Monteiro’ in António Barreto & Maria Filomena Mónica (eds), Dicionário de
História de Portugal vol. 8, Suplemento F/O (Lisbon: Figueirinhas, 1999), p. 521.
36. More precisely, Freixo-de-Espada-à-Cinta. Rosas et al. (eds), Armindo Monteiro, doc. 4, letter, Luanda, 4
August 1930, Armindo Monteiro to António de Oliveira Salazar, p. 32.
37. Rosas et al. (eds), Armindo Monteiro, p. 32.
administered, of course, by Lisbon. This process culminated in November
1933, through the simultaneous publication of the Organic Charter of the
Portuguese Colonial Empire and the Colonial Administrative Reform. Already
in June 1933 a First Conference of Colonial governors had been held, a visible
demonstration of their subordination to Lisbon; a year later, Henrique Galvão
oversaw a Colonial Exhibition in Oporto. During this period, Portuguese
industry began to respond positively to the opportunities offered by the
captive, and protected, colonial market, as well as to the possibilities offered up
by colonial raw materials, such as cotton and industrial oils. The protectionist
measures of the Colonial Act of 1930 were not slow in taking effect. But for all
the talk of imperial autarky, and protecting national economic interests, there
was also an understanding that Portuguese capital was not sufficient to
modernize the colonies; foreign investment, if discrete, continued to be
welcome.
When Salazar came to power, colonialism was a self-evident truth, not
open to any serious challenge. The colonies were seen as an essential part of
the creation of a new Portuguese spirit; they could and should ‘become great
schools of Portuguese nationalism’; all Army officers should serve there.38 At
the inauguration of the 1934 Colonial Exhibition, Armindo Monteiro explained
what was at stake in his defense of the Empire: ‘The overseas spirit prevented
our fusion into the peninsular body, and gave as an unmistakable individuality.
It saved us as a nation: but it sets all parts of the land that make up Portugal on
an equal footing.’39 The need to defend Portugal’s patrimony led Salazar into
an essentially defensive diplomatic stance, with Germany and Italy as potential
aggressors, and would remain a thorn in his side over the course of the 1930s.40
It was because of his forthright views on the danger to Angola, and the
government’s inability to defend it, that Paiva Couceiro, a former colonial hero
who had kept alive the flame of monarchist resistance during the First
Republic, now ran afoul of Salazar. In a letter dated 23 June 1935, Paiva
Couceiro noted that all Salazar had done was to balance budgets, but that this
would not prevent England from giving Angola to Germany in order to save
itself: the old Alliance would count for nothing, since nothing had been done
to reinforce both the military defenses of the colonies and the overall

39. ‘O notável discurso do sr. Dr Armindo Monteiro, ilustre Ministro das Colónias’ in Diário da Manhã
(Lisbon), 16 June 1934.
40. On 26 March 1933 the national press carried an official note from the Presidency of the Council of
Ministers denying, on the strength of a statement from Mussolini, that the Portuguese colonies had been the
subject of a deal proposed by the Italian government to its British counterpart, as had been stated in some
foreign newspapers. ‘Um desmentido a atoardas de alguns jornais estrangeiros’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon),
26 March 1933.
Portuguese presence there.41 Questioned about recent articles in the British
press about the future of overseas Portugal, Samuel Hoare, at the time Foreign
Secretary, assured Armindo Monteiro that Britain and Germany had not dis-
cussed the future of the Portuguese colonies, and that Britain would not enter-
tain any discussion of the issue.42 In January 1937, in a long official note pub-
lished in the press, Salazar denied the latest rumor doing the rounds—that
Portugal had denied that it was selling one of its colonies because in fact it was
renting them to Germany for ninety-nine years.43 Feigning exhaustion with the
procedure, Salazar proclaimed, as he would continue to do over the next thirty
years, that
We will not sell, we will not cede, we will not rent, we will not share our colonies
[…] Our constitutional laws do not permit it—and, even if they did not exist, our
national conscience would not permit it either.
Even Great Britain, Portugal’s ally, could, at times, play the role of potential
aggressor.44 After World War II the nature of the threat would change, since
colonialism itself, rather than the actual division of spoils, began to be ques-
tioned. At that point colonialism would be elevated within the regime’s ideo-
logical pecking order, so that when fighting began in Angola, in 1961, the
defense of the colonies had become its primary concern.
Salazar’s enemies within what had been the military dictatorship also sought
to exploit conditions in the colonies—the gap between rhetoric and reality—to
41. AOS CO PC 3, letter, Santo Amaro de Oeiras, 23 June 1935, Henrique de Paiva Couceiro to Mário
Pessoa. As a result of this letter, and the publicity given to it by Captain Pessoa, Paiva Couceiro was banished
from national soil for six months. The official note informing the press of this decision and a copy of the
letter can be found in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 13 September 1935. For his continued part in the spreading
of rumors about the situation in Africa, Paiva Couceiro would again be banished from Portuguese soil, this
time in November 1937, for two years.
42. AOS CO Negócios Estrangeiros (NE) 7A, Notes on the conversation between Foreign Minister
Armindo Monteiro and the British Foreign Secretary, Samuel Hoare, in the Hotel Beau Rivage, Geneva, 12
September 1935. Much ink had recently been spilt in Portugal to denounce an article published in August by
the Echo de Paris which reported the impending sale of the Portuguese colonies.
43. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘O suposto arrendamento de Angola à Alemanha’ in Discursos e notas políticas
vol. 2 1935–1937 2nd edition (Coimbra: Coimbra Editora, 1946), pp. 257–264.
44. In this regard, see, for example, S. R. Ashton and S. E. Stockwell (eds), British Documents on the End of
Empire Series A, Volume 1, Imperial Policy and Colonial Practice 1925–1945 (London: HMSO, 1996), Document
20, 24 January 1938, ‘Germany: the next steps towards a general settlement; the colonial question’, minutes
of the Cabinet Committee on Foreign Policy, in which Neville Chamberlain outlined a future reorganization
of central Africa: ‘His idea was that two lines should be drawn across Africa, the northern line running
roughly to the south of the Sahara, the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, Abyssinia and Italian Somaliland, and the
southern line running roughly to the south of Portuguese West Africa and the Belgian Congo, Tanganyka,
and Portuguese East Africa. There should be general agreement among the Powers concerned that all the
territories between the two lines should be subjected to the proposed new rules and regulations covering the
administration of the territories. It was not contemplated that there should be any pooling of the
administration but that those Powers which now held the territory, together with Germany who would be
given a territory of her own, would each administer their own territories subject to the over-riding rules and
regulations to be laid down.’
embarrass the President of the Council and turn Carmona against him. In
November 1935 leading Integralist Hipólito Raposo sent a long missive to
Carmona, describing the situation in the colonies as catastrophic, with a revolt
among the population, especially of Angola, becoming a distinct possibility:
If whites are begging door-to-door from blacks; if we find the indigenous peoples
looking for sanitary care in foreign lands, since there is no-one to help them in our
lands; if light-houses are turned off, because the money for oil has run out; if in
Cape Verde mothers carry with them the bodies of their dead sons, so that they
might avail of the ration destined for the deceased—then it will not be easy to dis-
miss the sad verdicts reached by others, or to bear the remorse of having forsaken
our lands and our people in Africa.45
Beneath the veneer of order, which was all that those in Portugal were
allowed to see, conditions in the colonies were very different. But censorship
on this topic was complete; as far as most Portuguese were concerned, nothing
was amiss overseas. On 11 July 1938 Carmona left for São Tomé and Angola,
amid the by now well-oiled ceremonial machinery of the New State—the first
time a Portuguese head of state visited the country’s colonial possessions. He
returned on 30 August, to a similar spectacle, with the Terreiro do Paço
bedecked with the flags of all Portugal’s municipalities and a Te Deum in the
Jerónimos monastery. He set off again on 17 June 1939, this time for Mozam-
bique. These trips, apart from reinforcing the Portuguese position in Africa,
served also to demonstrate Salazar’s growing power, no longer reliant on
Carmona’s immediate presence to shore itself up.
The New State, 1932–1940: Institutions and Practices.
With Salazar installed as President of the Council of Ministers, the business

of government changed immediately. Salazar was a new sort of premier,
handling matters of State differently from his predecessors in both the
dictatorship and the Republic. Information and initiative was concentrated in
his person; no-one else had the full picture or even, for that matter, the
privilege of initiative. Ministers were technicians, who turned their master’s
voice into concrete proposals, in the shape of projected laws and decrees, and
then submitted them to Salazar for approval. Salazar never hid his intentions
45. AOS CP 234, letter, Lisbon, 3 November 1935, J. Hipólito Raposo to Óscar Fragoso Carmona. Carmona
passed it on to Salazar a week later, excusing himself for the delay by blaming his secretary’s illness.
Ironically, Raposo had been in Africa as part of a highly publicized ‘holiday cruise to the colonies’, presided
over by Marcelo Caetano, which had been designed to interest the country’s university students, and some of
its social and intellectual elite, in the fate of Portuguese Africa.
on the matter. In an interview with the Diário de Notícias, on 12 July 1932, he
stated,
There will possibly be a radical change in the government’s mode of operation,

through the replacement of the reformist impatience, for which we are so often
attacked, with the orderly resolution of the most pressing problems, and through
the replacement of the frequent Councils of Ministers (certainly reserved, in the
future, for the definition of general lines) by meetings of the Head of Government
with the ministers, regarding their specific affairs.
Ministers came and went at Salazar’s pleasure. Their life was not an easy
one.46 After the approval of the 1933 Constitution, Salazar tendered the collec-
tive resignation of the Cabinet, Carmona asking him to remain in place in order
to create a new executive. There were new Ministers of War (Major Luís
Alberto de Oliveira) and Foreign Affairs (José Caeiro da Mata) and two new
Undersecretaries of State: of Agriculture (Leovigildo Franco de Sousa47) and of
Corporations and Social Welfare (Pedro Teotónio Pereira). A second cabinet
reshuffle occurred in July 1933, when three new ministers were unveiled:
Captain Raul Gomes Pereira at Interior, Sousa Pinto48 at Public Instruction,
and Franco de Sousa, at Agriculture (this being a new portfolio, separated from
Commerce and Industry, which continued in the hands of Sebastião Ramires).
The creation of this cabinet position was an indication of the growing power of
the country’s landowners. Albino dos Reis’ removal from the Ministry of the
Interior, where, as he put it, ‘the defense of the current situação’ was overseen,
was politically significant: ‘to govern is to antagonize’, he said, in his farewell
speech.49 Gustavo Cordeiro Ramos’s departure from Public Instruction was
more painful. First, Salazar forced his brother Armando from his position as
46. José Pequito Rebelo informed Salazar, in the summer of 1933, that his kinsman, Armindo Monteiro, was
increasingly ill, a victim of the punishing work rate that ministers now faced. Although the cabinet was no
larger than its predecessors during the First Republic, ministers were now responsible for the production of
legislation. ‘The result is that the highest government personnel can only carry out their mandate at the
expense of a slow suicide.’ AOS CP 235, letter, Anadia 9 August 1933, José Pequito Rebelo to António de
Oliveira Salazar.
47. Leovigildo Queimado Franco de Sousa (1892–1968) graduated from the Lisbon Institute of Agronomy
and then sketched out a military career, which came to naught. A landowner in the Alentejo, Franco de
Sousa was brought into government by Sebastião Ramires in 1933 as Undersecretary of State for Agriculture,
being then promoted to Minister some months later. His career in government, and in politics, would be
brief.
48. Alexandre Alberto de Sousa Pinto (1880–1982) graduated in Physics and Chemistry from the University
of Coimbra and joined the lecturing staff in the University of Oporto, of which he became rector in 1929.
He served in a number of political and corporative roles, and sat in the National Assembly from 1945 and
1953, but his cabinet career as Minister of Public Instruction was limited to a single year’s activity.
49. ‘Tomaram posse os novos titulares das pastas do Interior, da Instrução, do Comércio e Indústria e da
Agricultura’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 25 July 1933. Situação (situation) was a long-standing expression
used to designate the rule of a particular faction or party. Given the nature of Portuguese politics, this
expression did not convey permanence.
Gustavo’s chief of cabinet;50 then it was Gustavo himself who had to leave.
According to Salazar, President Carmona had ‘authorized me to resolve certain
present difficulties, through a cabinet reshuffle, as a result of which some
ministers which are the target of the most pressing attacks will be replaced’.
Cordeiro Ramos, who had sought to politicize the primary school, making it a
conduit for nationalist thinking, was being attacked by the teachers, Salazar
explained; the time had come for him to go.51 Cordeiro Ramos replied, saying
that he knew that a plot against him was underway, a plot that had already cost
his brother his job (‘a hard and undeserved test which still hurts me deeply
today’).52 Remaining in the cabinet against Salazar’s will was, however,
impossible.
Practice was to show that Salazar did not decide on matters of State on his
own. It has been suggested that the machinery of the New State, including the
government and the National Assembly, constituted one great source of expert
advice to the man who had to decide, a sounding board for his policies.53
Salazar described the dictatorship as it had existed until the end of 1934 in the
following way—‘many prepare, one alone decides, and carries out with the
necessary means’54—but it could be argued that this modus operandi applied to
his time in government as a whole. Ministers and others might not be able to
decide on political matters, there might not be—unless Salazar sought it, which
he sometimes did—a cabinet consensus on policy; but ministers could criticize
him, even vigorously, provided such criticism was delivered privately, and that
once a decision had been reached it remained unchallenged. Salazar’s working
habits were remarkable for their consistency over the forty years in power. He
got up, not particularly early (although insomnia would plague him for most of
his life), and read the newspapers. A first working session in the morning with
his chief of cabinet was then followed by the study of a particular problem,
such as a legal initiative or a speech that demanded close attention;55 this work
50. In a letter to Salazar, Armando Cordeiro Ramos accepted his dismissal, despite avowing his innocence of
‘this sad and painful incident’, which is unspecified. AOS CP 234, letter, Lisbon, 15 May 1933, Armando
Cordeiro Ramos to António de Oliveira Salazar.
51. AOS CP 234, undated draft, António de Oliveira Salazar to Gustavo Cordeiro Ramos.
52. AOS CP 234, undated letter, Gustavo Cordeiro Ramos to António de Oliveira Salazar. Salazar replied by
saying that even though he and Cordeiro Ramos had worked closely together, ‘I now deem it useful for the
march of the government to replace you at this moment […]’. AOS CP 234, draft dated 24 July 1933,
António de Oliveira Salazar to Gustavo Cordeiro Ramos.
53. Barreto, ‘Salazar’, p. 334.
54. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘A constituição das Câmaras na evolução da política portuguesa’ in Discursos,
vol. 1, p. 371.
55. In the interview with the Diário de Notícias, published on 12 July 1932 (and reproduced in the Diário da
Manhã the following day) Salazar confessed that he was used ‘to writing down everything which is destined
for public consumption. That is why I do not make impromptu speeches, or make my thoughts known
through the spoken word. I draft what I want to say and read it. This has been my system throughout my
public life.’
might be carried out on his own or in conjunction with a subordinate. Lunch
was followed by a break for rest, and work would begin again mid-afternoon; it
was then that he entertained visitors, including ministers looking for guidance.
After dinner, in which he was usually accompanied by any of a small number
of friends, and their spouses, a long walk would follow, initially through the
streets of the capital, and, after the 1937 attempt on his life, inside the walled
garden of his newly furbished official residence. It was frequent, until 1937, to
spot Salazar in one of his nightly promenades, in the company of the Minister
of the Interior or of another friend, José António Marques,56 who kept him
abreast of the latest rumors doing the rounds in Lisbon. This centralized
system, and the attention to detail paid by Salazar to forthcoming legislation,
speeches, etc, meant that progress was slow, too slow for some who viewed
Germany and Italy as models. Salazar thought the comparison unfair:
Mussolini and Hitler do not work like me. They do not do what I am forced to do.
Governing rich countries, with great resources at their disposal, they do not lack
trained “elites”, made up of competent experts, who relieve them of all duties bar
strategic tasks. I have to dedicate day and night, with no pauses, to the most
different matters, carrying out tasks which I should never have to worry about.57
The 1933 Constitution, which turned the Portuguese State into a ‘unitary
and corporative Republic’, was the centre-piece of the regime; its approval by
plebiscite, on 19 March of that year, and its promulgation, on 11 April, marked
the point when the military dictatorship gave the way definitively to the New
State.58 This document was remarkable for a number of reasons, above all the
latitude it provided the President of the Council. It was also a document that
was very much rooted in the existing political circumstances, with their own
intricate balance of power. It described not an ideal way of governing a
country, but sought instead to reconcile Salazar’s need for far-ranging powers,
and independence of action, with the preservation of General Carmona’s
56. José António Marques was born in the parish of Santa Comba Dão in 1881 and graduated with a degree
in Law from the University of Coimbra. In Coimbra he was involved in Catholic politics, meeting and
befriending Salazar. He performed a number of administrative and political roles during the New State,
including mayor of Santa Comba Dão and deputy to the first National Assembly, having failed, however, to
serve out his first term in the Assembly.
57. ‘Funcionalismo público: Uma entrevista do sr. Presidente do Conselho’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 18
August 1935. This article was reprinted from A Verdade (Lisbon).
58. The Constitution of 1933 differed little from the draft presented to the public in May 1932. Portugal was
described as a ‘corporative Republic’, whereas in the earlier version of the Constitution it had been labeled an
‘organically democratic and representative Republic’. In practical terms, the greatest difference lay in the
parliamentary representation, all of which was popularly elected in the final version, adopted in 1933,
whereas only one half was popularly elected in the 1932 draft, the other half being chosen by the municipal
chambers and the colonial corporatist electoral colleges. It is worth noting as well that in the original draft
the President of the Republic could not serve back-to-back terms, a provision that had been shelved by 1933.
prerogatives, which had become the touchstone of the army’s honor. Both
these criteria were met through the reinforcement of the Executive at the
expense of the Legislative. According to the text of the Constitution, the Head
of State was theoretically the dominant figure. It was he who named the
President of the Council and the other ministers, and he could also exonerate
them; he could deliver messages to the National Assembly, give it constituent
powers, and dissolve it; he could represent the nation and ‘direct the State’s
external policy’. He could be advised, in his actions, by a small Council of State.
This constitutional arrangement, with a directly elected President of the
Republic co-existing with a President of the Council of Ministers, or Prime
Minister, might invite a comparison with the Weimar Republic. In Portugal,
however, the arrangement resulted in the subordination of the President of the
Republic to the President of the Council. Such a system could not handle two
strong personalities capable of neutralizing each other. In order to avoid
paralysis, one must take the lead. As the more capable man, and as head of the
government, which he centralized in his person, Salazar held most of the
trump cards. Military intrigue aside, Carmona knew what Salazar wanted him to
know, and said in public what Salazar asked him to say. Theoretically,
Carmona, if he so chose, could dismiss Salazar without a second thought; he
could even put an end to the regime, by an appeal to the army, which might
very well follow his lead against the New State. Both courses essentially
amounted to the same thing, and would be designated, in today’s language, a
nuclear option. By 1932, however, and for the remainder of Carmona’s life, to
move against Salazar would have been to move against the army’s privileged
role in politics, against the myth of National Revolution set in motion by the
army, and to split the existing consensus among conservatives, with unpre-
dictable consequences. It is not surprising that he never took that step.
The reader of the 1933 Constitution must wait until article 106 to read
about the powers of the government and of the President of the Council. The
Constitution was organized so as to reflect the organic nature of the new
Portugal; it began with a definition of the territory, and then rose up from the
ground, via the individual, with his rights and responsibilities, to the family,
corporations, and local government, and then to matters such as the ‘Social and
Economic Order’, education and culture, religious affairs, defense, and
finances. Only then did it turn to the political players at a national level, and
even here the government had to wait its turn behind the President of the
Republic, the Council of State, the National Assembly, and the Corporative
Chamber. Despite the apparently secondary role it reserved for the govern-
ment, in practice the 1933 Constitution instituted a dictatorship of the Presi-
dent of the Council of Ministers, and while there were many guarantees of civil
and political rights, all of these were subjected to a number of conditions that
were shamelessly exploited by the executive. A police state, as we will see, was
allowed to emerge from within the strictures of the 1933 Constitution.59 What
did the text of the Constitution unambiguously allow Salazar to do? He could
propose ministers and undersecretaries of state to the President of the
Republic, who would officially name them; answer before the President for the
‘general policy of the government’, while coordinating and directing ‘the
activity of all the ministers, who answer politically to him for their actions’; and
summon the Council of Ministers, a power he shared with the President of the
Republic. All other powers were attributed to the government as a whole; it
had considerable power to legislate, as well as to enforce laws. Legislative
initiative was shared with the National Assembly, which was composed of
ninety directly elected deputies. These were guaranteed the usual immunities,
although they were not exempted from civil and criminal responsibilities for
‘defamation, calumny, insult, offence to public morality, and public incitement
to crime’; they could also lose their mandate for expressing ‘opinions contrary
to the existence of Portugal as an independent State or for in any way inciting
the violent subversion of the social and political order.’ The National Assembly
met for a mere three months a year. Working alongside the National Assembly
was the Corporative Chamber, ‘composed of representatives of local govern-
ment and of the social interests.’ This second chamber had a subsidiary role,
since it did not legislate; it merely gave its opinion on bills presented for the
consideration of the National Assembly before the latter debated them. Its
sessions coincided with those of the National Assembly, although it did not
ordinarily work in plenary sessions; members met, behind closed doors, in their
respective sections.
Salazar had relied, for the writing of the Constitution, on the collaboration
of a small number of trusted Coimbra professors; their input was comple-
mented by that of the National Political Council, established in February 1932.
In May 1932—before, of course, Salazar became premier—an initial draft was
released to the press. It met with opposition within the armed forces, in what
remained of republican circles, in more extreme political factions on the radical
Right, and in the Church and Catholic associations. Even after the 1933
plebiscite, it took a long time for the Constitution to come into effect and to
begin operating fully, largely because of opposition to its content. The first
National Assembly was to meet only in January 1935, Salazar having taken
steps in the meantime to ensure its loyalty. In an interview with António Ferro,
late in 1932, Salazar confessed that

[…] I am profoundly anti-parliamentary. I hate the speeches, the verbosity, the
flowery, meaningless interpellations, the way that we waste passion, not round any
great idea but just about futilities, vanities, nothingnesses from the point of any
national good […] a parliament frightens me so much that while I recognize the
necessity of our new Constitution I am just a little afraid of what may come out of
it […] The present Council of Ministers is good enough for me; it’s a small
parliament in a way, and it’s also useful and does something.60
Six years later, however, and again in the presence of Ferro, Salazar defended
the National Assembly, which ‘must continue to function as a political body’.
For Salazar, it had two basic tasks—‘to bring the great national aspirations
before the government and to supervise the proper execution of public admin-
istration.’61 This defense of a body whose roots lay in the liberal tradition, at a
time of increased pressure from the extreme-right, was to be no coincidence.
Like all such documents, the 1933 Portuguese Constitution contained
within its articles a complicated set of concessions and finely-tuned balances.
Much of the old liberal order survived in its 142 articles (to which was
appended the Acto Colonial): the notion of the division of powers; popular (if
not quite universal) suffrage; guaranteed political rights and freedoms for every
citizen. In fact, the differences between the project published in 1932 and the
final version reveal the persisting influence of the conservative republicans,
determined to preserve as much of the old republican order as possible, and to
halt the radical Right.62 But it is easy to overemphasize these hangovers from
the liberal age; they may well have had some importance in making possible the
Constitution’s acceptance by a wide range of groups, but for every concession
there was a condition which undercut it. In the end, the Constitution of 1933
was the instrument of Salazar’s will; he exploited every article in his favor,
interpreted its ambiguities as he saw fit, and rewrote articles when they no
longer suited him. There was, in the end, nothing definitive about it; no institu-
tion or practice which it created could be guaranteed long life and survival.
António Costa Pinto writes, reflecting on Salazar’s Constitution,

61. Ibid., p. 37. Addressing the first Congress of the União Nacional, Salazar spoke of the upcoming elections
to the National Assembly, and turned to this body: ‘It will have escaped no-one who is attuned to such
problems, that the organization of the Legislative Power in the Constitution suffers somewhat from a sort of
concession to current ideas, whose prestige lies more with mental habits that with their real merit. It is the
constitutional institution which seems to me liable to undergo the most profound modification: the
experience and the dissemination of new ideas will impose it at the right moment.’ Salazar added, for good
measure, that ‘even with an elected Chamber there will be no parliamentarianism, that is, sterile discussions,
groups, parties, struggles for power within the National Assembly.’ António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘O Estado
Novo português na evolução política europeia’ in Discursos, vol. 1, p. 344.
In sum, the definition of a “constitutionalized dictatorship”, to use a phrase of the
time, reflected the real nature of the regime. Reduced to mere “advisory councils”,
both the Chamber of Deputies and the Corporative Chamber represented, as did
the single party, the regime’s “limited pluralism”. The contradictions between
those favoring a restoration of the monarchy and republicans, between integral
and moderate corporatives, cut across the chambers. In the 1950s lobbies arose
among defenders of agricultural and industrial interests.63
Different factions within the regime might express their opinions within the
New State’s political structures, but had to keep to well-defined limits to do so;
other voices could not be heard.
A plebiscite was organized to approve the Constitution, the first test of the
União Nacional as a mobilizing entity and, indeed, of the New State. ‘We want a
strong State’, cried a mother and child in a campaign poster designed by artist
Almada Negreiros; the Diário da Manhã advanced ten reasons for approving the
document: one of them was that ‘it means the death of the parties that
plundered the nation and the resurrection of a true national policy (Everything
for the nation, nothing against the nation)’.64 Salazar spoke to the country on
16 March from União Nacional headquarters, his words broadcast by radio.65 He
told the Portuguese that worse than the financial crises that followed one after
the other, at a prodigious rate, was the crisis in economic thinking sweeping the
world, which had led to the fracturing of societies. The social utility of wealth
had been forgotten, replaced by the satisfaction of vanity; workers had been
reduced to machines; the family had been ignored:
We deem the regular existence of the worker’s family to be a rational part of social
life and useful to the economy; we deem it fundamental for the worker to support
his family; we maintain that the work of the married woman, and generally even
the work of the single woman, integrated in a family but not responsible for it,
should not be encouraged: there never was a good housewife who had little to do.
What could be done? Rid production of class warfare, and trust in the State to
guide the national economy:
We desire for ourselves the mission of making elevated criteria of justice and
human balance preside over national economic life. We want to dignify labor and
harmonize property with society. We want to move towards a new economy, working
in harmony with human nature, under the authority of a strong State capable of
63. Costa Pinto, Salazar’s Dictatorship, 166.

64. ‘Devo votar a Constituição’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 17 March 1933.
65. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘Conceitos económicos da nova Constituição’ in Discursos, vol. 1, pp. 185–
210.
defending the nation’s superior interests, its wealth and its labor, be it from
capitalist excesses, be it from destructive bolshevism. We want to satisfy
proletarian demands, within order, justice, and national balance to a greater degree
than was done by those who promised everything.
On Saturday 18 March newspapers carried an appeal from the government for

a ‘yes’ vote; by Monday 21 the result was out: over 95% of registered voters
had, it was claimed, approved the text.
In October 1934 Salazar relieved his turbulent Minister of War from the
burdens of office, as part of a small reshuffle, which included bringing in
Rafael Duque into Agriculture, Lieutenant Colonel Henrique Linhares de
Lima66 into Interior, and the rector of Coimbra University, Eusébio Tamagnini,
into Public Instruction. In the wake of this change, Salazar wrote a long official
note with which he sought to reassure supporters that the creation of the New
State had not stalled, and that decisive steps would soon be taken. As had often
happened in the past, rumors of unhappiness in the ranks of the situação had
grown to such an extent that Salazar had to shelve his usual working habits and
make his plans known. Recapitulating the regime’s achievements and its
international stance—including Portugal’s commitment to the British
alliance—Salazar informed the country that a busy political period was
approaching. A presidential election was due; General Carmona had agreed to
stand once again. Carmona would also, as soon as possible, name his Council
of State, which would replace the existing National Political Council. Elections
for the National Assembly would also be held, probably in mid-December; and
the government would legislate to define just how the Corporative Chamber
would be selected, given that the corporations had not yet been created.67 All
of this was accomplished in the months that followed; of special importance
was the announcement, in November, of the União Nacional’s ninety candidates
for the National Assembly.68 That same month, in the annual report on the
application of the previous year’s (1933–34) budget (which presented a surplus
of 129,800 contos), Salazar was caustic. Many criticized his actions, and denied
either their validity or the numbers contained in budget after budget. Yet the
‘lies’ he stood accused of uttering were everywhere turning into reality: old
66. Henrique Linhares de Lima (1876–1953) had a background as a military administrator. He served as
Minister of Agriculture between 1929 and 1932, being thus responsible for the early implementation of the
Campanha do Trigo. Relieved of ministerial responsibilities by Salazar in July 1932, he was nevertheless given a
number of political assignments within both the União Nacional and the administration of Lisbon. He would
remain Minister of the Interior until January 1936, being generally distrusted by the more radical elements
within the New State.
67. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘O momento político’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 21 October 1934.
68. ‘Lista dos candidatos à Assembleia Nacional’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 22 November 1934. Of the
ninety candidates, three were women (two teachers and a lawyer)—the first female representatives in a
Portuguese parliament.
roads were repaired and new ones built, alongside ports, school-buildings,
railroads, telegraph and telephone lines, irrigation projects, warships… ‘All of
this is true’, wrote Salazar, ‘and still the balanced budgets, the surpluses, the
reduction of the debt, the currency’s stability, reserves, financial order, all are a
lie—a kind, condescending, fecund lie, a lie which for six years bow has
behaving, as it will behave all its life, like the truth.’69
With the announcement of the make-up of the Corporative Chamber, and
of the list of deputies for the National Assembly, there began the first of the
many electoral campaigns that would periodically agitate the New State’s
existence. That there were no opposition names on the ballot mattered not,
claimed the regime’s mouthpiece: ‘This circumstance, rather than easing the
responsibility of all, increases it, since the electoral act assumes the distinct
mantle of a plebiscite.’70 Under Linhares de Lima, eager to turn the election
into a national demonstration of support for Salazar, the União Nacional swung
into action with a propaganda effort that culminated on Sunday, 9 December,
when, the Diário da Manhã proclaimed, 150 public sessions were held. ‘Absten-
tion is treason’, warned the newspaper. Pride of place was given to Salazar’s
speech, broadcast by the Emissora Nacional,71 which began hesitantly: ‘If this
small machine, that seems to shake to the smallest vibrations of my voice, does
not fail, then I am speaking to the largest audience ever assembled in Portugal
to listen to someone’s voice.’ As ever, Salazar contrasted the chaos of the past
with the order of the present, and presented the work carried out since 28 May
1926 as an orderly progression, slow because of the scale of the challenges and
not because of disagreement or dissent. Salazar then made a long plea for tran-
quility—‘no fortune is greater for a nation than the stability of a capable gov-
ernment’—and for the safeguarding of the independence of those in power: ‘If
we cannot do without strong governments, then let us be aware that the greater
part of their strength lies in their independence.’ This meant, in practice, that
the Executive power had to be strong, and above the interference of the
Legislative power, whose supreme authority before 1926 had been at the root
of the country’s political instability:
Our liberalism sounded false: it was always intolerant and jacobin. It would sound
even falser in the future, should it find itself again in power. It would no longer be
just anti-Catholic, it would be anti-Christian, irreligious, furiously atheist; it would
no longer just be alien to the things of the spirit, it would be, in theory and in
69. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘Contas públicas de 1933–34’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 16 November
1934.
70. ‘Propaganda’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 23 November 1934.
71. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘A constituição das Câmaras na evolução da política portuguesa’ in Discursos,
vol. I, pp. 367–88.
practice, amoral […] Its end would be—as is attested by the experience of other
countries—communism, meeting place of the most varied tendencies, as a result
of the ultimate deductions of doctrine and as a fatal consequence of the revolt
against reason, discipline, and authority.
The new Constitution, Salazar continued, was centered on man and his aspira-
tions; the political institutions it outlined served, above all, to help the indivi-
dual meet these aspirations. At the top of the hierarchy, unfettered by any
other institution was the President of the Republic: ‘This independence gives
him strength and stability: the same is true for the government.’ Salazar
addressed his relationship with Carmona in theoretical terms: ‘The constitu-
tional and practical subordination of the ministers to the head of government
and the power of the President of the Republic to name and dismiss freely the
President of the Council mean that conflict between the two is impossible,
since the government’s orientation is always one—that which meets with the
approval of the Head of State.’72 Then, finally, Salazar went on to address the
issue of the day: ‘I am convinced that in twenty years, bar a retrocession in
political evolution, there will no longer be in Europe any legislative assemblies
(I will not say the same of purely political assemblies).’ Nevertheless, a govern-
ment alone could not take for itself the whole task of preparing legislation,
given its other functions. There was still a role for a parliament of sorts;
technical experts, such as provided by the corporations, could advise the
current National Assembly on its mission and would possibly, in the future,
assist the government directly, once the latter had established for itself the
monopoly of legislating. The election was not, in other words, about electing
the list of ninety deputies. It was about allowing Salazar’s work to continue. As
he put it, ‘the Dictatorship ends, but the revolution continues.’ Changes and
reforms would continue to be made: ‘The years pass, one after the other, and
still on the fragile shoulders of some men there lies this heavy cross, but always
there remains in their heart the same desire, the same burning, the same faith,
illuminating life, embellishing the struggle, until others might relieve the ex-
hausted, or dead, soldiers.’ The vote was a measure of confidence in this future
change. ‘What is there to be afraid of? There are more of us; and we are the
72. This constitutional subordination to Carmona was emphasized in a subsequent speech, on the eve of the
Presidential election: ‘We avoided, out of concern for the post and the safeguard of other national interests,
confusing the Head of State with a political chief, but we did not avoid conferring on him, courageously (and
running counter to more comfortable norms, marked by the fear of responsibility), all the powers and
guarantees needed for him to set out, with full independence, the great lines of the life of the State. The
Constitution replaced a decorative and inert President with a true Head of State, the active guide of the
Nation, responsible for its destiny.’ António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘Funções e qualidades do Chefe do Estado’
in Discursos, vol. 2, pp. 3–12.
best’. The elections were held on 16 December; on 3 January 1935, the list of
the Corporative Chamber’s procuradores was published.
Soon after the first meeting of the new parliament, on 12 January 1935,
and the presidential election, on 17 February (for which 726,402 votes were
eventually claimed), a constitutional revision took place, one which reinforced
the power of the government and, more specifically, of Salazar himself. It
specified that, in case of emergency, or death, the President of the Council
replaced the President of the Republic; moreover, the former was now given
the power to go to the National Assembly to speak when he saw fit. More
significantly, the revision limited the initiative of deputies (who could not
propose measures that increased spending) and the kind of decrees submitted
for their approval; it also allowed the government, and not just the National
Assembly, to ask for the Corporative Chamber’s opinion on proposed legisla-
tion. In the space of a few weeks, the National Assembly had clearly frustrated
Salazar by the number of bills and avisos prévios (prior notices of debates) intro-
duced by deputies. Salazar met with deputies on 19 February to scold them and
made his criticism known through an interview with O Século. Part of the prob-
lem, he admitted, was the lack of party discipline among the ninety deputies,
who were acting as individuals, devoid of a common purpose:
The Chamber has not enjoyed, be it with the União Nacional, be it with the govern-
ment, the intimate relations and collaboration one might wish for. It is therefore
not surprising that until now there should have been an abundance of avisos prévios
and bills, many of which touched upon matters of great concern and sensibility,
and about which the government found out only through the newspapers.73
The result was that the unity of purpose that had characterized, Salazar said,
the Dictatorship, was being jeopardized by the deputies. All confusion had to
be avoided:
The Chamber will adopt the self-discipline that it is lacking. Moving closer and
closer to the government, its actions will be regulated in such a way that none is at
odds with the rest. All of these actions must contribute to governing and legisla-
tive unity. They cannot provoke dispersion.
73. ‘O sr. Presidente do Conselho concedeu uma entrevista sobre os problemas mais instantes que
assoberbam a vida ao País’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 23 February 1935. This interview had been published
the day before in O Século (Lisbon). According to Salazar’s diary, he had met the journalist on 19 February,
six hours before the meeting with the deputies; he then dedicated part of the morning and of the afternoon
of 20 February to the task of revising the text of the interview.
Like ministers, deputies served at Salazar’s pleasure. Only fifty-five out of
the ninety deputies elected in 1934 would be included in the União Nacional list
for the election of 1938. 23 March 1935 saw the National Assembly undertake,
for the first time, a role which would characterize it for the rest of its existence,
that of ‘embodying’ the voice of the nation for foreign consumption, debating,
at the initiative of Mário de Figueiredo, the links, including the supply of arms,
between the Azaña government in Spain and the exiled opposition, a matter
which had recently been discussed in the Spanish Cortes. Figueiredo and a host
of other deputies—Lopes da Fonseca, Vasco Borges, Cancela de Abreu, and
Garcia Pulido—competed with each other in their expressions of revulsion
before what had happened in Spain some years before.74 A subsequent revision
of the Constitution that same year took another step towards a conservative
position, with the stipulation that public education be carried out in accordance
with Christian morals and doctrine. This was an important step, since the 1933
Constitution had confirmed the separation of Church and State, allowing all
religions to be practiced in Portuguese territory.75 Now this line was blurred.
One of the most important steps in these early years of the New State was
the creation of a distinctly Portuguese corporative regime, part and parcel of
Salazar’s ideological baggage, which he brought from Coimbra and his Catholic
past. Corporatism, of course, was highly ambiguous, since it had been adopted,
and adapted, by the Italian fascists, forming part of that great area of political
confusion where conservative authoritarianism mingled freely with fascism.
Portuguese corporatism reflected these twin influences; it was determined by
social Catholicism, part of Salazar’s political roots, but it was tainted as well
with a more authoritarian, fascistic streak. Pedro Teotónio Pereira, who joined
the New State despite his Integralist past, was charged with the practical crea-
tion of the Portuguese brand of corporatism.76 Teotónio Pereira’s collaboration
with Salazar would last a lifetime, and would best be remembered for the
former’s diplomatic activity: but in the 1930s the elaboration of a distinctively
Portuguese form of corporatism was in his hands, Salazar keeping a close eye
on the process. The truth was that while enough had to be done for it to be
stated that something new was on the way, the corporative structure was not
74. ‘Uma sessão histórica!’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 24 March 1935.

75. Questioned by Ferro on the need to revise the Constitution so soon after its promulgation, Salazar was,
at first, evasive—‘the amendments introduced affect not the “doctrinal” section but the part that deals with
creation of departments of State and their manner of working’—and then aggressive: ‘There were two ways
of avoiding those “amendments”, which so far have been purely formal: by fictitious interpretation of the
principles contained—the fatal process so often applied to the Constitution of 1911; or by recourse to coups
d’état, a method also unfortunately popular between 1910 and 1926.’ Ferro, Salazar, p. 34.
76. There were, in the months that preceded Teotónio Pereira’s entry into the government, some attempts to
bring Salazar face-to-face with workers, allowing him to demonstrate ‘all his concern for the life of the more
humble classes.’ ‘Os Srs. Dr Oliveira Salazar e Engenheiro Sebastião Ramires visitaram ontem duas traineiras
que pescavam ao largo da Costa da Caparica’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 11 January 1933.
allowed to become a power in its own right. As one historian put it, ‘Salazar
will never be absolutely sure of how to define the corporative organization,
what role it should have within the regime, which powers to confer to it and
how to put it in practice.’77
The first step taken in the creation of the corporative state, after a period
of reflection by Teotónio Pereira and other ex-Integralists, and intensive con-
sultation with Salazar, was the publication of the country’s labor charter, the
Estatuto de Trabalho Nacional, in September 1933. The Estatuto was a fleshing out
of the Constitution’s definition of Portugal as a ‘corporative Republic’. It is im-
possible not to compare this seminal text with the Fascist Carta del Lavoro
(1927); the democratic opposition certainly did so. The Estatuto, however, while
strong on rhetoric, was intended as a flexible backdrop for further legislation; it
contained few actual policies. What it did show was that that Portuguese
corporatism was going to be strongly dependent on the State, which reserved
for itself the right to intervene where and when it saw fit in the country’s
economic life, although claiming that it would do so with prudence and in the
national interest. The State also chose to recognize as legitimate mouthpieces
of sectional interest only those associations it created or approved of. Portu-
guese corporatism, therefore, would be coercive, with social harmony—the
preservation of order—as its ultimate goal. How organizations imposed from
above might actually reflect their members’ interests, and earn their allegiance,
was resolved through an appeal to a higher, national, interest. It was here, in
the lack of legitimacy of the corporative organizations, that the new edifice’s
greatest weakness lay.78 At the same time as the Estatuto was unveiled, so too
were the first corporative bodies. The government created the Grémios (Guilds),
forcing the coming together, in professional bodies, of farmers, traders, and in-
dustrialists (although not all were covered, since some employers’ organizations
retained their independence; these were to prove especially important in agri-
culture); the first national syndicates of commercial and industrial workers; and
the Casas do Povo (People’s Houses), geographically based associations of all
those who worked the land, from agricultural laborers (who were therefore not
allowed their own unions) to large landowners. It was hoped that these associa-
tions would become centers of welfare, education and training, and credit.79

78. José Barreto writes, ‘Hence the central problem of Salazar’s corporatism: the use, against the backdrop of
an authoritarian political project, of associative bodies and of mechanisms of negotiation, transaction, and
self-government which were fuelled by the liberty and the vitality of civil society, two essential items which,
by definition, were scarce and frowned upon in that backdrop.’ ‘Estatuto do Trabalho Nacional’ in Barreto &
Mónica (eds), Dicionário de História de Portugal vol. 7, pp. 680–84.
79. The first Casa do Povo was inaugurated in the Alentejo village of Barbacena (‘remote village, lost in the
Alentejo’s expanse’) on 6 January 1934 by Salazar, Teotónio Pereira, and António Ferro. The Diário da Manhã
predicted that ‘Barbacena will have a place in the history of the New State […] she was the first to say to the
Perhaps unsurprisingly, there was a lot more detail regulating the life of the
national syndicates than in the decree covering the Grémios.80 Political parties
had been banned by the dictatorship, and denied any breathing room by the
Constitution; now it was the independent trade unions that were attacked, since
the national syndicates represented all people involved in their particular
activity; no other associations would be recognized. Subsequent legislation gave
existing unions two months to sign up to the system, or face extinction.
Another bureaucratic tier, made up of organizations for economic coordi-
nation, served as the link between the State and emerging corporative institu-
tions. It was said at the time that once corporations had been created, these
intermediary organizations would disappear: but they subsisted, and their
importance was actually increased with time. They were present in agriculture,
the agro-food export sector, and certain vital industries; their staff decided on
production quotas, prices, and salaries. They were, in effect, the agents which
enforced the government’s strategic thinking on economic matters. Finally, a
new centralizing organization was created, the Instituto Nacional do Trabalho e
Previdência (INTP—National Labor and Welfare Institute), which was to prove
the most important means by which the government, from a distance, mani-
pulated the corporative machine. The Institute, whose delegations covered the
country, was designed to bring the nation’s producers into the corporative
machinery, and to foment a new working spirit capable of bypassing the old
class divisions. It was meant to devise and enforce labor legislation, keeping an
eye on the needs of all sectors of the economy; it also oversaw the arbitration
of disputes. In practice, the INTP controlled the new unions, denying them
any real initiative; it could dissolve them if they strayed outside the principles of
the Estatuto de Trabalho Nacional. In 1934, a Corporative Council—a mix of
academics and ministers—was created to advise Salazar on the selection of
whole of Portugal that Peace between those who work and those who provide work can and should be made
once and for all.’ Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 7 January 1934. Salazar’s speech, not included in the Discursos
collection, is worth recalling. Salazar began by pointing out that the inauguration was occurring on Epiphany,
and then emphasized his own origins, establishing a link with the rural audience to explain the occasion and
the political hour: ‘I spent Christmas in my village, in my home. The old are gone now, but the young, the
youngest of all, are forced to drink from the fountain of the old traditions. I attended Christmas Mass in my
church, a bit bigger than yours, but poorer. The church is shared by two villages. The people of both attend
the same religious ceremonies, each in its own side of the church. Once Mass was over, the adoration of the
Infant Jesus began. The girls of the two villages, swept away by vanity and pride, began to sing. But each
village sang its own songs, singing ever louder, ever stronger, in an attempt to drown out the other. With
each group singing a different song, none could be made out. Confusion reigned. All were well intentioned,
but good intentions are not enough. The priest looked on, paralyzed. He should have intervened, telling the
girls to be quiet, establishing a Dictatorship.’
80. Pedro Teotónio Pereira stated that the decree 23,050, which created the syndicates, embodied a ‘complete
juridical regime’, which described all aspects of life of the new organizations; the Grémios, however, were not
the definitive article: they were a stopgap, and the legislation reflected this. ‘O sr. dr. Pedro Teotónio Pereira
[…] realizou, ontem, a sua conferência sobre “As entidades patronais na organização corporativa’ in Diário da
Manhã (Lisbon), 18 February 1934.
procuradores for the Corporative Chamber, and on the further steps needed to
create the Corporative state. The following year saw the creation of the
Fundação Nacional para a Alegria no Trabalho (FNAT—National Foundation for
Happiness at Work), overseen by the Undersecretary of State for Corporations,
and modeled on the Italian Dopolavoro; it had ‘as its goal making use of
Portuguese workers’ free time in order to ensure their greater physical develop-
ment and the elevation of their intellectual and moral level.’ To this end, it pro-
posed to organize holiday ‘colonies’, to promote trips and excursions to scenic
spots, museums, and monuments, organize sports tournaments, gymnastics
courses, conferences, and concerts, and make the most of film and radio to
pass on its message. 1935 saw as well the publication of a law on Previdência
Social (Social Welfare), adding an important dimension to the corporative state.
Welfare was to be administered by the corporative machinery, and would one
day fall to the corporations themselves to run. This institution was held par-
ticularly dear by Teotónio Pereira, who wanted it to have an active role, making
a real difference in the life of workers; employers, however, were less keen, and
few seized this opportunity to improve the living standards of their workforce.
In 1935 a minimum wage was announced. The political progress made by the
New State in late 1934 and early 1935, with the presidential re-election and the
coming to life of the National Assembly and the Corporative Chamber, made it
seem as if the creation of the corporations was next on the agenda.
The whole corporative machinery was to be overseen by the government,
in the shape of the Undersecretary for Corporations, who was answerable
directly to the President of the Council; there was as yet no Ministry of
Corporations, although this would come later. Teotónio Pereira, however, was
generally deemed to have gone too far when it came to welfare provisions,
salaries, working hours, and conditions: business interests were angered by this
‘white bolshevism’, and, acting in concerted fashion, forced a retreat.81 In a
bitter letter, Teotónio Pereira explained that if he had been reduced to ‘a sort
of unhappy defender of proletarian interests’, it was because the other actors
had refused to engage with his actions; ‘Corporative Organization means
unions and Casas do Povo’, he complained.82 Employers’ associations success-
81. Pedro Teotónio Pereira had foreseen this reluctance on the part of employers to embrace the corporative
State’s concern for workers’ welfare. Welfare arrangements, he predicted in an interview, would be resolved
within each corporation, and would be negotiated and administered jointly by representatives of employers
and the national syndicates. Teotónio Pereira added, ‘It is possible that many employers deem this
dangerous, and will be left hankering for the days of class associations with their strike and social resistance
funds’. ‘O sr. dr. Pedro Teotónio Pereira [...] realizou, ontem, a sua conferência sobre “As entidades patro-
nais na organização corporativa”’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 18 February 1934.
82. Correspondência de Pedro Teotónio Pereira para Oliveira Salazar vol. 1 (1931–1939) (Lisbon: Comissão do Livro
Negro Sobre o Regime Fascista, 1987), doc. 11, letter, Lisbon, 12 February 1934, Pedro Teotónio Pereira to
António de Oliveira Salazar, p. 27.
fully stalled negotiations on workers’ rights, pay, conditions, and other issues
that came before them. Within the organization, and therefore the New State
as a whole, the balance of power tilted firmly in the direction of employers. In
many cases, employers simply ignored laws on work schedules and the mini-
mum wage; nothing was done.83 Teotónio Pereira, frustrated by the inability to
move against certain interests, had first asked for his resignation in February
1934, and would repeat this request numerous times in the months and years to
come. The nature of the initial corporative impulse, as overseen by Teotónio
Pereira, suggests that there was scope, within Portuguese corporatism as a
whole, for genuine concern with the conditions endured by the Portuguese
working class, and for a desire that the State should be the engine for im-
proving those conditions. For a time, Salazar himself expressed disappointment
with the evident selfishness of those with money, notably the landlords and
other influential figures in the rural world who were failing to pay their dues—
inexpensive as they were—towards the upkeep and operation of the Casas do
Povo.84 However, under pressure from the economic interest groups, Salazar
dumped Pedro Teotónio Pereira, replacing him with Manuel Rebelo de
Andrade; shortly afterwards, though, he rescued this valuable collaborator by
handed entrusting him with the Commerce and Industry ministerial portfolio,
from which he oversaw the reinforcement of the State’s role in Portugal’s
economic activity. Teotónio Pereira’s defeat suggests that Salazar did not
necessarily share his concern for working conditions, at least to such an extent
that he was willing to face down economic interest groups, or harm other
principles of government.85 Teotónio Pereira had often called on Salazar to
lead the creation of the New State’s corporative dimension directly, devoting
his attention to it as fully as he had overseen the country’s financial reform:
There is only one solution: for you to convince yourself that the reform of the
State is today the main problem and to direct it in person, as you directed the
financial reorganization. I cannot even understand how a new Constitution was
83. Costa Pinto, Salazar’s Dictatorship, p. 185. On 15 August 1934 the Diário da Manhã (Lisbon) reprinted an
earlier interview by Salazar, given to the Diário de Notícias (Lisbon), in which Salazar discussed this very issue.
Addressing the difficulties so far encountered in the creation of the corporative State, Salazar mentioned, on
the one hand, the spirit which still prevailed in the civil service, and, on the other, the attitude of employers.
Existing ‘class’ organizations representing employers had not ‘presented, to this day, a single report detailing
their integration in the corporatist organization’, and many employers viewed this integration as a chance to
establish trusts, or cartels. Salazar also mentioned the fact that many employers saw the national syndicates
with distrust, and had attempted to prevent their workforce from joining these officially sanctioned bodies.
84. ‘O sr. Presidente do Conselho concedeu uma entrevista...’.
85. Costa Pinto, Salazar’s Dictatorship, p. 64. Costa Pinto is here drawing on a dissertation written by Fátima
Patriarca, ‘Processo de implantação e lógica e dinâmica de funcionamento do corporativismo em Portugal.
Os primeiros anos do Salazarismo’ (Lisbon: Instituto de Ciências Sociais, 1992).
written, and the pretension arose of creating a corporative regime, without you
leading the way.86
Much of the INTP’s staff would continue to struggle to improve the lot of
workers. Damning reports were produced concerning the nature and tactics of
Portuguese employers, but, ultimately, these had little impact.
Nineteen thirty-five also saw a new initiative, the Law for Economic Re-
constitution. In its articles the State outlined—no more than that—its invest-
ment priorities for the next fifteen years. The Law’s name was a misnomer,
since defense was clearly the priority; actual ‘economic reconstitution’ came
second. This ‘reconstitution’ entailed a program of investments in the country’s
infrastructure, on matters such as road, rail, ports, telephone and telegraph,
irrigation and agricultural colonization, and schools and other official buildings.
There was also to be preservation work on monuments, urban development in
Lisbon and Oporto, and a boost to colonial credit. Was the law an innovation,
an advanced glimpse the detailed economic planning that would mark postwar
Western Europe? The answer is no, for the various dots were not connected;
there was no aim in terms of making all these improvements come together for
a purpose. The law was, essentially, an enumeration of public-works projects.
The only productive sector affected was agriculture—and even here, spending
was limited to improvements in infrastructure. The law was also dependent on
financial realities for its implementation: it relied on ordinary spending by the
government.
That spending on the military was the first priority of a program of ‘eco-
nomic reconstitution’ was a reflection of Salazar’s troubled relationship with
the army. Upon taking office, in 1932, Salazar had reasserted his loyalty to Car-
mona, on whom the cabinet depended for de jure and de facto legitimacy. By
doing so Salazar was seeking to free himself from the claims made by junior
officers, as effervescent as ever. This was a wise investment, Carmona sticking
by his Prime Minister for years to come, despite all the hopes pinned on his
person by the disaffected in Portugal. The summer of 1933 was a difficult
period for Salazar. There was unrest in rural Portugal, for once because of
over-production; Rolão Preto’s national-syndicalists (see below) were at the
height of their power and trying to remove Salazar before the latter’s triumph
was complete; and, in the cabinet, there was an open struggle between Salazar
and his War Minister, Major Luís Alberto de Oliveira87 (formerly commander
86. Correspondência de Pedro Teotónio Pereira, vol 1, pp. 30–31.

87. Luís Alberto de Oliveira (1880–1956) was an army officer who served in both Africa and France during
World War I. He also served in a variety of administrative positions during the Sidónio Pais presidency,
including Civil Governor of Coimbra. In 1930 he became the commanding officer of Caçadores 5, the most
politically reliable force at the disposal of the military dictatorship.
of Caçadores 5, one of the key units within the military dictatorship). At this
point, Carmona enforced a truce between the two men, and it would take
Salazar fifteen months to be rid of this new rival. A lengthy examination of the
political situation in Portugal, by the German legation, stressed the vulnerability
of Salazar’s power: ‘Salazar’s position is contested and he must forever be
imposing himself against adverse forces.’88
As 1934 began, tension between Carmona and Salazar was mounting.
Many officers worried about the increasingly authoritarian stance of the New
State, the increasing personal power of Salazar, and his willingness to use that
power. There were rumors of plots involving Carmona, national-syndicalist
supporter General João de Almeida, and General José Vicente de Freitas.
Moreover, in April 1934, Salazar insisted that the government be represented at
a ceremony in which officers were to ask Carmona to stand for the Presidency
of the Republic in the 1935 elections. Salazar was suspicious of their motives,
but Carmona stood firm and kept civilians at bay. There was a private sphere—
the consultations between the President and his fellow officers—that Salazar
could not penetrate; he had to live with that sphere, as he did with the
‘National Revolution’, and work around it. This private sphere would provide
fertile ground for plots and allegations until Carmona’s death in 1951, ulti-
mately to no avail.89 On 15 April 1934 Caçadores 5 held a major ceremony in
honor of Carmona’s sixth anniversary as President of the Republic. Luís
Alberto de Oliveira spoke at the event, at which Carmona and many other sig-
nificant officers were present. The Minister of War criticized Salazar openly, to
the delight of the junior officers egging him on, and stated that, first and fore-
most, he served Carmona, being responsible only to him.90 According to some
accounts, a number of military units pledged their willingness to defend the
minister from any chastisement. Salazar reacted immediately to this open
challenge. He called together the Council of Ministers, announcing his inten-
tion of resigning, and informed Carmona of that same intention by letter.91
Salazar then left for Santa Comba, leaving the President to ponder the future
88. António Louçã (ed.), Portugal visto pelos Nazis: Documentos 1933–1945 (Lisbon, Fim de Século, 2005), doc.
1, Lisbon, 23 November 1933, from the German legation to the Auswärtiges Amt, pp. 29–34.
89. In a letter dated ‘Ash Wednesday’, probably of 1935, Salazar’s first love, Felismina da Glória Oliveira,
informed him that the municipality of Viseu had distributed a framed photograph of Carmona to all its
schools. She wrote, ‘I […] cannot help feeling indignant when I walk into a school and see the inequality of
treatment afforded to the two portraits, knowing that the portrait of the President of the Republic provides
umbrage for all manner of underhanded actions and that only yours represents true nationalism.’ AOS CP
202.
90. The event was covered in the daily press. The Diário da Manhã of the following day edited the Minister’s
words so that they did not betray the true intention behind them.
91. Salazar’s diary for Sunday 15 April 1934 shows that news of what had happened were quick to reach him:
‘2—In Belém, congratulating the President on the 6th anniversary of his proclamation.
9—Leal Marques and Lieutenant Assis—the rumors.
9½—1—Executive Commission of the UN—preparation for Congress. Commissions’
course of the regime. This was a seasoned gambler’s move, and a visible
demonstration of his detachment from power. Carmona caved in, denying any
involvement in conspiracies and asking Salazar to stay. It was clearly the case
that he did not want the onus of being responsible for Salazar’s departure, and
to make this fact clear Carmona agreed to place on the record his support for
Salazar, as the Council of Ministers had asked him to do. Senior officers now
gave interviews to the press in which they stressed the unity of the army and its
loyalty to the government. General Farinha Beirão, commander of the Guarda
Nacional Republicana (GNR—Republican National Guard), whose name had
been included in a shadow military government, details of which had been
printed in the Madrid newspaper El Liberal, spoke to the Diário de Lisboa,
denouncing a foreign plot to destabilize the country and seize its colonies.92
In October, having let tempers cool down, and amid renewed speculation
that Luís Alberto de Oliveira was plotting against him, Salazar axed his War
Minister, who returned to Caçadores 5. He was replaced by Colonel Abílio
Passos e Sousa, the man who had previously offered to make Salazar Minister
of Finance. In a long official note, Salazar, among other matters, spelled out
what he expected from the army, an idea he took up in November when
visiting the aviation school in Sintra: ‘In order [for the army] to correspond to
the government’s thinking and the highest needs of the country, it requires
material means, perfected technique, and military spirit.’93 The government had
to provide the latest weapons in order for the army to do its duty, and the army
had to learn how to use them, keeping up with the latest ‘military science’: but
these two factors would be meaningless if the third—‘the collection of military
virtues and, in a way, the essence, the soul of that kind of life’—was not
present. These virtues were ‘discipline, pride, loyalty, dedication, spirit of
sacrifice, selflessness, impartiality, and courage’. Salazar concluded his address
by recalling Nelson’s message to his crews before Trafalgar—‘England expects
every man to do his duty’: ‘There never was a better, or a briefer, speech. By
recalling it, I am left with nothing else to add.’ This would not be the end of
troubles, real or imaginary, with the army. As António Costa Pinto writes,
92. ‘Contra a ofensiva da intriga maçonico-revolucionária’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 22 April 1934. This
was a reprint of the interview published in the Diário de Lisboa the day before. Farinha Beirão went on to dis-
cuss Salazar himself: ‘Is there anyone,’ he asked, ‘that can doubt the patriotism and the competence of the
head of government?’ He added that ‘Dr Oliveira Salazar is an intelligent and honest man, and a great Portu-
guese. He is in that job merely out of patriotism, making extraordinary sacrifices. Even physically he has
made great sacrifices, making an enormous effort. No-one can imagine, for example, how hard he works
when preparing his budgets.’ Farinha Beirão concluded by saying, ‘There is no doubt that one is born a
leader. Those who are not predestined to command can ascend to a position of leadership through effort and
preparation, but he will never be a true leader, not like Dr Oliveira Salazar and some others are.’
93. ‘Palavras de Salazar’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 19 November 1934.
Throughout the regime’s long life this [the army] was the institution that Salazar
was most sensitive about and the one he most feared. Nonetheless it is clear that
the subordination of the military hierarchy to the regime was a fact on the eve of
the Second World War. The process was slow, and numerous tensions arose, but
the movement to co-opt and control the military elite was the central element in
the consolidation of Salazarism.94
In January 1935 Salazar would write to the then War Minister explaining
why thirty-five officers, including a general and a brigadier, had been moved
from Lisbon, and why there was no reason for either a detailed investigation of
their actions, or for allowing them to return. They sowed confusion wherever
they were posted; those allowed a brief return to the capital over the Christmas
period had caused considerable turmoil through their words and actions. They
could not keep their mouths shut; they ‘poisoned the public conscience’.95 In
October of that year Salazar was informed that Colonel Raul Esteves, an im-
portant figure on the right of the dictatorship, had complained to the Minister
of War that the ‘army could not continue to be trod on by the President of the
Council without losing its prestige.’96
Given Salazar’s continued run-ins with the army, the New State would only
consolidate itself if it forced the military back into its barracks, away from any
kind of political or administrative activity. This meant investing in the armed
forces. Hitherto, while allowing to the navy to purchase new vessels, and using
their arrival, or completion in local shipyards, as a demonstration of national
resurgence and commitment to empire,97 Salazar had failed to allow the army
to modernize itself. The lack of investment in the army naturally created
resentment, although it must be said that even the newly re-equipped fleet con-
tinued to call for increased resources with which to put its already expensive

95. AOS CO PC 3B, letter, Lisbon, 14 January 1935, António de Oliveira Salazar to Colonel Abílio Passos e
Sousa.
96. AOS CO PC 3H, anonymous note received by Salazar on 26 October 1935.
97. The first phase of the fleet’s modernization included the purchase and construction of two first-class
sloops, four second-class sloops, five destroyers, and three submarines. A second-phase of the programme,
which involved, among other vessels, an aircraft carrier and two large cruisers, was often discussed, but never
implemented. The arrival of each new warship was greeted by large crowds and impressive festivities, with
Salazar speaking in public. The first of the new ships, the sloop Gonçalo Velho, was greeted by a considerable
crowd, which the Diário da Manhã put at 20,000 people. See António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘No Gonçalo Velho’
and ‘No Vouga’ in Discursos, vol. 1, pp. 213–16 and 241–44. A warship named Vouga had sunk off Madeira
during the 1931 revolt, and Salazar made the most of this fact in the speech, on 29 July 1933, marking the
launch of its successor: ‘The nation healed the wound opened in its breast and patiently filled the gap opened
in its treasury by the horrible tragedy.’ On 18 November 1933 another destroyer, the Douro, was launched.
The Diário da Manhã spied tears in Salazar’s eyes as the ship slid into the water, and speculated that he must
have been surprised by the powerful emotions the moment conjured, giving him added insight into his own
soul, the soul of ‘a true Portuguese, of a Portuguese from another age.’ ‘O lançamento do contra-torpedeiro
“Douro”’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 19 November 1933.
ships to good use.98 It was only in May 1936, when Salazar took over the
Ministry of War, that work could finally begin on the army’s rearmament—but
even then this had to be subordinated to a reform of the army that was
designed to make it smaller, and cheaper to run, and to curb its political aspira-
tions. Until then, budgetary considerations to which only Salazar was privy had
enabled him to keep the politically divided officer corps at bay. This had meant
a constant struggle against General Passos e Sousa, who, when Minister of
War, had dreamt of a 500,000-strong army capable of keeping a potential
enemy, in all likelihood Spain, at bay. The fact that Passos e Sousa was openly
critical of fellow ministers did not help his cause.99 Matters between the two
men came to a head in April 1936. The surviving accounts reveal an extra-
ordinary showdown. On 11 April, two days after a Council of Ministers, Passos
e Sousa wrote to Salazar, stating that two assertions by the President of the
Council had come as a surprise to him: first, that reforms of the army, super-
vised by the Ministry of War, were already underway, something which was not
the case—and could not be the case, Passos e Sousa had repeatedly pointed
out, until the Conselho Superior de Defesa Nacional (CSDN—Superior Council for
National Defense) had issued recommendations. The second point was more
personal. Salazar had stated that the Council of Ministers had decided already
to opt for a small army of three divisions. Passos e Sousa wrote,
I was surprised by this statement, because I have no memory of any such

decisions, beyond a vague assertion, made by the Minister of Justice, about two or
three divisions, something which was not debated […] I cannot agree and such a
decision has no technical basis to support it. In any case the Council of Ministers,
a political body, cannot, by itself, address such a technical issue.100
This was manifestly unfair; the Council of Ministers had met over the course of
five days in February 1936 to discuss defense matters, and the center-piece of
the debate had been a memorandum by Foreign Minister Armindo Monteiro
which recommended a small army, given the country’s generally positive diplo-
matic situation. Salazar wrote to Passos e Sousa on 17 April. He restated his
belief that the February meetings had unequivocally mandated the Ministry of
War to begin studying the reorganization of the army, and attributed Passos e
Sousa’s failure to carry out his mandate to the fear of losing face before the rest
98. The situation in the navy, which for decades had suffered the effects of an ageing fleet, was poor; the
officer corps had become a land-loving bureaucracy with terrible consequences for the effectiveness of the
newly acquired vessels, which spent far too little time at sea in training. See AOS CO PC 78K, letter, Lisbon,
14 February 1936, M. Ortins de Bettencourt to António de Oliveira Salazar.
99. Faria, Debaixo de fogo, pp. 73–74.
100. AOS CO Guerra (GR) 11, letter, Lisbon, 11 April 1936, Abílio de Vale Passos e Sousa to António de
Oliveira Salazar.
of the army, since his preferences had been overridden by the civilians in the
cabinet.101 Salazar added that ‘I always considered that the Conselho Superior de
Defesa Nacional should meet to study problems which had already been analyzed
by the Council of Ministers’. What this meant, in practice, was that the Council
of Ministers defined policy, and the CSDN its implementation; there had been
no need, in Salazar’s mind, to wait for a meeting of the CSDN before
beginning to study the proposed reforms. This was a convoluted position, but
a necessary one, since it laid the groundwork for what followed in the letter:
Not everything that was resolved [at the February Council of Ministers] was
expressly voted on. When there was unanimity of opinion in the declaration of the
ministers, I called attention to certain precise points that seemed to result from
their statements, in order to ensure that they reflected exactly the opinion of the
Council. One of those points was exactly the creation of a small army of at most
two to three divisions […]102
The letter continued, gathering steam and a considerable amount of irony,

You say that this decision has no technical basis to support it, and no doubt you
have some very worthy reasons for saying so: it is unfortunate that you did not
present them at the right moment, that is, if the lack of knowledge on military
affairs of the greater part of the members of the government would allow them to
grasp the implications of your arguments.
Since Passos e Sousa had already made his views on this point clear, there
was no need for further discussion on the matter. What might still be argued,
Salazar concluded, were the relative merits of a large and a small army. Given
the cost implications, this was a political decision, and therefore one that
Salazar believed himself able to contribute to: ‘all we need to know is how
much we are able to spend over the course of the next ten years’. The Council
had decided on a small army; until something else was decided, that was the
orientation that should be followed. There was nowhere for Passos e Sousa to
turn after such a letter. Stripped of initiative and power, and pressured from
below by officers whom Salazar was manipulating, he tendered his resignation
in a short letter dater 9 May 1936.
Upon becoming Minister of War, Salazar appointed Captain Fernando
Santos Costa as his Undersecretary of State of War.103 It would be Santos
101. Faria, Debaixo de fogo, p. 109.

102. AOS CO GR 11, letter, Lisbon, 17 April 1936, António de Oliveira Salazar to Abílio Passos e Sousa.
103. Fernando dos Santos Costa (1899–1982) was born in Alcafache, not far from Santa Comba Dão, and
aligned himself politically with Salazar in the early 1930s, supplying him with both political information
regarding the state of the army and more technical appraisals of its capabilities and possibilities. Still only a
captain, Santos Costa was invited by Salazar to serve as Undersecretary of State for War, remaining in the
Costa’s job to provide the technical expertise and insight into military opinion
that Salazar lacked. That a relatively junior officer should have such influence
was resented by the higher ranks, but Santos Costa, a representative of what
might be termed the army’s ‘technocrats’, more than made up for this with the
zeal and devotion with which he would serve Salazar for the next twenty-five
years, often as a lightning-rod for the army’s discontent. Salazar had to move
with great care, but the increasingly troubled situation in Spain reinforced his
position: not only did the fighting over the border make even clearer the
Portuguese army’s inability to carry out its most basic mission, but it also
reinforced the need for domestic cohesion. Reforms were prepared throughout
the following year, and published in September and December 1937. There
was to be a smaller standing army, some 30,000 strong, which could be in-
creased in an emergency. Many units were abolished and the officer corps was
slimmed down by a number of devices, including forced retirements and
transfers into a reserve force; promotion by merit was introduced; and a
General Staff branch was created. To make all this change palatable, salaries for
senior officers were substantially increased, and a solemn promise of re-equip-
ment was made. It is worth comparing the Portuguese situation under the New
State with the Spanish under the Second Republic; Salazar’s reforms can be set
alongside those of Manuel Azaña, although there was a lot less friction in the
Portuguese case. Still, the dissension provoked was enough to generate hints of
a coup in January 1938, centered on General Domingos de Oliveira, former
prime minister and now military governor of Lisbon. An official note had to be
published on 10 January, explaining some of the technical aspects of the
reforms when it came to pay and pensions. Two days later, one of Salazar’s
ideological firefighters, Captain Henrique Galvão, took to the air to remind his
listeners that had the government followed purely military criteria, the majority
of the army’s officers, too old for the ranks they held, would have been dis-
missed: the reforms had been, in that sense, a mix of the military and of the
humane.104 Other public expressions of military fidelity to Salazar would be
made in the weeks that followed; the simultaneous visit to Lisbon, early in
February, by the German battleship Deutschland and the British battleship HMS
Nelson, and a visit by Italian warships the following month, helped Salazar’s
cause greatly, being interpreted by his press as a sign of the international
respect for Portugal and approval for its diplomacy. Salazar’s reforms favored
the career prospects of younger officers, generally to the right of those being
government until the wake of the 1958 presidential elections. His loyalty to Salazar was unique for a military
officer.
104. Henrique Galvão, ‘Leis do Exército Novo’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 13 January 1938. Further radio
lectures on the subject were made by former minister Major Mendes do Amaral (13 January), and Captain
Carlos Selvagem (14 January).
retired; there was thus a political element which suited Salazar—the passing of
the ‘conservative republican’ generation into retirement, and the winning over
of the younger exaltés.
Rolão Preto and the National-Syndicalist Threat
Ironically, perhaps, the main threat to the New State and its leader in the
early 1930s came not from the Left, which could be moved against with all the
strength of the regime, but from the far Right—the Movimento Nacional-
Sindicalista (National-Syndicalist Movement) of Rolão Preto which, having
emerged from within acceptable sectors of the military dictatorship, had some
support within the army, especially the younger officers, as well as a generation
of young nationalists. Discontent with the moderate course charted by Salazar’s
government was rife; one rightist supporter wrote Salazar, ‘seeing serenely,
with bitterness, what is happening in Portugal, I obey my conscience by telling
Your Excellency: you are dooming yourself and dooming us.’105 Because of
their connections with the military, Salazar could not move openly against
Rolão Preto’s ‘Blue Shirts’, as they were known, having instead to bide his time
until they had gone too far for Carmona and the main body of the army, which
took its cue from the President of the Republic. Rolão Preto, despite his
Integralist background (he was the youngest of the movement’s early leaders),
had ditched the monarchist ambitions which had seen him exiled in his late
teens in favor of more aggressive, revolutionary stance, akin to early Italian
Fascism, or to the politics of Georges Valois in France, whose political trajec-
tory his own course seemed to mirror.106 His personal evolution in the 1920s,
across a variety of leagues and movements, mirrors the evolution of the far
Right in Portugal. One concern that set Rolão Preto apart from the Integralists,
and which was to remain a constant with him, was the need to win over the
working class, bringing it into national life as a conscious and educated actor.
He had believed, originally, that a king might be able to accomplish this; later
he replaced the monarch of old by a more contemporary, charismatic figure,
leading a corporative regime. Salazar was eventually to see off Rolão Preto’s
challenge, but only after some hesitation; it was another obstacle in his way,
105. AOS CP 62, letter, Oporto, 1 November 1932, Ângelo César to António de Oliveira Salazar. This was
not, however, the end of Ângelo César’s correspondence with Salazar; by February 1933 he was informing
Salazar of national-syndicalist activity in Oporto. In May 1933, ‘A group of officers who organized the 28
May and who so far have asked for nothing and who want nothing’ wrote Salazar, advising him on a
rumored cabinet reshuffle. The main target for their ire was Albino dos Reis, the Interior Minister: ‘For us,
he is absolutely finished […] we do not believe it possible to make a New State with men whose mentality is
old, liberal, and retrograde, and who are entangled in a liberal political past.’ AOS CO PC 3B, letter, Lisbon,
31 May 1933.
representing, in effect, a new set of compromises that he had to accept as the
price of power.
Rolão Preto’s national-syndicalists castigated Salazar for refusing to turn
the emerging corporative state into a truly fascist phenomenon. This meant
foregoing the old-style elite-based politics, now that liberalism had been
defeated, and bringing about the union of all nationalist forces under radical
leadership. Yves Léonard writes,
National-Syndicalism marks the belated attempt to unite, under the guise of a

party, all the fascist sub-groups which had appeared in the wake of the First World
War, in the continuation of Sidonismo and, above all, the continuation of Integralismo
Lusitano, at the heart of the radical right.107
The themes for this blue-shirted, indigenous fascism were the need to inculcate
an imperial mentality in the Portuguese, the introduction of true corporative
representation, and an attack on both communism and international capitalism.
Moreover, the national-syndicalists called for the emergence of a genuinely
charismatic leader, capable of leading from the front, rather than restraining the
nation, as Salazar was doing. The first national-syndicalist rallies were held in
September 1932; the movement’s first big test was the rally in Lisbon, in
February of the following year, by which time the movement’s press had begun
to call Rolão Preto ‘chefe’.108
In Rolão Preto’s rhetoric the Blue Shirts represented the youth of the
country, the vanguard of a revolution made possible thanks to the army’s
action in 1926. This vanguard was soon engaging in low-level street violence
with members of the Left, or what remained of it, while the movement sought
the support of the workers, castigating employers and the world of finance.
Social justice was a key concept here for Rolão Preto, who attempted, in this
area also, to demarcate himself from Salazar. The movement also began to
open ‘syndical houses’ across the country—although only four were ever
created—which worked as centers of propaganda and support for the unem-
ployed. The obvious problem facing Rolão Preto was the figure of Salazar, who
inevitably began to be questioned. Salazar was not a charismatic man, and was
seemingly insensitive to the social injustices to be found all over the country.
That being the case, he could not lead the entire nation, or even just enthuse

108. At a banquet in his honor, and in front of 600 guests, Rolão Preto addressed an absent Salazar: ‘Dr
Salazar: listen to the Portuguese soul, as it rings out; listen to the wishes of this youth and, should you wish it,
alea jacta est!’ ‘Ao banquete de homenagem ao sr. dr. Rolão Preto assistiram cerca de 600 convivas’ in Diário da
Manhã (Lisbon), 19 February 1933.
it.109 In Rolão Preto’s vision of the future, one day the communist revolution
would break out, and on that day the Blue Shirts would save the country, while
Salazar, should he still be in power, would watch on, powerless to affect the
course of events. With an estimated 30,000 members, the Blue Shirts were fast
becoming an important and independent force within the country. More
importantly, although they had sympathizers within the New State and the
army, their growth was being achieved thanks only to their own efforts, which
set them apart from the State-nurtured União Nacional. One of Salazar’s young
collaborators, Marcelo Caetano, while reaffirming his continued loyalty to
Salazar, castigated him for failing to take advantage of the Blue Shirts,
absorbing them into the regime:
[…] National-Syndicalism represents the first spontaneous movement of opinion

which has appeared since the establishment of the Dictatorship, a movement
which did not need to be laboriously put in motion by the Ministry of the Interior,
which is not the work of the civil governors, which does not sustain itself at the
government’s expense, which is not an electoral agency.110
After a long period of hesitation, Salazar acted quickly. Dealing with the Blue
Shirts, it turned out, proved easier than anyone had expected. As the German
minister in Lisbon explained, the movement had never developed a mass
following, which in Portugal, given the existing illiteracy rate, was almost
impossible to do; and there was no feeling of impending crisis, no widespread
need for a dramatic, radical, change of policy.111 Salazar split the movement
with the lure of actual power, recognizing the most moderate faction within the
organization as the acceptable face of national-syndicalism and granting it
political space for its own organization and newspaper. Many of Salazar’s
future collaborators entered the regime at this point, tilting it noticeably to the
right in policy and aesthetics.112 In order to lure nationalist youths into the New
109. The Diário da Manhã hit back, depicting Salazar as a ‘man of action’ and Rolão Preto as a ‘man of
agitation’. ‘Agitação e acção’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 19 January 1933. Some days later the same news-
paper reminded its readers that the creation of the New State was moving slowly—too slowly for some in
Portugal—because Portugal was neither Italy nor Germany; the Portuguese revolution had to move at a
different pace, in accordance with ‘a more serene evaluation, with a sense of reality more in keeping with the
possibilities that are open before us.’ ‘A nossa revolução’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 27 January 1933.
110. José Freire Antunes (ed.), Salazar e Caetano: Cartas Secretas, 1932–1968 (Lisbon: Difusão Cultural, 1994),
doc. C 2, undated letter, Marcelo Caetano to António de Oliveira Salazar, p. 92.
111. António Louçã (ed.), Portugal visto pelos Nazis, doc. 1, Lisbon, 23 November 1933, from the German lega-
tion to the Auswärtiges Amt, pp. 29–34.
112. This was not well received by those who, from within the União Nacional, had resisted the Blue Shirts.
Albino dos Reis, recently removed from the Interior Ministry, offered to resign, along with his colleagues in
the União Nacional´s Executive Commission, in order to create vacancies for the incoming national-
syndicalists, but added that ‘while that may matter little to the men who leave, it will matter a lot for the
União Nacional, and to the trust it needs to obtain from part of the country: a trust that will not be increased
from acts that might be interpreted as an occupation of the União Nacional by national-syndicalism.’ If the
State, Salazar then gave the go-ahead to the formation of a first fascistic
organization, the Acção Escolar Vanguarda (AEV—Vanguard Students’ Action).
Léonard writes,
[…] the creation of the AEV is completely dictated by circumstances, as its

ephemeral nature clearly shows; it was no more than a clever mise-en-scène by
António Ferro designed to fabricate the myth of a “revolutionary” Salazar.113
Restricted to a narrow student base, its strength was put, in May 1934, at some
1,500 members.114 Salazar reserved the full force of the State’s repressive
apparatus for the recalcitrant Blue Shirts. An official note, published in the
press on 29 July 1934, deemed them potential enemies, denying them any of
the rights which all other Portuguese enjoyed.115 Rolão Preto’s movements and
correspondence were restricted. There is a strong suggestion that he appealed
for help from the Nazi Party, to no avail.116 His appeals to the President,
General Carmona, proved futile, and in July the national-syndicalist leadership
was arrested and the organization disbanded; those who refused to join the
União Nacional or the breakaway national-syndicalists were forced into exile, a
fate which befell Rolão Preto. Allowed to return to Portugal the following year,
Blue Shirts were seen with distrust by many sectors of the Situação, added Albino dos Reis, then that distrust
would increase once they dominated the sole political organization recognized officially by the government.
AOS CP 235, letter, Oliveira de Azeméis, 7 August 1934, Albino Soares Pinto dos Reis Júnior to António de
Oliviera Salazar. A reshuffle went ahead anyway in October of that year.
113. Léonard, Salazarismo, p. 127. More than Ferro, it was António Eça de Queiroz who guided the AEV in
its brief existence. A short and intriguing letter from the novelist’s son to Salazar has Eça de Queiroz
apologizing for the impossibility of meeting Salazar’s wishes by halting the production of green shirts for the
young vanguardistas: ‘the date of the boys’ rally is so close that I was forced to deal with the matter as soon as
you authorized their appearance in uniform.’ For some reason, then, Salazar had changed his mind regarding
the appearance of this uniformed youth organization, but had done so too late. AOS CO PC 12, undated
letter, António Eça de Queiroz to António de Oliveira Salazar.
114. Louçã (ed.), Portugal visto pelos Nazis, doc. 4, Lisbon, 4 May 1934, from the German legation to the
Auswärtiges Amt, pp. 39–40. Freytag, the German minister, received this number from the movement’s
secretary, so it might be somewhat inflated. However, some reports point out that once it was gone,
secondary schools were totally open to opposition propaganda. AOS CO PC 3E, Notes, Lisbon, 1 June
1935, on a conversation between the Minister for Foreign Affairs and a teacher from a Lisbon secondary
school.
115. ‘Aos Nacionais Sindicalistas’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 29 July 1934. In this official note, Salazar
described the national-syndicalists as ‘the curvature of the circle that united in confused aspiration the
extremes of Portuguese politics.’
116. AOS CP 62, letter, Oporto, 24 April 1934, Ângelo César to António de Oliveira Salazar. This document
includes a letter written to César by Friedhelm Burbach, the Nazi party’s highest representative in Spain and
Portugal, which stated ‘as soon as I can I will go to Oporto and then I will tell you something I do not want
to commit to paper.’ According to César, ‘the last part of the letter, the last lines, refer to the following: a
delegate of Rolão’s national-syndicalism went to Madrid to ask Frederico [sic] Burbach for financial support
from the German government for that movement!!! Faced by Burbach’s refusal to intervene in the matter, he
was then asked to write a letter of recommendation for Germany! This too was refused. There is the im-
pression that similar requests were made in Italy and among certain Spaniards!’ Scarcely two months later,
Burbach, in his quality as NSDAP Ausland Komissar für Spanien und Portugal, wrote António Eça de Queiroz in-
viting a party of AEV leaders to visit Germany. AOS CO PC 12, letter, Lisbon, 12 June 1934, Friedhel Bur-
bach to António Eça de Queiroz, Head of the External Services of the SPN.
Rolão Preto participated in a coup on 10 September, but the whole conspiracy
was known to the police and he had to flee to Spain a second time.117 This
event led Salazar to release a long official note, ‘The current political situation’,
in which, over two newspaper pages, he attempted to explain, in some detail,
his political choices.118 Salazar now blamed the political disturbances on a core
of officers who understood theirs to be the real voice of the 28 May, and who
therefore would not countenance what the National Revolution had become.
Defining the differences that separated them, Salazar wrote of the distance
between strength and violence, and between politics and administration, as well
as of the reaction to the creation of a new constitutional order, which had
naturally shifted the axis of power within the old dictatorship. Salazar went on
to demonstrate that the army had taken on too much responsibility as a result
of its intervention in politics, and that it was now time for it to return to its pri-
mary missions: ‘the maintenance of order and the defense of the Pátria’s
integrity.’ Only by having a proficient army could Portugal have a serious
foreign and colonial policy—and given the constant rumors surrounding
Portugal’s colonies, the latter was particularly important. Salazar nevertheless
dismissed all these rumors, and quoted from pre-war German diplomatic dis-
patches, which told of how, in the confused political climate of the period,
there had been no stiff response in Portugal to the news that Germany and
Britain were discussing the fate of the Portuguese colonies. Salazar proudly
established the contrast between the years before 1914 and the present, and
pointed to his financial and political achievements. Financial solvency, as well
as political unity, were, he attempted to demonstrate, the key to the preserva-
tion of the colonies:
It may be the case that the government’s policy is becoming clearer now: when we
insist that balanced finances are a pre-condition for the Pátria’s independence and
integrity; when we attempt to cement a spirit of true national union among all
117. Santos Costa outlined the coming coup, and its potential support, in Correspondência de Santos Costa para
Oliveira Salazar vol. 1 (Lisbon: Comissão do Livro Negro Sobre o Regime Fascista, 1988), doc. 5, letter,
Caldas da Figueira, 1 September 1935, Fernando Santos Costa to António de Oliveira Salazar, pp. 30–31.
Rolão Preto was not mentioned in the official note published in the press describing the events. One
important component of the planned coup were non-commissioned officers, angered by Salazar’s comment
that, given the administrative chaos to be found in the army, some sergeants earned more than generals. See
‘Funcionalismo público: Uma entrevista do sr. Presidente do Conselho’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 18
August 1935. This interview was a reprint from A Verdade (Lisbon), which had organized a competition
entitled ‘Five minutes with Salazar’. This invited readers to write in what they would ask the President of the
Council if they had five minutes to spend with him. Reflecting on this interview, Costa Brochado, the editor
of A Verdade, wrote, ‘the first interview was conducted on the road to Loures, through the mountains, on a
hot night in August. It was the first time that I spoke to Salazar [...] what I remember from that first inter-
view, on our own, was that Salazar was sincerely anti-militarist, anti-clerical, fair, straight, and truthful!’ Costa
Brochado, Memórias de Costa Brochado, p. 133.
118. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘O actual momento político’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 20 September
1935.
good Portuguese; when we try to give this country a full awareness of its worth
and its destiny so that it may be morally and materially ready to react at the right
moment, we are not merely engaging in political literature—we are defending in
the best possible way the high interests of Portugal.
There were other advantages to be gained from balanced finances:

economic crises, such as those affecting Portuguese agriculture, could be
addressed; the modernization of the country’s infrastructure and armed forces
could be planned out, through the Law of Economic Reconstitution; there was
time to reform public services. Salazar concluded by recalling an episode from
his Coimbra days, at the time of World War I’s conclusion: having met an
Englishman whom he knew to be opposed to Lloyd George, Salazar and his
peers urged this man, in a very Portuguese fashion, to denounce his prime
minister—but they received instead a lesson in civic morality, being told that
“Mr Lloyd George has on his shoulders a most heavy burden, and for that same
reason he can avail of great powers. It does not suit us, for England’s sake, to
diminish the government’s prestige, or to create obstacles to its action, obstacles
that might then be used as an excuse for a possible failure. His mission finished,
Mr Lloyd George will then be called to account for the use made of his powers.”
Normality was not, however restored by this appeal for time and space in
which to govern; the following month Salazar received a number of letters
from supporters urging him to stay, or swearing fidelity.119 The most important
of these was a long, rambling letter by Justice Minister Manuel Rodrigues, who,
while firing accusations of treachery in all directions, vehemently denied
plotting against Salazar, despite rumors to the contrary. These were clearly days
of high agitation:
During the days I spent in Lisbon the number of rumors and their content amazed
me, above all because of the credulity they were being received with: Generals had
gone to [the presidential palace at] Belém, regimental commanders were holding
meetings, you had fled to Switzerland, you had refused to give money for the
Army’s re-equipment despite the request from a delegation of British officers at
the time in Lisbon, and other such idiocies. In relation to me there were two
rumors: that I was conspiring with you to be rid of General Carmona, whom you
119. AOS CP 123, letter, Lisbon, 7 October 1935, Henrique Galvão to António de Oliveira Salazar; AOS CP
215, undated letter, Guimarães, Alfredo Pimenta to António de Oliveira Salazar, accompanied by censored
newspaper article intended for publication in A Voz (Lisbon), 8 October 1935. The Diário da Manhã (Lisbon)
published on 10 October 1935 a list of individuals and organizations which sent letters or telegrams in this
wave of support which, spontaneous or organized, was designed to show that the nation stood alongside its
leader, against the sowers of distrust and rumor.
would replace, I replacing you; that I was not conspiring, but, rather, my head of
cabinet and my secretaries.120
Salazar was magnanimous in his reply, stating that he had never entertained a
shadow of a doubt about his colleague, but that the same could not be said of
his close aides, about whom what the police had told him amounted to less
than anyone could learn by walking the streets and frequenting the capital’s
cafés.121
União Nacional, Mocidade, and Legião
Salazar often spoke of the need to create a new elite, technically capable of
collaborating in the task of regenerating the country and imbued with a
nationalist spirit that would ensure devotion to country and obedience to the
leadership. The lack of elites capable of manning the government, the military,
the colonial administration, and the corporative organization was frequently
alluded to as a reason for the slow pace of reform. Salazar called Portugal a
‘country of pauper-like elites’;122 but, as we will see, little was done in a sus-
tained and practical fashion to alter this circumstance. On 30 July 1930, the
military dictatorship unveiled a political movement, to be called União Nacional
(National Union). A manifesto and statutes were published. Some have seen in
this innovation an action born out of fear,123 but the União Nacional was a
natural attempt by elements within the government to rally all potential
supporters, paving the way for the creation of a new regime. By not becoming
a party, it could reach out to monarchists, bypassing the eternal debate on the
nature of the regime. Plans for the União Nacional were presented by the gov-
ernment to delegates of all the country’s municipalities, the closest thing there
was at the time to a safe public opinion. The União Nacional had as its aims en-
couraging all that was national, and that brought the Portuguese together; it
existed to encourage a new, national, way of thinking. These aims were hardly
clear and, like so many other New State creations that would follow, would
soon be totally dependent on the government, especially the Minister of the
Interior.
120. AOS CP 242, letter, undated, but received on 13 October 1935, Manuel Rodrigues to António de
Oliveira Salazar. In this letter Rodrigues accused the police of starting the rumor that Salazar was going to
tender his resignation to Carmona, and that he had already written a letter to that effect.
121. AOS CP 242, draft of letter, 25 October 1935, António de Oliveira Salazar to Manuel Rodrigues.
122. Freire Antunes (ed.), Salazar e Caetano, doc. C 12, letter, Lisbon, 21 March 1942, Marcelo Caetano to
123. Douglas Wheeler, A ditadura, p. 50.
Salazar spoke at the União Nacional’s launch, and he described the move-
ment as an open invitation to support the Dictatorship, so that it might turn
into a new regime, rather than simply reverting, over time, to the old Republic.
The União Nacional existed, then, to provide some sort of legitimization for the
nascent New State, by making a victorious plebiscite possible and credible. He
did not say, however, that the União Nacional should remain in place after the
change of regime had been achieved. Such a political movement had the added
advantage of contributing to the removal of the Army from national life. In a
vital passage of his speech, Salazar stated that
Invited by the government to support the Dictatorship, so that the latter might lay
down the bases for a national social reorganization and prepare the future smooth
operation of the State’s powers, the Portuguese know, even as they hurry to offer
their support, that they are fulfilling a duty, not acquiring an entitlement.
This view would not change over the next forty years. Portugal was not going
to become a one-party state, with members of the single party constantly
expecting and demanding privileges. António Costa Pinto writes,
The National Union was a creation of Salazar’s, established and organized by gov-
ernmental decree. Legislation on the party was passed in the same way as legisla-
tion on the administration of the railways. The administration controlled it, let it
slumber or revitalized it according to the situation at the time.124
In August 1930 a number of prominent monarchists entered the União

Nacional; the CCP, Salazar’s old party, expressed cautious support for the
initiative, but chose to soldier on as an independent force. The União Nacional
had the support as well of many conservative republicans, but other groups
stayed out: Integralists, some other monarchist die-hards, and the rest of the
republicans. The already existing Liga 28 de Maio was not abolished, but was re-
branded as the voice of the loyal petite bourgeoisie and working-class. The União
Nacional did not magically appear, though; it was the Ministry of the Interior
that painstakingly created it by convincing local elites across the country, those
men who had already served the monarchy and then the Republic, to enter the
movement. At the time, this Ministry was headed by Lopes Mateus, republican
and freemason. Under his initial impetus his fellow republicans achieved con-
trol of the organization; they formed an overwhelming majority at national,
provincial, and local level. On 18 May 1931, the day after an important rally in
a Lisbon theatre, the Coliseu dos Recreios, a meeting presided by Lopes Mateus

oversaw the approval of the organic bases of the movement. In June of that
year, journalist Ayala Monteiro twinned support and admiration for Salazar
with membership of the União Nacional: one could not support the situação and
deny it one’s active support.125 1932 saw a flurry of meetings by the new
Minister of the Interior, Mário Pais de Sousa, whipping up support for the
movement. On November 1932 the União Nacional’s Central Commission was
unveiled. It was presided over by Salazar, and comprised Bissaia Barreto,
Albino dos Reis (Vice-president), Manuel Rodrigues, Armindo Monteiro, Navy
Minister Antunes Guimarães, Lopes Mateus, and Joaquim Nunes Mexia.126
With the exception of Bissaia Barreto, all were serving or former ministers.
Reflecting as it did the current cabinet’s make-up, the União Nacional remained
a republican-leaning organization. In his speech that day, Salazar made it clear
that the time had come for remaining political organizations to stand down.
Monarchists no longer had a king, given the death of Dom Manuel II;
Catholics, meanwhile, should turn their party into a social organization and
enter the União Nacional. Salazar’s words set off a debate within what remained
of his old party, the CCP, with leader António Lino Neto arguing for the
formation’s survival. The Episcopate seemed to agree until, in February 1934,
the Pope informed Cardinal Cerejeira that the time had come for Portuguese
Catholics to restrict their organized intervention to the religious and social
spheres. Lino Neto resigned and, without being formally dissolved, the party
ceased to function.127
In May 1934 the União Nacional was allowed to host its first National
Congress. Staged to coincide with the usual 28 May celebrations, which
included accompanying demonstrations, parades, and rallies, it was easy to
believe that the União Nacional would make a significant impact in the regime’s
evolution. The government gave it the role of building the corporative state
while creating a ‘new mentality’. But little headway was made in either direc-
tion, since the movement controlled no means to bring this, or indeed any
other end, about—and that same month, Carmona and Salazar, in a are public
outing, attended a special session of the older Liga 28 de Maio.128 A report
drawn up by José Luís Supico in March 1935 reiterated the conclusions
reached at the congress: the União Nacional should have as its main function
‘the complete integration of the Portuguese in the general principles that
125. Ayala Monteiro, ‘Grande “exemplo de patriotismo”’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 11 June 1931.
126. Alongside the Central Commission, a Consultative Commission with a more pronounced right-wing
flavor was introduced to the public, consisting of Passos e Sousa, Linhares de Lima, José Gabriel Pinto
Coelho, Marcelo Caetano, and João do Amaral. The actual day-to-day running of the movement was en-
trusted after October 1933 to an Executive Commission, which was headed by Albino dos Reis.
127. Manuel Braga da Cruz, ‘Centro Católico Português’ in Barreto & Mónica (eds), Dicionário de História de
Portugal vol. 7 Suplmento A/E (Lisbon: Figueirinhas, 1999), p. 291.
128. ‘Liga Nacional 28 de Maio’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 23 May 1934.
constitute the basis of the national, social and political basis of the New State,
and awaken sentiments of high-minded nationalism and passionate ambition
for greatness of the Pátria and faith in its destiny.’129 Salazar read the report,
and underlined much of it, but did nothing; he was allowing the União Nacional
to wither away.130 Its essential mission, to voice the nation’s support for the
regime at a plebiscite, had been accomplished. Little remained for it to do. As
one author puts it,
[…] its lethargy was especially notorious during the 1930s. Once its leaders had
been appointed, its statutes established and its candidates to the National
Assembly chosen, the UN practically disappeared […]
The frailty of the UN’s internal structure was also clear in the absence of
departments that most other authoritarian single parties possess, notably propa-
ganda, ideological training, and cultural intervention. It also lacked socio-pro-
fessional organizations which in neighboring Spain, for example, could be found
in the FET.131
By the time the 1930s came to an end, the União Nacional was in a state of
deep hibernation. Speaking in March 1938, as a new Central Commission,
Executive Commission, Consultative Junta and Propaganda Commission of
the União Nacional were unveiled, Salazar admitted that, the previous Executive
Commission having resigned and then served in a caretaker capacity for a full
year, ‘the impulse for all joint action and for all political activity was pro-
gressively reduced until it was almost extinguished.’132 It should now spring
back into life, Salazar said, so that it might carry out the crucial task of ‘inten-
sifying the political education of the Portuguese in order to ensure the
revolution’s continuity.’ The Diário da Manhã applauded these words,
recognizing that ‘we all agree that the União Nacional needs to experience a new
lifeblood coursing through its body so that its actions and movements may
129. AOS CO PC 4A, report, Lisbon, 7 March 1935, by José Luís Supico on the União Nacional. Supico
would later serve as vice-president of the União Nacional’s propaganda commission, which attempted to
oversee a national campaign capable of reaching all audiences, with industrial workers representing an
important target. AOS CO PC 4A, letter, Lisbon, July 1935, José Luís Supico to all municipal commissions
of the União Nacional.
130. At the conclusion of a meeting of the district commission of the União Nacional, Salazar did take up
some of these themes, noting the importance of the already established Center for Corporative Studies and
the planned Indoctrination Brigades which, it was hoped, would establish direct contact with the population
in order to better explain the government’s action—a task already undertaken, he added, by the delegates of
the INTP. ‘Na sessão de encerramento da reunião plenária das Comissões Distritais […]’ in Diário da Manhã
(Lisbon), 6 December 1935.
132. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘A educação política, garantia da continuidade revolucionária’ in Discursos e
notas políticas vol. 3 1938–1943 2nd edition (Coimbra: Coimbra Editora, 1959), pp. 25–38. It was in this
speech that Salazar uttered his most quoted maxim: ‘in politics, what seems to be, is.’
have greater impact on the moral and political aspects of the Nation’:133 but
during the first four years of World War II the movement lay low. It would be
revived and used in the electoral campaigns of the 1940s and 50s, before
collapsing again in the 1960s. The patchy use made of the União Nacional by the
State and, above all, by Salazar, remained a source of frustration to those most
deeply involved with it. António Costa Pinto reminds us that
[…] the “New State” was not established after a democracy but after a clientelistic
and oligarchic republic based on restricted electoral participation, with some
obvious points of continuity inherited from the old constitutional monarchy of the
19th Century. Although it changed the rules of the game, the National Union was
a central instrument in the adaptation of the local notables to the new political
system. It was in this area that we feel its role was most important.134
In other words, it had some importance at local and regional level, serving
as an inherently conservative networking tool for local notables. As the União
Nacional settled down, it quickly became a movement of grand old men. The
leadership’s average age was fifty, higher than that of the parliamentary repre-
sentation,135 with which there was no direct organic connection. The majority
of deputies, over the course of the New State, did not belong to the União
Nacional, although they were elected on its ticket, a reality replicated in the
Corporative Chamber. Less than one third of the New State’s ministers
belonged to the movement.136
Salazar’s style of leadership, and his rigid belief in the existence of natural
hierarchies, made it difficult to be a salazarista, to develop a strong identifica-
tion with the regime. Yet it was in this sense of attachment, or of belonging, of
being part of something new and exciting, was part and parcel of other right-
wing authoritarian, and fascist, regimes. There was a current of support for the
New State that looked forward to, and pressed for, the creation of uniformed
paramilitary formations as a tangible demonstration their support for the ideas
that underpinned the new Portugal. Salazar tolerated the creation of a first uni-
formed youth organization, the Acção Escolar Vanguarda (AEV—Vanguard
Students Action), as we have seen, as a way of taking the wind out of the
national-syndicalist movement’s sails, only to starve the organization, which
eventually numbered some 2,000 members, of funds and allow it to wither
away. While it had existed, however, the AEV had received considerable
support from the New State’s image makers. On 27 April 1934, the sixth anni-
133. ‘Obra de educação política do povo português’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 24 March 1938.
135. Ibid., p. 175.
136. Ibid., p. 179.
versary of Salazar’s entrance into government, a number of organizations paid
their respects to the President of the Council; the Diário da Manhã gave pride of
place in its coverage of the event to the Vanguardistas, their parade, their
message to Salazar, and his reply—‘We are confident of victory. Youth is with
us, your presence here tells us. No idea can triumph without the ardor of
youth.’137 Such support was short-lived. A letter from the movement’s young
leaders, in the run-up to the second anniversary of its foundation, revealed that
the AEV was growing weaker with every day that passed: ‘Of the great initial
surge there remain today our good will and the purity of the principles.’ In-
stitutional support from the State’s propaganda service had vanished; there was
no money.138
Still, pressure from below, fuelled by the sense that the formation of a new
nationalist mentality required disciplined and methodical intervention by the
State, and fears of turmoil in neighboring Spain, led to Salazar’s acceptance of a
second youth organization, the Mocidade Portuguesa (Portuguese Youth). Both
the AEV and the Mocidade Portuguesa had been foreshadowed in the statutes of
the União Nacional, which announced that the State would ‘promote, protect
and help’ organizations designed to train the country’s youth for its military
responsibilities. This was not new in Portugal, since under the Republic a
similar organization, the Instrução Militar Preparatória (IMP), had existed, as part
of a ‘nation-at-arms’ principle which had never imposed itself. The early 1930s
saw a number of projects for youth associations come and go, from a number
of sources.139 Three successive Ministers of Public Instruction worked on the
project, the last, Carneiro Pacheco, developing the final blueprint; within the
União Nacional, meanwhile, other projects were being discussed. Carneiro
Pacheco’s vision was laid out in the April 1936 law that transformed his
Ministry into the Ministry of National Education, and was further refined by a
follow-up decree in May. The Mocidade was defined as a ‘national and pre-
military organization designed to stimulate the integral development, the
formation of character, and the devotion to the Pátria [of Portuguese youth]
and allow it to contribute efficiently to the Pátria’s defense.’140 The Mocidade was
137. ‘Palavras de Salazar aos Vanguardistas’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 28 April 1934.
138. AOS CO ED 1D, letter, Lisbon, 14 January 1936, AEV to António de Oliveira Salazar.
139. Tellingly, when asked by António Ferro about children within the New State late in 1932, Salazar replied
that ‘it’s clear that we can’t and that we oughtn’t to follow the Italian system; there the State absorbs the
child; they have their excessively nationalist and militant organization of the Balilla.’ Ferro, Salazar, p. 234.
On 29 July 1933 the Diário da Manhã noted the creation of a Liga da Mocidade Portuguesa, which would
centralize ‘all of the educational and cultural action of the young’.
140. Legislação repressiva e antidemocrática do regime fascista (Presidência do Conselho de Ministros/Comissão do
Livro Negro Sobre o Regime Fascista, 1985), p. 25.
given a uniform,141 a flag, an anthem, and a national structure in which, as had
been the case with the Republic’s IMP, military officers played an important
role; it was led by a National Commissioner, who answered to the Minister of
National Education. In the first months of its existence, the Mocidade suffered
from somewhat chaotic recruitment.142 Membership was drawn from many
sectors, including children not attending school, but this situation, which
horrified class-conscious Portuguese society, was rapidly dealt with. As the
years passed, the Mocidade, while establishing itself as an unavoidable feature of
the New State’s appearance (it was complemented in 1937 by the Mocidade
Portuguesa Feminina), saw its ideological role diminish. It was never able to
establish a totalitarian hold on Portuguese youth, the Church being able to
protect its scouting organization: in fact, it was the Church that colonized the
Mocidade, being able to impose, from 1939 onwards, a ‘director of moral forma-
tion’, a position entrusted to a priest.
Salazar, it is fair to say, had little time for the Mocidade and for the com-
plaints of its National Commissioners, which invariably focused on funding
questions and, as with the União Nacional, on the need to make service in the
organization desirable and imperative for those who wanted to make a name
for themselves in Portuguese life. A letter from Leal Marques to Nobre
Guedes, the first National Commissioner of the Mocidade Portuguesa, dated 1
February 1939, contained the text of some notes written by Salazar, who, Leal
Marques explained, did not have enough time to write a proper letter. In these
notes Salazar was harsh in his appreciation of Nobre Guedes’ complaints:
It is unreasonable to elevate the reduction of budgets and the elimination of ex-

penses to matters of [personal] confidence. Only those who administer the totality
[of resources] can know how much is available; those who run services must live
within the means that are afforded them, without their way of understanding
problems, or the concept they form of the need or utility of expenses, going
beyond the moment in which each budget is defended.143
In other words, Salazar was reasserting the primacy of the financial over the
ideological; Nobre Guedes must not be offended that the Mocidade was short of
money—he should simply be thankful for what he was given. The second, and
141. The uniform consisted of brown trousers and a dark green shirt; the belt buckle bore an S, which was
said to stand for ‘Service’, but which, many pointed out, stood for ‘Salazar’ as well. The anthem, a not
unpoetic exultation of youth, was hardly militaristic.
142. Luís Pinto Coelho would say, at the Campo Pequeno rally on 28 August (see below), that over one half of
the volunteers who had presented themselves by that date to the Mocidade Portuguesa were above the age limit
fixed by law. ‘Contra o Comunismo’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 29 July 1936.
143. AOS Correspondência Diplomática (CD) 2, letter, Lisbon, 1 February 1939, Antero A. Leal Marques to
Eng. Nobre Guedes.
more significant, National Commissioner, Marcelo Caetano, would write to
Salazar, in August 1944, venting his frustration: the time had come, he argued,
to leave behind the stage of the Mocidade as ‘tolerated child’s play’ and
transform it into a ‘true and serious public service’.144 But that year Caetano
would be appointed Minister of the Colonies, and his vision of the Mocidade as
a device for identifying, selecting, and educating future elites was allowed to
dissipate. It is hard to accept that this would have happened had Salazar not
been, at the very least, indifferent to the organization.
The outbreak of civil war in neighboring Spain facilitated the consolidation
of the Mocidade Portuguesa, since it was felt that the country’s youth had to be
protected from the revolutionary ideas prevalent in the Spanish republican
zone. But the war’s impact did not end here: it allowed the regime’s fascistic
elements to go further, and impose a full-blown armed militia, along the lines
of the Nazi SA or the Fascist Blackshirts. There had been a number of pre-
vious attempts to set up such a body, all of which had met with failure; since
the Popular Front electoral victory in Spain, the Diário da Manhã had run a
campaign calling for the formation of ‘a force of patriotic volunteers, with the
objective of defending national sovereignty and protecting the nation from the
communist enemy.’145 After July 1936, the fear of revolutionary contagion
from Spain both increased the drive of its proponents and mollified Salazar.
On 4 August 1936, Pequito Rebelo, an Integralist who had preserved good
relations with Salazar, in a letter to the President of the Council, suggested the
creation of an anti-communist militia to help control the border: such a force
could be put together ‘without great feats of organization, just a simple arm-
band with the cross of Christ146 as a distinguishing feature—and as a propa-
ganda motif’. Pequito Rebelo saw this as an opportunity to embrace some of
the more dynamic, if possibly undependable, forces on the margins of the
‘National Revolution’,147 giving them a sense of purpose. Others were also on
the move, notably Captain Jorge Botelho Moniz, at that time director of a
private radio station, the Rádio Clube Português,148 and the ‘official’, or tolerated,
national-syndicalists, who were heavily represented in the corporative associa-
144. Freire Antunes (ed.), Salazar e Caetano, doc. C 27, letter, 5 August 1944, Marcelo Caetano to António de
Oliveira Salazar, p. 123.
145. Luís Nuno Rodrigues, A Legião Portuguesa: A milícia do Estado Novo, 1936-1944 (Lisbon: Editorial
Estampa, 1996), p. 44.
146. This refers to the Military Order of Christ, of which Prince Henry the Navigator had once been the
Grand Master. It was the preferred symbol of Portuguese nationalism, adopted by many factions and
movements (including the national-syndicalists).
147. AOS CP 235, letter, Lisbon, 4 August 1936, José Pequito Rebelo to António de Oliveira Salazar.
148. Jorge Botelho Moniz turned the Rádio Clube Português into an unofficial propaganda center for the
Spanish army in the early weeks of the war, broadcasting constantly with both information and denials of the
assertions made by radio stations loyal to the Spanish Republic. See ‘Rádio Clube Português’ in Diário da
Manhã (Lisbon), 3 August 1936.
tions, notably the national syndicates. It was they who organized a massive
anti-communist rally in the Campo Pequeno, Lisbon’s bull-ring, in which the pro-
posal for a militia was made, on 28 August. Despite the crowd’s frequent inclu-
sion of Salazar’s name among its chants, this rally represented a low point in
Salazar’s ability to control the radical Right in Portugal. Everything about the
evening’s events will have been deeply distasteful to Salazar: the vibrant and
enthusiastic welcome for the members of the Lisbon Fascio Italiano and the
local NSDAP branch; the suggestion, by a Mocidade Portuguesa representative
(Luís Pinto Coelho), that the Heaven-sent men (foremost among them Salazar)
who had saved Portugal from perdition, might one day be taken away by God,
an eventuality for which the country had to prepare; Major Ricardo Durão’s
statement that ‘I earn my bread in the army; like you, I am a worker; this is my
blue-collar shirt […] we military men want to win over the sympathy of the
working classes, not to use them, like the communists, but to serve them in
their legitimate rights and their just demands’; and Botelho Moniz’s violent
rhetoric, predicated on the notion that a violent struggle was indeed coming,
one for which the whole of Portuguese society had to be ready:
Women of Portugal:
Tomorrow, when the struggle begins, it is possible—it is probable—that some of
us will fall. As we leap to attack, a bullet, a grenade, or a dagger will wound and kill
us […]
Some of you, women of Portugal, will cry; some of you will suffer and weep for a
groom, a husband, a son, whom the Pátria has requested. You will be right to do
so. Mourn him well. But dry your tears quickly. And on that cruel but glorious
hour, […] proclaim, with a loud voice, “son! My son! A Portuguese who falls
fighting never dies.”
After the speeches were over, Jorge Botelho Moniz presented to the
assembled crowd (estimated at some 20,000 people) a motion through which
nationalists, given both the nature of the enemy that haunted Portugal and the
recent approval for the Mocidade Portuguesa, asked their government to welcome
the organization of a ‘civil legion designed to encompass all those who, by a
conscious and voluntary act, and accepting wholeheartedly the greatest of sacri-
fices, take a step forward and answer this appeal for the defense of everything
we hold most sacred.’149 Not all in Portugal agreed with the proposed move,
but the state of agitation that led to the Legion’s creation was more than
evident in a letter from Pedro Teotónio Pereira on 5 September 1936:
149. ‘Contra o Comunismo’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 29 July 1936.

The signs of communist eruption are bursting everywhere […] They must be meet
everywhere with an iron fist. Their propaganda is reaching such proportions that I
am convinced that things can only be sorted out by a true mobilization of all the
country’s healthy forces and by a strong counter-offensive before their own takes
shape.150
On 15 September, six days after a major naval mutiny (see Chapter 3), the
Council of Ministers approved the creation of the Legião Portuguesa (Portuguese
Legion). The prologue to the decree recognized that in this instant the cabinet
was answering a call from below:
The population, alarmed by the dangers that have beset other peoples, wanted to
take on itself a greater share of the responsibility for its own defense, by word, by
example, and by deed.151
In a short space of time, the prologue continued, some twenty thousand people
had signed up for the Legião, turning then to the government ‘to recognize and
discipline it’: this the government was happy to do, given, first of all, the tactics
of the communist enemy, which
attempts to install itself in the social body of the nations, infiltrating schools,
workshops, fields, the liberal professions and the ranks. It denies the Pátria, the
family, the highest sentiments of the human soul, and the secular achievements of
Western civilization.
Such a step represented a considerable risk for Salazar, since it might be

interpreted by the army as a stratagem to reduce its monopoly on force and
therefore minimize its role, within the New State, as the guarantor of the
‘National Revolution’. There was also an added gamble involved in allowing
the more radical elements of the New State an eye-catching platform during
politically turbulent times. There is consensus among historians that the idea of
the Legião did not come from Salazar; one writes, ‘there is, undeniably, in the
origins of the militia, a grass-roots pressure, a measure of spontaneity from
those socio-political sectors [the radical Right]’.152 Costa Brochado, a journalist
and admirer of Salazar, described, in his usual dramatic tone, the Legião as a
direct threat to the dictator:
150. Correspondência de Pedro Teotónio Pereira I, doc. 28, letter, 5 September 1936, Pedro Teotónio Pereira to
151. ‘O Governo reconhece a “Legião Portuguesa”’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 16 September 1936.
152. Rodrigues, A Legião Portuguesa., p. 47.
When the Legião Portuguesa was founded, I wrote an article in A Verdade arguing
that, all things considered, there was no reason for it, it was unnecessary […]
behind it all was the plan to replace the União Nacional, which they said was
pointless, by a Fascist or even Nazi-style organization. Salazar, to placate them,
had to demean himself by raising his arm and stick a pin on his lapel, he who was,
from a doctrine point of view, the antithesis of all that! […] With Franco’s arrival
in Spain, the Moroccan troops, and the growth of the civil war, Fascist and Nazi
groups in Portugal felt triumphant. Having reached an agreement with the Spanish
Falange, they even dared to threaten Salazar’s policies.153
Still, Salazar gave the project a green light. He could, in fact, discern many
advantages. The army might object to the Legião, but the latter might be used as
a negotiating tool (and if necessary a sacrificial pawn) by Salazar in his quest for
supremacy—for freedom from military tutelage—within the New State. Salazar
was, moreover, confident in his ability to master the situation, if nothing else
through his usual methods: control of the purse strings, denial of opportunities
for action, and a muddling of the chain of command. In the first rush of
optimism, it was decided that the Legião would be self-financing, but after 1939
it began to rely on State subsidies,154 thus sealing its doom. Moreover, the
Central Junta of the Legião, its supreme body, was named by the government;
serving army and navy officers could belong to it.
The first President of the Legião’s Central Junta, holding the position for
eight years, was João Pinto da Costa Leite (Lumbralles), perhaps the most
significant link between the far Right and his onetime lecturer in Coimbra,
Salazar. This post was held in addition to a cabinet portfolio. Costa Leite had
been involved in the Liga 28 de Maio and had been a member of the national-
syndicalist Grand Council, but was to prove, in the final instance, loyal to
Salazar. Despite his presence, the radical Right seemed intent on dominating
the new movement, turning it into a vehicle for the propagation of its views
and a haven for its supporters. Many of the military men who agreed to partici-
pate in the Legião had similar political backgrounds; amongst these was its first
‘General Commander’, Colonel João Namorado de Aguiar,155 who was
seconded by a young hothead, Humberto Delgado. Another was captain
Roque de Aguiar, who would head the militia’s intelligence service, created late
153. Costa Brochado, Memórias de Costa Brochado (Lisbon: Marciso Correia—Artes, 1987) pp. 139–40.
According to Costa Brochado, Salazar countered by dispatching potential leaders of a fascist Portugal
abroad—Mocidade Portuguesa leader Nobre Guedes as minister to Berlin and Pedro Teotónio Pereira as special
representative to the Nationalist authorities in Burgos.
154. Rodrigues, A Legião Portuguesa, p. 98.
155. For Namorado de Aguiar’s opinions on the Legião and its mission (‘Let us believe firmly in the
possibility of raising against the foreign enemy the steel wall of our phalanx: The “Legião Portuguesa”’), see
‘Legião Portuguesa’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 15 November 1936.
in 1936. In Coimbra, where the União Nacional was openly republican, the
Legião served as a vehicle for the ambitions of all those who had refused to join
the older organization. The German minister, Huene, was delighted by this
development, and by Costa Leite’s request for details on the SA and SS organi-
zations, whose model he wanted the Legião to adopt. ‘It is undoubtedly in our
interest’, he wrote to Berlin, ‘that Portugal follows our model in this organiza-
tion as well, because by it one can expect progress in the promotion of appre-
ciation for National-Socialist Germany.’156
The high point of this stage of the Legião’s existence came in 1937, in the
shape of the annual 28 May celebration. According to the press, some 12,000
legionnaires, with an added 3,000 boys from the Mocidade, paraded through
Lisbon, watched by Carmona, the government, and the diplomatic corps, while
a squadron of brand-new JU-52 bombers flew overhead. It was not an unim-
pressive sight. The Diário da Manhã was exultant: ‘the city became a forest of
arms held out in the Roman salute […] the names of Carmona and Salazar
were held up high, cheered by a thousand voices […] after this grandiose dis-
play, the conviction that the always ascending march of the National Revolu-
tion has not halted has been firmly rooted in all Portuguese.’157 Despite this
show of strength, however, Namorado de Aguiar and Costa Leite clashed from
the start over what course the Legião should follow. The conflict ended shortly
after it began. In November 1937 the Central Junta, under government control
from the start, was renovated. Lumbralles kept his place, while Namorado de
Aguiar did not, being replaced by the more moderate General Casimiro Teles,
who stressed military training (and secured the necessary equipment with
which to carry it out) over political indoctrination. He also abolished the
‘Roman’ salute.158 A temporary ban was placed on new members, while what
was, in effect, a purge, took place, with nearly 900 serving legionnaires turned
away, mostly for ideological reasons.159 The battle for control of the
organization was over.
Like other organizations before it—the Mocidade and the AEV—the Legião,
soon after its creation, was already feeling the effects of the shortage of State
funds. Thus, on 20 November 1938 Captain Roque de Aguiar, the director of
the Legion’s Intelligence Service, wrote to Salazar warning him that in the face
of mounting evidence of a coming coup, the regime could rely absolutely on
very few organizations, and that the most devoted of them all, the Legião, was
in bad shape:
156. Louçã (ed.), Portugal visto pelos Nazis, doc. 8, report, Lisbon, 31 October 1936, from the German legation
to the Auswärtiges Amt, p. 51.
157. ‘A consagração da Revolução Nacional’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 29 May 1937.
158. Rodrigues, A Legião Portuguesa, p. 114.
159. Ibid., p. 116.
The numbers for Lisbon are today very reduced and for a long time now the
number of new memberships is smaller than the number of resignations. Young
men are not joining us from the Mocidade, as should be the case, and one can even
detect a certain antagonism between the Mocidade and the Legião, for which the
former’s leadership is responsible: young men who desire to join the Legião cannot
do so, since membership of the Mocidade has been extended until twenty-six years
of age!
According to Roque de Aguiar, the police forces saw the Legião as a rival and
had no time for its members, and the same was true of the army; legionnaires
were under no illusion that, in case of a coup, they would be turned away when
they turned up at army barracks in order to secure weapons: ‘The legionnaire
today feels that he is held in contempt by the powers that be and that he is the
man who in Portuguese Society must bear the greatest hatreds.’160 Some days
later Costa Leite, President of the Central Junta of the Legião, wrote Salazar a
begging letter, pointing out that the 2,000 contos he had authorized for the
Legião in the upcoming year was insufficient; the Legião had asked for 3,000,
which was a bare minimum:
It is my belief that reducing the expenses for training and uniforms will be a
serious blow which, by not permitting the necessary activity, will transform the
Legião into an organization of little utility—or no utility at all. It is thanks to the
training that we have managed to keep the nationalist flame alive and have pre-
vented the local sections from becoming involved in politics and intrigue.161
One historian writes, reflecting on the importance of the Legião Portuguesa,
The Legião Portuguesa has left a much greater mark on the collective memory of the
Estado Novo than its scant weight within the regime warrants. Together with the
Mocidade, its 30,000 members, “uniformed, disciplined, and instructed”, dominated
the regime’s choreography between 1937 and 1939. With the end of the Civil War
in Spain and the discrete return of the Portuguese volunteers who had fought on
Franco’s side, the LP’s presence and even its choreography declined significantly.
It was reduced to carrying out actions of provocation and information during the
brief post-war electoral campaigns.162
Salazar was keen to keep the Mocidade and the Legião well apart from each
other. There was, moreover, no institutional linkage between the Legião and
160. AOS CP 3, letter, Lisbon, 20 September 1938, Captain Roque de Aguiar to António de Oliveira Salazar.
161. AOS CP 152, letter, Lisbon, undated (but accompanied by a letter from the Junta Central da Legião
Portuguesa, signed by Costa Leite, dated 6 December 1938), João Pinto da Costa Leite to António de
Oliveira Salazar.
162. Costa Pinto, Salazar’s Dictatorship, p. 189. For ‘information’, one should probably read ‘intelligence’.
União Nacional. From the former’s creation until the outbreak of World War II
these organizations were involved in a conflict for influence although, in truth,
none really had any.163 Salazar described the Legião and the Mocidade, for foreign
consumption, as tools for the modification ‘of the general mentality of the
people’ and creators of a ‘civic conscience’: ‘These organizations have also
taught the Portuguese to be more tolerant and to respect one another’s
beliefs—this alone, in our country, is a great step forward.’164 Words such as
these make comparisons between the Portuguese organizations, on the one
hand, and the SA and Hitler Youth, on the other, a hazardous exercise.
Dealing with the Opposition: Repression, Censorship, Press, and Radio
For all of the emphasis on legality and respect for the rights of the
individual which supposedly separated the New State from its totalitarian
counterparts, the truth is that the silencing of dissenting views played a vital
role in the regime that Salazar established. Whether or not he had genuinely
expected opposition to disappear with time is not clear, but dissonant voices
made it harder for him to speak on behalf of the nation, as a result of which he
designed measures for their silencing. The New State’s repression was not an
all-powerful force which reached into every village and home, or which drew
up categories of men and women who were judged irredeemable; there was no
need for systematic violence in a country where most people did not pay atten-
tion to politics, believing no good could ever come from parliaments and gov-
ernments in Lisbon. Rather, Salazar oversaw, or, better still, had others over-
see, a system of repression that was selective and as repressive as it had to be to
preserve the peace without provoking scandal—a fine line that was not always
kept to.
Before the topic of repression and violence is addressed in greater detail, it
must be remembered that Portugal in the 1930s was still emerging into
modernity. A process that was difficult for most, if not all, countries was
especially traumatic for Portugal, where, as a result of the monarchy’s replace-
ment by the First Republic, there was now, in many regions, a great deal of dis-
engagement from the State. An ancient source of power—the crown (whose
symbolic significance survived even in its final liberal and constitutional
setting)—was gone, replaced by a diffuse entity, the Republic, whose men were
unknowns and whose centralizing tendencies were more marked than those of
163. Léonard, Salazarismo, p. 133. See, for a semi-official denial of the existence of such a rift, or competition,
the article ‘União Nacional’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 6 May 1937. According to this article, rumors of a
split between members of the two organizations were of communist-masonic origin.
previous rulers. The Republic’s attack on the Church added to the trauma of
modernization, further distancing much of the population from the centers of
power. If one considers the Republic as part of a ‘long Nineteenth-Century’,
then the continuity between it and the liberal monarchy, and the New State, is,
in this respect, striking. Much of the violence occurring in Portugal from the
1930s onwards did not take place because Salazar was in power: it took place,
ironically, because the State and its mechanisms were, if one considers popular
allegiance to the State, weak. It was the kind of violence that had been
occurring in Portugal for decades and whose suppression had long formed the
main mission of the Portuguese army.
Opposition to the emerging New State came in various forms. We have
already considered the delaying effects of factions within the broad consensus
of the military dictatorship, those to the left and the right of Salazar, and we
have examined the challenge posed by Rolão Preto and his national-syn-
dicalists. Other enemies existed. Exiled republicans, the leadership of the
former regime, did their best to halt the consolidation of Salazar’s rule, under-
standing him to be a more permanent threat than the military. In truth, these
same men had been in this situation before, during Sidónio Pais’ presidency in
1918. They had been ignored by foreign governments then, and were ignored
now, with the exception of the Spanish Republic, when in the hands of the
Left. They tried to cast doubts on Portugal’s financial recovery, the bedrock of
Salazar’s prestige, and to sabotage putative loans, reminding foreign govern-
ments and financial institutions of Article 26 of the 1911 Constitution,
according to which loans were not valid unless sanctioned by parliament.
Salazar dealt with their threats through direct communication with the people
in the shape of official notes and newspaper interviews. The republicans
managed little, given lack of numbers, of means, and of unity of purpose. In
Paris, a Liga de Defesa da República (often referred to as the ‘Liga de Paris’) had
taken shape during the Military Dictatorship; its membership included former
party leaders Afonso Costa, Álvaro de Castro, and José Domingues dos Santos,
members of the intellectual current known as Seara Nova, and exiled officers.
The organization’s aim was to establish contact with well-disposed military
officers within Portugal, overthrow the government, and restore the Republic
of 1910. Free-masonry, so central in the life of the Republic, played an im-
portant role in keeping these contacts alive. Some of its members went on to
participate in another similar exiles’ organization, the Grupo de Buda. Attempts
to subvert the army from abroad would continue throughout the 1930s. Salazar
was under no illusion that the former Republican leadership might be lured
into collaboration with the New State. As he put it in July 1932, ‘the education
transmitted in our schools is too abstract to allow the realities of life to have an
effect on men who have adhered to a certain system […] it is rare to meet
individuals who are constantly comparing, correcting, and rectifying, with the
aid of facts, their mental position.’165
As conservative republicans loyal to Cunha Leal and his União Liberal were
elbowed out of the military dictatorship, and then the New State, the potential
for trouble increased. In 1931 opposition within Portugal came together in the
form of the Aliança Republicana-Socialista, led by men such as Norton de Matos,
Mendes Cabeçadas, and Admiral Tito de Morais. Their immediate aim was to
participate in any elections the regime might hold, and use them to distribute
their propaganda. Events in Spain seemed to be making their task easier: the
Primo de Rivera dictatorship had fallen apart, the monarchy was in crisis, and
the Second Republic appeared from out of nowhere. However, despite this
favorable international backdrop, the republican opposition was undermined
by personal quarrels (notably a long-standing quarrel between Cunha Leal and
Norton de Matos) and the lack of a common program. The military dictator-
ship, and later the New State, did not simply sit back while the opposition
organized itself; it acted against internal and external opposition through a
variety of legal means. Introduced on 9 October 1928, Decree 16,011 stated
that
All Portuguese who, abroad, be it as individuals, be it in league with others,
promote either rebellion against the government of the nation or the internal or
external discredit of the country will be subjected to the application, by the
Council of Ministers, of a fine proportional to their wealth and to the gravity of
their actions.166
Until the payment of the fine, such individuals could not dispose freely of their
property and wealth in Portugal; their accounts would be frozen. On 16
September 1931, and in the sequence of the Madeira revolt, Decree 20,314
dealt with civil servants, local officials, and members of the armed forces who
had shown their opposition to the government’s policies. This piece of legisla-
tion was remarkable for the harsh tone of its prologue:
[…] in courts, government departments, schools, and military establishments, are
to be found officers, magistrates, civil servants, workers and teachers who, not
content to remain within the strict confines of their assignments, carry out cam-
paigns of opposition and hatred, of insult and defamation, against the government
and its national policy. This provides the most fruitful setting for the revolutions
that have followed one another, dishonoring the country and causing grave losses
to the Treasury and dangerous alterations in the public order. […]
165. ‘Palavras de um chefe’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 13 July 1932. This interview was published originally
in the Diário de Notícias (Lisbon), 12 July 1932.
166. Full text of the decree can be found in Legislação repressiva, pp. 84–86.
In schools, government departments, and barracks, everywhere, there are some
who profess communist doctrines and who seek to initiate youth, the working
masses, and soldiers in the knowledge and the practice of the most advanced
principles of social subversion.167
Punishments set out by the decree ranged from temporary suspension to en-
forced retirements and even to definitive exoneration. Appeals, while possible,
were to be handled by the relevant Ministry. On 5 December 1932, with
Salazar now installed as President of the Council of Ministers, Decree 21,493
granted an amnesty to political prisoners and émigrés, but a list of fifty excep-
tions was appended to it: those already tried would be banned from the
national territory for two years; the rest would still have to face trial.168 Of
these fifty Salazar would say, soon after the decree’s publication, that they had
been ‘guilty of grave crimes which they have not expiated. They were the
people who led the revolutionary movement in Madeira and the colonies; they
are the eternal agitators, the fatal trouble-makers in our system […] nobody
was unjustly penalized and […] nobody was favored.’169
Published on 11 April 1933, Decree 22,468 regulated the right of assembly,
stating that ‘meetings held for the purpose of political or social propaganda can
only be held once permission from the civil governor of the respective district
has been secured.’170 That same day, Decree 22,469 revisited censorship:
The sole role of censorship is to prevent the perversion of public opinion’s

function as a social force and it shall be exercised in such a way as to defend
public opinion from all factors that might steer it away from truth, justice, morals,
good administration and the common good, and to prevent attacks against the
fundamental principles of social organization.171
Salazar defended censorship by stressing that the West was at war: ‘There is no
such thing as Portuguese, French, or British communism, but only inter-
national communism, which strives to impair and destroy national inde-
pendence.’ As a result, measures acceptable in wartime, such as censorship,
were needed in what now passed for peace.172 Censorship existed as a direc-
torate-general within the Ministry of the Interior. Ideally it should have worked
closely alongside the new propaganda service, the Secretariado de Propaganda
168. Full text of the decree, including the list of names, can be found in Legislação repressiva, pp. 130–34.
171. Ibid., pp. 142–43.
Nacional (SPN—National Propaganda Secretariat), created in September 1933,
but relations between the two bodies were to prove strained.
In an interview with the Diário de Notícias, in October 1933, Salazar
announced that the times had definitively changed, and that, far from being on
the defensive, the government would go on the offensive against the opposi-
tion: ‘I cannot accept the small-mindedness and the ridiculous nature of the
petty worries of certain groups, and sub-groups, in the face of national realities!
I do not understand and cannot tolerate that half a dozen good-for-nothings
should spend their life plotting my destiny, and that of my collaborators, while
the men in the seats of Power struggle against the great national problems, and
solve them!’173 The most important of these ‘good-for-nothings’ was Afonso
Costa, who remained the opposition’s trump card, the ‘other’ Finance Minister
capable of righting the budget. Salazar took the threat he represented seriously,
and in the summer of 1934 wrote a long official note answering allegations
made by Afonso Costa. Salazar now elaborated on the earlier considerations
about education. Men like himself had been educated in an increasingly
positivist spirit, which relied on the observation of the real world: teachers
relied on ‘texts, tables, objects, maps, statistics, experiments’. Previous genera-
tions, however—men like Afonso Costa—were chained to the world of theory,
and doomed to argue themselves to exhaustion in the face of the living proof
which undermined their points. Their arguments were sterile, for arguing was
all they knew, and their arguments had nearly killed off what remained of the
national spirit. Salazar then picked up three allegations made by Afonso Costa
in an interview with a Brazilian journalist, José Jobim, which had found its way
into a book, A verdade sobre Salazar (The Truth About Salazar), published in
Brazil, and proceeded to refute them at length. The most significant of these
was that it was the opposition’s warning to foreign statesmen that future
(republican) governments would not honor debts incurred by the dictatorship
which had led the League of Nations to bring negotiations on a loan to
Portugal to an end. Salazar quoted a long diplomatic report to show that this
was not the case, and that he had pulled the plug on the negotiations; the most
damaging passage of the note was a description of how the opposition had
gone about its futile work, leaving their ‘scraps of paper’ under hotel-room
doors in Geneva.174
Throughout the 1930s, and as predicted in the Constitution, the role of the
armed forces in ensuring internal order was diminished. The army was
173. ‘Declarações do Sr Dr Oliveira Salazar’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 21 October 1933. The interview
was originally published in the Diário de Notícias (Lisbon), 20 October 1933.
174. ‘Nota oficiosa da Presidência do Conselho: Duas escolas políticas’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 17 July
1934. Salazar concluded the piece by writing: ‘Three statements, six falsehoods. It is like this in everything
else.’ Predictably, a string of anti-Afonso Costa articles appeared in the press in the days that followed.
gradually replaced in this task by the old police forces—the Polícia de Segurança
Pública and the Guarda Nacional Republicana—while an existing political police
became, in August 1933, the Polícia de Vigilância e Defesa do Estado (PVDE—
Police for Vigilance and Defense of the State). As before the dictatorship,
command of the various police forces fell to military officers. The PVDE,
which became a mainstay of the regime, was nominally subordinated to the
Ministry of the Interior, but increasingly reported directly to the President of
the Council of Ministers. According to one of the first academic surveys of its
action, by Douglas Wheeler,
the assigned functions of PIDE, or PVDE as it was originally called […] were
many and went beyond that of defense or attack on political oppositionists; that
function was fulfilled by only one section, the ‘Vigilance and Defense section’ of
the Security Department or branch of the PVDE. PVDE combined the functions
of criminal investigative police, international police, internal security and counter
intelligence, foreign intelligence, immigration and emigration control services,
border surveillance, and prison administration service.175
Wheeler continues, ‘its powers differed from those of Britain’s MI5 in one
important respect: PVDE had the power to arrest.’176 The army was not, how-
ever, totally removed from the task of political repression. On 6 November
1933 (Decree-law 23,203177) a new type of law court was introduced, the
Tribunal Militar Especial (TME, Special Military Court), which adjudicated on
crimes against the security of the State and the organs of sovereignty (which in
practice meant also the spread of political propaganda, the spread of rumors
designed to perturb public opinion, and strike activity, whatever its origin).
Defendants’ rights were curtailed in these courts, which consisted of two
officers, one of whom presided, and a career judge. The crime of rebellion was
to be punished with six to twelve years of exile in the colonies, or four to eight
in prison.
In 1935 the young National Assembly approved a law against secret
societies; freemasons were its main target. However, the number of freemasons
in the immediate vicinity of Salazar, including Carmona, Bissaia Barreto, and
José Alberto dos Reis, suggests that something more was at play here. Was this,
as Manuel Lucena has suggested, a continuation of earlier splits within the
Masonic Order? Or was it simply another string being added to the bow of the
State, another ground on which a move might be made against its enemies?
175. Douglas Wheeler, ‘In the Service of Order: The Portuguese Political Police and the British, German and
Spanish Intelligence, 1932–1945’ in Journal of Contemporary History 18 (1983), p. 3.
176. Douglas Wheeler, ‘In the Service of Order’, p. 5.
While many freemasons were in the opposition, the Order was never subjected
to the kind of scrutiny that applied, for example, to the communist party.
Salazar was not involved in drafting this legislation; he had no obsession, like
Franco, when it came to freemasons. Overall, this measure seems to have been
part of the New State’s increasing harshness against all dissenters, real or
potential, a policy determined by the desire to break with the past.
That same year, on 6 May, Cunha Leal was banished from Portuguese
territory for two years, by a decision taken by the Council of Ministers, in the
presence of Carmona. A lunch had been held in honor of Cunha Leal at
Lisbon’s Aviz Hotel, at which a high-ranking secret police officer was present;
despite his presence, speeches were made in which the need for republican
unity for the securing of liberty was stressed. Some of the speakers had
important roles in the judiciary, others in academia, and others still in the
military. Cunha Leal was the final speaker; ‘he declared that this was a purely
political meeting and attacked those who had sided with the situação, preaching
republican unity to free the Republic from the hands of the priests who,
supported by force, had usurped it.’178 It was no coincidence that some days
later decree 25,317, which identified thirty-three people to be dismissed from
public service, was published: among those listed was a handful of officers and
educators (and some, like Norton de Matos, who combined both professions),
from primary schools to universities; they were joined by judges, judicial
administrators, and civil servants. With the coming of the Spanish Civil War,
the State armed itself with new repressive powers. Decree-Law 27,003, pub-
lished on 14 September 1936, introduced an oath of loyalty to be sworn by
present and incoming holders of civil service jobs, as well as peripheral services
of the State:
I declare on my honor that I am integrated in the social order established by the

1933 Constitution, and that I actively repudiate communism and all subversive
ideas.179
This oath was also incorporated in the existing declaration of fidelity which all
incoming members of the armed forces had to make.
In September 1933, as we have seen, a series of decrees made possible the
creation of a corporative state; one of the most significant was that which
created national syndicates, excluding all unions already established from any
recognized function. This measure was to set the scene for the most dramatic
act of resistance against the New State in the 1930s. The anarcho-syndicalists
178. AOS CO PC 3E, letter, Lisbon, 6 May 1935, Agostinho Lourenço to Henrique Linhares de Lima.
of the Confederação Geral do Trabalho (CGT—General Confederation of Labor)
might have been weakening, and facing competition for working-class support
from other forces (some of a reformist, others of a communist, bent), but they
decided to make a stand against what was evolving—not just the laws, of
course, but the actual success of the new national syndicates in attracting
members from the old trade-union movement.180 A revolt, scheduled for 18
January 1934, was to be coordinated with a republican rising. But Salazar’s gov-
ernment, aware of what was planned, was able to strike first, destroying the
republican rising before it began, and forcing the unions to strike and to act in
the open, the last stand of a cause which had never been a real threat to the
State.181 There were some spectacular acts of violence from the communists,
and some important anarchist-led strikes, in a curious inversion of roles; but
the press, scaremongering, concentrated on the first, highlighting the dangers
posed by the international communist movement to Portugal. Some 700 arrests
led to 417 prosecutions, and to 260 guilty verdicts in the TME.182 1934 proved
to be, until World War II, and isolated actions aside, the last open challenge to
the regime to emerge from the Left.183
Salazar’s immediate response to the strikes was determined by concerns for
his security. With armed bands roaming the streets of Lisbon, he was forced to
retire to the civil governor’s offices, from which the security of the capital was
being coordinated. For added safety, Salazar then headed for the barracks of
Caçadores 5; there he was joined by other cabinet ministers and leading military
authorities. He was back at his house by 9:30 in the morning of 18 January, the
180. Fernando Martins, in his exhaustive study of Pedro Teotóno Pereira’s career, writes, ‘seen as a desperate
attempt to prevent the transformation of the unions into fascist bodies, [the revolt of] 18 January only makes
sense as part of a naturally complex whole which included as the objective of those who prepared and
executed it, halting the hemorrhage of workers from the syndicalist associations which existed until 1933 to
the syndicalist structure created by the new regime.’ Martins, Pedro Teotónio Pereira: Uma biografia (1902–1972),
Ph.D. Thesis, University of Évora, 2004, p. 441.
181. As early as 19 November some 150 political prisoners, among them many important members of the
republican opposition, were shipped from the fort in the coastal town of Peniche to the Azores. See Fátima
Patriarca, Sindicatos contra Salazar: A revolta de 18 de Janeiro de 1934 (Lisbon: Imprensa de Ciências Sociais,
2000), pp. 200–6. Two days later, ex-major Sarmento Beires was arrested in Lisbon, along with some
followers. The German minister in Lisbon, Freytag, pointed out that the government was well aware of the
conspiracy, and that its democratic element was the one that worried it most, since it might have some
impact on the armed forces. As a result, the government acted with such force and speed that ‘it is said that
the democrats retreated at the last minute, and that the marxist leaders did not display all-out commitment,
or use all of their forces.’ Louçã (ed.), Portugal visto pelos Nazis, doc. 3, Lisbon, 27 January 1934, From the
German legation to the Auswärtiges Amt, pp. 36–38.
182. Patriarca shows that the sentences fell into three brackets: up to two years’ imprisonment for 107 of the
defendants; up to eight years of removal from continental Portugal, with or without imprisonment, and
heavy fines, for eighty-nine defendants; and a third, of ten-to-twenty years’ removal, usually with imprison-
ment, and extremely heavy fines. Patriarca, Sindicatos, pp. 458–59. Patriarca also notes the hurry with which
the trials, which the press openly described as ‘summary’, were organized and held. Patriarca, Sindicatos, p.
461.
183. The most complete guide to the events of January 1934, concerned not only with the events of those
days but also with their historiography and indeed mythology, is Fátima Patriarca, Sindicatos.
worse seemingly over; that same afternoon he summoned a Council of
Ministers to deal with the fallout from the events. The Council ordered
employers not to readmit workers who had participated in strike activity, deter-
mined that the guilty would be tried by the TMEs, and instructed authorities in
Angola to prepare a prison camp at the mouth of the Cunene river, to house
the revolt’s leadership. Finally, the government announced that a purge of the
civil service and the army would be carried out, with all those guilty of
professing revolutionary ideals being driven out.184 This immediate response, in
many ways predictable, was not the most interesting feature of the crisis: what
stands out is Salazar’s direct intervention. Salazar and his government had been
aware that the revolt was brewing. While the police carried out raid after raid,
delivering important blows against all elements implicated in the revolt—
anarchists, communists, and republicans—Salazar was directly involved in the
campaign to exploit, politically, what he knew would be his victory over the
rising. Thus, censorship authorities silenced the press when it came to
reporting on the rising turmoil; Salazar encouraged the daily O Século to launch
an anti-communist campaign in its pages;185 and he himself filled the informa-
tion void with two official notes, published in the press in quick succession—
on 28 November and on 1 December. In the first, Salazar explained the cir-
cumstances that led to the arrest of a famous republican aviator, José Manuel
Sarmento Beires, in the possession of incriminating documents. Salazar ex-
plained as well the need to deport many prisoners to the Azores—the prisons
in which they were held acted as ‘active centers of conspiracy’186—while
reminding the public of the generous amnesty granted in December 1932,
which had covered all but fifty people, most of whom were living freely outside
Portugal. The second note is more interesting, and was given extraordinary
coverage—the whole first page—by the Diário da Manhã. Salazar now took it
upon himself to spell out, and interpret, one of the documents allegedly found
on Sarmento Beires. Salazar used the opportunity both to remind the Portu-
guese of the dangers posed by the pro-democracy forces and to point out that
no regime had done as much as the New State when it came to curing the
country’s social ills. Along the way, moreover, he delivered some sharp
comments against the opposition. Describing the contents of the document,
Salazar wrote:
184. ‘Os responsáveis na direcção e preparação do ultimo movimento revolucionário devem seguir, dentro
de poucos dias, para um campo de concentração na foz do Cunene’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisboa), 20 January
1934.
185. Patriarca, Sindicatos, p. 230.
186. ‘Ordem Pública: Dá-se conta dos últimos manejos revolucionários’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 28
November 1933.
In education, a State monopoly would be created: secular, obligatory, and uniform
schools would follow foreign models, and the State would be the [sole] educator,
seeking to create a uniform type of free man.187
The document also threatened to remove from their positions all civil servants,
and military men, who did not actively support the coming rising, and to
expropriate all those who had political responsibilities in the New State, as well
as leading military figures, and to distribute their earnings to all those who had
been persecuted by the New State. Salazar’s conclusion was dramatic. Portugal
was faced by two distinct choices:
The government wants the people to be fully aware of the dilemma which it faces:
to become a pitiful wreck, and to sink into the abyss of disorder, ruin and misery,
or to continue its march, within the New State, in which order and discipline make
viable the most progressive reforms and make more just the popular liberties […]
Not surprisingly, victory over the January rising was greeted with another
official note, which the press was obliged to publish: in it, Salazar wrote:
The seizure of armament, the timely arrest of the principal leaders and instigators,
the tight vigilance exercised by all elements of the security services, the army, and
the navy, the civic conscience of the country and the magnificent orderly spirit of
workers in general led to the failure of the extremists’ plans, in terms which render
their repetition impossible. Neither public tranquility nor the normal life of the
population was perturbed. Naturally, punishments will now follow.188
José Manuel Sarmento Beires wrote Salazar on 18 May 1934 from the Aljube
prison. Mentioning his ill-health, the imprisoned rebel added that he was now
being supported by his brother, who had eleven sons, and so requested being
sent, should his sentence involve transportation to a colony, to a spot whose
climate would allow him to work, in the company of his wife and stepson. That
same day, moreover, Salazar met Sarmento Beires’ brother Rodrigo, who wrote
Salazar the following day:
I do not dare remind Your Excellency of the requests made by my brother. It

would be impossible for you, having spoken to me of them as you did, to forget
them. I dare, nevertheless, request Your Excellency’s efforts to avoid any more
187. ‘Ordem Pública: O Governo revela ao País o programa da revolução abortada [...]’ in Diário da Manhã
(Lisbon), 1 December 1933.
188. ‘Nota Oficiosa’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 19 January 1934.
delays to the trial, something demanded by my brother’s health, moral and
physical.189
It is impossible to picture Mussolini, Hitler, or Franco holding such a meeting.

The prison camp at Tarrafal, in the Cape Verde islands, was the ultimate
symbol of the New State’s repression. The setting up of the camp was part of a
general tightening up of the existing means for dealing with political
opponents, which were far from perfect: as a rule, they had simply been
banished to the colonies and left to fend for themselves, their status of
degredado counting for little. Armindo Monteiro, giving Salazar his impressions
of Luanda, wrote,
The sight which most offended me was that of the degredados, who are everywhere
on these streets. One sometimes has the impression that, in certain areas, they
overwhelm the rest of the population. It is horrible. In the Palace one lives
surrounded by them. They meet blacks with a displeasing ease. I am told that there
are many products of their unions, and that these are a dead weight to the colony:
the parents’ manias are combined with the tendencies of the mother’s inferior
race. They [the degredados] disorientate the people, and bring indiscipline to the
blacks.190
The 1934 rising gave new impetus to the on-going search to this difficulty. The
government announced that it was going to build a dedicated prison camp in
Angola, at the mouth of the Cunene river, but changed its mind in an effort to
distance Portugal’s prized colony from such an activity, and to remove the
prisoners from the African mainland altogether. Cape Verde was, from both
points of view, a more attractive prospect. Dated 23 April 1936, decree 26,539
stated that a ‘penal colony for political and social prisoners’ would be created at
Tarrafal, in the island of São Tiago.191 Tarrafal was envisaged originally as a
work camp—a colony where the inmates would be regenerated by agricultural
189. AOS CP 31, letter, Oporto, 19 May 1934, Rodrigo Sarmento Beires to António de Oliveira Salazar.
Rodrigo Sarmento Beires would write again on 6 June 1934, once the trial was over, thanking Salazar for the
speed with which the trial was held, and reminding him of José Manuel’s requests. But little happened after
that; having been sentenced to seven years’ removal from the metropolis, and the Minister of the Colonies
having settled on Macau as the place for the sentence to be served, José Manuel Sarmento de Beires was still
languishing, ill, in the Azores, in November. AOS CP 31, letter, Oporto, 29 November 1934, Rodrigo
Sarmento Beires to António de Oliveira Salazar.
190. Rosas et al., Armindo Monteiro, doc. 4, letter, Luanda, 4 August 1930, Armindo Monteiro to António de
191. That same day Leal Marques received an unsigned letter from someone at the PVDE, who stressed the
importance of reserving the proposed Cape Verde camp for ‘social and political prisoners’, so that their
‘pernicious propaganda’ should not be spread to others. The letter’s author added that ‘the prisoners to be
transferred from Angra [the Azores fortress in which political prisoners were held] are among the worse and
it is perhaps because they are imprisoned that peace has been preserved despite what is happening in Spain
[…]’. AOS CP PC 3B, letter, from the PVDE to Leal Marques, 23 April 1936.
labor. A nearby water source would make the project viable. However, when
the camp came into operation in October 1936, some 150 prisoners, many of
whom had already been held in the Azores,192 found that they had to build it
themselves, for all that awaited them in situ were tents.193 The original plan was
never concluded; no attempt to ‘recuperate’ inmates would ever be made—just
to break their wills and their health.194 Sentences imposed by the courts meant
little here. Prisoners were totally at the hands of the secret police. Moreover,
many had not even been sentenced by the courts; they were simply interned, or
‘preventively detained’, and sent to Tarrafal. Conditions, determined by the
PVDE, and not by the Ministry of Justice,195 varied in accordance with the
need for repression at home. Not surprisingly, the start of operations, coin-
ciding as it did with the war in Spain, was a harsh time. Special punishment was
carried out in the ‘frying pan’, a cell, at a distance from the main camp, which
had almost no ventilation, temperature within it therefore soaring in daytime.
Given the mosquitoes, harsh labor, poor food, and practically inexistent
medical care, Tarrafal was a disaster in the offing. The camp doctor, Esmeraldo
Pais Pratas, born in Santa Comba Dão, was a cousin of Interior Minister Mário
Pais de Sousa, himself related, by his brother’s marriage, to Salazar.196 This
meant little to the prisoners suffering from malaria. Six of them died in four
days, in September 1937.197 Another four perished days later. Their fates were
described in a pamphlet issued by the now illegal CGT and the ‘Anarchist
Federation: Portuguese Region’, entitled ‘Black roll of the Cape Verde concen-
tration camp’. According to the pamphlet, which Salazar read, four of the dead
were communists, two were anarchists, and one was a socialist. Of the two
hundred inmates, the pamphlet stated, only two had escaped high fevers,
having been left at the mercy of the elements during the harshest season with
no medical care of any description: ‘This is the kindness of that Christian civili-
zation so praised by the Portuguese press and by the gentle Patriarch in all his
perorations to the men of good will […] like the perverse Manuel Martins dos
Reis [the camp commander] and the jackal Esmeraldo Prata [sic].’198 Excessive
192. Political prisoners sent to the Azores were held in the fort of St John the Baptist, in Angra do
Heroísmo. Conditions there were extremely poor, one pamphlet distributed in 1933 alleged. It can be found
in AOS CP PC 3A.
193. At the end of September 1936, the PVDE’s Prison Section reported the existence of 1,191 prisoners in
Portugal (143 of whom were in Angra), and 157 deportees, ninety-six in Timor, six in Guinea, forty-three in
Cabo Verde, and twelve in Mozambique. AOS CO IN 8C, PVDE, 25 September 1936, Prison Section,
report on the existence of prisoners.
194. Luís Farinha, ‘Campos de concentração’ in João Madeira (ed.), Irene Flunser Pimentel & Luís Farinha,
Vítimas de Salazar: Estado Novo e violência política (Lisbon: Esfera dos Livros, 2007), p. 230.
195. José Barreto, ‘Tarrafal’ in Barreto & Mónica (eds), Dicionário de História de Portugal vol. 9, pp. 486–90.
196. Barreto, ‘Tarrafal’, p. 488.
197. Farinha, ‘Campos de concentração’, p. 233.
198. AOS CO IN 16, Pamphlet, ‘Quadro Negro do campo de concentração de Cabo Verde’. Handwritten
note: ‘Received by Dr Alfredo Pimenta, 5/III ’38.
punishments also led to some deaths, including those of anarcho-syndicalist
leader Mário Castelhano (in 1940) and veteran communist Bento Gonçalves (in
1942). There were some attempted escapes, but those who broke out found
that there was nowhere to go.
The use of Tarrafal by the secret police slowed down in the mid 1940s.
Júlio Botelho Moniz, Minister of the Interior as World War II drew to a close,
was opposed to the continuation of the camp’s activity.199 Forty prisoners were
allowed to leave in 1945, with another seventy doing so in January 1946. Forty
remained behind—the sailors involved in the 1936 revolt (see Chapter 3).200
Prisoners would come and go until January 1954, when Tarrafal was deacti-
vated. All in all, some 400 prisoners had been housed there; almost all fell ill at
some time or other, and of these, thirty-two would perish.201 A recent survey of
the camp’s life stresses that ‘Tarrafal is sufficient by itself to mark the dicta-
torial and authoritarian nature of salazarism’.202 It is hard to dispute this con-
clusion. The camp was renamed and reopened during the colonial war, this
time to house African political prisoners.
Education and Religion
As we have seen, the young Salazar had viewed education as a powerful

tool with which to effect the transformation of his fellow countrymen, and
once in power he blamed the education systems of the past for the continued
opposition demonstrated by republican political figures wedded to outdated
political theories. While education was naturally an important focus of action
for the New State, it remained, like all other areas of the State’s action, sub-
ordinated to the financial constraints imposed by Salazar. There was to be no
explosion in the construction of schools similar to the one being carried out in
the neighboring Spanish Republic. However, in May 1935, during a speech to
the Liga 28 de Maio, Salazar claimed the opposite. According to him, of 700,000
children in Portugal, only 200,000 could read. This would be overturned, he
claimed, in the space of two years: ‘if we do not achieve this, then only the sons
of the rich will be able to achieve what it might be fairer for the sons of the
199. See AOS CP 183, letter, Lisbon, 2 December 1944, Júlio Botelho Moniz to António de Oliveira Salazar.
Botelho Moniz, who claimed to have visited Tarrafal in the recent past, wrote, that, keeping in mind the un-
healthy conditions of the camp, ‘it seems to me that the political advantages of keeping it open in its present
form do not outweigh the inconvenience generated, at home and abroad, by the intrigue it generates.’
201. These are Farinha’s figures; Barreto places the total number of prisoners at 340. Of the thirty-two
deaths, Barreto specifies that the first thirty occurred in the period 1937 to 1945, which indicates a clear
change in conditions from that moment onwards. Barreto also points out that, in the context of the drought
and hunger experienced in Cabo Verde during the war, inmates had a better chance of survival during the
war than the rest of the population.
poor to achieve.’203 The project would be financed by charging for the educa-
tion of those who could afford to pay for it. This revolutionary program was
tempered by sentiments of a more reactionary nature: children in the country-
side should not learn to read in order to abandon the plough, but to make
better use of it; learning to read should be accompanied closely by a moral
education, or better yet, the two should take place together, through the careful
selection of reading material for schoolchildren. In other words, the universal
ability to read was of no use to the nation, and was therefore unworthy of in-
vestment, if it served only to create a generation of over-educated mal-
contents.204 The speech, however, was to prove of little consequence.
There was a steady, if slow, expansion of the primary school network, but
education was hollowed out, becoming less academic and more moralistic and
overtly political. This was described as a move towards education and away
from simple instruction. Obligatory school attendance fell from five to three
years; the curriculum was restricted to reading, writing, arithmetic, and the
acquisition of basic religious and moral principles. In some areas, where there
were no schools, an unqualified teacher—known as a regente escolar—could be
appointed. Great emphasis was placed on the provision of a ‘common book’
for all disciplines, to be used in schools throughout the country. More attention
was also paid to the political views of teachers. In 1935, selective exams for
entrance into secondary schools were introduced. As the Diário da Manhã
noted, secondary schools had become centers of anti-regime propaganda; this
had to stop, and more care was needed in the selection of teachers and pupils.
The practice of numerus clausus was introduced as well in universities, which
remained the domain of a very narrow elite.
When he entered government, as we have seen, Salazar toned down his
Catholicism and dropped his former party’s political program in favor of a
more neutral and technocratic appeal. He was especially keen to refute the
accusation that Catholics, and the CCP, had brought him to power: ‘Catholics
had nothing in the world to do with my coming to power, just as they have
nothing at all to do with my political actions.’205 This did not mean that the
Catholic Center’s ambitions were rejected outright, however; the process of
clearing the way for a Catholic resurrection in Portugal was begun once Salazar
was in power. It had to be, however, like all other aspects of Salazar’s govern-
203. ‘Na Liga 28 de Maio—Casa do Povo da União Nacional’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 12 May 1935.
204. A similar line of thought was followed, in the speech, in relation to the freedom to work—to choose
one’s career—and to receive medical care. The first had to be subordinated to the economic needs of the
country, and was therefore subjected to corporative concerns; the second could not override the
responsibilities of the family. In this respect, the United States was singled out for ridicule, because of the
existence of old-age homes—‘special hotels where one goes to die’.
ment, a slow and laborious process, which did not affect the balance of power
that preserved his position. Catholics would have to be patient, which they
often were not, and would have to rely, to a large extent, on their own
resources. After World War II, as we will see, the Church and Salazar grew far
apart, leaving the latter ideologically stranded. For the moment, however, the
most visible face of Catholic interaction with society, given the demise of the
CCP, was the Acção Católica Portuguesa (ACP—Portuguese Catholic Action),
founded in 1933. This organization was a symbol of the Church’s desire for
autonomy, which now came at the price of abstaining from the political sphere.
ACP was the Portuguese branch of a movement spreading around the Catholic
world, acknowledged and praised by Pius XI in his encyclical Ubi Arcano Dei:
All these organizations and movements ought not only to continue in existence,
but ought to be developed more and more, always of course as the conditions of
time and place seem to demand […] since such work is vitally necessary, it is with-
out question an essential part of our Christian life and of the sacred ministry and is
therefore indissolubly bound up with the restoration of the Kingdom of Christ
and the reestablishment of that true peace which can be found only in His
Kingdom—“the peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ”.
ACP’s realms were the social and the religious; it was the means by which
the Church hoped to transform Portugal, using its doctrine to restore a unity of
purpose among all Portuguese that might bring an end to class conflict and the
unreflecting search for material wealth and possessions. ACP’s structure was
enormously complex; it was organized at national, diocesan, and parish level;
by age (leagues for over 30s, youth movements for those in the 18–30 bracket,
and a plethora of childhood organizations); by social category and profession
(five sub-divisions in total, each corresponding to a vowel: agrário, escolar,
independente, operário, and universitário [agrarian, secondary-school, independent,
workers, and university student]); and by sex. One might thus belong to JUC
Feminina (Women’s Catholic University Youth), or to LOC (Catholic Workers’
League), or any of the other permutations. Moreover, there were three levels of
membership, which culminated in the rank of ‘militant’. Promotion on this
scale was attained not only by commitment to the organization, but also by the
display of Catholic virtues in one’s lifestyle. The creation of a lay Catholic elite
was one aim of the organization, and this is generally reckoned to have been a
success: but the overall challenge of re-Christianizing Portugal fell a long way
short of the desired end.206
206. For a brief description of ACP’s existence, see António Matos Ferreira, ‘Acção Católica Portuguesa’ in
Barreto & Mónica (eds), Dicionário de História de Portugal, vol. 7, pp. 25–31.
In May 1935 a constitutional revision to Article 43, paragraph 3, stipulated
that the State’s education system would be guided by the principles and morals
of Christian doctrine, deemed part of the national tradition. This development
was quickly followed, in April 1936, by the conversion of the Ministry of
Public Instruction into the Ministry of National Education, led initially by
António Carneiro Pacheco. Teachers were henceforth to be selected on the
basis of scientific ability and their commitment to the ‘formation of the
national spirit’. A cross was placed in every classroom, ‘as a symbol of the
Christian education determined by the Constitution’, and a reform of the
primary curriculum was introduced. Church doctrine played a significant part
in this revised offering:
From the 1930s onward the educational system rigidly codified the “official”
version of Portuguese history which was revised and its relative pluralism elimi-
nated to fulfill the slogan “everything for the nation, nothing against it”. As early
as 1932 the Minister of Education [sic] drew up a new policy that greatly
strengthened “the family as a social cell”, “faith, as […] an element of national
unity and solidarity”, “authority” and “respect for the hierarchy” as “principles of
the social life”. The heroes of the past were purged of all vices, and their saint-
liness eventually confirmed by scientific investigation. The sole objective of the
“Maritime Discoveries”, for example, was noted to be the “spreading of the faith
and of the empire”, and the positivist view of the discoveries as a “mercantile
adventure” was eliminated.207
Women’s education, as can be expected, was extremely traditional. A number

of organizations attempted to ensure the support of women for the regime,
preparing them for their appointed supporting role within the family, the basis
of society. An Obra das Mães para a Educação Nacional (OMEN—Mothers’
Effort for National Education)—was to be headed by Maria Guardiola until
1968; 1937 saw the appearance of the Mocidade Portuguesa Feminina, a counter-
part to the more militarized boys’ organization.
Nineteen thirty-seven also saw the first steps being taken towards a Con-
cordat with the Catholic Church. The Church had been pushing for such a
development for a number of years,208 with Salazar hesitating—he wanted to
be in full control of the country before such a step was taken, so as not to have
to defend himself from the accusation of subjection to the Church. In March
1937, when Salazar was already Foreign Minister, and the war in Spain was
pending towards Franco, Cerejeira presented Salazar with a project for a Con-

208. See, for example, AOS CO NE 7B, Report, Lisbon, 18 May 1935, on the conversation between the
Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Apostolic Nuncio (Ciriaci).
cordat. On 14 March, after spending a morning reading the project, Salazar
heard Mass with Cerejeira and then spent an hour with him discussing the
issue. Salazar appointed a team to help him in the negotiations, which proved
to be slow: Mário de Figueiredo, Manuel Rodrigues, Fezas Vital, and Ambassa-
dor Luís Teixeira de Sampaio, Secretary General of the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs.209 The result, when it finally emerged, was, unsurprisingly, a cautious
compromise. There was little in the way of financial support for the Church,
except in the missionary field, defined as part of the effective control by
Portugal of its colonial territory (this was in fact defined in a Missionary
Accord published simultaneously with the Concordat). However, and crucially
for the Church, the State recognized the validity of Canon Law, which essen-
tially allowed the Church to organize itself, and to act on internal matters as it
saw fit; the State also accepted the establishment of religious orders and con-
gregations, and prohibited those married in the Church from divorcing. The
Concordat offered, however, no compensation for religious buildings and
other property which had been taken over by the State in 1834 and 1911. Pre-
dictably, difficulties had emerged in the negotiations over the role of Acção
Católica Portuguesa and its affiliated Catholic organizations. Salazar wanted to
leave no room for Catholic opinion to be heard on political matters, and he
believed himself to have emerged victorious on this point. He proved himself,
despite his beliefs and his past allegiances, and his friendship with Cardinal-
Patriarch Cerejeira, to be a difficult negotiator, a trait the Allies would soon
discover during the World War.
Through the ‘Christianization’ of education, and, later, through the
Concordat, Salazar created the conditions for the Church to act freely across
the country in the social, moral, and cultural fields, recapturing a hold over the
population it had long relinquished. The Church, however, never lived up to
this challenge, not even when its influence and power was reinforced by the
government’s weakness after 1945. Portuguese Catholicism was not particularly
militant, and apart from a few well-meaning middle and upper-class youths, the
campaign to retake Portugal found little practical outlet. Catholics, hampered
by the continuing shortage of priests and, in many cases, by the Church’s good
relations with the State, encountered a deep-seated resistance to their
evangelizing attempts, while the selection of themes for the Church’s cam-
paigns, notably on issues of morality, generated little enthusiasm. Nevertheless,
the Concordat would ensure that Church-State relations remained positive for
209. Luís Teixeira de Sampaio (1875–1945), son of a career diplomat, entered the Portuguese foreign service
in 1896, rising to the post of Secretary General without ever serving abroad. His aristocratic background and
monarchist beliefs hampered his career during the First Republic, much time having been spent managing
the Ministry of Foreign Affair’s archive, but after the 28 May 1926 his career took off again.
years to come. As one historian puts it, ‘Salazar’s art was revealed by his resolu-
tion of the “religious question”, giving it a price and an implicit condition: that
of collaboration—active or passive—with the New State. Catholics had every
right and freedom so long as they did not exercise them by calling the dictato-
ship into question.’210 Until the end of World War II, few Catholics sought to
exercise these freedoms, preferring instead to legitimize the regime which
protected their faith, despite keeping its formal independence.
The New State and Fascism: Attraction or Repulsion?
The academic debate over whether or not Salazar was a fascist, or, perhaps
more to the point, whether or not the New State was a fascist regime, is an old
one, and is one for which there is no discernible end, since the definition of
fascism (if one is to accept the existence of a standard, or ‘generic’, fascism) is
forever shifting. It should also be remembered that most of the attempts to
discuss Salazar’s putative fascism concentrate on the 1930s. But Salazar—like,
it should be said, Franco—governed for much longer; what was applicable in
one decade was not necessarily applicable across forty years, and isolating one
period as the ‘genuine salazarism’, to the detriment of the rest, is intellectually
unsatisfactory and possibly even unfair. The regime changed in accordance
with domestic and foreign factors; it evolved, as did Portugal and the world
around it.
Initial international discussions on fascism as a political category, carried
out while Salazar was still in power, dismissed the notion that the Portuguese
leader could be seen as a fascist. A general consensus eventually developed that
Salazar fell into the relatively broad ‘authoritarian’ bracket, as defined initially
by Juan Linz.211 More specific labels, such as ‘clerico-fascist’ and ‘clerico-cor-
porative’, then made a brief appearance, the New State being grouped with
Dollfuss’s Austria. This comparison is renewed by Stanley G. Payne, who
describes the New State, alternatively, as a ‘rightist authoritarian regime’,212 as
‘authoritarian corporatism’, and as ‘authoritarian corporative liberalism’.213 The
Portuguese transition to democracy, broadly coinciding as it did with those of
Spain and Greece, led to the notion of a common Southern European path,
which some attempted to extend to Latin America, leading to the emergence of
new labels, such as ‘bureaucratic-authoritarian’.
210. João Miguel Almeida, A oposição católica ao Estado Novo, 1958–1974 (Lisbon: Nelson de Matos, 2008), p.
24.
211. For a discussion of this evolution see Costa Pinto, Salazar’s Dictatorship, pp. 4–41.
212. Stanley G. Payne, A History of Fascism, 1914–1945 (London: UCL Press, 1995), p. 312.
213. Ibid., p. 313.
The obstacles in twinning the New State with fascism are self-evident:
among others, one can pick out the lack of mass mobilization, the moderate
nature of Portuguese nationalism, the careful and ultimately apolitical selection
of the narrow elite who ran the country, the lack of a powerful working-class
movement, and the rejection of violence as a means of transforming society.
To include Salazar, given his background, his trajectory, his faith, and his
general disposition, in the broad fascist ‘family’, is, at first sight, to stretch
fascism to a point where it becomes meaningless. Despite these hurdles, how-
ever, some authors have done just that. Italian historian Enzo Collotti was in-
trigued by some aspects of the New State: the elimination, totalitarian in
nature, of the opposition; a brand of corporatism that served to destroy the
independence of the labor movement; and Salazar’s ‘spiritual and economic
statism’. These allowed Collotti to describe the Portuguese regime as fascist.
Collotti writes, ‘more than a marginal episode in the phenomenology of the
fascist regimes, Portugal represented the epigonic nature of fascism.’214 Such
views, however, have remained in the minority, and Collotti does seem to
exaggerate the repressive character of the New State. Philippe Schmitter
rejected the New State’s alleged fascism, claiming that it lacked a necessary
‘fascist minimum’. His is an interesting viewpoint, since Schmitter points out
the importance of the Portuguese administrative machinery, which effectively
controlled, and de-politicized, the country. Salazar thus emerges an heir to
Metternich, or, in Portuguese terms, the Marquis of Pombal: and it is tempting
to set such an observation alongside the young Salazar’s stated desire to be the
chief minister of an absolute monarch.215 Was this still his ambition, decades
later, when actually in power, having replaced this unattainable monarch by
Carmona, or by a concept of nation to which all belonged, but which brought
individuals no practical political rights?
Because of the nature of the regime, and, later, because of the nature of
Portuguese academic life in the transition to democracy, Portuguese academics
did not participate in the broader debate on fascism. As the regime fell, in
1974, it seemed self-evident to most celebrating the event that the New State
had indeed been fascist; this was the new orthodoxy, enshrined in, for example,
the preamble of the 1976 constitution. It was only natural that many intellect-
tuals and academics, having been muzzled and persecuted for their views,
should employ the term ‘fascist’ in a loose sense, not bothering with the
niceties of political science. But soon all faced the same conceptual and prac-
tical stumbling blocks: Salazar had not seized power, and showed, outwardly,
214. Enzo Collotti, Fascismo, fascismi (Milan: Sansoni Editore, 1994), p. 122.
215. Various authors have referred to this desire by the young Salazar. For an overview, see Barreto,
‘António de Oliveira Salazar’, endnote 48.
no pleasure in wielding it; there was no strong party behind the leader, forged
in the days of opposition, possessing its own history and martyrs; there was no
attempt to enthuse the masses, to communicate directly with them as Hitler
had done at Nuremberg, or Mussolini did from the balcony of the Palazzo
Venezia. Nevertheless some interesting and innovative explanations emerged,
notably that of the New State being a ‘functional equivalent’ of fascism, its
network of agencies and dominant groups carrying out the role assumed else-
where by fascist parties.216 Such a view makes it possible to posit the existence
of a sliding scale, with the regime willing to assume, when challenged, attitudes
and methods redolent of fascist regimes. This, in turn, makes it easier to recon-
cile Salazar’s theoretical opposition to State violence with its actual existence.
Manuel de Lucena, meanwhile, described the New State as a brand of ‘fascism
without a fascist movement’, stressing the practical similarities of Italy under
Mussolini and the New State. Ultimately, argued Lucena, and for all its lack of
clout, the União Nacional performed similar roles to those of the Partito
Nazionale Fascista, working out a compromise between competing power
groups, while the corporative state, nationalist in character, trapped all classes
and professional groups within its complicated, bureaucratic, web. For Lucena,
thus, Portugal’s was undoubtedly a fascist regime (while, for different reasons,
National Socialist Germany was not).217
Caution is needed. We have already seen how Salazar’s political thought
evolved, over the first quarter of the twentieth century. Like other Christian-
Democrats of his time, Salazar was moving to the right as a result of the
Bolshevik revolution and its consequences; his views have, as a result, been
described as ‘Ultramontane’, or as a form of ‘Catholic Integralism’.218 Salazar
and others like him posited the existence of a supreme interest, that of God
and His designs; then came the common interest of all men. Such a common
aim existed not because all men were equal, but because there was a common
purpose to existence. In Salazar’s world view there were such things as natural
elites which, having evolved over time, should be preserved and respected.
Traditional—‘organic’—forms of society and organization, centuries old in a
country like Portugal, were best placed to pursue these aims; their preservation,
or resurrection, should be the goal of politically organized Catholics. This was
not Maurras’ la politique d’abord: spiritual values had primacy, and attaining them
216. Costa Pinto, Salazar’s Dictatorship, p. 48. See also Manuel Vilaverde Cabral, ‘Sobre o Fascismo e o seu
advento em Portugal: ensaio de interpretação a pretexto de alguns livros recentes’ in Análise Social 48 (1976),
pp. 873–915.
217. Costa Pinto, Salazar’s Dictatorship, p. 51. Costa Pinto is referring to Manuel de Lucena’s article ‘The
evolution of Portuguese corporatism under Salazar and Caetano’ in Lawrence S. Graham & Harry M. Makler,
Contemporary Portugal. The revolution and its antecedents (Austin, TX, 1979).
was the engine that drove politics. As has been pointed out, it was easy, in the
1920s and 1930s, to confuse these views with fascism. One historian has
written that
the study of Catholic political ideologists contributes towards rectifying the rather
simplistic models of intellectual history which still prevail in much writing about
this period. This orthodoxy portrays the ideological map of Europe between the
wars as a battlefield dominated by the massed armies of fascism, liberal democracy
and communism or socialism […] In their haste to define the contours of the
battlefield, many historians […] have tended to allocate Catholic thinkers and
publicists somewhat arbitrarily to the fascist or democratic camps without pausing
to consider the distinctive political tradition to which they belong.219
Although the underlying principles (revolution versus reaction) of Fascism and

this political Catholicism were poles apart, there was ample scope for contact
between the two camps. As Valentim Alexandre puts it,
[…] this distinction, very clear when it comes to principles, could easily dissolve in
political practice: between ultramontanism (and, in a wider sense, the various
currents of the authoritarian and conservative right) and fascism there exists, in
the 1920s and 1930s, a system of communicating vessels, which allows for their
mutual contamination, creating multiple forms of transition, be it in individual
trajectories, be it in political movements and regimes.
Alexandre continues:
This contamination was facilitated by the existence of common enemies—

liberalism, democracy, socialism and, most importantly, bolshevism, which like a
specter haunted Europe since the Soviet Revolution.220
Fascism and Catholicism were seemingly united, finally, by many of the

proposed solutions—corporatism and nationalism—although the nature of the
former, and the virulence of the latter, could vary greatly. Portuguese
nationalism existed to cement bonds between disparate elements in the country
and, as a doctrine, aimed essentially at enabling Portugal to lead its existence
unmolested by the rest of the world. Its purest expression can be found in the
1935 message, read out at the ceremonies marking the anniversary of the 550th
anniversary of the victory over Castile at Aljubarrota, and then distributed
219. Martin Conway, ‘Building the Christian City: Catholics and Politics in Interwar Francophone Belgium’
in Past and Present 128 (1990), p. 117.
throughout the country’s schools.221 Like other victories over Portugal’s larger
neighbor, Aljubarrota attested to an enduring desire for independence. Past
victories should no longer be celebrated against others, however, but rather ‘for
ourselves’. Aljubarrota was followed quickly by overseas expansion, which
Salazar described as an ‘historical imperative’. Not all Portuguese had fought
for their king at Aljubarrota, as not all had fought in 1640 to recover
Portuguese independence: ‘members of the clergy and of the nobility fell victim
to the difficulty of seeing clearly in certain historical junctures’: but the people
had remained united in their desire for independence; the people were ‘the
ever-living fountain of our nationalism’. Important, too was youth: the Portu-
guese at Aljubarrota had been led by a king and by a general in their twenties,
advised by other youths:
It is […] essential that the spirit of youth be by us shaped in accordance with

Portugal’s historical vocation, through the examples—which in our history are so
plentiful—of sacrifice, patriotism, selflessness, abnegation, courage, dignity in
one’s self and respect for the dignity of others.
For that reason, youth should be placed at the heart of the Aljubarrota celebra-
tions in years to come; it should be made to visit the battlefield and the
monastery at Batalha, where King Dom João I and his family are buried: ‘I
myself, even when constrained by the narrowness of time, can never pass there
without stopping and entering’ to pay homage to those ‘who consolidated the
independence of Portugal and built the foundations for its future greatness’. In
1936, large celebrations were indeed held at the site of the battle and the
monastery, and again Salazar spelled out his spiritual understanding of
Portuguese nationalism: ‘We are the sons and agents of a millenarian civiliza-
tion which has elevated and converted peoples to a superior conception of life
itself, making men through the assertion of spirit over matter, of reason over
instinct.’222
Salazar’s beliefs would endure beyond World War II. As a result, he went
from being one element in a volatile but widespread mix of beliefs, which
stretched from Christian Democracy to Fascism and National Socialism, and
which was united above all by a rejection of the parliamentary tradition and of
the idea of an unavoidable class struggle, to being a loner on the international
scene. Salazar’s core beliefs—or, more accurately, his core dislikes—did not
change; what did change, however, were the international circumstances, and
221. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘Aljubarrota, festa da mocidade’ in Discursos, vol. 2, pp. 49–56. According to
the Diário da Manhã (Lisbon) of 17 August 1935, 7,000 addresses had been made on 14 August, including the
reading out of this message by Salazar.
222. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘Sempre o mesmo milagre’, in Discursos, vol. 2, pp. 175–79.
the domestic political balance. Given Portugal’s evident weaknesses, and even
Salazar’s sometimes precarious position at the summit of Portuguese politics,
adjustments had to be made along the way—sometimes towards fascism,
sometimes, especially after World War II, away from it. The New State
evolved, but did so slowly, and never in a linear fashion. In an article entitled
‘The ideology of the Constitution of 1933’, one of the authors of the Constitu-
tion, Fezas Vital, spelled out just how important the Catholic component had
been in the elaboration of the regime’s supreme law (a point made clear, he
argued, by the recent reform which pointedly announced that education would
be guided by the principles of Christian doctrine and morality).223 Thus, wrote
Fezas Vital,
the essence of our Civilization is Latin-Christian, and there is no doubt that the
Christian ideal has been the supreme guide in the ascending march of the New
State as it seeks to fulfill its destiny.
This was to be seen in the guarantees offered to the individual, as well as to the
key roles attributed to both family and corporation: ‘The New State has a
doctrine, as one can see, but this doctrine is as far from that individualism
which worships the individual as it is far from those Hegelian conceptions
which worship the State.’ Modernity, and the loss of spiritual values, had come
close to destroying the family. Reliance on the State to fulfill the family’s essen-
tial tasks—not all of which were pleasant and agreeable—was not just a form
of selfishness: it was part of civilization’s blind descent into Bolshevism. As
Salazar put it,
Parents send their children to crèches, sons intern their parents, brothers are put
into sanatoria and rest homes. And do you know why? Because a fearful humanity
fears the spectacle of pain, and seeks all means to drive pain from its presence, as
if suffering were not a part of life and if we did not have the duty to care,
personally, for those who suffer […] The sick are sent systematically into hospital
so that one may continue to go, at night, to the movies. This is pure communism,
because it threatens, directly and gravely, the moral girders of the family, bringing
about its dissolution.224
Salazar, who was more than willing to praise Mussolini, whose signed photo-
graph he kept on his desk, was also eager to draw attention to what separated
223. Doutor [Domingos] Fezas Vital, ‘A ideologia da Constituição de 1933’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 7
July 1935.
224. ‘Só quem tem a responsabilidade de dar orientações […]’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 25 August 1935.
Reprinted from A Verdade (Lisbon).
him from the Duce: ‘Mussolini, I repeat, is a very great man. But it is not for
nothing that he is a child of the country of the Caesars and of Machiavelli!’225
Salazar, while appreciating the strengthening of the State’s power under
Fascism, pointed to the existence of a ‘pagan Caesarism’ in Italy, by which the
State recognized ‘no limitations of legal or moral order’; this meant, in effect,
that it could get its way instantly, no matter what the circumstances. Musso-
lini’s opportunism was a reflection of this. The situation had to be different in
Portugal: ‘The new Portuguese State […] cannot and does not attempt to
escape from certain limitations of the moral order which it deems indis-
pensable as boundary lines in its work of reformation.’226 The violence at the
heart of the Fascist experiment was also rejected by Salazar; it was at odds,
Salazar claimed, with ‘our race and our traditions’, a claim confirmed by the
systematic failure of successive governments to punish, in an exemplary
fashion, those who rose against them in revolt.227
However, when we look at Salazar’s rhetoric from the 1930s, we can un-
doubtedly find totalitarian tendencies when it came to the stated intention of
altering the mindset of the people. As Salazar put it, ‘the supreme guarantee for
the stability of the work carried out so far lay in the moral, intellectual, and
political reform, without which material improvements, financial equilibrium
and administrative order could not be realized or would not last.’228 It was
Salazar’s belief that a change of mentality was needed since, as we have seen,
opposition was caused by the poor educational methods that affected the pre-
vious generation. Such a change of mentality never really occurred, however,
and Salazar’s interest in the project waned. The situation was similar when it
came to corporatism. By 1935 it had become clear that landowners and em-
ployers were skeptical, or even hostile, to corporatism, at least in those areas
where it meant dipping into their pockets. Faced by the fact that the dream of a
nation united behind his efforts would not materialize as expected, Salazar
ploughed on nevertheless. At least budgets could continue to be balanced:
what he could do, would be done well. In other words, although over the
course of the 1930s he had, like so many others, allowed the borders that
delineated his political beliefs from other, similar, doctrines to become porous
(opening his mind, in effect, to Fascist ideas), experience, and the need to
remain in power, led Salazar to drop the new ideas along with the old, settling
for a cynical pragmatism that would see him through to his final years.

226. Ibid., pp. 176–77.
227. Ibid., pp. 178–79.
228. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘Balanço da obra governativa. Problemas políticos do momento’ in
Discursos, vol. 2, pp. 21–40.
There was more to the New State than just Salazar, of course, and as the
1930s wore on, the regime was forced to move to the right: Salazar’s brand of
political Catholicism remained what it had always been, a minority creed. Since
a return to the old Republic was out of the question, support and manpower
had to be found among the various right-wing movements. Among these, a
fascistizing tide was rising; to harness their support, the regime adopted their
characteristics. By November 1936, then, the Diário da Manhã could con-
gratulate itself with ‘the progress of fascism across the world’ and include the
New State as a leading exponent of this phenomenon, having defined fascism
as the ‘universal designation of the nationalist tendencies peculiar to each
country’, tendencies brought to the fore by the threat of Soviet expansion.229
Costa Brochado was in no doubt about what had happened in these years:
When Salazar initiated his consulate as President of the Council of Ministers, the
men whom he trusted, politically, were Albino dos Reis and Mário Pais de Sousa,
both from Cunha Leal’s party, balanced republicans who orbited around Professor
Bissaia Barreto, an important but disillusioned republican who was a personal
friend of Salazar’s. These men, with legions of others throughout the country,
gave Salazar his republican legitimacy since […] his greatest difficulty, at the start,
was the lack of republican credentials. Albino dos Reis and Pais de Sousa were
therefore precious to him, as were Professors Manuel Rodrigues and Bissaia
Barreto, Duarte Pacheco, certain officers, like Vicente de Freitas, Farinha Beirão
and Passos e Sousa, etc. He governed with them as best he could and for as long
as he was able to, convincing the country that its cherished Republic was not in
danger.
With the triumph of the Falange in Spain, national-syndicalists, legionnaires,

and the Mocidade Portuguesa, with Pedro Teotónio Pereira at their head, began to
attack these men. Brochado continued,
Salazar was deprived, from one moment to the next, of his faithful initial collabo-
rators, and was left in the hands of the most fanatical followers of the Axis […]230
Costa Brochado’s point is probably valid, although his chronology is not;

the flirtation with fascism was well under way before the start of the war in
Spain. 1935 was a key year in the New State’s existence, a time when it sought
to reach out to the working class (through, for example, the creation of
FNAT), reform education, and eradicate opposition. Its institutions secure, it
sought now to transform the country. June marked a peak in sensational
229. ‘Os progressos do fascismo no mundo’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 15 November 1936.
230. Costa Brochado, Memórias, pp. 152–54.
actions designed to create excitement in the capital, engaging in histrionic
actions typical of fascism. The country was being visited by foreign intellectuals
at the invitation of the SPN—at whose headquarters they attended a cocktail
party on 9 June. That same day saw the arrival of new ship for the fleet, the
first-class sloop Bartolomeu Dias, with the usual fanfare. The following day,
Portugal’s national holiday, was marked by an aeronautical festival, and the
streets of Lisbon were crossed by a long popular cortège, representing the
different quarters of the capital, witnessed by the two Presidents, Carmona and
Salazar. 11 June witnessed another popular cortège—‘the cortège of labor’—
representing the corporative State on the march. Some days later there was a
medieval procession, centered on the figure of King João I, the victor of
Aljubarrota. Salazar and Carmona were always present, symbolizing the new
political truce. There were circuses aplenty that summer.
What about Italian fascists—how did those committed to exporting
Fascism across Europe view Salazar and the New State? In a seminal article,
Simon Kuin investigated the work of the Comitati d’Azione per l’Universalità di
Roma (CAUR—Committee for Action leading to the Universalization of
Rome) in Portugal in the 1930s.231 A CAUR delegate, Guido Cabalzar, visited
Portugal in May 1934 in the hope of setting up a delegation in Lisbon; he was
received by many New State personalities, including António Ferro and
President Carmona, but was never granted access to Salazar, who excused him-
self by claiming to be too busy (although his diary does not suggest that this
was the case). Despite the good relations established with men like Ferro and
António Eça de Queiroz, the SPN was to publish, in the fall of that same year,
a work entitled Contra todas as interncionais (Against All Internationals):232 There
were, the booklet proclaimed, three such internationals: the ‘Red’ international,
of course, but also the ‘Gold’, or financial international, and the White inter-
national, driven by ‘nationalist reaction’. The warning was stark: there should
be respect among the nationalist regimes, but no interference or proselytizing:
According to the author of Contra todas as internacionais, Salazar’s regime need not
adhere to organizations linked to Italian Fascism, because this implied denying the
originality of the ideology that underpinned the New State, following an anti-
national path, and falling prey to Italian imperialist ambitions in the colonial
domain.233
231. Simon Kuin, ‘O braço longo de Mussolini: Os “Comitati d’Azione per l’Universalità di Roma” em
Portugal (1933–1937)’ in Penélope 11 (1993), pp. 7–20. An abbreviated account of this article can be found in
Payne, A History, pp. 315–16.
232. Contra todas as internacionais (Lisbon: Vanguarda, 1934).
233. Kuin, ‘O braço longo’, p. 12.
It was through the recently created AEV, controlled by the SPN, that contact
with the CAUR was preserved. Some members of the new youth organization
traveled to Rome and enthused publicly about their trip: very soon the AEV’s
president was removed to make way for a civil servant from the Ministry of
Public Instruction, who essentially oversaw the organization’s demise. As Kuin
points out, the SPN turned the CAUR on its head, using it to carry out New
State propaganda in Rome—and it was Eça de Queiroz who represented
Portugal at the Montreux congress, by December 1934, again using it to stress
the originality of the Portuguese experiment, as well as the New State’s con-
crete achievements, which he shamelessly exaggerated.234 When Cabalzar
returned to Portugal, in February 1935, he was enlisted in the New State’s
recently unveiled answer to CAUR: the Liga de Acção Universal Corporativa
(LAUC—Universal Corporative Action League), headed by those who had so
far worked with Cabalzar. The new organization’s aim was clear—to publicize
abroad the work of the New State, and to inform the Portuguese of progress
made by similar regimes abroad. Its action, however, was never felt in any of
these fields, LAUC disappearing without a trace.
Despite a significant Italian propaganda wave in 1935, sufficiently powerful
to drag Salazar into a cinema, little progress was made by the CAUR.235 The
head of a third mission, Ubaldo Baldi Papini, despaired, writing, in his report,
that the main obstacle to the spread of Fascism in Portugal were
the false ideas found in Portugal in relation to Fascism, which result from Salazar’s
crude and false opinions—he has described Fascism as a dictatorship which tends
towards a pagan caesarism, a new state which knows no moral or legal boundary,
which marches towards its goal, meeting no difficulties or obstacles.236
Also in the way of Fascism was Portuguese chauvinism and the power struggle
against the national-syndicalists. Contact with CAUR would come to an end
later that year as a result of the invasion of Abyssinia. This was a low point in
the relations between the two regimes, with Armindo Monteiro, as Foreign
Minister, playing an important role in the League of Nations’ actions to punish
Italy (see Chapter 3).237
A Personality Cult?
One of the most important characteristics of fascism was the cult of the
leader, to whom all manner of attributes were ascribed, and on whom endless
234. Ibid., p. 13.

235. Salazar’s diary entry for 29 April 1935 includes the phrase ‘Movie at the S. Luís [cinema]—Camicia
Negra [sic]’.
236. Kuin, ‘O braço longo’, p. 17.
237. Monteiro presided over a Committee of Six, made up of the United Kindgom, Chile, Denmark, France,
Romania and Portugal, appointed to establish who the aggressor had been—a very easy task.
praise was heaped. The leader, embodying the nation, or the race, forged a
direct link with the people, whom he unerringly understood, and the strength
of this link, re-forged by regular contact, allowed the usual complications of a
constitutional regime to be bypassed. On the face of it, Salazar had no cult of
personality, despite having a considerable grip on Portuguese life at the time of
the widest belief in the value of this political device—the 1930s.238 In fact,
some of the characteristics of Salazar’s style of leadership are the exact
opposite of what one would have expected of a man with his personal power
in the 1930s. He had an undoubted dislike of public appearances, professing to
have a lack of time to show himself before his people; he did not involve
himself directly in the regime’s elections and referenda; and he did not lend his
face to electoral campaign posters. His portrait was in every classroom, but so
too was the portrait of the country’s President, General Carmona. Salazar was
also a poor public speaker, with a weak voice and a style that reflected both his
schooling in a provincial seminary and then his experience as an academic. He
also demonstrated an inability, or an unwillingness, to ‘dumb down’ his speech,
or to trade in easily remembered slogans.239 Salazar, awkward around spon-
taneous demonstrations of support and affection, also refused to countenance
participation in mass rallies. Almost all of his speeches were made to selected
bodies or the country’s parliament, the National Assembly, at key moments,
and in the whole of Salazar’s career there are almost no set-pieces on a
grandiose scale, or emotional appeals to ‘the street’. Finally, Salazar refused to
embrace the symbols of authoritarian power, such as a distinctive emblem (like
the Fasces, the Swastika, or the Yoke and Arrows of the Falange), or to wear a
special uniform, like that of the Legião, when it was created in 1936. The União
Nacional, was envisaged merely as an association of patriotic elites eager to
cooperate with Salazar, not as a mass movement designed to mobilize the
whole population. There are only some photographs, dating from the late
1930s, of Salazar making an unabashed Roman-style salute, in acknowledge-
ment of those who insisted on it. From then on his salute would be a half-way
house between the Roman salute and a royal wave, and all such gestures would
be dropped after World War II.
Salazar’s character, and his reluctance to become a Portuguese Duce—
which disappointed so many supporters in Portugal—did not mean that he was
not conscious of his image, and intent on manipulating it for his political gain.
238. This does not mean that others did not start one for him; see, for example, Pestana Reis, ‘Salazar tem
sempre razão’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 8 July 1935. See also the combined Diário da Manhã/Emissora
Nacional contest, launched in March 1937, to determine which was the best of Salazar’s maxims—the first
candidate being ‘Nothing against the nation, everything for the nation’.
239. Although these did exist: ‘Legionnaires—Who lives? Portugal, Portugal, Portugal! Who commands?
Salazar, Salazar, Salazar!’
This attempt to convince the country to entrust him with the business of
politics, although usually discrete, was nevertheless real, and built on, like any
other cult of personality, on a manipulation before a mass audience of the
leader’s image. Certain disadvantages—of temperament, above all, but also of
background—were more than offset by Salazar’s assets: an academic reputation
that set him apart from his dictatorial peers; the carefully cultivated relationship
with the Church; and his financial ‘wizardry’. Very real steps were taken to
capitalize on these successes, at home and abroad. His speeches were compiled
and published. All told, there would be six volumes, the first being published in
1935, and many editions of each volume, some with important prefaces. More
significantly, an official propaganda agency—the Secretariado de Propaganda
Nacional (SPN—National Propaganda Secretariat), created in 1933—was en-
trusted to one of the best-known conservative journalists and intellectuals at
the time, António Ferro. Ferro was a committed nationalist, and an anti-
democrat, with solid links with the extreme Right throughout Europe, notably
its cultural milieu; he had been involved in an abortive extreme-Right coup in
1927, and had built his journalistic reputation in Portugal through interviews
with, among others, General Primo de Rivera and Benito Mussolini, for
Lisbon’s main daily, the Diário de Notícias. Ferro’s tasks were two: to carry out
what he termed the ‘policy of the spirit’, that is, bringing culture, as filtered by
the SPN’s nationalism, to the people, restoring a sense of belonging and
pride;240 and to provide domestic and foreign opinion with a few set ideas
about Salazar, making him appreciated abroad and more popular domestically.
The first policy failed, its totalitarian tendencies beyond the political and finan-
cial means put at the organization’s disposal. Ferro succeeded spectacularly in
the second task, carried out through a variety of means: by publishing, with
State support, and in a profusion of languages, interviews with Salazar carried
out in December 1932, which would provide the world with its first insight
into Salazar’s mind;241 by providing ready-made copy about Salazar for
domestic and foreign newspapers (and tracking the extent to which this copy
was published, in order to better understand the support for the regime
evidence by the different publications); by publishing simple summaries of the
240. See, for example, Ferro, Salazar, p. 22. The first public action of the SPN was a free performance at
Lisbon’s National Theater, aimed at the capital’s working classes, those people ‘who, until now, were
prevented from enjoying the great spiritual pleasure and the magnificent tool for education that is the theater,
when well chosen and oriented.’ ‘Constituiu um grande êxito o primeiro espectáculo gratuito promovido pelo
Secretariado de Propaganda Nacional’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 6 November 1933.
241. In English, Salazar: Portugal and Her Leader (London: Faber and Faber, 1939, prefaced by Sir Austen
Chamberlain).
New State’s doctrines, designed for a mass audience;242 and by staging news-
worthy events abroad.243
The ‘policy of the spirit’ would eventually fail because Ferro and his
collaborators could not strait-jacket the producers of culture, highbrow or
popular, into the required ideological mold, and because Portugal did not close
itself off from the world. Much of the SPN’s history, in this regard, is one of
frustration, as supposedly friendly agencies, such as the national broadcaster
(Emissora Nacional), or the Inspecção Geral dos Espectáculos (General Inspectorate
of Performances) failed to exercise due vigilance. The provision of favorable
copy regarding Salazar was a process made easier by a number of factors:
domestic censorship, which prevented bad news, or any sort of criticism of
Salazar, from coming out into the open and being picked up by foreign
correspondents; the relief among the international community that Portugal
had stopped being a point of instability and concern, as it had been for
decades; and the discredit into which the Portuguese Republic, which had
preceded the New State, so that its leaders’ criticism, made from their
respective places of exile, carried little weight. One by one provincial
newspapers, or voices within them hostile to the New State, were extinguished
by a variety of means. The sole remaining ‘opposition’ newspaper in Lisbon,
República, refused to carry the SPN’s copy, and to discuss the regime; its pages
had thus an unreal feel, concentrating on international affairs for their political
content, even though these too were subject to censorship. A previous genera-
tion of politicians, like deposed President Bernardino Machado and Afonso
Costa, foremost among Portugal’s democrats, attempted to carry the torch of
the First Republic with their writings, but, it must be said, with very little
success; they were to face frequent campaigns of denigration in the press loyal
to Salazar, with no chance of clearing their name.244
Ferro also intervened directly with foreign journalists, writers, and opinion-
makers, inviting them to come to Portugal on closely coordinated visits and
providing them with information,245 precious access to Salazar,246 and, on occa-
242. João Ameal, Decálogo do Estado Novo (Lisbon: SPN, n.d.) [but 1934]; published in English as The Ten
Commandments of the Portuguese New State.
243. See Je Suis Partout (Paris), 21 March 1936, reporting a conference by this ‘grand écrivain portugais’, but
neglecting to mention his official status.
244. See, for example, the column ‘Ao de leve’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 12 August 1932, in which the
former leader of the Democratic party was subjected to a sustained ad hominem attack that stretched back to
his student days.
245. In June of 1935, Ferro organized a ‘cultural embassy’ to Portugal which brought, among others,
Georges Duhamel, Gabriela Mistral, François Mauriac, Maurice Maeterlinck, Jacques Maritain, and Miguel
Unamuno, to Portugal, which they toured extensively at the SPN’s expense.
246. ‘Une dictature en intelligence: Entretien avec M. Oliveira Salazar’ in Je Suis Partout (Paris), 8 April 1938.
Henri Massis, who carried out the interview, would shortly thereafter publish his book Chefs (Paris: Plon,
1939), which considered the cases of Mussolini, Franco, and Salazar, and in which he identified the latter as a
follower of Charles Maurras. He would return to the subject of Salazar in 1961 with his Salazar face à face.
sion, financial subsidies for favorable work on Portugal. One recipient of the
Portuguese State’s largesse was a French academic, Professor Paul Descamps,
who was paid a substantial sum to prepare a book entitled Le Portugal: La vie
sociale actuelle (1935).247 After World War II he would publish another work,
Histoire Sociale du Portugal (1959). The launch of Ferro’s interviews with Salazar
in French, Le Portugal et son Chef, took place at the Hotel Ambassadeur, in Paris,
which cost 2,300 escudos. Paul Valéry, who wrote the preface, was paid 2,500
escudos. Other authors vied to get equal treatment; French journalist and
amateur historian Paul Bartel repeatedly begged Salazar for work and for help
with Portuguese newspaper editors. The appearance of favorable articles and
books abroad was presented domestically as a sign that the world was waking
up to Portugal’s existence and recognizing the merits of her leader; foreign
authors counted on the favorable reviews their work received in Portugal to
boost their careers. Everybody, it seems, won.248
Making Ferro’s task easier was a wave of interest in Portuguese matters
that swept among European conservatives in the 1930s. Europe was troubled
by, one the one hand, the Bolshevik revolution and the fear of its westwards
spread and, on the other hand, by the seeming inability of parliamentary
democracy to halt it. Italian Fascism and German National Socialism had
shown that force could halt this threat (whether it was real or not is another
question), but the totalitarian price-tag they carried was not welcomed by all,
especially those from conservative, and religious, elite circles. Mobilization of
the masses, whatever the end, was viewed with distrust in these circles.
Francisco Franco did not meet the aesthetic and intellectual standards these
groups were looking for: he had come to power on the back of a violent civil
war, and had more blood on his hands than was tasteful to countenance. In the
West, therefore, there remained Salazar: hard-working ruler of a previously
anarchic country;249 financial dictator who had restored a practically bankrupt
State to a position of, if not comfort, then at least respectability; devout
Catholic with a background of defense of the Church in a hostile, anti-clerical
environment; and at pains to distance himself from Fascism and all forms of
totalitarianism, which curtailed the rights of God and man alike. Portugal, and
247. Paul Descamps, Le Portugal: La vie sociale actuelle (Paris: Firmin-Didot et Cie, 1935).
248. Ferro’s visibility, access to Salazar, and state sponsorship were all resented, and the SPN was routinely
presented by the opposition either as a monument to Salazar’s vanity or a form of embezzlement. See, for
example, in AOS CO PC 3A, the pamphlet entitled ‘O Exército não vê?’ (Can the Army Not See?), signed
‘an officer’.
249. Salazar’s willingness to work is indisputable, and worried his friends; late in December 1936 Professor
Serras e Silva wrote his ‘dear friend’ Salazar, saying that everyone was impressed by Salazar’s recent fatigue,
and urging him to ‘save your strength with the zeal that you have saved money.’ One solution was employing
an Undersecretary of State for the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, a proposal that was ahead of its
time. AOS CP 257, letter, Lisbon, 22 December 1936, Serras e Silva to António de Oliveira Salazar.
more precisely, Salazar, were, in conservative intellectual circles, the height of
fashion. Portuguese corporatism and the New State seemed to herald a new
departure in politics, which combined modernization with tradition and
discipline, all for the good of the nation. There are countless examples of this
sudden interest, from all quarters of Europe, from different political families,
and for entirely different ends. French interest was particularly strong: Léon de
Poncins, Maurice Maeterlinck, Jacques Ploncard d’Assac and Henri Massis all
met and interviewed Salazar. In September 1934 the French press-and-cham-
pagne magnate Pierre Taittinger, himself heavily involved in the French
extreme right in the 1920s and 1930s, having founded the Jeunesses Patriotes in
1924, wrote to the SPN:
You would be doing me a great pleasure if you could send to one of our news-
papers an interview with Mr. Oliveira Salazar, along with a signed photograph
dedicated, for example, to Le National. We would publish it on the front page of
that newspaper, and would then reproduce it in our other papers, notably dailies
like the Matin Charentais, the Journal du Loiret, etc. Did you know that Le National
has a print-run of 185,000 copies?
Another country where interest in Salazar was high was Ireland. Richard S.
Devane S.J. wrote, in 1938:
Out of the great wilderness of so-called Liberalism, with its religious, social and
financial chaos, Salazar has, like another Moses, led his people into the fair Land
of Promise about which for so many years Portuguese poets and patriots sung and
dreamed. Down how many centuries have our Gaelic and Anglo-Irish poets sung
of the sorrows of the Niobe of the nations? […] To-day Portugal has risen with
dignity from the dust in which she has so long lain—while Ireland is still on her
knees. Has Portugal’s resurrection no lesson for Ireland?250
What is interesting about this literature, however, is that its factual content
was based on extremely limited information all of which, eventually, can be
traced back to the SPN and its sponsored publications. This meant that it
ignored the harsh realities of life in Portugal and the very real limitations of the
New State. Portuguese corporatism, despite its evident difficulties (which
began with the inability to establish actual corporations) was often described as
a finished product from which others could learn: but, as we have seen, it was
far from that.
250. Richard S. Devane, S.J., ‘Economic development under Salazar: A corollary’ in Irish Ecclesiastical Record
51 (1938), pp. 40–41.
Salazar approved of the international facet of the SPN’s existence, and
protected it from prying eyes. When a deputy to the National Assembly asked a
parliamentary question about the Secretariat’s expenses, Salazar himself drafted
the answer: ‘The nature of the services that fall to the SPN mean that they
cannot be completely divulged […] The President of the Council has complete
and minute knowledge of the reserved expenses. The Minister of Finance
sanctions them […]’. The organization was given a clean bill of health by
Salazar, the effects of its action evidenced by the ‘atmosphere of interest in,
and admiration for, Portugal, which had been created everywhere.’251
What, then, were the characteristics of Salazar, as portrayed in the State’s
propaganda machine and endlessly replicated by its domestic and foreign
agents? The first, and perhaps most enduring, was that Salazar had no desire
for political or any other form of power. This disdain was exemplified a
passage from the English translation of Ferro’s book, taken from an interview
carried out in 1938:
“Do you at least feel happy in being a ruler and tasting the sweets of power? Do
you find any happiness in ruling?”
“Yes. The happiness of the good. I can work by any particular measure. I confess
I do feel a great consolation when I observe practical results proceeding from my
own individual activity, when I see that certain government measures have
definitely brought about an improvement in the conditions of living. Above all,
because I am proud of being Portuguese, I rejoice at Portugal’s recovery and her
enhanced prestige abroad.”
“That is not quite what I meant,” said I, not wishing to relinquish my point.
“What I wanted to know was if the fact of wielding power gave you any sensible
pleasure?”
Salazar thought the matter over for a few moments:
“You see, my position is rather unusual. I have neither the ambition to rule nor yet
am I one of those rulers who seem to have no sense of their own responsibility.
The latter particularly must be very happy persons.”252
This fiction would be kept alive for forty years. In Franco Nogueira’s diaries,
an aged Salazar longs again and again for retirement, and a return to Santa
Comba Dão, so that he might have some years of peace before his death.253
The distaste for politics was part of Salazar’s public persona, a tactic to be used
with even the closest collaborators. Politics was portrayed as a sacrifice per-
formed by Salazar, diverting him from his real concerns, most important of
251. AOS CO PC 12D, António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘Secretariado da Propaganda Nacional’, 6 February
1936.
253. Franco Nogueira, Um político confessa-se (Diário: 1960–1968) 3rd edition (Oporto: Civilização, 1987).
which was his professorial chair in Coimbra. On 30 May 1939, Salazar wrote to
Armindo Monteiro, then ambassador in London, refusing Monteiro permission
to resign his post, on grounds of domestic and international politics:
This letter, as you can see, is more of an appeal to your intelligence than to your
sentiment […] This is, in any case, more in accordance with my way of working.
Sentiment does not always answer the call: while all reason needs is to be
unobstructed, without the passions darkening it, in order to understand all that I
say. You know very well that I seek neither personal feats, nor glory, nor the satis-
faction of vanities; I am merely someone who sacrifices himself in order to best
administer the affairs of his country.254
Earlier still, in May 1935, the Diário da Manhã, reflecting on Salazar’s speech to
the Liga 28 de Maio, which focused on education, work and health, applauded
the country’s leader both for speaking directly to the people and for the forth-
right manner in which he did so: ‘Salazar, or the Anti-Demagogue. That would
be the best way to define him. The demagogue addresses himself to the base
instincts […] Salazar addresses himself to the well-formed consciences, to the
impulse of altruism and balance, to the small flame of Grace that is latent in
the intimate side of every creature.’255 This attitude of ‘contempt’ for power
became a standard feature of the regime, and was repeated endlessly in the
private correspondence of ministers and other leaders to Salazar. It was either
part of the New State’s aesthetics of power or a form of institutional hypocrisy,
depending on one’s point of view—but it was dictated from the top, by Salazar
himself.
A second feature of this carefully cultivated image of Salazar was his per-
sonal incorruptibility, as well as his ability to remain above the fray of normal
men and their petty concerns. Another extract from Ferro’s book is significant:
“Some people”, I say, “attribute the lack of enthusiasm of the present situation, its
lack of the human touch, to your personal isolation. Now is this a private trait of
yours or is it a personal defense?”
“Both guesses are true,” Salazar tells me with the kindly smile of a man prepared
to put up with even the most indiscreet questionings! “It is really a defense, but
one that costs nothing because it fits in very well with my personal habits. Formal
calls, long conversations about nothing in particular, wordy, drawn-out talks, all
that is a failing common both to men and women. We Portuguese are a race of
born talkers, useless talkers, and more especially when we have nothing much
254. Rosas et al. (eds), Armindo Monteiro, doc. 24(a), letter, Lisbon, 30 May 1939, António de Oliveira Salazar
to Armindo Monteiro, p. 99
255. ‘Salazar e o povo’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 13 May 1935.
inside us. We should get on well, the country and I, if I had to receive everybody
who wanted just to talk to me, to put forward his own special circumstances! I
should certainly never have been able to do the work I am supposed to have done.
I should never have been able to settle most of those personal cases which, when
they are genuine, always really involve measures of general public order. I cannot
conceive how it can be possible for a minister to go here, there, everywhere; to
take the chair at dinners, to be at all sorts of ceremonies, solemn meetings, to be
ready for every kind of festival and reception. After all that, where is he going to
find time for any work, for his own job! Wouldn’t the country have the right to
accuse us of neglecting our mission, of leaving national and State affairs, simply
for a bit of totally useless pomp and ceremony!”256
The following year, at a ceremony to mark the beginning of work in the Lisbon
shipyards of a new destroyer, the Dão (‘I must begin by thanking the Navy
Minister for choosing to name this unit of our fleet after the river that crosses
my town’, Salazar said), Salazar thanked the shipyard workers for their message
of gratitude for the naval orders for their forthright words:
Because of the high office I hold, I am used to reading many lies. For that very
reason I was satisfied to see in your message simple but sincere words, which I
prefer to the lies that so often I have to read on official notepaper.257
Salazar’s house in Vimieiro played a part in this constructed identity; it

allowed him a refuge from Lisbon and its plotting, especially important in his
early days in the cabinet. This house, which he described as a choupana
(cabin),258 was part of an elaborate political mise-en-scène, in which simplicity, and
a Barrèsian attachment to the land, was played out. Simplicity of lifestyle, of
course, was related to the view of Salazar as an indefatigable worker, alone in
the middle of the maelstrom, holding the country together. Salazar apologized,
in his Prologue to Ferro’s interviews, for the Prologue’s very existence, since it
had taken him away from his other duties.259 The extreme-right French periodi-

257. ‘O discurso do chefe do governo’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 30 May 1933. Salazar concluded this
short intervention, in which he stressed his belief in the quality of the Portuguese workforce, by stating: ‘My
friends: As a son of the people, village-born and used to dealing closely with those who work, I thank you
for your simple but sincere words. Work, and remember that while you carry out your obligations for the
good of the Pátria, I will be in the Ministry of Finance, gathering the money that is both your bread and the
resurrection of the fleet.’
258. Freire Antunes (ed.), Salazar e Caetano, doc. S 130, letter, 19 September 1950, António de Oliveira
Salazar to Marcelo Caetano, p. 270.
259. Ferro, Salazar, p. 109. A survey of his diary suggests that Salazar worked on the Prologue every morning
from Monday, 9 January 1933, to 16 January, when he signed off on the work and sent it to the presses, with
the exception of Sunday, 15 January. He also met Ferro for an hour in the afternoon of 12 January.
cal Je Suis Partout reported, on 21 March 1936, a conference by António Ferro
in which the SPN’s director stated that
the military men were in complete control, but were embarrassed by their power
in the face of the overwhelming task that loomed before them. They called on
Salazar. From that day onwards, he was the master. Without uniform, without
popularity, without contact with the crowd, without extraordinary powers, he
would rebuild his fatherland and return it to prosperity and peace guided only by
the light of genius and the height of virtue.260
Some years later, in the same newspaper, Hervé Le Grand wrote, ‘whatever
happens, we will remember that Portugal, so great because of its past, but so
reduced by democracy, began to raise itself in an impressive manner from the
day it benefited from a single government, embodied by a man who can be
correctly depicted as someone who knows only numbers and God.’261
Not surprisingly, given his background and outlook, Salazar was frequently
described as a ‘moral dictator’, a protector of traditional religious concerns and
a Catholic conception of life and society in the face of a century marked by
materialism in all of its guises. René Richard, in Je Suis Partout, on 1 April 1933,
wrote,
The Portuguese reformer is a moral dictator: he is less interested in using the

national defects to consolidate his power than to overcome those defects so that a
new national spirit might help him to carry out his work beyond the reaches of
government. It is this moral preoccupation that has been at the basis of his ambi-
tion, and that pushed him through the various stages of his career, moving him
from Finance, where he restored the budget, to the complete direction of affairs
from which, through the same methods, he attempted to restore the moral balance
of the nation.262
Thomas O’Donnell, writing in Studies, an Irish Jesuit review, in 1941, came to

the conclusion that ‘to anyone who has studied the work of António Oliveira
Salazar it must be obvious that herein lies the great secret of his achievement
against heavy odds, confidence in things of the spirit. What he has practiced himself
he has tried also to impart to his people, and his success may be judged by the
wonderful regeneration that has taken place in his country’. Such morality was
also to be found in Salazar’s oft-repeated opposition to State violence. René
Richard wrote, in Je Suis Partout,
260. ‘Une conférence d’António Ferro’ in Je Suis Partout (Paris), 31 March 1936.
261. ‘Un redressement financier: Le Portugal’ in Je Suis Partout (Paris), 14 April 1939.
262. ‘Lettre du Portugal: Comme d’ailleurs, un État nouveau’ in Je Suis Partout (Paris), 1 April 1933.
Seriousness cannot be separated from gentleness in the Portuguese soul. Our
century is not sufficiently civilized to allow for the (pre)meditation of violent
actions, as was the case in the beaux jours of the Renaissance. Thoughtful action ex-
cludes the troubled passions which have brought certain dictators to the age of the
hatchet. But had the gentleness of Salazar, Coimbra Professor and precise econo-
mist, been alien to the people he guides, he would only have known failure.263
Thomas O’Donnell, in Studies, was less lyrical, but the message was the same:
The systematic employment of violence in the practical application of principles,

which is the logical outcome of the Fascist doctrine of the omnipotence of the
State, is not applicable, according to Salazar, to the Portuguese situation. Mussolini
upholds the right to employ violence […] Salazar, on the other hand, rejected this
principle of violence where Portugal is concerned: “Violence which is the direct
and constant outcome of the Fascist Dictatorship, is not applicable to our con-
ditions, nor can it be adapted to our customs… I agree with Mussolini as regards
Italy, not when applied to Portugal.”264
It must be remembered, however, that Salazar was not the first, and would
not be the last, politician to preach moral values while leading what would be
considered, at the time, an immoral life. The years after Salazar’s ascent to gov-
ernment were marked by at least two significant affairs, which were kept secret
from the public. The first involved a niece of his Coimbra friend, Glória Cas-
tanheira. Maria Laura Campos Paiva was married to a businessman from
Oporto. When the couple moved to Lisbon, more or less at the same time as
Salazar, the affair began; it continued through her divorce, which occurred in
1930, and her subsequent marriage to her former husband’s uncle and
employer.265 Her place in history was ensured by the message in French which,
every New Year’s Eve, she left in the pages of Salazar’s diary: ‘Encore et
toujours + que hier - que demain’.266 The second affair would have been
equally dangerous had news of it been allowed to leak, involving as it did Maria
Emília Vieira, who had led, in Portuguese terms, an unusually bohemian life, in
Lisbon and, for a time, in Paris. She had made her living as a dancer in various
Lisbon night-spots; with her regular dance partner she would be the first on
the dance floor every evening, leading the way for the paying customers. As
World War I drew to a close, she had moved to Paris, where she spent five
years; there she joined the Theosophical Society and became interested in
astrology; in the 1930s, having met in ways that are lost to the historian, she
263. ‘L’expérience d’Oliveira Salazar: La douceur, force politique’ in Je Suis Partout (Paris), 29 May 1937.
264. Thomas J. O’Donnell, S.J., ‘Salazar and the New State of Portugal’ in Studies 25 (1936), pp. 142–43.
265. Cabrita, Mulheres, pp. 45–46.
266. Franco Nogueira, Os tempos áureos, p. 136.
and Salazar became lovers, part of a bizarre love triangle that involved a well-
known journalist, Norberto Lopes, whom Maria Emília would marry in
1946.267 The two would remain in touch for the rest of their lives; Maria Emília
would write out his horoscopes until 1968.268 Curiously, it seems that Salazar
was somewhat careless, in his own home, with amorous correspondence.269
One woman was to accompany him all the years he spent in Lisbon, Maria
de Jesus Caetano Freire, whom the country knew simply as Dona Maria. Five
years older than Salazar, she had served as a maid in Cerejeira’s Coimbra house,
Os Grilos, and Salazar brought her to Lisbon in 1928, installing her as his
governess; she would run his household staff, first in his private residences,
and then, after 1937, in the newly created official residence, with what seems to
have been an iron fist; she also accompanied him on his breaks to Vimieiro,
which of course fuelled much speculation about the nature of their relation-
ship. The appearance of family life would be rounded off by the presence of
children in the Salazar household. The first to arrive, Maria da Conceição Rita,
born in 1929, was the younger sister of Dona Maria’s brother-in-law who,
thanks to the personal intervention of Dona Maria, had secured a job as a door-
man in the parliament building in Lisbon, where Salazar’s office was located.
While her sister-in-law was in the hospital for a birth, in 1936, Maria da
Conceição was looked after by Dona Maria in Salazar’s house. When the time
came to return to her brother’s home, she rebelled, launching, in her words, a
mutiny. Salazar, perturbed by the girl’s tears and screams, inquired about what
was happening, and delivered a simple verdict: ‘“Well, if you like it here, you
can stay”’.270 ‘Micas’, as Maria da Conceição was nicknamed, would stay on in
the Salazar household until her wedding in 1957, curiously to a young man
whose father had been involved in opposition activities in the 1920s, having
been arrested. Another young girl joined the household later, Micas’ niece,
Maria Antónia, seven years younger than her aunt. Her relationship with
Salazar, and with Dona Maria, would, however, be more fraught. To the horror
of Dona Maria she began skipping school to see her boyfriend, a mechanic with
opposition beliefs. Confronted by Dona Maria, Maria Antónia left for her
parents’ home; the breach with the Salazar household was irreversible. Micas’
son, António, would himself spend much of his childhood with Salazar in the
São Bento residence: ‘If I had been like a daughter to the Senhor Doutor, then he
267. Cabrita, Mulheres, p. 52.

268. Ibid., pp. 58–59, makes much of the importance attributed by Salazar to these horoscopes, with little in
the way of evidence apart from the simple fact of their existence. Salazar’s ‘ward’, Micas, in her memoirs,
disagrees. Maria da Conceição de Melo Rita & Joaquim Vieira, Os meus 35 anos com Salazar (Lisbon: Esfera dos
Livros, 2007), p. 104.
269. Rita & Vieira, Os meus 35 anos, pp. 105–6.
270. Ibid., p. 35.
had now found in little António his grandson.’271 It is perhaps unfair to
consider Salazar’s peculiar domestic arrangements in a section dedicated to the
manipulation of his image for political advantage; but the presence of the girls,
and Salazar’s devotion to their upbringing, became an indelible part of his
public image, exploited for political ends.272 It may be the case that had he
remained in Coimbra, with Cerejeira gone, his household would equally have
evolved into the simulacrum of family life that it assumed in Lisbon.
All things considered, Salazar was, in the SPN’s message, countless times
reproduced abroad, the savior of the nation. Michael Derrick, in the Dublin
Review of October 1937 wrote, picking up on this theme, ‘to all acquainted in
any way with the history of Portugal during the past century, his work must
seem almost incredible; and to all who base their politics on Christian prin-
ciples, his work must seem wholly admirable.’273 W. P. MacDonagh, S.J., in The
Irish Monthly of August 1940 wrote, in a similar vein, that ‘Portugal was quite
literally a dying nation’ by 1926.274 Roger Griffin suggests in his The Nature of
Fascism that the notion of national rebirth in the face of catastrophe is an
essential ingredient in a Fascist movement.275 The SPN’s propaganda definitely
blurs the line between the New State’s Catholic authoritarianism and fascism,
but its message, to the Portuguese, was unique: having been assured that the
country was in good hands, they were now asked to trust, and obey, and devote
themselves to ‘living habitually’, without worrying about political matters,
which were safe in the hands of Salazar and his chosen collaborators. They
should, in other words, turn their attention to the pursuit of happiness, in this
life and the next. It is also the case that Ferro’s propaganda secretariat refrained
from the most dramatic claims advanced on Salazar’s behalf, but that, con-
versely, the censorship authorities allowed these to be made by private
individuals—which meant that there was tacit official approval of the more
overblown claims as to the uniqueness and greatness of Salazar.
A recent analysis of Salazar’s rhetoric notes how Salazar, in addition to the
SPN’s efforts on his behalf, devoted an important part of his speeches to
establishing his ‘psychological profile’.276 When he first joined the cabinet,
humility and modesty were the hallmarks of this self-constructed portrait. This
271. Rita & Vieira, Os meus 35 anos, p. 157.

272. Micas’ existence was revealed to the country by O Século (Lisbon), 21 May 1938, in an enormous photo-
graph that occupied most of the first page. The caption read, ‘It is always the Dr [Salazar] who, after 10 p.m.,
teaches little Maria da Conceição, his protégée, her multiplication tables.’
273. Michael Derrick, ‘Portugal and Salazar’ in Dublin Review n. 403, October 1937.
274. W. P. MacDonagh, S.J., ‘A professor in politics: Salazar and the regeneration of Portugal’ in The Irish
Monthly, August 1940.
275. See Chapter 2, ‘A new type of generic fascism’, of Roger Griffin, The Nature of Fascism, paperback edition
(London: Routledge, 1993).
276. José Martinho Gaspar, Os discursos e o discurso de Salazar (Lisbon: Prefácio, 2001), p. 113.
humility and modesty were preserved for a long time, although they were
enriched with further elements: constancy of views, spirit of sacrifice, and lack
of political ambition.277 There was also an insistence on a ‘policy of truth’, by
which the country would be kept informed of what it needed to know, when it
needed to know it. In an interview with the ‘loyal’ national-syndicalist news-
paper, Revolução Nacional, Salazar claimed that
I can only address myself to the good faith and intelligence of my countrymen. If
from the start I proclaimed the need in Portugal for a policy of truth and sincerity,
I could not descend to subtleties, or sleights of hand, for which there is no need
when [men of] good faith and intelligence are listening to me.278
There were, of course, those who did not subscribe to these views, and
who understood the nature and scope of the Portuguese propaganda machine.
In his Salazar e a sua Época (1933), national-syndicalist leader Rolão Preto wrote
that, by refusing to wear a uniform, Salazar was displaying his professorial con-
tempt for new formulas, not realizing that these would rescue Europe from
communism. Republican Spain was one regime which was largely immune to
the SPN’s charms, and its diplomatic representatives in Lisbon were harsh
about what they found. On 17 April 1934, for example, the chargé d’affaires,
Ramírez Montesinos, informed the Foreign Minister in Madrid that ‘President
Salazar’s propaganda is viewed with increasing concern. An enormously costly
bureaucratic machine, whose expenses have led to much open comment, has
been created. Extraordinary credits are repeatedly handed over to this propa-
ganda that almost always focuses on the man and not the work. Posters were
put up that convey only the name of Salazar followed by triple exclamation
marks.’ A month later, commenting on an interview of President Carmona
with António Ferro in the Diário de Notícias, Ramírez Montesinos wrote,
An exaggerated and hyperbolic compliment is made of the head of government,

Mr Salazar, at the same time condemning parliamentarianism and democracy while
also showing his sympathy for [the AEV], a new fascist-style organisation with
green shirts […] as you will readily understand, it is yet another piece of the New
State’s propaganda, which has been carried out in the national press and which is
extended to the international press through people who, in accordance with the
latest journalistic practices, put their pens at the service of propaganda funds. In
277. On 26 October 1933, at the launch of the SPN, Salazar mentioned how some of the people who had
long called for just such a body now decried its expense: ‘But we, who think long about all things, and who
carry them out with tenacity, we who have ideas, conviction, and intentions stronger than the leaves which
the autumn winds twirl in the air, what idea do we have of the Secretariat?’ António de Oliveira Salazar,
‘Propaganda nacional’ in Discursos, vol. 1, pp. 257–64.
278. ‘Salazar disse ontem à Revolução Nacional [...]’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 5 August 1934.
this manner, while Ferro, Portuguese, releases a book in France entitled Salazar,
Gerard Baver, French, praises the New State in Portugal, etc., etc.279
Curiously, it would be another Spanish diplomat, albeit one at the service of

Franco, who would get closest to the paradox that was Salazar, and who would
be best able to express his surprise at the gulf between reality and public image.
The Spanish press attaché, Javier Martínez de Bedoya, would write, in February
1946, ‘it must be recognized that Salazar and his men benefit from a technique
and from political processes which, for me, are the key to their successes’.
Martínez de Bedoya went on, ‘to any casual spectator […] Salazar is a flexible
man, with no attachment to power, a quasi-democrat. The very fact that this
impression exists is enough to reveal the vast amount of political technique
which this man has at his disposal and whose most immediate result is
appearing to be flexible when deep down he is intransigent.’ Martínez de
Bedoya provided the following examples:
1. He organized elections in accordance with strictly democratic procedures and

on the basis of universal suffrage, but at the same time fomented and pro-
voked by all possible means abstention among the opposition forces.
2. He solemnly conceded all necessary liberties for the electoral campaign; this
concession was shouted from the rooftops and seemed, as a result of all the
bombast, to be of a permanent nature; however, on the very day that the
electoral campaign ended, press censorship was silently re-established and
little by little all the other freedoms disappeared.
3. […]
4. [Portugal] is the only State—Russia notwithstanding—which currently, and in
addition to the Police and the Gendarmeria has a Police for the Defense of the
State.
5. Despite all the appearances of a regime where the rule of law is upheld,
Salazar counts on the support of a militia, the Legião, well armed with pistols,
rifles, and even some heavy weapons.
6. During the electoral campaign, the Corporative Organization was heavily
attacked. Salazar defended it and defends it still, despite this attack […]
7. While the Portuguese Press makes all kinds of verbal concessions to the ‘Old
Ally’, England, Salazar names as Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs a young
politician, intransigent in his anti-democratic beliefs and his public actions.
Martínez de Bedoya concluded that
279. Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores (MAE), Portugal, report 320, Lisbon, 28 May 1934, Ramírez
Montesinos to the Minister of State.
a) Being in truth a military dictatorship supported first of all by the army, the
Portuguese regime presents itself as a civil and constitutional system.
b) Being a strong, violent and police-led regime, it benefits on the international
plane from the appearance of a lawful and benevolent regime.
c) While Portugal remained neutral in the war, it recovered without any great
difficulty the colony of Timor, but Holland, a belligerent, sees its rights over
Indonesia challenged.280
The 1940 Centennials
In 1940, while the rest of Europe tore itself apart, Portugal settled down to
celebrate the centenaries of Portuguese independence (set rather arbitrarily at
1139) and its recovery, after sixty years of Habsburg rule, in 1640. These
national commemorations were the culmination of the first phase of the New
State, a material demonstration of Portugal’s glorious past, present, and future.
They were, in other words, the SPN’s ‘policy of the spirit’ writ large, and there
can be no doubt that what was really being celebrated was Salazar’s Portugal.
The fact that the war was going on diminished the international impact of the
celebrations, but increased their domestic political value. The contrast with the
outside world could not be greater.
One is entitled to ask what the point of the commemorations was, given
the nature of the Portuguese population: a small, divided, elite; a hard-pressed
and often hostile urban working class and petty bourgeoisie; and the broad
rural mass of the population. The New State intended to win some over, by
dazzling them; to plant the seed of pride in their country in others, especially
the young—and to link that pride with support for Salazar; and to make it clear
to all that there was no need to join, to militate, to march up and down: just to
trust and, when necessary, to obey. In other words, Portugal was recovering its
greatness, but Salazar needed more time. The 1940 celebrations were the first
folly of the regime, its first frivolous expense. There were many complaints at
the time about the scale of the events, and their cost.281 But this was no simple
circus, and it came with a markedly ideological message. Ultimately, it was
counteracting the powerful notion of decline, so eloquently expressed in the
280. MAE, Portugal, report 261-E, Lisbon, 13 February 1946, Javier Martínez de Bedoya.
281. A PVDE report on the state of public opinion affirmed that that ‘the people of good sense do not
object to its occurrence, but criticize the fact that it is not being carried out economically’. The main
complaint were the subsidies paid to those who worked in the Exhibition’s staff, which were added to the
salaries of men who were, in many cases, employees of the State to start with. AOS CO IN 8B, PVDE
report, 27 January 1940. This ‘accumulation’ of salaries was, in the Lisbon of the time, the most frequent
source of complaint and intrigue. See, for example, an anonymous list of names and real salaries, being
distributed in Lisbon, and received by Salazar in February 1940: Carneiro Pacheco topped the list, on fifty-
five contos per month. AOS CO PC 3H, ‘Relação de alguns preclarados TUBARÕES e seus vencimentos
mensais expressos em contos’.
late 19th century by Oliveira Martins, for whom Portugal—and Spain—had
perished, as vital nations, in 1580, the date of their union:
This fusion was merely formal, since nature is not sufficiently artistic to breathe
life into the embrace of two corpses.282
In March 1938, an official note penned by Salazar had outlined the scope
of the celebrations and the reasons behind them: ‘to be eight-centuries old is a
rare or unique circumstance in Europe and in the whole world, especially if one
defines political identity on the basis of the same people, the same Nation, and
the same State.’283 According the centenaries their correct importance meant,
‘firstly, giving the Portuguese a tonic of joy and confidence in themselves’; it
also demonstrated Portuguese ingenuity and the continued relevance of Portu-
gal’s ‘historical mission’. Monuments would be built or re-built; congresses and
exhibits held; cortèges and parades would be staged to fire the enthusiasm of
the Portuguese. Other countries, and especially Brazil, would be invited to
cooperate. It was expected, Salazar continued, that the event would be of great
interest to the rest of the world, and an influx of foreign visitors could be ex-
pected: to receive them, much would have to be done to the country’s infra-
structure, and especially to that of the capital; modes of working and decision-
making would have to be altered for the commemorations to be a success:
Let us see if, seized by such a lofty and beautiful ideal, we will be able to expel
from within us all sadness and evil so that we may prepare to celebrate, properly,
what few can boast of: eight centuries of independence, by which I mean free life
and intense labor, for the most part selfless, on behalf of the other peoples of the
earth.
Júlio Dantas, an author who presided over the celebration’s executive com-
mittee, pointed out, in a note accompanying photographs of the medals minted
to commemorate the Exhibition of the Portuguese World, in Lisbon, that the
six words engraved on the medals summarized Portugal’s history: ‘Indepen-
dence, Conquest, Faith, Navigation, Expansion, Empire’.284
The celebrations were divided into four phases: Medieval, Discoveries,
Empire, and Restoration. Events, held the length and breadth of the country,
began on 2 June 1940 with a Te Deum held across Portugal and the Empire.
282. Oliveira Martins, História da Civilização Ibérica (Lisbon: Publicações Europa-América, n.d.), p. 205.
283. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘Comemorações centenárias’ in Discursos, vol. 3 1938–1943, 2nd edition
(Coimbra: Coimbra Editora, 1959), p. 41.
284. AOS CP 92, letter Lisbon, 4 April 1940, Júlio Dantas to António de Oliveira Salazar. In the same letter,
Dantas added that ‘we are carrying out a miracle of improvisation’.
During the ‘Empire phase’, coinciding with the opening of the Exhibition of
the Portuguese World, Lisbon airport was inaugurated, along with a regular air
service to Britain. The celebrations, especially the great Exhibition in Lisbon,
allowed the State to act as a sponsor of artistic life, providing contracts, orders,
and personal contacts, with artists: painters, sculptors, and architects for the
design and decoration of the pavilions and public spaces created in the
riverside district of Belém, complementing the historical monuments that link
Portugal with the age of discoveries—the Jerónimos monastery and the Tower
of Belém. The whole ensemble reflected the tensions between the modernists,
grouped around Ferro, and the traditional wing of the New State, towards
which Salazar was more inclined. Seventeen architects, fifteen engineers, and
over 6,000 workers were employed at creating the Exhibition.285 This was
inaugurated on 23 June, and stayed open until December. Official figures state
that three million visits occurred. Great Britain was represented at the opening
by the Duke of Kent, the king’s brother, welcomed with great pomp and
circumstance. An embattled Britain and its press made the most of the event:
‘The English played a great part in Portugal’s tempestuous history and men
from these shores helped her to win her earliest breath of independence […]
At this time of great danger, we count ourselves fortunate in our many ties
with Portugal.’286
Everyone in the regime seems to have had a hand in the commemorations.
With so much at stake, and so much money up for grabs, real clashes of power
and personality were generated. Salazar, not involved directly in its
organization, was the recipient of countless complaints and appeals, and was
hard-pressed to resolve them all. Henrique Galvão, for example, was charged
with organizing events in the northern city of Guimarães, where the centenary
celebrations began, the Colonial Section of the Exhibition, and the ‘Parade of
the Portuguese World’. He complained bitterly about the last of these, which
the Minister for Public Works demanded should be held in Belém, near the
Exhibition, and not in Campo Grande, on the other, more modern, side of the
city, where all the preparations had already been made, and where many more
could have watched the parade in comfort. The heat, in an area with little
shade, and the confusion that followed, were hard to describe:
The heat made the work much harder. The participants fell with heat stroke, the
animals refused to move forward, the precious costumes suffered terribly on the
bodies of men suffocated with heat. All of the protection organized in Campo
285. Maria Filomena Mónica, ‘Exposição do Mundo Português’ in Barreto & Mónica (eds), Dicionário de
História de Portugal vol. 7, pp. 710–71.
286 ‘Portugal’s 800 Years’ in The Manchester Guardian, 4 June 1940.
Grande against the heat was non-existent in Belém where there was not a single
tree, or any shade.287
Overall, the celebrations of 1940 were a qualified success: the reduction in

international impact occasioned by the World War served to reinforce the
image of a country which, recovering from self-inflicted wounds, had, thanks
to its long and unique history, and its peaceful outlook, the right to survive in
whatever world order emerged from the conflict.
287. AOS CP 123, undated letter, Henrique Galvão to António de Oliveira Salazar.
Chapter III
The Spanish Civil War

1936–1939
W hatever plans Salazar had once formulated for the Portuguese economy
were altered by the Great Depression. Likewise, the New State’s
political evolution would also be shaped by forces well outside his control.
From February 1936 onwards, Portugal’s existence was going to be carried out
under the sign of foreign affairs. It would take all of Salazar’s intelligence and
patience to keep the forces he identified as dangerous at bay; for ten years, by
centralizing even more power than before in his person, and by demanding
blind obedience from his closest collaborators, he kept Portugal at peace.
Sparing Portugal the horrors of war and of Nazi occupation would prove his
greatest achievement, even if a great deal of luck was involved, and even if this
effort came at a heavy price, to Portugal, to Salazar himself, and to his his-
torical reputation, besmirched by the specter of collaboration in some areas,
and silence in others.
Salazar and the Outbreak of Civil War in Spain
The outside world’s intrusion in the New State’s evolution began in 1935,
as a result of the Abyssinian crisis launched by Mussolini—a crisis which
served, in effect, as Salazar’s apprenticeship in foreign affairs. Portugal, a
temporary member of the League of Nation’s Council, was forced to adopt an
attitude because of both its position in Geneva and its status as an African
The Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939 191
power. What made matters more difficult was that Great Britain was finding it
difficult to define how best to respond to Italian expansionism in East Africa,
so that simply following the line laid down by London was not, this time, an
option. Foreign Minister Armindo Monteiro presided over a committee of six
governments charged with determining which country was to blame in the
crisis, and the committee’s report unambiguously called for an economic and
military embargo to be imposed on Italy. The report was approved by the
League’s Council and its General Assembly, and Portugal was then asked to
preside over a committee of eighteen governments to draw up the actual sanc-
tions.1 Whatever his private political views, Monteiro took his task seriously,
which led to a marked cooling in Portuguese-Italian relations. The crisis was
resolved, however, not in Geneva, but in the Rhineland, whose military occu-
pation Hitler ordered on March 1936. The policy of sanctions against Italy was
quickly dropped, to Salazar’s relief. He had opposed, without success, any
acceptance by Portugal of a leading role in the punishment of Italy, out of
political, strategic, and economic considerations (fearing especially the applica-
tion of sanctions to an expansionist Germany, at a terrible cost to the Portu-
guese economy), but was still hesitant about stamping his will on diplomatic
affairs.2 Future events would see him taking absolute political control over
foreign policy, leaving very little room for Armindo Monteiro, or anyone else,
to move freely.
In February 1936, and against the prognoses of Portuguese observers, the
left-wing forces that constituted the Spanish Popular Front roared back into
power with victory at close-fought elections. All over Spain repressed forces
burst into the open: strikes, land occupations, and the violent settling of old
scores became the norm. The threat to the New State was not immediate, but
was real nevertheless: the Spanish Left had already shown its sympathy towards
Portuguese exiles, and could be expected to provide them with a haven once
again.3 There was no longer any certainty, however, about the Republic’s ability
to contain the revolutionary forces it harbored. It was with great relief that
news of the Spanish Army’s rising in July was received in Portuguese gov-
ernment circles, and from the very first instant those same circles pledged their
full support to what was expected to be a quick mopping-up action.
Salazar led this stance, and was unwavering in it. He shut his mind to the
possibility of any understanding with the republican camp, and refused to
1. Pedro Aires Oliveira, ‘Portugal perante a crise Italo-Abissina de 1936’ in Ler História 42 (2002), p. 17.
2. Aires Oliveira, ‘Portugal perante’, p. 27.
3. In the summer of 1934 reports had emerged of a plot involving the sale of arms to Portuguese opposition
figures when Manuel Azaña had been Spain’s Minister of War. The Portuguese press loyal to Salazar made
great use of these revelations, and when, in October of that year, the Spanish Left attempted to return to
power by force, that same loyal press began to speak of a left-wing plot to deliver Portugal to Spain.
accept that the moderates in that camp, beginning with Manuel Azaña, could
be trusted and reasoned with. For Salazar and his diplomatic apparatus, the
republicans and the ‘Reds’ were, in practical terms, one and the same, and both
had designs on Portugal (although if anyone had such designs it was the radical
elements of the Spanish Right for whom Portugal was just one step up from
Gibraltar in terms of its right to exist outside Spain). The desire for a better
understanding between Salazar and Azaña had been expressed a number of
times by the latter’s supporters. Spain’s ambassador in Lisbon, Claudio
Sánchez-Albornoz, who took up his position in May 1936, urged the Por-
tuguese to see Azaña in a favorable light: he was not a revolutionary agent, but
rather someone who believed that some measure of social progress was
required in order to prevent drastic and uncontrollable change. In early August
one of Salazar’s more dependable followers at the Ministry of War, Lieutenant
Colonel Esmeraldo Carvalhais, the head of protocol, reported a conversation
with the Spanish military attaché, Lieutenant Colonel Golmayo:
According to him [Golmayo], Azaña attempted always to preserve the army’s

necessary efficiency as a guarantee of order and it was on the army that he
intended to support himself when, once the essential program of the Popular
Front had been implemented, the time would come to repress excesses. Azaña is a
leftist, but is a bourgeois, not a communist, he added.4
Azaña, however, had burned his connections with the Portuguese New
State by his support for its Portuguese exiled opponents, who viewed Spain as
the natural base for their operations. This support was no mere detail; as has
been shown, Azaña had a ‘Portuguese policy’ and pinned his hopes for its
success on men like Jaime Cortesão, Moura Pinto and Jaime de Morais, who
successfully convinced him of the possibility of an Iberian union built on
mutual consent.5 Sánchez-Albornoz met Salazar a month before the outbreak
of the Civil War. His account of the meeting, interesting in part because of the
description of Salazar’s working environment,6 was replete with messages
4. AOS CP 49, letter, 7 August 1936, Esmeraldo Carvalhais to António de Oliveira Salazar.
5. Hipólito de la Torre, ‘La conspiración iberista de Manuel Azaña’ in Fernando Rosas (ed.), Portugal e a
Guerra Civil de Espanha (Lisboa: Edições Colibri, 1998), pp. 209–220.
6. ‘Simplicity in the hall. Simplicity and solitude. No porter, not a living soul. I cover the entire ground floor
of the part of the palace [São Bento, which housed parliament] belonging to the Presidency of the Council
without meeting anyone. Eventually I see a soldier, dark cap, dagger in his belt, who is looking for me and
who leads me to the top floor, where Salazar has his office. A brief spell in a waiting room decorated with
the greatest of simplicities […] Dust on the floor and on the furniture. The Head of Protocol attempts to
shorten this wait with some words in Spanish which he believes are polite. Eventually he brings me to Salazar
through an office where secretaries and typists interrupt their work as I pass. […] He sits behind a desk
cleared of all papers, and I on a chair placed on the left side of the desk. I have before me the dictator of the
Portuguese people, although few would have believed it. No trace betrays a man of action. Everything about
about Portugal’s fears of Castilian interference and domination, which,
according to the ambassador, dominated Portuguese thoughts.
Sánchez-Albornoz was aware of the conspiracy being planned against the
Republic, which involved General José Sanjurjo, exiled in Portugal. It is hard to
believe that Salazar was not aware of it as well. Such prior knowledge helps to
explain his lack of hesitation, and his undeviating stance, once the coup was in
motion, and once it became a civil war. It has been suggested that at least one
of the leading Spanish conspirators, the exiled Marquis of Quintanar, who had
long enjoyed close intellectual links with some of the Portuguese far Right, was
keeping Salazar informed of what was being planned through regular meetings
from March 1936 onwards, coinciding with General Emilio Mola’s speeding up
of conspiratorial planning.7 At 3 p.m. on 18 July, the date of the rising in
mainland Spain, Salazar met with the head of the PVDE, Captain Agostinho
Lourenço, the Minister of the Interior, General Sanjurjo, and the Marquis of
Quintanar. The following day Salazar informed Carmona about events in
Spain, and from that meeting he went to the PVDE headquarters to hear the
latest news on the rising and to issue orders for the policing of the border. The
military coup in Spain, as we know, failed, and General Sanjurjo, putative head
of state, died when, bound for Spain, his plane crashed upon take-off. Salazar
had little time to ponder the consequences. Spanish exiles immediately began
to inform Salazar’s government of the wishes of the military junta, and their
efforts were eventually channeled through an officer, General Miguel Ponte y
Manso de Zuñiga, sent by Mola to Lisbon to coordinate aid to the rebels. In
order to distance himself from all such negotiations, Salazar called on his
former Minister of Commerce, the canning magnate Sebastião Ramires, to im-
plement the Portuguese response to the rebels’ requests. Salazar and Ramires
would meet frequently in the months to come. Thus, Portuguese intervention
in the conflict was largely covert, but no less significant for it. Other Portu-
guese figures played a significant role in the shaping of policy towards Spain.
José Pequito Rebelo, allowed his estate to be used as a landing ground for
him is inexpressive, including his face, his gestures, and the tone of his voice’ […]. Document reproduced in
Rosas (ed.), Portugal e a Guerra Civil, pp. 49–52.
7. César Oliveira, Salazar e a Guerra Civil de Espanha (Lisbon: O Jornal, 1987), p. 115. Later in the same work,
Oliveira writes, ‘Although there is no conclusive proof, it seems possible to state that, as a result of in-
formation arriving from Madrid, of links with Sanjurjo, and of the relationship between the [regime’s]
support groups (and Oliveira Salazar himself) and the elements of the conspiracy which Emilio Mola, from
Navarre, efficiently directed, the Portuguese government and the police authorities had knowledge of the
imminence of a military rising in Spain.’ Others are more explicit than Oliveira. Writing of the Marquis of
Quintanar, Carlos Olavo states that ‘this element of the Spanish latifundiary “old aristocracy” came to inform
Salazar in person, on May 1936, of the state of the Spanish military conspiracy against the Republic.’ Carlos
Olavo, ‘Guerra Civil de Espanha’ in Barreto & Mónica (eds), Dicionário de História de Portugal vol. 8 Suplemento
F/O (Lisbon: Figueirinhas, 1999), pp. 148–57. Salazar’s diary mentions a meeting with Quintanar to discuss
‘Spanish matters’ on 28 March, not in May.
German Junkers transports on their way to Morocco. He pressed continuously
for the immediate recognition of the rebels as the legitimate Spanish authority,
which the rebels also wanted, arguing that such positioning would be a way of
limiting Italian influence among the rebels—something which other countries,
notably Great Britain, must surely appreciate.8 How far would Salazar have
gone in aiding the rebels, in this initial stage? One report suggests that he was
ruling out no option, including military intervention.9 Pedro Teotónio Pereira’s
long involvement with Francoist Spain began with the military rising itself. On
29 July he sent Salazar the draft of a note which Teotónio Pereira believed
should be sent to the Republican government in Madrid. Admitting that this
government was not aware of the acts of banditry being committed in the
province of Badajoz, the Portuguese government would offer to occupy the
province and restore order.10 This putative note was accompanied by other,
more violent documents, one of which suggested the recognition of the
‘Spanish national government’ as the legitimate voice of Spain because the
government in Madrid is exercised by a political-military force, whose first goal is

the crushing of the Spanish national army and whose second goal is a revolu-
tionary war for the absorption of Portugal.11
Other reasons were the ‘tragic and vile disorder’ practiced by ‘communist
armed hordes’ at the Portuguese border and the need for one country to take
the first step and recognize the authorities in Burgos as the legitimate voice of
Spain, after which other countries would surely follow. A third document
recommended aid on a greater scale to the nationalists, since what had so far
been delivered, insufficient in of itself to guarantee victory, had nevertheless
attracted the hatred of the ‘Spanish communist government’ which, if vic-
torious, would surely march on Lisbon. Teotónio Pereira’s grand plan included
the political mobilization of the Portuguese, a wave of pre-emptive strikes
against centers of possible revolutionary agitation within Portugal (including
the Spanish embassy), an increase in aid to the Spanish army, recognition of the
Burgos government and, if it came to that, the mobilization of the Portuguese
army. All of this was impractical, of course, but Teotónio Pereira’s final sugges-
8. AOS CO NE 9 I, letter, 2 August 1936, José Pequito Rebelo to António de Oliveira Salazar.
9. Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918–1945 From the Archives of the German Foreign Ministry Series D (1937–
1945) (DGFP) vol. 3 Germany and the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office,
1951), doc. 25, the ambassador in France to the Director of the Political Department, Paris, 2 August 1936,
pp. 24–25. Ambassador Welczeck’s source was the former Swedish ambassador to Madrid and Lisbon, who
had been kicked out of Spain as a result of his rightist sympathies, and who had met with Salazar.
10. Correspondência de Pedro Teotónio Pereira, vol. 1, doc. 27a, draft official note attached to letter, Lisbon, 29 July
1936, Pedro Teotónio Pereira to António de Oliveira Salazar, p. 47.
11. Correspondência de Pedro Teotónio Pereira, vol. 1, doc. 27b, ‘Portugal’s declaration to the other nations
regarding the Spanish question’, p. 48.
tion was not, and would be adopted by the Lisbon government: ‘If England
opposed this plan (which is not likely), then ask it, as an alternative, for a
formal guarantee of the alliance in case of attack from Bolshevik Spain.’12
Spanish gratitude to Salazar was genuine and openly expressed in the
Nationalist camp from the very first days of the war. Portugal’s consul in
Seville, António de Cértima, wrote, on 4 August, that there was an ‘enthusiastic
movement of sympathy towards Portugal’ manifesting itself among the whole
population of the city: ‘Press notes have called the public’s attention to the
gratitude with which Spain must receive, at this moment, all demonstrations of
friendship made by the Portuguese nation […] for some days now a numerous
public, drawn from all social classes, has called in constantly into this Consulate
to leave calling cards and letters containing the warmest and most vibrant senti-
ments for the Portuguese nation and for the glorious creator of the New
State.’13 Private messages of thanks arrived from the earliest days of the rising
to Salazar from the leading rebels: Cabanellas, Queipo de Llano, and, of course,
Francisco Franco himself.
Ambassador Sánchez-Albornoz claimed that there was a significant change
in the stance of the Portuguese authorities once party and union militias began
to be armed by the embattled Madrid government: panic set in. Press and radio
propaganda in favor of the army were stepped up. He also described the level
of help being supplied to the army by the Portuguese authorities, of which he
was made aware by the collaboration of Spanish republicans and their Portu-
guese sympathizers. Others were aware of this help. Count Du Moulin, the
German chargé d’affaires in Lisbon, wrote,
[Portugal’s] Government determined on the clear policy of complete support for

the rebels as far as it was possible to do so and maintain the semblance of formal
neutrality, and it has consistently adhered to this policy.
This decision, extremely difficult as it was to carry out, could never have been
taken, of course, if the political structure of the country had not placed the gov-
ernment in the hands of a leader who is aware of his responsibilities and who has
the courage of his convictions: Prime Minister Salazar.
Salazar had, according to the German diplomat, marshaled the press in its
support of the Spanish army; facilitated the acquisition of all kinds of war
materiel, making sure that zealous customs officials were not looking in the
right direction as goods were unloaded and shipped; allowed the shipping of
munitions from the southern rebel zone to Burgos, through Portuguese
12. Ibid., doc. 27c, report attached to letter, Lisbon, 29 July 1936, Pedro Teotónio Pereira to António de
13. AOS CO NE 9 I, report, Portuguese consulate in Seville, 4 August 1936.
territory; and allowed German Ju-52 planes, on their way to Morocco, to land
in Portugal. Lastly, while placing republican refugees in camps, Salazar gave
nationalist refugees a warm welcome and allowed them to go free.14
It is doubtful whether any foreign government was surprised by Salazar’s
actions in the summer of 1936. As early as 1931 the Portuguese had already
sounded out the British embassy about the possibility of combined operations
in case of a triumphant communist rising in Spain.15 The answer had not been
very encouraging. In the wake of the Popular Front victory in 1936, and in the
face of mounting political violence across the border, the Portuguese returned
to this theme. Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, detailed a conversa-
tion with Armindo Monteiro for the benefit of the British ambassador at
Lisbon:
The Portuguese Foreign Minister asked to see me this morning, when he said that
he wished to speak to me upon a subject which was causing the Portuguese
government grave preoccupation. The condition of internal affairs in Spain was
going from bad to worse. The government now had very little authority anywhere,
and in many parts of the country conditions were scarcely distinguishable from
anarchy […]
But most serious of all, however, in the view of the Portuguese Foreign Minister,
were the relations which the Portuguese government were convinced existed
between the present Spanish government, with its communist tendencies, and the
communist party in Portugal […] There had in the past been instances of arms-
running between Spain and the Portuguese communists, and the Portuguese
government were afraid that with the return of Sr. Azaña to power this might
begin again. A particularly sinister feature of this danger was that behind it lay the
desire of the Left in Spain to make of Spain and Portugal a socialist-communist
political entity. It was their way of undermining Portuguese independence. […]
Eden was noncommittal, which the Portuguese took badly: ‘I thanked Mr.
Monteiro for telling me in advance of his preoccupations, and told him that
14. DGFP Series D vol. 3 doc. 53, report no. 2469, Lisbon, 22 August 1936, the chargé d’affaires in Portugal
to the Foreign Ministry.
15. See, for example, NA FO W 10424/801/36, Lisbon 31 August 1931, from Sir C. Russell to the Marquess
of Reading: ‘Commander Branco said that he went in fear of organized attacks and raids on Portuguese
territory from across the frontier and considered that time might come when Portugal and England would be
forced to act together to save whole of communist [sic] Peninsula from falling under communist rule. The
Minister for Foreign Affairs shares hope of his countrymen that in time of need, Portugal can count on
armed help of England.’ The Minutes which accompany the cable are very revealing, one British diplomat
commenting, ‘it rather looks as of Commander Branco was cherishing exaggerated illusions about the extent
of the Anglo-Portuguese alliance […]’. Another wrote, ‘I think that the Embassy at Lisbon should be careful
about this question. The Portuguese Govt. are naturally trying to obtain some assurance out of us that we
shall intervene in Portugal in certain eventualities. The policy is that we reserve to ourselves to judge the
circumstances under which our help shd. be given or withheld, and in these days it would surely be
impossible for us to intervene to stop an internal communist rising even though it may be aided from
abroad. If Spain does turn communist, then very likely Portugal will follow suit, but that is not our business.’
while we were aware of the unstable internal conditions in Spain, it was news
to me that the relations between the two countries had been so much
affected.’16 This was an early indication to Salazar, still learning his way around
international affairs, that the much-vaunted British alliance had its limitations,
and that it meant far less in London than it did in Lisbon. Since Britain was, for
the moment, militarily weak, Portugal was especially vulnerable. Reports
reaching Lisbon from the embassy in Madrid from February onwards made it
clear that with Azaña as Prime Minister, the exiles’ conspiracies were once
again in favor. Azaña, it was suggested, was in direct contact with the most
feared exile of all, Afonso Costa. The exiles had accepted the suggestion of the
small Partido Comunista Português (PCP, Portuguese Communist Party), for a
Popular Front against fascism. Conversely, conservative Spaniards began to
flock to Portugal, seeking protection from a revolution they believed imminent
(or wanting to participate in plots to overthrow Azaña) and raising Portuguese
concerns about forthcoming events. They were not in any way interfered with
by the Portuguese authorities.
On 29 July 1936 Salazar wrote Armindo Monteiro, in Paris, stating that
should the Spanish army be defeated, a new government would not be formed
in accordance with constitutional niceties:
It is to be expected that the socialist and communist militias will remain masters of
the situation, ensuring the continuation of the anarchy and violence in the interior.
Should a government be formed in the regular manner [nevertheless], we must
expect a time of difficulties, with successive conflicts and constant provocations
aiming at the expansion of communism in the Peninsula as a base for other
Bolshevik conquests. Even in the case of there being no solid communist organi-
zation, a victory against the army would have serious repercussions here as a result
of moral contagion and certainly as well of material support.17
British diplomats perceived another aim of Portuguese policy. The

exaggeration of the Spanish threat to Portugal, before and after the outbreak of
violence, was designed to force a recalcitrant Britain to furnish the Portuguese
army with the modern weapons it sought to ensure its transformation into a
useful fighting force. They divined as well that it was not so much the need to
defend Portugal’s borders that drove this process as Salazar’s political need to
secure the support of the army by offering them tangible improvements at a
time of restructuring. Certainly Armindo Monteiro, while Foreign Minister, was
16. NA FO W 2540/478/36, Mr. Eden to Sir C. Wingfield (Lisbon), Foreign Office, March 21, 1936.
17. Dez anos de política externa (1936–1947): A Nação Portuguesa e a Segunda Guerra Mundial (DAPE) vol. 3
(Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional de Lisboa, 1964), doc. 66, Lisbon, 29 July 1936, from the Secretary General of
the MNE to the Portuguese chargé d’affaires in London, pp. 49–51.
busy impressing on Eden the advantages of a modern Portuguese fighting
force;18 Salazar, who had taken over the War portfolio in May, had assured the
officer corps that ‘the army would shortly receive the necessary war materiel’.19
Salazar’s pro-Franco stance, evidenced from the start, applied as well to the
thousands of Spaniards of all political backgrounds who poured over the
border looking for refuge. Not all were treated in the same manner, in what
was undoubtedly an abdication of Portugal’ duties as a sovereign state. Such
duties were sacrificed at the altar of ideology and good relations with the
Spanish rebels; for a regime like Salazar’s, which had to keep a watchful eye on
its exiled opposition, harboring a foreign political refugee was by definition a
hostile action against that refugee’s home country. It is the treatment of
Spanish republican refugees which hangs darkest over Salazar’s reputation at
this time. There is no doubt that they were all tarred with the Bolshevik brush
and treated accordingly. Military men who crossed the border were initially
housed in Portuguese army barracks, but tended to be moved from there to
prisons. Civilians were either housed in hastily built and desolate camps near
the border or, much worse, immediately returned across the frontier to the
nationalist authorities and their death. Sánchez-Albornoz complained, of
course, but his words had no effect whatsoever. The ambassador’s actions were
totally undermined by police supervision, censorship, and, of course, the deser-
tion to the nationalist camp of many of his collaborators in the Spanish em-
bassy and other official bodies. One letter, written to a Spanish prisoner,
Colonel Puigdengolas, held by the Portuguese at a fort, paints a grim descrip-
tion of life in Lisbon for the ambassador and other committed republicans:
Since my last visit to you all I have been left absolutely alone, not only in the
embassy but also in the consulate. All republican civil servants have either left
Portugal or been arrested. There have been threats on my life and threats of kid-
napping against my daughters […] I have not received a single peseta from Madrid
since June […] Spanish republicans in Lisbon, scared, have not returned to this
house, which is surrounded by the police […] Verbally and by letter I have again
requested the authorization of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to allow all officers
to embark. I will keep you informed of the reply, which I do not expect to be
favorable […]20
18. NA FO W 771/762/36, United Kingdom Delegate to Foreign Office, Geneva, 27 January 1936, En-
closure: despatch, Geneva, 22 January 1936, Mr Eden to Sir C. Wingfield.
19. NA FO W 4531/933/36, report, Lisbon, 14 May 1936, Sir C. Wingfield to Mr Eden. Wingfield reported
the views of a representative of the Birmingham Small Arms Company, according to whom ‘there has been
very strong resentment among the younger officers at the delay in rearmament, since they had been told that
money was available last January yet no orders had been placed’; they were, however, hopeful that Salazar, as
War Minister, might be able to overturn this situation.
20. AOS CO NE 9I, letter, Lisbon, 11 September 1936, Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz to Colonel Puigdengolas.
Sánchez-Albornoz was wrong, since the Portuguese government did allow

many of those being held to be returned to Spain; a transport was organized to
the Catalan city of Tarragona, arriving there on 14 October 1936 with some
1,500 detainees.21 But the departure of this ship did not signal the end of the
refugee question, since desperate men continued to flee the border from Spain
into Portugal. Surprised by what awaited them, some natives of Galicia wrote
directly to Salazar from their hiding place in order to voice their complaints:
It is the case, most Excellent Sir, that, be it because of the suspension of relations,
be it because of sympathy for Spanish nationalism, we are being inhumanely
persecuted by the Portuguese authorities.
It is inhuman that we, despite our respect for Portugal’s politics, and seeking the
protection of its laws, should be forced to lead a humiliating life. It is inhuman that
we should be pursued and shot at through towns and hills (we have witnesses).22 It is inhuman,
most Excellent Sir, that when we are detained we should be delivered to the
Spanish nationalists.23
It is extremely difficult to calculate the number of republican prisoners held by

the Portuguese. One report, dated 25 September 1936, mentioned a total of
500 foreign prisoners, 496 of whom were Spanish. The greatest concentrations
were to be found in the fort of Caxias, just outside Lisbon (255) and in the
Northeastern city of Bragança (102). But the number was far higher, since the
camps on the Spanish border, notably at Barrancos, must also be included—
and since many Spaniards eluded the Portuguese authorities. One historian
estimates the total number of republican refugees at over 3,000.24
21. See AOS CO NE 9I, letter, Lisbon, 28 September 1936, Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz to Armindo
Monteiro. For a Portuguese description of the unique meeting between Portuguese officers and Spanish
anarchists, see ‘Chegou ontem a Lisboa o “Nyassa”’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 17 October 1936.
22. This passage was underlined by Salazar.
23. AOS CO NE 9I, letter, 13 September 1937, ‘A group of Spanish refugees in Portugal’ to António de
Oliveira Salazar. The letter continued, in a passage again marked by Salazar, with the request that they be
allowed to reside in a concentration camp, at their own expense, or to leave Portugal for a third country: ‘If
we are not to be allowed to live in Portugal, please, Your Excellency, allow us the freedom to leave it.’
Perhaps in response to an enquiry by Salazar, a note was delivered by the PVDE, signed by Captain Rui
Pessoa de Amorim, detailing the existence of large numbers of many Spaniards on the run in remote parts of
Portugal. According to this officer, the expense and danger of pursuing the fugitives in the mountainous
terrain in question was not worth the potential reward. Pessoa de Amorim further explained that ‘when
arrested, these individuals never admit to being on the run, “reds” or political exiles. They always allege
having entered Portugal illegally in search of work. Once their cases are prepared, their indigence, lack of
documentation and impossibility of becoming documented—for the Spanish Consulates refuse to do so—
lead [the Portuguese authorities] to propose their expulsion. This expulsion cannot be carried out by the
maritime border, since the Consulates do not give them documents, and the shipping companies do not sell
tickets to those who cannot identify themselves.’ AOS CO NE 9I, report, 27 September 1937, Captain Rui
Pessoa de Amorim.
24. Oliveira, Salazar e a Guerra Civil, p. 159.
The outbreak of ideological war in neighboring Spain also had an imme-
diate impact on the appearance, and the workings, of the New State. The war’s
outbreak coincided with the appearance of the Mocidade Portuguesa; as we have
seen, it was used to justify the creation of an armed militia, the Legião. Mean-
while, the TME’s powers were widened, while civil servants were forced to
swear an oath of loyalty to the regime. Matters did not end there. In Novem-
ber, Salazar took over the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was now Minister of
Finance, of War, and of Foreign Affairs. His quest for personal power, for all
his protestations to the contrary, seemed unstoppable. As before, though, this
dictatorial attitude was necessary in order to keep the extreme Right, which had
been energized by the war in Spain, in check. This was especially true in
relation to the Legião. Salazar had to show this radical Right, and the undecided
conservatives, that he could take charge and keep their common enemies at
bay. One important episode in this process was the naval revolt of September.
At dawn on 8 September two vessels, the sloop Afonso de Albuquerque and the
destroyer Dão, were seized by part of their crews, who then attempted to take
the ships out of Lisbon in order to join the Spanish Republican fleet. The ships
were, however, badly damaged by coastal artillery and forced to surrender. At
first glance the episode was an embarrassment, since these were two of the
newest vessels in the fleet, part of the much trumpeted resurrection of the
Portuguese navy. Now they lay beached on the Tagus. The temporary loss of
the Dão, given Salazar’s identification with the ship, must have been especially
galling. However, the mutiny was used by Salazar as a salutary warning of the
dangers facing Portugal, and a demonstration of strength on the part of the
authorities. Salazar wrote of the two vessels, in an official note,
Their construction was ordered with that clarity of conscience which only the pur-
suit of duty can create, although they were paid for by the labor of a whole people.
It was with the same imperturbable serenity that I ordered them to be shelled until
they either surrendered or sank. The reason—which stands taller than any other
sentiment—was this: the ships of the Portuguese navy can be sent to the bottom
of the sea, but they cannot serve under any flag other than that of Portugal. In a
single moment many months’ savings were wasted, it is true: but we cannot
restrict our actions by such considerations when the honor of the nation is at
stake.25
Often in the past naval revolts had heralded a revolution; not this time. The
German minister, Huene, stressed how in control of the situation Salazar had
been:
25. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘A ordem pública em Portugal e os acontecimentos de Espanha’ in Discursos,
vol. 2, pp. 184–85.
It is even said that Salazar, being well informed by agents of the state of spirit of
the crew aboard the Afonso de Albuquerque upon its return from a port in red Spain,
and having been able to pre-empt the mutiny by preventive measures, provoked
the dramatic development, or at the very least allowed matters to run their usual
course.26
Recognition of the Nationalist Government
In October 1936 the Lisbon government broke off relations with the gov-
ernment of the Spanish Republic, giving de facto—if not yet de jure—recognition
to the military junta in Burgos. The reason for this significant step was the
‘attitude of the Madrid government’
1. in giving wide publicity to grave and unfounded accusations which they made
against the Portuguese government before the latter had given any reply;
2. in violating the correspondence addressed to the Portuguese chargé d’affaires
and abusively retaining it;
3. in humiliating the diplomatic agents of the Portuguese government;
4. in ordering the public search of their offices;
5. in attempting to attack a vessel flying the pennant of the Portuguese navy;
6. in pretending to believe that the Spanish ambassador is deprived of his liberty
in Lisbon.
Understandably, the British, who had not been consulted, were upset.27 But
the expectation in Lisbon (and in this Salazar was not alone) was that Madrid
would soon fall to the advancing Spanish army, and that once this had
occurred full and universal recognition of Franco would have to follow swiftly.
Salazar did not follow Hitler and Mussolini in recognizing Franco de jure in
November, and delayed over a year, until December 1937, before naming
Pedro Teotónio Pereira ‘special agent’ to the Nationalist zone. This would
prove to be a difficult mission, since it was impossible to establish secure
communications with Salazar:
Telephone conversations are uncertain and often extremely difficult in terms of

understanding and I am sure they are listened to. Telegrams take many hours and
for days now have arrived completely mangled.28
26. Louçã, Portugal visto pelos Nazis, doc. 7, Lisbon, 12 September 1936, from the German legation to the
Auswärtiges Amt, pp. 48–50.
27. Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919–1939 (DBFP) Second Series vol. 17 Western Pact Negotiations: Out-
break of a Spanish Civil War June 23, 1936–January 2, 1937 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1979),
doc. 324, Foreign Office, 23 October 1936, Mr. Eden to Sir C. Wingfield (Lisbon), pp. 462–63.
28. Correspondência de Pedro Teotónio Pereira, vol. 1, doc. 55, letter, Salamanca, 30 April (1938), Pedro Teotónio
Pereira to António de Oliveira Salazar, pp. 101–4.
As a result, Teotónio Pereira favored going to Portugal and talking directly

to Salazar.
It might not seem immediately obvious why Teotónio Pereira should be
sent to Burgos, given that he had no relevant diplomatic experience, and that
his advice to Salazar in July 1936 had been less than sensible. The answer to
this problem lies not in Teotónio Pereira’s diplomatic skills (Salazar would
often employ politically appointed ambassadors, to the detriment of career
diplomats), but rather in Portuguese political situation. Teotónio Pereira’s
departure from the Rossio station, in Lisbon, was the scene of a great demon-
stration of his supporters, as were the rail stops along the way. Fernando
Martins, Teotónio Pereira’s biographer, writes, of the crowd that assembled in
Lisbon on ‘that cold morning in January 1938’ to bid farewell to the ex-Under-
secretary of State for Corporations, and Minister of Commerce and Industry,
that
it included all that was truly new and which had sought to consolidate itself
through the inauguration of the new constitutional regime in April 1933. It was
characterized by its youth, its nationalism, and its voluntarism […] They [the
demonstrators] were united in their devotion to Salazar but also in their
impatience over his failure to side unequivocally with the revolutionary spirit and
practice which characterized the program and the objectives of certain groups and
individuals in the Right of the New State’.29
In other words, Teotónio Pereira’s sending to Burgos was part of the cam-
paign which Salazar was waging in order to control the radical Right, including
its most visible expression, the Legião Portuguesa. He was removing, from the
scene, a potential rival. Martins continues,
[Teotónio Pereira] had become, willingly or otherwise, as a result of the supporters
he had gathered around his person, and of the power those supporters conferred
on him, a prominent figure which many of the regime’s most radical sectors saw
not just as a complement to Salazar but, instead, an actual alternative to the head
of government.30
This was a gamble that paid off, since not only was this radical Right
deprived of an obvious leader, but Salazar gained an effective ambassador,
whom he would often call on in the future: Teotónio Pereira would serve in
Rio de Janeiro, London and, on two different occasions, Washington.
29. Martins, Pedro Teotónio Pereira, p. 496.

30. Ibid., p. 498.
On 28 April 1938 Salazar announced that de jure recognition of Franco’s
government was forthcoming, and indeed this was given on 12 May. The
gesture was extremely well received in Burgos, where Franco and his collabora-
tors had been sure Salazar would simply take his cue on the matter from
London. Franco dispatched his brother Nicolás as his representative to Lisbon,
and he would remain there for a decade as ambassador. There was a delay
between the announcement and Nicolás’ departure for Lisbon. According to
Teotónio Pereira, the Generalissimo’s brother was holding out for the more
prestigious embassy in Rome.31 Good relations with Nationalist Spain did not
mean, however, total confidence in Franco’s strategic abilities. Salazar and
Teotónio Pereira shared in the general frustration with the length of the war,
fearing that it might drag on long enough to become a part of the generalized
European conflict which everyone was predicting. What then for Portugal, and
its alliance with Great Britain? Salazar was informed by Teotónio Pereira, on 13
May 1938, that General Yagüe had been arrested on Franco’s orders after a
speech in which he had criticized the Generalissimo. Teotónio Pereira added,
‘may God will the end of this war before new splits appear!’32 When Teixeira
de Sampaio met the German chargé d’affaires, in August 1938, he heard a long
complaint about the way Franco was fighting the war and engaging in endless
intrigue. Given plenty of warning about a forthcoming Republican attack on
the Ebro, Franco had done nothing to prepare the defense of the sector.
Sampaio asked at the end of his note, ‘To what purpose did he tell me all of
this?’33 The commander of the Portuguese Military Mission to Spain (see
below), while briefly in Lisbon in September 1938, added to this impression.
He explained that both sides lacked reserves with which to effect a strategic
breakthrough, and that the Nationalists had revealed grave shortcomings at all
levels in the battle so far. Their commanders dated from the Moroccan wars,
and simply did not understand modern warfare; the ‘Reds’, starting from
scratch, were improving steadily. Unless something dramatic occurred,
Franco’s victory would not be swift.34
Support for, and recognition of, Franco and the Nationalist cause in
general did not blind Salazar to the threat that that same Nationalist cause
posed, potentially, to Portugal. There could be no excessive camaraderie with a
hyper-nationalist Spanish movement some of which, of ideological necessity,
31. Correspondência de Pedro Teotónio Pereira, vol. 1, doc. 56, undated letter (probably 1 May 1938), Pedro
Teotónio Pereira to António de Oliveira Salazar, pp. 105–6.
32. Correspondência de Pedro Teotónio Pereira, vol. 1, doc. 58, letter, Salamanca, 13 May 1938, Pedro Teotónio
33. AOS CO NE 4, Ministério dos Negócios Estrangeiros (MNE), note, Luís Teixeira de Sampaio, 25
August 1938.
34. AOS CO NE 9I, letter, Lisbon, 12 September 1938, Colonel Anacleto dos Santos, Commander of the
Portuguese Military Observation Mission in Spain, to Undersecretary of State of War.
would have designs on Portuguese independence. Upon his arrival in Burgos,
in 1938, Teotónio Pereira was confronted with the evidence that elements
within the Falange had their eyes set covetously on Portugal; his complaints to
Franco did not meet with much success. In May of that year Salazar expressed
his alarm at the growing intensity of cross-border intellectual activities, notably
congresses and lectures. He wrote, ‘I have the greatest misgivings about so-
called cultural interchange. This has only ever served for the Spanish to heap
praise upon Portuguese writers, carrying out through this means a type of
peaceful penetration that must not be encouraged.’ He added, ‘the current
crisis, in which we have helped nationalist Spain to defeat communism, must
not make us forget the immutable factors of peninsular politics.’35
The containment of the radical Right, evident, as we have seen, in Salazar’s
cautious but firm dealings with the Legião Portuguesa and its supporters, and in
Teotónio Pereira’s nomination as special representative in Burgos, also mani-
fested itself in the treatment reserved for the thousands of Portuguese volun-
teers serving in the Nationalist forces. Referred to, at the time as the Viriatos,36
these men had not been allowed to leave Portugal in large batches, or to serve
in specifically Portuguese units. Recruited all over Portugal by Spanish authori-
ties, most of these volunteers served in the Spanish Foreign Legion, although
some fought in the Falange or the Carlist militias. The Viriatos are sometimes
confused with a Portuguese military mission in Spain, created in March 1937
and commanded by Colonel Anacleto dos Santos. The latter’s task was to
observe the Nationalist army at work, in order to learn of recent improvements
in warfare. As a result, the mission rotated a number of specialists in and out of
front-line Spanish units (including air units), where some of its elements par-
ticipated in the fighting. Within the mission, Captain Jorge Botelho Moniz, the
same man who had turned the Rádio Clube Português into a propaganda agency
for the military rebels, exercised some supervision of the Viriatos’ efforts and
needs. Botelho Moniz’s telegrams kept the Portuguese Ministry of War—and
thus Salazar, its leader—abreast of developments affecting individual Portu-
guese volunteers.37 Botelho Moniz was especially keen to turn the Viriatos into
a political force, possibly an elite unit of the Legião: a battle-hardened cohort of
35. AOS CO PC 12 D, António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘Instruções sobre o intercâmbio cultural com a Espanha
nacionalista’, handwritten draft and typed note, 25 May 1938.
36. The original Viriato (Viriathus) was a Lusitanian leader who had defied Rome in the 2nd Century B.C.
37. A great deal of confusion surrounds the actual number of Portuguese who served in Spain, partly because
Hugh Thomas put the total at 20,000. One Portuguese historian has looked at the matter in great detail.
Actual records found in Lisbon and Madrid reveal 2,654 volunteers, to which must be added the Military
Mission personnel. César Oliveira explains that many more might have been recruited by the Spanish under a
false identity, either because they were minors (and some boys as young as fifteen joined up), others because
they were on the run, either from the law or domestic difficulties. Given these and other considerations,
Oliveira advances the figure of 8,000 as a maximum. Oliveira, Salazar e a Guerra Civil.., p. 247.
politically motivated men at the service of the regime. Teotónio Pereira, first as
agent, then as ambassador, also kept an eye on the volunteers, and visited them
at the front. He was excited by their triumphs and the praise heaped on them
by Spanish superiors:
I went to Málaga to visit the authorities and yesterday I was at Cáceres. The Tercio
has a fine hospital there, dedicated to Our Lady of Fátima. There were over fifty
Portuguese being treated there, some of them mutilated or badly wounded. There
was a solemn Mass for our dead and then I inaugurated a beautiful tile panel with
the Virgin and the little shepherds. Military parade, speeches, great enthusiasm and
not a single sour note. Portugal and your name always mentioned at the high point
of the events.38
In April, Teotónio Pereira wrote of the need to provide Portuguese

soldiers with military chaplains.39 Salazar and Santos Costa were, under-
standably, quick to crush any desire to recognize the Viriatos as a political
entity, especially one imbued with the kind of special legitimacy that wartime
service, and a modicum of martyrs, can bestow. On 26 November 1938
Botelho Moniz wrote Salazar, pledging his loyalty and complaining that despite
all the valor shown by the men of his section, and indeed the Mission, specula-
tion had broken out about their actions and intentions.40 Despite these pleas of
innocence, Salazar remained firm. There was to be no victorious parade
through Lisbon when the war in Spain ended (although the soldiers who
arrived on 8 June were given an important reception, at which some members
of the government were present), and no specifically Portuguese contingent in
the Madrid victory parade. Not surprisingly, given the attempt by the far Right
to make use of the Viriatos, Salazar applied to them the usual tactic of death by
constriction. On 9 June 1939 Teotónio Pereira mentioned that thousands of
Portuguese had served in the Foreign Legion, and that many of them had been
wounded and rendered unable to work; he added that their performance on the
battlefield meant that the country could not turn its back on them, even if the
government had had nothing to do with their recruitment (so much so that the
embassy in Spain had no concrete numbers regarding the Portuguese soldiers
in the Tercio). A threat hung over Portuguese veterans. As foreigners, they
would not receive, like their Spanish counterparts, preferential treatment in
terms of finding employment in Spain; if residing outside Spain (including
38. Correspondência de Pedro Teotónio Pereira, vol. 1, doc. 53, letter, Salamanca, 22 February 1938, Pedro
Teotónio Pereira to António de Oliveira Salazar, pp. 97–98.
39. Correspondência de Pedro Teotónio Pereira, vol. 1 doc. 54, letter, Dafundo, 26 April 1938, Pedro Teotónio
Pereira to António de Oliveira Salazar
40. AOS CP 182, letter, Lisbon, 26 November 1938, Jorge Botelho Moniz to António de Oliveira Salazar.
Portugal, to which most would presumably try to return), they would not
receive any pension. There was thus a possibility that they would take on
Spanish nationality in order to receive the benefits to which they were en-
titled.41 There is nothing in the archives to suggest that Salazar was in any way
concerned by this circumstance.
Salazar’s Diplomacy from Non-Intervention to a New Departure
Once London and Paris had hit upon Non-Intervention as the best way to
deal with the Spanish Civil War, they immediately began to sell the idea to
other capitals. Lisbon, however, resisted, raising apparently principled objec-
tions which exasperated British and French diplomats. But it was not just prin-
ciple, as we have seen, that was motivating the Portuguese position; there was
also the pressing need to provide as much aid as possible, as quickly as
possible, to the military insurgents. The first foreign contact with the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs in relation to Non-Intervention occurred on 5 August, when
the British chargé d’affaires and the French minister in Lisbon met Foreign
Minister Armindo Monteiro, asking him to adhere to the new strategy for con-
tainment of the crisis. Monteiro played for time, asking for the British position
on a number of issues: the status of the international zone of Tangier (an
enclave in Spanish Morocco), the arrival of Soviet weapons and munitions in
Spain, recognition of the Spanish army, which controlled almost the whole
length of the Portuguese border, as a belligerent, and, most importantly,
Portugal’s national defense. Azaña, Monteiro stated, ‘had publicly proclaimed
her [sic] intention to march on Lisbon if the Spanish government win’. This, of
course, the Portuguese government could not allow. It believed that by aiding
the Spanish army it might avert this danger, but the British government was
now asking it to waive away this option; would it, then, be ready to step in to
protect Portugal should the Spanish Republic indeed emerge triumphant from
the ongoing contest and begin its march on the Portugal capital? Could Britain
bring troops and airplanes to Portugal in the space of twenty-four hours? This
London would not do, since it viewed the Portuguese Alliance as serious
commitment, but not an automatic one: London reserved the right to evaluate
the merits of a Portuguese request for assistance. There was one final question;
Monteiro wanted to know what the British government wanted from the war:
‘It cannot be in the interests of His Majesty’s government that Spanish army if
victorious in spite of His Majesty’s government’s intervention should be full of
resentment against His Majesty’s government.’ Such an outcome would be
41. Correspondência de Pedro Teotónio Pereira, vol. 1, doc. 77, letter, San Sebastian, 9 June 1939, Pedro Teotónio
dangerous for both Britain and Portugal.42 This last point was crucial, and
would form the basis of Portugal’s diplomatic activity for the next ten years:
reconciling Burgos (later Madrid) and London, so that Franco need not rely
exclusively on the Axis powers for foreign support and guidance. On 14
August Monteiro agreed in principle with Non-Intervention, adding never-
theless that there were a number of points he insisted on making.43 A further
week passed before Monteiro put pen to paper, again adding a number of con-
ditions which made the Portuguese gesture essentially worthless. Thus, for
example, the enlistment of volunteers for Spain was an action contrary to the
spirit and form of the agreement; ‘consent of any government to such acts will
release the Portuguese government from its obligations.’ Salazar’s government
also viewed ‘defense against any subversive regime established in Spain’ as lying
outside the scope of the agreement.44 By the time Portugal adhered to Non-
Intervention, the worst had passed for the rebellious army, whose two parts—
in the north and in the south—had come together to form a single Nationalist
force.45
Non-Intervention soon showed itself to be a farce, since German and
Italian aid to the Spanish army arrived in ever-greater quantities as the summer
wore on. The Franco-British response was not to confront those who broke
the agreement, but to talk to them, in an attempt to prevent the crisis from
escalating into a generalized conflict. Out of this effort arose the Non-
Intervention Committee. Once again, Lisbon was going to delay the process,
this time in a more pronounced fashion. On 1 September Monteiro informed
the British ambassador and the French minister in Lisbon that his government
did not feel bound to enter the Committee, since the latter did not follow from
the letter of the Agreement; as a gesture of goodwill, however, Monteiro asked
to see a strict definition of the Committee’s remit. For good measure, Monteiro
added that ‘it must be remembered that the devastating war in Spain is between
42. DBFP Second Series, vol. 17 Western Pact Negotiations: Outbreak of a Spanish Civil War June 23, 1936—
January 2, 1937 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1979), doc. 65, Lisbon, 7 August 1936, Mr. Dodd
(Lisbon) to Foreign Office, pp. 68–70. A reply was sent from the Foreign Office on 10 August: See DBFP
Second Series, vol. 17, doc. 7, London, 10 August 1936, Foreign Office to Mr. Dodd (Lisbon), pp. 80–81.
43. These included that the agreement be implemented with ‘inexorable rigor’; that strictest control be
exercised over the sale of arms from producing countries, which of course excluded Portugal; that Portugal,
uniquely affected by events in Spain, be allowed to keep its freedom ‘to take such action as may be dictated
by their duty to preserve domestic peace in Portugal, the lives, property and liberties of the people and
security, integrity, and independence of the country’. See DBFP Second Series, vol. 17, doc. 90, Lisbon, 14
August 1936, Mr. Dodd (Lisbon) to Foreign Office, pp. 96–97.
44. DBFP Second Series, vol. 17, doc 119, Lisbon, 21 August 1936, Sir C. Wingfield (Lisbon) to Mr. Eden,
pp. 142–43.
45. On 2 August, the German chargé d’affaires in Lisbon, Du Moulin, reported that the steamships Kamerun
and Wigbert had docked in Lisbon, and that thanks to Salazar’s ‘personal handling of details’, the ‘material’ had
been safely delivered. DGFP Series D vol. 3, doc. 52, 2 August 1936, the Chargé d’Affaires in Portugal to the
Foreign Ministry, p. 53.
Western civilization and an effort to overthrow it by terrorism.’46 Despite
British appeals to the contrary, Portugal, of all the signatories of the Non-Inter-
vention Agreement, was the sole country absent from the first meeting of the
Committee, on 9 September, in the Locarno room of the Foreign Office.
Given the nature of Portugal’s involvement in the conflict, not to mention its
strategic position, this was an anomaly that had to be resolved; the pride and
reputation of the Foreign Office and the Quai d’Orsay were at stake, and a
small country like Portugal did not have the means to stand in their way. On 4
September, Monteiro was able to tell the German minister, Huene, that
Portugal had to know exactly what the Committee ‘controlled and how it was
to exercise its control’: Portugal simply could not agree to having Soviet repre-
sentatives on its borders. Monteiro added that ‘basically he was against such a
commission, just as Germany was, and he only wished to avoid being accused
later of having obstructed a solution of the situation.’47
While the British and French representatives in Lisbon attempted to put
pressure directly on Salazar, their superiors, Anthony Eden and Yves Delbos,
seized on a meeting of the General Assembly of the League of Nations to
bring pressure to bear on Armindo Monteiro.48 Monteiro had clear guidelines
from Salazar: Portuguese membership of the Non-Intervention Committee
could only be considered once the powers and rules of the Committee had
been clearly spelled out. In London, meanwhile, the German representative
was doing his best to buy time for Portugal by stressing that the actions of the
Lisbon government could not be discussed by the Committee, a stance in
which he found himself alone, since even the Italian representative, Ambassa-
dor Dino Grandi, ‘energetically stressed before the committee the necessity of
Portugal’s participation’. The German Foreign Ministry instructed its Rome
embassy to obtain from the Italian government a guarantee that Grandi would
be called to order on this matter.49 On 23 September the Portuguese press
carried a long official note by Salazar explaining the true meaning of the war in
Spain—the army’s fight against international bolshevism—and why Portugal
had not yet participated in the workings of the Non-Intervention Committee:
essentially, because its existence had not been mentioned in the initial Agree-
46. DBFP Second Series, vol. 17, doc. 153, Lisbon, 1 September 1936, Sir C. Wingfield (Lisbon) to Mr. Eden.
47. DGFP Series D vol. 3, doc. 70, Lisbon, 4 September 1936, the minister in Portugal to the Foreign
Ministry, pp. 70–72.
48. See DBFP Second Series vol. 17, doc. 199, Lisbon, 17 September 1936, Sir C. Wingfield (Lisbon) to Mr.
Eden, for a brief account of the British ambassador’s meeting with Secretary General Sampaio, who linked
British hesitation to supply Portugal with arms to the ongoing rumors, picked up from a number of sources,
of a proposed arms embargo against Portugal. Wingfield added that ‘such an embargo would cause deep
resentment here whilst encouraging those who would like to overthrow the government.’
49. DGFP Series D vol. 3, doc. 84, Berlin, 21 September 1936, the Acting Director of the Political Depart-
ment to the embassy in Italy, pp. 91–92. These instructions were carried out, and Grandi was given fresh
directives on the subject.
ment, and because Portugal had lived up to that same Agreement.50 To blame
Portugal, which did not produce armaments, for their arrival in Spain, when all
major European armaments producers were represented in the Committee,
was, argued Salazar, with some logic, absurd. However, once the Committee’s
president, W. S. Morrison, had indeed drawn up a document specifying the
Committee’s rules, Monteiro believed himself able to sign up to it, and in-
structed the Portuguese chargé d’affaires in London to appear as the country’s
representative in London.51 This happened on the same day that Salazar’s note
was published. By the time Salazar, through Teixeira de Sampaio, had counter-
manded Monteiro’s initiative, it was too late. Lisbon’s action led Monteiro to
tender his resignation as Foreign Minister,52 although his pretension was for
the moment rejected. In a laconic note published on 29 September, which
completely contradicted his earlier comments on the subject, Salazar informed
the country that the government, now satisfied about the workings of the
Committee, had instructed Portugal’s representative in London to attend its
sessions.53 A long period of indecision followed, while Lisbon and Moscow
traded insults and accusations in London, to the delight of the Lisbon press,
and the União Nacional capitalized on this diplomatic clash, organizing, on 31
October, a large demonstration of support for Salazar and his foreign policy.54
Salazar was not keen to discipline a minister who, while displaying
dangerous levels of initiative, also enjoyed good relations with Anthony Eden.
Armindo Monteiro was, in other words, an important tool in the opportunistic
strategy that was evolving as a result of events in Spain. Portugal was offering
to serve as the go-between between Burgos and London, presenting the
Nationalists with an alternative to total reliance on Italy and Germany, through
a working relationship with Great Britain. This was a new departure for Portu-
guese diplomacy, which had hitherto traditionally sought to interpose London
between itself and Madrid. The solution eventually arrived at by Salazar was to
50. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘Os acontecimentos de Espanha e a não-intervenção’ in Discursos, vol. 2, pp.
193–206. For domestic consumption Salazar then established a link between the campaign to denigrate
Portugal over its reluctance to embrace non-intervention and the on-going rumors of the partition and sale
of Portugal’s colonies.
51. DBFP Second Series vol. 17, doc. 222, Geneva, 23 September 1936, Mr. Edmond (Geneva) to Foreign
Office, p. 306.
52. Monteiro’s biographer has noted that the telegram in which Monteiro tendered his resignation, pointing
out that no-one could reasonably say that the government had suffered a diplomatic reversal by entering the
Committee on its terms, was not included in DAPE. Pedro Aires Oliveira, Armindo Monteiro: Uma biografia
política (Lisbon: Bertrand, 1999), pp. 163–64.
53. ‘Nota Oficiosa’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 29 September 1936.
54. The Diário da Manhã (Lisbon) published a number of articles under the title ‘Moscow’s insolence’. On 29
October 1936 it also published Armindo Monteiro’s letter to the president of the Non-Intervention
Committee, replying to Russian accusations of Portuguese breaches of non-intervention—a document which
sets out Lisbon’s account of Russian involvement in Spanish affairs before and after the outbreak of the Civil
War. For Salazar’s brief speech to the large crowd that turned out to express its support, see Salazar, ‘A
guerra de Espanha e a suspensão de relações diplomáticas’, in Discursos e notas políticas, vol. 2, pp. 221–26.
send Monteiro as ambassador to London. When, in October, Armindo
Monteiro again offered his resignation, Salazar accepted it, informing him of
the decision to send him to the Court of St James’s. The text of this letter was
vintage Salazar:
I know very well that it is now seven years of exhausting and worrying labor. And,
moreover, that you have wasted an important part of your health on government
service. In these conditions, I no longer dare to impose on you the sacrifice of
continuing at your post in this or any other emergency.
As a dedicated and most thankful friend I should, however, tell you this: if you
stay, you will perform a great service to the government and the country; if you
insist on leaving, we must see to it that you do not leave enfeebled, or even vul-
nerable to attack. But speculation would be great, especially since no great
explanation could be forthcoming, unless you immediately accept a post equi-
valent in dedication and importance to the one you are leaving behind. I can only
think of one that meets these criteria: the embassy in London.55
After another letter along similar lines, Monteiro accepted Salazar’s offer, and
recommended that Salazar himself replace him at Foreign Affairs: ‘It seems to
me today that, in contrast to what may have happened in former days, Finance,
which is set on a sound course, is less important.’56
In October, Sir Charles Wingfield, the British ambassador in Lisbon,
informed Eden that Portugal was not committing breaches of the Non-
Intervention agreement; the country had little or no war material to spare and,
of course, the Spanish army now had a number of adequate ports to receive
such material directly.57 Thus, ‘when specific cases are mentioned they generally
either occurred before agreement came into force or else concern supply of
petrol or other goods which are not prohibited.’ Speaking to the House of
Commons on 29 of that month, Eden repeated this view, and attacked the
Soviet government for picking out its Portuguese counterpart as an entity in
breach of Non-Intervention.58 The following month, Italy and Germany
recognized Franco as the legitimate ruler of Spain, which meant, in the eyes of
Lisbon, that they must now view the Soviet government as ‘the organizer of
war against [the] legitimate Spanish government’. This meant, in effect, that the
55. Rosas et al. (eds), Armindo Monteiro, doc. 15a, letter, 8 October 1936, António de Oliveira Salazar to
Armindo Monteiro, p. 55
56. Ibid., doc. 18, letter, Urgeiriça, 11 November 1936, Armindo Monteiro to António de Oliveira Salazar, p.
63.
57. DBFP Second Series vol. 17, doc. 313, Lisbon, 21 October 1936, Sir C. Wingfield (Lisbon) to Mr. Eden,
pp. 446–47.
58. House of Commons Debates, p. 316, cols. 39–51.
Non-Intervention Committee had ‘sustained a mortal blow’.59 By 1937 Non-
Intervention, despite (or perhaps because of) its complete failure to do
anything other than prevent the outbreak of a generalized war, had shifted in
focus. The need to exercise control in Spanish ports and over the land borders
with Spain became accepted, a follow-up to an earlier question of preventing
more foreign volunteers from entering Spain. Again Portugal lagged behind,
refusing to participate in a process which its representative in London deemed
‘incompatible with the prestige of the country’. It was unfair, Salazar argued, to
punish the Portuguese government for the sins of other, more powerful,
countries which had signed up to Non-Intervention but did not respect it.60
This time it was not just Paris and London which wanted a Portuguese change
of tack; even Berlin seemed to desire Portuguese adherence to a scheme that
was not really about ending the war,61 but rather about continuing the useful
policy of Non-Intervention under a new guise:
It would be extremely regrettable from every point of view if Portugal alone were
in existing circumstances to refuse to co-operate in this scheme, which has been
prepared and thought out with greatest care and concern for the interests of all
parties.62
Salazar was faced with either allowing international observers into Portugal
or having Portugal-bound shipping subjected to the same controls as that
bound for Spain; he was already being blamed for the looming breakdown in
Non-Intervention, a manifestly unfair charge given what the whole process
actually entailed. On 2 February he told Wingfield that there was little chance
of accepting foreign control, given the state of public opinion on the matter
(he used the indignant reaction to the League of Nations loan in 1928 as an
example of this opinion, although it was, of course, an entirely different
issue).63 Under intense pressure, Salazar held out until 9 February, when he
proposed another way out: as a sign of friendship towards Britain, Portugal
would accept the presence of British observers, reporting not to the
Committee but rather to their government; this, then, was to be a part of a
59. This quote was taken by Sir C. Wingfield from the Lisbon daily Diário de Notícias of 19 November 1936.
The ambassador added that given the existence of press censorship in Portugal, one had to allow for the
possibility of a Portuguese withdrawal from the Committee. DBFP Second Series, vol. 17, doc. 387, Lisbon,
19 November 1936, Sir C. Wingfield (Lisbon) to Mr. Eden, p. 566.
60. DBFP Second Series vol. 18 European Affairs, January 2–June 30, 1937 (London: HMSO, 1980), doc. 79,
Lisbon, 17 January 1937, Sir C. Wingfield to Mr. Eden, p. 105.
61. DGFP Series D vol. 3, doc. 217, Berlin, 2 February 1937, the Acting State Secretary to the legation in
Portugal, pp. 238–40.
62. DBFP Second Series vol. 18, doc. 128, Foreign Office, 31 January 1937, Foreign Office to Sir C. Wing-
field, pp. 168–69.
63. Ibid., doc. 138, Lisbon, 2 February 1937, Sir C. Wingfield to Mr. Eden, pp. 176–77.
British-Portuguese agreement—not a multi-lateral deal.64 Salazar insisted on
this point, while Monteiro objected to it. The different nationalities of the
observers in the Pyrenees would find it hard to work together, while the strictly
British presence on the Portuguese borders and ports would doubtlessly be
efficient: this harmed Portuguese interests and Franco’s cause. In order to pre-
serve Portugal’s good relationship with Britain, the Lisbon government would
have to ensure that no contraband was making its way into Spain; ‘but if that is
the case, in what way can we be useful to out Spanish friends?’65 Meanwhile,
abroad, the old notion that Portugal merely did Britain’s bidding would make
an unwelcome reappearance. Despite Monteiro’s misgivings, the new arrange-
ment came into being, and was made public in an official note published on 20
February, which stressed that the government had refused international super-
vision of its borders.66
In May 1937, Anthony Eden decided to launch an initiative to arrive at a
mediated settlement to the war in Spain. British ambassadors in Lisbon, Paris,
Berlin, Rome, and Moscow were asked their opinion about the suitability of the
enterprise. Wingfield’s reply, dated 13 May, stressed the opportunity of con-
sulting first with the Portuguese, who might have a lot to offer and who were
keen to strengthen links with Britain. However, when Eden’s views became
more concrete, involving a pause in the fighting to allow for the withdrawal of
foreign volunteers, the Portuguese government objected: firstly, because by
acting outside the Committee, the governments in question would be under-
mining the body set up to resolve Spanish issues; secondly, because the pro-
posal for a pause was being made at the time of a successful offensive by one
of the parties—in this case, the Nationalist assault on the Basque Country.67
Portugal acted forcefully again the following month, informing London that
the withdrawal of German and Italian ships from Non-Intervention duties
meant that there was now no parity at sea, which meant that there was no point
in Portugal participating in control activities. When questioned by the British
ambassador about the wisdom of this course, Teixeira de Sampaio replied that
the Portuguese government did not ‘understand why His Majesty’s government
seemed to be strongly averse to the idea of victory of General Franco’, who
had given Lisbon guarantees that he was not politically or economically bound
to Germany or Italy.68 Eden, in London, complained to Monteiro, pointing out
64. DBFP Second Series vol. 18, doc. 158, Lisbon, 9 February 1937, Sir C. Wingfield to Foreign Office.
65. Fernando Rosas et al. (eds), Armindo Monteiro, doc. 21, Letter, London, 22 March 1937, Armindo
Monteiro to António de Oliveira Salazar, pp. 72–73.
66. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘Portugal e a Guerra de Espanha’ in Discursos, vol. 2, pp. 267–70.
67. DBFP Second Series vol. 18, doc. 525, Lisbon, 22 May 1937, Sir C. Wingfield to Mr. Eden, pp. 791–92.
68. DBFP Second Series vol. 18, docs. 655 & 656, Lisbon, June 25 1937, Sir C. Wingfield to Mr. Eden, pp.
938–39. The Portuguese dilemma was neatly encapsulated by a British journalist who wrote, ‘If only Britain,
instead of Germany and Italy, were backing Franco! Dr Salazar’s task would then be so much simpler and the
that at sea there was still French and British cover—although, of course, on
land, there were still the Portuguese authorities on the border.69 Nevertheless,
as he delivered this blow to British hopes, Salazar hoped to make the British
see that there was value to be had in an independent Portuguese foreign policy,
notifying Eden of the details of a conversation between Franco and a
Portuguese emissary, the kind of immediate account of Franco’s thinking that
had become closed off to the British government.
On 18 November 1937 Teixeira de Sampaio met the British chargé
d’affaires. The latter expressed worries about the future of Spain, given the
presence of 80,000 Italians and nobody knew how many Germans. Sampaio
coolly replied that the Portuguese had long warned London about this fact:
If they [the British] though that we would be éblouis with the existence of large
German armaments factories in Spain, beyond the reach of any English influence,
they were wrong. We had seen the dangers and signposted them. I added that I
thought I knew that the British government was aware of Franco’s opinion and
the Peninsula’s countries should follow the British political trajectory.
This the British diplomat did not deny, adding that Franco would need
British help for reconstruction.70 A year later, as the war was coming to an end,
Salazar reflected on the state of the British alliance: relations between the two
countries had never been better, since both understood each other’s needs:
Alliances imply rights and obligations on both sides. Our alliance with Britain will
be strong in proportion as those rights and obligations are equally balanced. More-
over, our very frankness is appreciated in England; the decorum of our public life
is duly noticed, and reliance is placed upon our loyalty, which has never wavered.71
Ultimately, the most significant achievement of Portugal’s attitude towards

Nationalist Spain, and its diplomatic activity in Burgos during the war, was the
creation of a debt of gratitude which would last for decades to come, and act as
a check against the expansionist drive of many within the Nationalist camp. In
other words, Salazar presented a peninsular policy (with significant strategic
possibilities in South and Central America) as an alternative to a closer align-
painful discrepancies in Portuguese policy would be easily resolved.’ ‘Portugal and Spain: An Inner Conflict’
in The Manchester Guardian, 29 October 1937. This correspondent pointed out that support for Franco, which
resulted in collaboration with Berlin and Rome, was having important effects on the New State: ‘Portugal is
definitely more totalitarian than she was eighteen months ago.’
69. DBFP Second Series vol. 18, doc. 662, Foreign Office, 28 June 1937, Mr. Eden to Sir C. Wingfield, pp.
946–47.
70. AOS CO NE 7A, MNE, notes on a conversation between the Secretary General and the British Chargé
d’Affaires, 18 November 1937.
71 Ferro, Salazar, p. 43.
ment with the Axis powers, and was able to update that policy during World
War II, allowing Franco a diplomatic option. Franco’s declaration of neutrality
in case of a European conflict, made during the Munich crisis, was seen by
Salazar as the first victory of this campaign: Had Franco promised to support
Germany in case of a war over Czechoslovakia, Spain, and Portugal would
have found themselves, for all the recent good work, in opposing sides in the
putative conflict.72 Salazar was not, of course, the first Portuguese statesman to
think along these lines, overcoming the traditional gulf that separated the two
Iberian states;73 but the freedom of initiative that he conquered from London,
as well as his political longevity, allowed him to make more significant strides
in this direction than anyone before him.
Portugal was thus to play the role of intermediary between Franco and the
Western democracies, notably Great Britain, for the next two decades. Over
and over again, for twenty years, Salazar and his diplomats would explain that
there was infinitely more to be lost by abandoning Franco, first to the Axis
powers, and then to the opposition, than by treating him as an equal (even if, in
his direct dealings with Franco, Salazar would keep his guard up). Portugal’s
position was summarized by Teotónio Pereira in an anonymous article (thus
taken by the readers to be the product of a Spanish author) he wrote for the
Spanish review Vertice in December 1938, as the war was coming to an end:
Nobody today ignores how much Portugal’s attitude before the war in Spain has
contributed to illuminate the point of view of others about us [Nationalist Spain],
overcoming the grave damage provoked by either ideological prejudices or
deficient information. We must not forget to note what this attitude represented if
we analyze it under the light of Portugal’s position before England. Allied to the
latter since the Fourteenth Century—this alliance having proved a powerful instru-
ment in the most serious moments of the lives of the two countries—and keeping,
as a result of her character as a great overseas power, close points of contact with
British foreign policy—Portugal did not give a moment’s hesitation in adopting
towards Nationalist Spain a policy entirely different—if not actually opposed—to
that judged best, initially, by her old ally. By now, England will have realized that
Portugal was right and that it would have been better, for Europe’s peace and
salvation, had she paid heed to the warnings addressed to her by Portugal, from
the very first moments of this true Crusade.
72. See Salazar’s speech on foreign affairs, ‘Preocupação da paz e preocupação da vida’ in António de
Oliveira Salazar, Discursos, vol. 3, pp. 103–20. Salazar described this potential conflict with Spain as a ‘conflict
between sentiment and duty’.
73. Oliveira Martins, in the 1890s, had seen in Spain Portugal’s natural ally: Spain could help protect the
Portuguese colonies, while Portugal could help in the defense of Spain. There would thus be in the relation-
ship a reciprocity missing in the one-sided British alliance, and the Iberian Peninsula could isolate itself from
European politics and conflicts. See Ramos, Dom Carlos, p. 269.
Teotónio Pereira added, as a word of caution to ‘his’ Spanish audience, ‘it is
clearly the case that the ties of mutual esteem which exist between Portugal and
England have emerged stronger from this trial.’74 The evolving Spanish-Portu-
guese relationship was useful to Burgos as well, since it allowed it a diplomatic
outlet outside the Berlin-Rome axis. By the end of 1938, as Teotónio Pereira’s
correspondence makes clear, it was Franco’s government that was seeking to
pin Lisbon down on a non-aggression pact; according to Teotónio Pereira,
Nicolás Franco had told him that such a pact was ‘necessary for Spain, even to
set out a position before “other friends” who sometimes take their impositions
too far.’75 On 17 March 1939 a Treaty of Friendship and Non-Aggression was
signed in Lisbon by Salazar and Nicolás Franco: the two countries agreed to
respect each other’s borders and territory, and not to aid foreign powers in an
aggression against each other, lending their own territory, sea, or air space for
that purpose. Future treaties or alliances with third parties would always take
into account this present pact, which was to last for at least ten years. Although
a success, since it helped to anchor Spain’s status as a neutral, it was not viewed
by Lisbon as a definitive guarantee of security on the border; as early as 19
April 1939 Teotónio Pereira was writing of the dangers posed by a generalized
European conflict:
Should it [war] come, Spain will have a rough time and there is always the risk of
seeing it dragged towards the others. But without war, I do not believe that there
is the slightest risk for us.
I believe—and no doubt you do as well—that it is imperative not to show Spain the
slightest apprehension or fear.76
Direct Action Against Salazar
It is impossible to disassociate Portugal’s involvement in the Spanish Civil

War from the one serious attempt to kill Salazar, which took place in the
summer of 1937. From the first days of the conflict threats against his life had
begun to be received. One anonymous letter, written from a Royal Mail liner
on 24 July, 1936, claimed that ‘everything is known, as a result of which your
secret orders in favor of those who in our neighboring country rose up against
their government are not ignored.’ The letter finished, ‘sad days await us. But
74. Correspondência de Pedro Teotónio Pereira, vol. 1, doc. 63a, attached to letter, San Sebastian, 10 December
1938, Pedro Teotónio Pereira to António de Oliveira Salazar, pp. 122–25.
75. Ibid., doc. 64, letter, San Sebastian, 15 December 1938, Pedro Teotónio Pereira to António de Oliveira
Salazar, pp. 132–33.
76. Ibid., doc. 74, letter, Burgos, 19 April 1939, Pedro Teotónio Pereira to António de Oliveira Salazar, pp.
160–61.
you will pay for all your crimes against Liberty and the Republic—the great
loves of the good Portuguese people. You can be sure of it’. In January 1937 a
number of explosions occurred in Lisbon, the targets being entities closely
associated with the Spanish Nationalist cause. These included the Casa de
España, the Rádio Clube Português, installations belonging to the American-
owned Vacuum Oil Company, and a number of military arsenals.77 From the
Portuguese legation in Paris came reports, via a Russian informer, that these
were the work of Comintern agents acting in conjunction with their Portuguese
contacts.78 More precise information arrived from the same source five days
later, along with the warning that a more daring attack would soon be
attempted. The authorities, however, were wrong: the attacks being carried out
were the work of an anarchist cell, not of a Comintern plot linking local
communists with Moscow.
With the police looking the wrong way, the anarchist cell in question,
which included men such as Emídio Santana, Francisco Damião, and Raul
Pimenta, began to prepare the attempt on Salazar’s life, seen as a shortcut to
the destruction of the regime and the end of its support for Franco. Salazar’s
weekly trip to the residence of a friend, Josué Trocado, to attend Mass in his
private chapel, was no secret, and was proof of the confidence with which
Salazar moved about in Lisbon. The initial plan called for a daring machine-gun
attack on Salazar’s car as it approached the house in question, on Barbosa du
Bocage Avenue, then a quiet residential street in the bourgeois Avenidas Novas
district of the city. This plan was abandoned following the failure to secure the
vehicles needed, and was replaced by the overnight placing of a powerful bomb
in the sewer that ran under the street in question, close to a manhole cover
next to which Salazar’s car was usually parked. The dynamite used in the
attempt was purchased illegally in the São Domingos pyrite mine, in the
southeast of the country. The bomb was placed—or rather, misplaced—on the
night of 3 July, a Saturday. The following morning, as Salazar’s car arrived, the
plotters were in position, with look-outs, agreed signals, and a getaway car.
At the end of that very same day, Salazar drafted a telegram to all
Portuguese embassies informing them of what had occurred:
URGENT—today, at around 10.30 a.m., when the car stopped at the door of the
house where I usually attend Sunday Mass, a strong bomb exploded from below
the cover of a man-hole a few meters from the car. The coincidence between the
77. Valdemar Cruz, Histórias secretas do atentado a Salazar (Oporto: Campo das Letras, 1999), p. 137.
78. AOS CO IN 8A, telegram, Paris, 20 February 1937, Armando Ochoa to MNE. Such a conclusion had
already been arrived at by the government, which met on 21 January and announced that it had ‘attentively
examined the previous night’s occurrences and had deliberated on the measures imposed by the gravity of
the communist outrages.’
explosion and the stopping of the car suggests that the former was detonated
electrically. Despite the violence of the explosion and the great power of the
device, and the material damage to the nearby houses, to sidewalks and plumbing,
there was no personal tragedy, not even light injuries. This communication is
being made in order for you to be on your guard against the possible exploitation
of the event by leftist circles which will attempt to explain the attack by reference
to the people’s exaltation against the political situation. There is absolute peace
everywhere and the public spirit is hostile to such revolutionary maneuvers. The
attack is a crime not connected in any way with a project to disrupt public order.79
The explosion left a huge crater, three by four-and-a-half meters, in the

middle of the road, and caused nearby gutters to explode. Windows in the
avenue were shattered. Salazar seized the day in magnificent fashion, providing
the loyal press with much to crow about. To the consternation of his hosts,
Salazar, his suit covered in dust, insisted on attending Mass as if nothing had
happened. ‘Salazar is always thus, serene, calm, strong, even in the gravest
moments.’80 That night, a crowd of supporters thronged the street outside
Salazar’s house, having assembled in the Rossio, Lisbon’s main square. The
Legião played an important part in the choreography of the occasion. Salazar
spoke briefly to the crowd—first saying that ‘there is no doubt that we are
indestructible—because Providence so wills it, and because, on earth, you want
it’ and later, after another long round of cheering, asking ‘can there by any
doubt that the Revolution continues’, which was greeted with a resounding
‘No! No! No!’ At his third and final appearance at the window of his house,
Salazar stated
Gentlemen! I thank you for this demonstration from the bottom of my soul, not
on my behalf, for I am immune to vanity and glory, but because all of you give me
the consoling certainty that our work can no longer perish!
A wave of congratulatory telegrams arrived at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs

from all over the country and the world. Benito Mussolini wrote that the
nature of the attack clearly revealed its origins, adding that no quarter could be
given to ‘the destructive and criminal forces of bolshevism’. From democratic
and authoritarian governments alike came messages, as well as from deposed
crowned heads and Cardinal Pacelli, the future Pius XII. Rumors of foreign
involvement in the plot swept Lisbon; the German minister, Huene, reported
79. AOS CO PC 3E2, telegram from the MNE to all embassies and legations, 4 July 1937. That same day a
further circular telegram was sent, which explained that initial investigations had shown that the bomb had
been detonated by wire.
80. Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 5 July 1937.
that the British Intelligence Service was widely reputed, especially among
nationalist circles, to have played a part, although there was no proof of this.81
On 6 July, over 1,400 army and navy officers gathered in São Bento to salute
Salazar. Salazar’s words were a study in moderation and self-effacement,82 and
he used the occasion to offer an explanation of his foreign policy, which
remained wedded to the British alliance—and therefore immune to calls for a
better understanding with other dedicated anti-Bolshevik regimes. The alliance
remained crucial to both countries:
I suppose that, from an English perspective, the alliance will be rethought, but
only when the British Empire is at an end and when some calamity has stripped
England of its insular nature.
The two countries might have their tactical differences over how to best
resolve the situation in Spain, provoked, ultimately, by Portugal’s position in
the Iberian Peninsula, but their strategic interests remained the same, as did the
friendship that bound them together.
The investigation into the failed assassination attempt that followed was
chaotic and poorly handled from the start. The PVDE proved itself able to
intimidate, but not to investigate. After a period of over forty days, during
which pressure to find the culprits had naturally been growing, five men, who
all confessed to the crime, were paraded before the press, which, in a series of
articles, praised the tactics and the ruses employed by the PVDE to find the
guilty party.83 The initial line of inquiry—the search for five men of communist
sympathies directed from abroad—led the secret police into a blind alley from
which it refused to back out, and five innocents were beaten until they con-
fessed to the crime and agreed to the details suggested by their captors and
torturers. In this they were helped by the wrong conclusions reached by the
military expert who examined the remains of the bomb, and who declared it to
be imported from abroad. He also identified the explosive as melinite, rather
than the more common—and correct—dynamite. Incredibly, though, some of
the actual perpetrators were arrested in the wide sweep conducted in the wake
of the bombing, and confessed to the crime—only to be dismissed as agents
provocateurs intending to throw the police off the scent. The investigating
magistrate found himself having to reject the line defended, with great
81. Louçã (ed.), Portugal visto pelos Nazis, doc. 14, Lisbon, 11 July 1937, from the German legation to the
82. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘Portugal, a Aliança Inglesa e a Guerra de Espanha’ in Discursos, vol. 2, pp.
301–16.
83. The Diário da Manhã (Lisbon) dedicated the whole of its first page of 23 August 1937 to the PVDE
account of the attack, including a group photograph of the five men and a short and damning biography of
each of them.
vehemence, by the leadership of the PVDE: and although the right men were
eventually tried, their case was heard to press silence within the TME, while the
five men whose reputation had been destroyed, and who had been physically
and mentally broken by their torturers, were released, a year after their arrest,
also to complete press silence. The PVDE agent who had led the original
investigation was unrepentant:
This letter’s signatory swears, on his honor, that
I—The authors of the bombings were those indicted by the PVDE.
II—If the inquiries carried out by the PIC [Criminal Investigation Police] resulted
in a different conclusion, it is because they were tainted with either malevolence or
stupidity.84
Salazar never acted to discipline the loyal military officers who commanded
the PVDE. What he did, however, as it became clear that for all of its pos-
turing, the secret police was finding it difficult to identify the culprits, was to
enlist Italian aid for the restructuring and modernization of the PVDE, whose
scientific ability was clearly falling short of what was required.
Although Salazar emerged unscathed from the attempt on his life, and
reaped considerable political gains from his response to the attack, his lifestyle
would change enormously, with long-established routines being altered in the
name of personal security. As a result of these changes, Salazar’s ability to
interact with the rest of the population, when in Lisbon, would be severely cur-
tailed. The most important change of all came about from the creation of an
official residence for the President of the Council at the back of the São Bento
palace, where parliament met and where Salazar’s office was located. No longer
would he rent an apartment for himself and his quasi-family. From then on
Salazar would live behind closed walls, moving between home and office in an
instant. Since his residence contained a chapel, Salazar’s religious duties could
be fulfilled without exposing himself to the outside world; and since the
residence had access to a small private park, Salazar’s walks would take place
not in the streets of Lisbon, but within his domain. Security concerns also
dictated the end of train journeys for Salazar. Now, whenever he returned to
Vimieiro, he did so by automobile, with a police escort. Gone were the days
when he could arrive unannounced at public ceremonies, or exhibitions, as he
had done in September 1934 at the Colonial Exhibition in Oporto, sending the
organizers into a panic. Salazar’s reputation as a recluse, or, given his religious
past, a monk, was reinforced. At least his love of gardening could be indulged,
the gardens around the residence becoming his pet project and the subject of
84. AOS CO PC 3E2, letter, Lisbon, 6 January 1937 (error in dating), Captain Rui Pessoa de Amorim to
António de Oliveira Salazar.
much correspondence with the Lisbon municipality’s experts. Dona Maria,
meanwhile, looked after the vegetable patch and the livestock. Nowadays, their
commitment to home-grown produce might be seen as remarkably modern
and ‘green’; at the time, however, it was seen with bemusement by Lisbon
society, and heightened the notion that Salazar was mean—his tightness with
money being the subject of the many jokes that were told about him, even by
his closest associates.85
Rearmament
Since the New State rested, ultimately, on military support for Salazar, the
issue of military reform and re-equipment was a sensitive one within the
regime. As we have seen, in 1936 Salazar secured an important victory by
assuming control of the military reform process. This was done, though, on the
back of a promise to modernize the army. For this to occur, the latest weapons
had to be secured. There were added reasons for this desire to modernize the
army. As Armindo Monteiro pointed out, in a long letter from London, in
March 1937, only once Portugal’s armed forces represented a considerable
would Britain take Portugal seriously as an ally. It was imperative, then, in an
increasingly dangerous world, for Lisbon to interest London in Portuguese
rearmament.86 To illustrate his point, Monteiro used a comparison which is a
telling comment of Salazar’s relationship with his government ministers:
There are some means of convincing England of the advantages she might derive
from our military preparation. I think that a patient campaign is necessary, one
that can bring her to our terrain, making her work with us. If we continue our
rearmament—alongside the military education of the army and the people—the
English will eventually accept the facts; they will then prefer to make us their
friends, helping us. But they stand before us as Dr Salazar stands before his
ministers: seeing is believing. The English do not yet believe in us.87
The search for supplies of modern weaponry began in 1936, once Salazar had
taken over the War portfolio, but the Spanish Civil War complicated this
process. As had been the case in terms of the navy, Portugal first knocked at
85. See AOS CO PC 3A, file 25, for a police report detailing a conversation, aboard a train, on 5 August
1934, between the Navy Minister, Mesquita Guimarães, and Dr Bissaia Barreto: ‘When the train passed
Alfarelos, [the conversation] turned to Salazar jokes, which the two told each other, laughing much and
saying over and over again: “that’s very good. Very good! I hadn’t heard that one yet!”’
86. On 12 September 1935, in Geneva, Foreign Minister Armindo Monteiro informed his British counterpart
that in a few years the country would be able to field two or three divisions with the latest equipment,
something to which Britain could not remain indifferent. AOS CO NE 7A, Very Confidential report on the
conversation between the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Sir Samuel Hoare in Geneva, 12 September 1935.
87. Fernando Rosas et al., Armindo Monteiro, doc. 21, letter, London, 22 March 1937, Armindo Monteiro to
Britain’s door, but Salazar was unable to source the necessary material there,
since Britain was belatedly waking up to its own military weakness, and other
countries were ahead of Portugal in London’s list of priorities for the supply of
weapons. Salazar’s independent diplomatic action over Spain did not, more-
over, endear him to the British government; there was a fear that arms supplied
to Portugal might soon find themselves in Spain. The general distrust of
Portugal was shown by a quarrel that developed with Czechoslovakia over the
supply of machineguns, which quickly led to the rupture of relations between
the two countries. The Czechoslovaks suspected that Portugal wanted to pass
the machineguns it had purchased in Prague on to the Spanish Nationalists,
and asked for guarantees that this would not occur; Salazar was offended, and
the dispute escalated rapidly.88 At the same time, though, the German arma-
ments industry began to take an interest in the Portuguese situation, and
offered extremely favorable terms. Tangible proof of this interest materialized
on 23 December 1936, when a squadron of ten brand-new Junkers JU-52
bombers arrived in Portugal for the country’s air corps, Salazar visiting them
on their landing. Ten of the more powerful JU-86 would arrive a year later,
while Italy supplied ten Breda 65 fighter-bombers. The overall military package
being offered by the Germans was excellent, since it involved technical and
industrial assistance, very favorable financial terms (which included payment in
kind), and the guarantee that the material to be delivered was the same that was
entering service with the German army—something unthinkable in the British
case.89 Although he authorized further purchases of German and Italian
weapons—machine-guns—which were demonstrating their worth in Spain,
Salazar resisted equipping the army exclusively with Axis-made weapons,
holding out the hope that Britain would understand his point of view and
respond positively to his requests to purchase weapons. Thus, for example, he
would be willing to accept the clearly outdated Gloster Gladiator biplane in
1938, instead of the brand new Supermarine Spitfire which the Portuguese air
corps coveted, in order to continue to buy British.
Hard negotiations with all parties followed throughout 1937 against a
background of some unrest, and even a plot to overthrow Salazar among
88. The Portuguese government’s explanation for the event is contained in an official note published in the
press on 19 August 1937. See DAPE, vol. I, appendix 1, for the diplomatic exchange between Lisbon and
Prague which preceded Salazar’s dramatic step. Of special importance is document 21, telegram, Prague, 6
August 1937, from the Portuguese minister in Prague (Carneiro) to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, in which
the former states that the Italian minister in Prague believed the cause of the incident to be Russian influence
in Czechoslovakia, as well as the action of the Spanish Republic’s minister in Prague. This ‘explanation’
found its way into the official note, which states that ‘the Portuguese government immediately realized the
true meaning of the Czech government’s attitude and in it divined the influence and pressure of those whose
interests lie in preventing or hindering our rearmament’.
89. Faria, Debaixo de fogo!, pp. 131–32.
Portuguese officers worried by this seeming estrangement from Britain, tying it
in with the perceived German threat to the Portuguese colonies. This was a
rattle-bag of discontentment, involving Paiva Couceiro, national-syndicalists,
and republicans, with little chance of success. One of its organizers, Colonel
João Casqueiro, was arrested in 5 May 1938, and accused of maintaining
dangerous links with a British military mission working in Portugal at the time.
A complaint was made by Teixeira de Sampaio to the British ambassador the
following day, adding to the tension existing between the two countries. In July
of that year an agreement was signed with Germany, by which the Mauser rifle
began to be produced under license in Portugal.
This wave of conspiracy was successfully contained, and the basic premise
that drove it forward was shown to be erroneous when, in the summer of
1937, a change of posture occurred in the British government in relation to
Spain, and it became more receptive to the line long defended by Salazar.
Suddenly awake to the expansion of German influence in the Iberian Penin-
sula, and understanding more clearly Portugal’s policy in regard to Spain,
Britain tried to mend fences with Salazar. A military mission was dispatched to
Portugal in February of 1938 to assess its military needs. But little came of it,
given the existing misunderstandings in relation to the nature of the Anglo-
Portuguese Alliance, Britain’s difficulties in meeting all its own military needs
and, it must be said, the lack of preparation for Portugal’s defense by its own
military authorities. It beggars belief that an ‘outline’ of Portugal’s defensive
strategy had to be produced in a hurry, over the course of July 1938 by Salazar,
Santos Costa, and a senior officer, General Tasso Miranda Cabral, exclusively
for the purpose of presenting the British with something—anything—that
might pass for a coordinated plan of defense. Existing consultative bodies
within the army were simply bypassed in the hurry to convince the British that
the matter was taken seriously. Admiral Woodhouse, leading the British mili-
tary mission, wanted to secure Portuguese support in wartime, and wanted to
use the lure of rearmament to achieve it; he was willing to commit Britain to a
guarantee of protection for Portugal until such a time as the modern weapons
had been supplied. But this could take some time to bring about, and in the
meantime a hard-pressed Britain would supply only surplus World War I
artillery—a far cry from what Salazar needed to secure in order to appease the
army. The Portuguese army thus entered World War II in a state of great
material poverty, especially when it came to heavier weapons—tanks, as well as
anti-tank and anti-aircraft artillery90—and little would, in practice, be done in
the first years of the conflict to overcome this situation.
90. Maria Carrilho, ‘Política de defesa e de rearmamento’ in Maria Carrilho et al., Portugal na Segunda Guerra
Mundial: Contributos para uma reavaliação (Lisbon: Dom Quixote, 1989), p. 27.
Chapter IV
World War II
The Axis Threat, 1939–1942
Portugal and World War II: Historical and Strategic Considerations
S alazar’s stance in World War II is perhaps the most misunderstood and

willfully distorted aspect of his political career. Political rivals and enemies,
hostile commentators, and subsequent historians—professional or otherwise—
have long seized on Salazar’s tortuous negotiations with the Allies, his violent
denunciations of some of their actions, Portugal’s purchases of weapons from
the Axis, and certain specific actions, such as the official period of mourning
after Adolf Hitler’s suicide, as evidence of pro-Nazi tendencies. Documenta-
tion from the period suggests quite the reverse. Salazar’s position, which
developed with time, as the war itself evolved, was built on a number of basic
premises. These were, in loose chronological order, that a German victory spelt
disaster for the rule of law and for peripheral, agricultural, countries such as
Portugal; that Great Britain alone could not defeat Germany, which would
therefore remain the supreme arbiter of continental affairs; and that the Allies’
desire for an unconditional surrender by Germany was working exclusively to
the benefit of the Soviet Union, as much of a threat to Europe as Nazi
Germany had been. To these considerations were added Salazar’s awareness of
Portugal’s military weakness and of the vulnerability of its colonial empire,
scattered across the globe and inadequately linked by the smallest of navies.
And then, of course, there was Spain. Helping to keep Spain out of the war, by
providing Franco with an alternative to a closer alignment with the Axis, was
Salazar’s great achievement of the conflict, one which earned him the thanks of
the Allies, notably Great Britain. Because of his desire to ensure that all sig-
nificant interaction with the outside world was subordinated to the wider diplo-
matic goal of staying out of the war, Salazar was forced to involve himself in
the minutiae of political, economic, and military negotiations. This constant
diplomatic endeavor, which absorbed most of his working day, was to take a
significant physical toll on Salazar, as is evidenced by the change in his appear-
ance over the course of the conflict.
Salazar’s analysis of the European situation from 1939 to 1945 was incom-
plete. It was based on an old-fashioned brand of realpolitk which saw states and
their leaders acting out of reasonable and quantifiable considerations. The mur-
derous racial enterprise that drove the Third Reich appears to have bypassed
Salazar, despite the information that must have been accessible to him (very
little of which survives, however, in his archive).1 The Portuguese press, mean-
while, was prevented from reporting on the Final Solution as its details became
known, and Salazar never made a pronouncement on the subject.2 The fate of
Europe’s Jewish population was not seen as an issue that affected the national
interest, which led Salazar, for example, to destroy the professional career of
diplomat Aristides de Sousa Mendes, now recognized by Israel as one of the
1. The Portuguese minister in Bucharest, Fernando Quartin de Oliveira Bastos, informed Salazar in Novem-
ber 1941 of the anti-Jewish measures adopted by the Romanian government, justified publicly by the alleged
persecutions of Romanians by Jews during the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Bukhovina. An unnamed
Romanian acquaintance of this diplomat, someone who who enjoyed access to Marshal Antonescu and had
been to the front, informed Quartin that there was a ‘German organization for the looting and extermination
of the Jews in occupied Russian territory’. DAPE, vol. 10, doc. 2520, from the Portuguese minister in
Bucharest to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, pp. 21–22. In another instance, in February 1943, the Portu-
guese government was informed by the German legation that all foreign Jews living in France, Belgium, the
Netherlands, Germany, and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia would be subjected to the regulations
regarding local Jews, which included their segregation, internment, and expulsion. Among their number were
some Portuguese Jews, and the government was given until the end of March to provide these people with
entry visas into Portugal, at which time the German authorities would provide them with exit visas, reserving
the right to examine each case individually. AOS CO NE 2, aide-mémoire, German legation, 4 February
1943.
2. A full study of the actions of Portuguese censorship in this regard is still to be carried out. Very little is to
be found on the topic in the Salazar archive. There is mention, for example, of a censored article, in the
monarchist/anglophile Lisbon daily A Voz, entitled ‘Piores entradas’. According to the censorship report,
‘some paragraphs were cut which attribute to the Germans the practice of the greatest cruelty towards
children. They are so horrible that one wants to believe that they are a piece of fantasy and thus have been
cut’. The censored article specifically referred to a camp at ‘Osviacim’, where children below the ages of 12
were killed on arrival. AOS CO NE 2, file 47, ‘Germany: news of the extermination of Jewish children
[1942]’. According to the archive’s records, the article in question was due to have been published on 1
January 1942. Although its title clearly indicates 1 January (the word ‘entradas’ refers to the start of the year),
1943 seems more correct, given the content of the article.
World War II: The Axis Threat, 1939–1942 225
Righteous. Curiously, however, Salazar could find himself in the firing line of
Portuguese anti-Semites. One extraordinary letter, intercepted by the PVDE,
and written by the Count of Avelos, a leading monarchist, to Dom Duarte, the
Pretender, at the time residing in Switzerland, spelled this circumstance out
very clearly, and in surprising terms. Avelos wrote, in July 1940, that few were
the men in positions of power in Portugal who did not have ‘Jewish blood’,
and that this necessarily imperiled the country’s prospects in a Nazi-dominated
Europe. Salvation lay with the restoration of the monarchy, supported by
gentiles.3
Portugal’s place in the world has long been a source of debate within the
country’s intellectual circles. An age-old argument has raged—and echoes of it
still subsist today—between those who want to see it involved closely in Euro-
pean affairs and those who see in such involvement a recipe for disaster,
arguing instead for an extra, overseas dimension. The latter camp has argued
that as a small, peripheral country, Portugal can never hope to influence Euro-
pean events decisively, and that the attempt to do so will lead to a subordina-
tion to a more powerful country. Better to turn one’s back to Europe, they
have suggested over the centuries, and explore, colonize, or trade with the rest
of the world. By the Twentieth Century, the first camp had come to be
associated—approximately—with democratic politics, while the second had
come to be dominated by nationalists who believed that Portugal, with the help
of its colonies, could go it alone. Salazar increasingly fell into this camp. His
desire was for peace in Europe (which might require a certain amount of
revision to the Versailles settlement) in order for Portugal to develop at its own
pace. As he frequently stated, Portuguese nationalism was not aggressive; the
country had no irredentist claims on anyone else, and had no need for extra
colonial resources. In September 1935, in a long official note examined in the
previous chapter, published as war between Italy and Abyssinia neared, Salazar
spoke of fulfilling Portugal’s duties towards the League of Nations in case of
common action against an aggressor, but also pointed out that ‘we are, above
all, an Atlantic power […] the traditional line of our foreign policy, which coin-
cides with the true interests of the Portuguese Pátria, lies in our not becoming
involved in European disorders, but rather in preserving the peninsular friend-
ship and developing the possibilities offered by our strength in the Atlantic.’
3. AOS CO IN 8B. letter, Oporto, July 1940, Conde de Avelos to His Majesty the Duke of Bragança. The
letter bears a handwritten date, in Salazar’s writing: 21 July 1940. Avelos backed up his statements with a
reference to a recently published work, Os Judeus, by João Paulo Freire, in which it was claimed, on page 422
of the third volume, that ‘Salazar […] is a Jew, a “new Christian” on both sides—on the father’s side by the
Castilian Salazars and on the mother’s by the Beira Oliveiras’. Both the author of the work and the Count of
Avelos thus ignored the unusual reversal of Salazar’s family names.
This isolationist camp, if one might call it that, drew on the recent ex-
perience of World War I in order to strengthen its hand. Portugal had, at great
expense, sent a relatively small force to the European battlefield only to see it
pulverized in one morning’s fighting.4 This seemingly pointless effort had had
terrible implications for the country’s ability to defend its colonial possessions,
as General Von Lettow-Vorbeck’s successful campaign in Mozambique
showed. Significantly, when a new European war began in 1939, Salazar sought
to inform himself about Portugal’s diplomatic activity during World War I.
Only the first volume of a White Book on the war had been published,5 and
Salazar now tried to track down the documents that had been scheduled to
make up a second volume.6 By November 1941, Salazar had traced their path
to the Ministry of War, where, for a time, a plan to publish them had been in
operation. Salazar wrote, ‘it is of the greatest interest to take possession of the
file or at least of the documents with which, at [the Ministry of] War, the White
Book was organized.’7 Even worse than Portugal’s involvement in World War I
had been the experience of the Napoleonic wars, during which Portugal was
transformed into a battleground, sacked, and subjected to a scorched-earth
policy. The Napoleonic invasions had also set off the chain of events that led
to Brazilian independence and to a series of devastating civil wars. This was a
terrible precedent; under no circumstance could Portugal once again become a
battlefield for European giants.
In the light of his handling of the Spanish Civil War, it is not surprising
that Salazar responded to this new and greater crisis by enforcing a tremendous
centralization of decision-making powers in his person. For the greater part of
the war, and in addition to being President of the Council of Ministers, Salazar
was Foreign and War Minister as well. In each of these ministries Salazar had
men who could aid him, notably the Secretary General of the Ministério dos
Negócios Estrangeiros (MNE—Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Ambassador
Teixeira de Sampaio, and the Undersecretary of State for War, Santos Costa.
Both men diverted part of the administrative burden, while engaging also in
some matters of political significance (Sampaio meeting foreign diplomats in
order to shield Salazar, and Santos Costa keeping a close eye on the army’s
4. On Portugal’s participation in the First World War, see Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses, Portugal 1910–1926:
From the First World War to military dictatorship (Bristol: HiPLA, 2004).
5. Documentos apresentados ao Congresso da República em 1920 pelo Ministro dos Negócios Estrangeiros: Portugal no
Conflito Europeu. Primeira Parte: Negociações até a declaração de guerra (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional, 1920).
6. See AOS CP 134, letter, 19 September 1939, Armando Marques Guedes to António de Oliveira Salazar,
and letter, 22 September 1939, Armando Marques Guedes to Antero Leal Marques, suggesting that the
missing documents might be in the Ministry of War’s archive.
7. AOS CO GR 1C, note in António de Oliveira Salazar’s handwriting, and typed copy, 21 November 1941.
morale and political reliability).8 But at the centre of it all stood Salazar, who
had the final word in all aspects and who was the sole person to see the com-
plete picture. Portuguese ambassadors abroad complained of their inability to
share in this bigger picture, but Salazar saw them essentially as sources of in-
formation, ideally devoid of initiative. Only he could signal approval, or dis-
approval, of one of the contending sides; only he could express an opinion on
the course of the war, and Portugal’s desired outcome. The toll taken on
Salazar was great. The British embassy’s survey of 1942 stated that
A year in which well-nigh superhuman responsibility has been borne by Portugal’s

dictator thus ended under altogether happier auspices in so far as concerned the
problem of maintaining Portuguese neutrality within the framework of loyalty to
the British alliance.9
Salazar expected his collaborators, at home and abroad, to make these

superhuman efforts as well, all while recognizing their status as simple cogs.
Not all were able to accept these conditions, as we will see, and for their failure
they would pay with their careers. When collaborators disagreed with him—the
most famous case, that of Ambassador Armindo Monteiro, is detailed below—
Salazar could be, by his standards, brutal. When they failed to live up to his
expectations, his contempt knew few bounds. A classic example of this was the
case of Francisco Nobre Guedes who, in the summer of 1940, had been sent as
minister to Berlin, where it was hoped his far-Right beliefs would hold him in
good stead. Nobre Guedes immediately began to complain about his working
conditions, the state of the official residence, and the overall shortage of
money. An exchange of letters in October of that year made it clear that Nobre
Guedes would not last long at his post: he was determined not to stay there
beyond March 1941. Salazar wrote to him, telling him that ‘haverá pois que
arrastar as coisas de qualquer modo’ (we’ll have to drag things out as best we
can until then); Nobre Guedes complained, stating that these had been cutting
words:
I told Your Excellency—and did so because I am sure of it—that I would carry

out my duties as if I were to remain at my post for a long time. There is no reason,
8. On 16 October 1940 Salazar, presumably for the sake of expedience and confidentiality, purchased a
Michaelis English-Portuguese/Portuguese-English dictionary and a Westminster English Dictionary. AOS, PP 6,
file 6, Book purchases, 1938–1964. The books were purchased from the Sá da Costa bookshop, the first
costing a not inconsiderable 180 escudos. Salazar added a note to the receipt: ‘At Bertrand [another Lisbon
bookshop] it cost 200 escudos’.
9. NA FO 371/34641 C 1736, Review of events in Portugal during 1942.
therefore, to suppose that despite my resolution I will not do all in my power to
carry out as best I can my obligations.10
Salazar was dismissive in his reply, drafted two days later:
Whatever the personal worth of the minister working abroad, time [spent in the
foreign post] cannot be replaced by any quality of intelligence or character. We
know that it is your firm resolution not to remain in Berlin beyond March. We
must resign ourselves to this period being very unproductive—almost lost to the
kind of action I would want to see carried out there. Thus, ‘haverá que arrastar as
coisas de qualquer modo’, as I wrote in my first letter, since the changes in
personnel and in means will not be, given the circumstances, of any real interest.11
As he promised to do, Nobre Guedes left his post in March 1941. Salazar
mentioned his return briefly in his diary, on 28 March, as part of a conversation
with Mário de Figueiredo, and the following day, when his replacement was
discussed with Teixeira de Sampaio. For Nobre Guedes, the result of this
failure to live up to expectations was profound; never again did he hold a
public post of any note. One historian notes, ‘it was the end of Nobre
Guedes’s political career, and only some years later, when Salazar’s fury had
been placated, was he able to resume his regular professional activity’.12
The First Phase of the War: September 1939–June 1940
When war broke out in Europe, with Germany’s invasion of Poland,

Portugal declared its neutrality.13 This step was not unexpected, and was not
dissimilar to what had occurred in 1914. There was as yet no inkling of what
Blitzkrieg entailed, and it was assumed in Lisbon that the war would follow a
similar pattern to that of 1914–1918, with France largely protected by the
massive Maginot Line. It was generally agreed that Portugal could bring little to
any of the contending sides, and London was content to see Lisbon adopt a
wait-and-see attitude, one that might allow it to render whatever services were
necessary for the prosecution of the war without provoking a German declara-
tion of war. Speaking to the National Assembly in a special session held to
mark President Carmona’s return from Mozambique, Salazar made some broad
10. AOS CD 2, letter, Estoril, 2 October 1940, Francisco Nobre Guedes to António de Oliveira Salazar.
11. AOS CD 2, letter, Lisbon, 4 October 1940, António de Oliveira Salazar to Francisco Nobre Guedes.
12. Pedro Aires Oliveira, ‘Francisco José Nobre Guedes’ in Rosas & Brandão de Brito (eds), Dicionário de
História do Estado Novo, vol. 1 (Venda Nova: Bertrand, 1996), p. 410.
13. The press carried an official note that explained the government’s stance on 2 September 1939: ‘Happily,
the duties imposed by our alliance with England, which we do not wish to avoid mentioning at such a grave
moment, do not force us to abandon in this emergency the condition of neutrality’. António de Oliveira
Salazar, ‘Neutralidade portuguesa no conflito europeu’ in Discursos, vol. 3, pp. 173–74.
statements regarding the crisis of European civilization that had brought about
the war, pausing to express a ‘word of profound sympathy for the Polish
nation, to whose heroic sacrifice and patriotism we should pay homage.’14
Salazar’s concern, at this stage of the conflict, was to prevent its expansion by
reinforcing the solidarity among the neutral nations, notably Italy and Spain.
Italian diplomats in Lisbon were reminded of their country’s previous anti-
German efforts and that ‘Germany—as always—had gone to war on a terrible
moral basis.’15 The similarity with events in 1914 was, however, only skin-deep.
If during the Great War the Portuguese government had tried to overcome the
ambiguity of its diplomatic position (being a neutral allied to, and collaborating
with, a belligerent) by trying to enter the conflict, now, from 1939 onwards,
Salazar tried to lessen any ambiguity by forcing the British to formulate
requests formally on the basis of the Alliance. This the overstretched British
were loath to do, since it would make them morally responsible for anything
that might happen to Portugal as a result of agreeing to a British request.
War posed a further threat to Salazar’s rule, this time internal: not only was
there the possibility of added economic dislocation (given that, despite the
economy’s contraction, the commitment to a balanced budget remained as
strong as ever), but, in a conflict between the western democracies and
National-Socialism, it was only natural that political tempers should flare. The
Ribbentrop-Molotov pact had eased the situation somewhat, making it less
likely that, through common links to Britain, Portugal, and the Soviet Union
might find themselves on the same side of a conflict. As monarchist writer
Alfredo Pimenta put it, in a letter to Salazar, ‘Germany rendered us, Portu-
guese, and the Spaniards, a great service, attracting Russia to its orbit, which is
not out own, and away from the English orbit, which is our own.’16 Neverthe-
less, the danger of exploitation of the conflict for domestic gain was ever-
present, and censorship of the press was generally reinforced in order to ensure
that no belligerent might be offended by the news coverage. Cuts now began
to be made, mostly in order to eliminate ‘insult and injury to Germany and
Hitler, or commentaries, based on war news, which compromise [Portugal’s]
neutral position.’17 For Pimenta, who maintained at this time an intense
correspondence with Salazar, such censorship was not going far enough, since
‘all of this misplaced love for England and France serves only to mask the
hatred for regimes founded on Authority. These people care not for Poland or
14. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘A Europa em guerra: Repercussão nos problemas nacionais’ in Discursos,
vol. 3, 1959, p. 185.
15. AOS CO NE 70, J. Carneiro, report on a meeting with the Italian minister, 3 September 1939.
16. AOS CP 215, letter, 3 September 1939, Alfredo Pimenta to António de Oliveira Salazar.
17. AOS CO PC 3E, Direcção dos Serviços de Censura, Boletim de registo e justificação de cortes,
Confidencial, n. 255, 22 September 1939.
for Hitler! All that they see in Germany is the traits it shares with us. Be under
no illusion!’18 The New State’s control over the press was not sufficient to
ensure that it behaved as Salazar wished it to. By the end of October, the
monarchist daily A Voz was at war with the União Nacional’s Diário da Manhã,
accusing it of germanophilia. The latter’s editor wrote directly to Salazar, asking
for guidance and defending himself of the accusations laid at his doorstep: in
fact, ‘as regards the Allies, it is enough to read the newspaper every day in
order to notice the spirit of preference and the discrete desire for their victory
which moves us.’19
The political police provided a more sophisticated analysis of the domestic
threat posed by the conflict: Left and Right were suddenly emboldened, and
both expected Great Britain to force changes in Portugal in order to bring it
into the war. Rumors abounded: that the Liga dos Antigos Combatentes da Grande
Guerra (League of Great War Veterans) was the agency through which a pro-
democracy coup would be carried out; that gasoline supplies to Portugal would
be cut; and that a British envoy, representing Lord Halifax, was in Lisbon to
negotiate a deal with the supporters of the pretender, Dom Duarte, by which
Portugal would enter the war in return for Britain forcing his restoration to the
throne.20 Although the author of the report suggested that for the moment the
situation was not grave, he added that, in the absence of concerted measures, it
could only worsen.21 The British embassy was at the center of opposition
hopes. As the Ambassador Selby, put it, in a meeting with Teixeira de Sampaio,
‘everything ends up in the embassy. Rumors are brought to it; questions are
asked about what the ambassador will do in such or such an eventuality; solu-
tions are advanced; real traps are laid out through written requests, etc.’22
Despite increased vigilance by the PVDE (which in April concluded a ‘tech-
nical accord’ with the Italian police, part of the reform process ordered in
1937), the political climate never stopped worsening during the ‘phony war’. In
January 1940, the secret police reported that public opinion was more alarmed
than at any stage since 1926: ‘complaints and signs of revolt are apparent every-
where and among all social classes, [being made] without concealment,
18. AOS CP 215, letter, 12 September 1939, Alfredo Pimenta to António de Oliveira Salazar.
19. AOS CO IN 1, letter, 31 October 1939, M. Pestana Reis to António de Oliveira Salazar.
20. AOS CO PC 3H, PVDE confidential report, ‘Situação política de Portugal perante as nações
beligerantes’, 29 September 1939.
21. One anonymous supporter wrote that ‘the present moment is one of the most difficult in which the New
State has found itself, and it is so difficult because those whose job it is to see in fact see nothing, as a result
of which you are so badly informed. Communist propaganda is carried out under the police’s nose. The
masonry works with insolent openness”. AOS CO PC 3D, anonymous letter to António de Oliveira Salazar,
8 December 1939.
22. AOS CO NE 7A, report on a conversation between the Secretary General of the MNE and the British
ambassador, 8 February 1940.
publicly.’23 Worse still, it was among former supporters of the regime that the
loudest and most vehement complaints were to be heard, especially among
military men, disgusted by the waste associated with the corporate organiza-
tions, as well as the SNP and SACOR, an oil company recently established with
State aid which was the cause of much disaffection: ‘The SACOR experiment
should have shown how inconvenient it is to hand matters over to incom-
petent Portuguese and foreign adventurers.’24 Everywhere the complaint was
the same: honest men were forced to pay ever greater taxes and national contri-
butions, while those with political protection enjoyed ever greater privileges.
Even Salazar himself came in for criticism, according to the usually cautious
PVDE. The regime’s supporters were exasperated by the lack of propaganda
material, intelligible to all, with which to take on their opponents:
They say: “The Chief has changed, maybe even without noticing it. At first, and
until recently, he would appear in public to soften the impact of his always
necessary actions with some words. But of late the little he has said is directed
more abroad than to the rest of us.”
Such aloofness, which was undeniable, served one purpose: masking

Salazar’s intentions from foreign observers. Neutrality is easier to maintain
when the access of the belligerent parties to the decision-making agents is cur-
tailed. All sides could more readily be made to think that Salazar was on their
side. A letter addressed to the official Nazi publishing house, Franz Eher
Nachfolger G.m.b.H., by a German resident in Portugal, opened and translated
by the PVDE, stated that ‘Dr Salazar is a friend of the Germans, but the
English do not like this and try to create certain internal difficulties.’25 This
ability to mask his intentions, to conceal resentments and concerns, and to
appear agreeable to all, was especially important when it came to Spain.
Enormous political credit would have been amassed, under normal circum-
stances, by Salazar’s decisive intervention in favor of the military rebels in the
summer of 1936. But these were not normal circumstances, and Germany and
a still neutral Italy were putting Spain under great pressure to commit itself
once and for all to the Axis cause. In April 1940 Salazar received Nicolás
23. AOS CO IN 8B, PVDE report, 27 January 1940.

24. Freire Antunes (ed.), Salazar e Caetano, doc. C 12, letter, Lisbon, 21 March 1942, Marcelo Caetano to
António de Oliveira Salazar, p. 103. SACOR (Sociedade Anónima Concessionária da Refinação de Petróleos
em Portugal) was set up by the Moldavia-born Martin Sain, who had built his reputation as an oil man in
Romania, in answer to the Portuguese government’s desire to establish an oil refinery in Portugal. One third
of its capital was provided by the State; another parcel was provided by one of Salazar’s confidants, Ricardo
Espírito Santo. The refinery was inaugurated in June 1940, but suffered badly due to the difficulties in
importing oil. Around its activities, and those of its founder, there were, in wartime, constant allegations of
corruption.
25. AOS CO IN 8B, letter, Oporto, 10 March 1940, Marx Arglebe to Franz Eher Nachf., G.m.b.H.
Franco, who spoke of his worries for the future: the way the war was going, the
Allies might have to accept the recent Axis conquest and settle for a white
peace, which for them meant a defeat. The Spanish ambassador said that his
brother feared that in such circumstances, France would be the scene for a
communist take-over: ‘He fears this so much that he has given the order not to
demobilize certain ammunition factories which were being quickly de-
mobilized, that is, readapted to peacetime production.’ Salazar tried to calm his
interlocutor, by arguing that a communist France was not of itself capable of
setting fire to its neighbors, and that in such an unlikely event, Portugal, Spain,
and Italy had to coordinate their actions in order to ‘avoid contagion’. But
afterwards, reflecting on the conversation, Salazar wrote, ‘from all of this the
only thing that really matters is the aside (or so it would appear) made by the
ambassador about the non-demobilization of the ammunition factories. Was
the communist France hypothesis just a pretext to pass on the news, in order
to forestall our hearing of it by other means, thereby endowing it with another
meaning?’26
By the spring of 1940, Lisbon, to Salazar’s annoyance, had become a
battleground for the propaganda machines of the warring countries. In the
German legation, films depicting the conquest of Poland were shown to
invited guests drawn from the armed forces, the press, and leaders of the
Mocidade Portuguesa.27 Upon hearing that the staging of a conference on the
‘Polish war’ by the German military attaché, to be delivered to a strictly military
audience, had been negotiated with the SPN, Salazar intervened to demand an
explanation from António Ferro; an apologetic letter was quickly produced by
his deputy, António Eça de Queiroz.28 Nevertheless the legation continued to
sponsor and produce other forms of propaganda. A ‘Portuguese Anti-British
Youth’ supposedly existed, and published a review, Grilhetas de Fogo (Chains of
Fire). Another organization, the ‘Anti-British League’, published its own mani-
festos. Launched from the top of the iron elevator of Santa Justa, or a nearby
rooftop, copies of these manifestos were spread across the streets of the Baixa,
Lisbon’s central district.29 Both sides tried to manipulate Salazar by portraying
their respective enemy as an enemy of the New State also. The British embassy
in Lisbon, in its review of events for 1940, pointed out that
26. AOS CO NE 7, report on a conversation between the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the ambassador of
Spain, 8 April 1940. Salazar continued in this vein: ‘Might that suspension of [de]mobilization be linked to
the diplomatic pressure, referred to by our ambassador in Madrid, in recent letters, exercised by Germany
and Italy, especially the latter, for Spain to adopt a favourable (and if possible, positive) attitude in case of
Italy being dragged into the war?’
27. AOS CP 49, letter, 30 April 1940, Esmeraldo Carvalhais to António de Oliveira Salazar.
28. AOS CP 231, letter, 1 May 1940, António Eça de Queiroz to António de Oliveira Salazar.
29. AOS CO PC 3E, letter, 30 May 1940, Adelino de Matos Silva to António de Oliveira Salazar.
The Germans […] made a determined effort to persuade the Portuguese govern-
ment that the very existence of Dr Salazar’s regime was being threatened by the
country’s pro-British sympathies. They pointed out that the cause of the Allies was
being hailed as the cause of the democracies, and was being invoked by Dr
Salazar’s political enemies in the hope of bringing about his downfall.30
The war’s outbreak had another effect on Portugal. The great display of
the New State’s achievements, and of patriotic pride, set to coincide with two
centenary celebrations (1140, chosen as the ‘birth of the nation’, and 1640, the
restoration of independence), was forced to become a low key affair, deprived
of international attention, coinciding as it did with the fall of France. The cele-
brations, including their center-piece, the Exhibition in Lisbon, had already
been the subject of much criticism, since they were seen not only as overly ex-
pensive, but also as a haven for shady deals and blatant profiteering. Now they
were starved of foreign visitors. Also diminished in its importance was the
Concordat with the Catholic Church, announced to the country on 7 May
1940, only days before the Nazi invasion of France and the neutral states of
Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg.
Studying the New Order
From the beginning of the war Salazar attempted to understand the im-
plications for Portugal of a German victory. The intentions behind the Nazis’
New Order were hard to decipher, and Salazar enlisted the help of former
Coimbra colleagues to help him in that task. Diogo de Amorim31 was one such
correspondent; Diogo de Almeida, who wrote for the Oporto newspaper O
Comércio do Porto, was another. Salazar read with care reports emanating from
the Berlin legation that might give any further clues regarding Hitler’s ultimate
ambitions. Most of the details, as they emerged, fell into the economic
category, and sufficed for concern. The German Minister for the Economy,
Walther Funk, spoke in August 1940, at a trade fair in Königsberg, of the need
for the political consolidation of Europe, sole means to bring about the ‘in-
tensification of the whole economic life of the European vital space.’32 Some
days later, Funk returned to the same theme at a fair in Vienna, his speech
30. NA FO 371/34641 C 361, Review of Events in Portugal during 1940.

31. Diogo Pacheco de Amorim (1888–1976) graduated with a degree in Mathematics from the University of
Coimbra and joined its lecturing staff, having concluded his doctorate in 1914. He collaborated with
Cerejeira and Salazar in the CADC and the columns of O Imparcial; he would later serve a number of terms as
a deputy in the National Assembly.
32. AOS CO NE 2J, report from the Portuguese legation in Berlin, transcript of speech by the Reich
Economy Minister, Walther Funk, at the opening of the 28th Oriental Fair in Königsberg on 11 August
1940.
being sent to Lisbon by the legation in Berlin. In the former Austrian capital
Funk stated that ‘Germany’s economic policy has as its objective ending the
economic atomization of Europe, considering as insane the excessive autarky
by which every small country desires to manufacture everything, from a button
to a heavy railroad engine.’ Such excessive autarky was to be replaced by a
‘reasonable and healthy division of labor’. Also worrying were Italian prog-
noses on the future of the European economy, such as that advanced by
Exchange Minister Raffaello Riccardi in Il Popolo d’Italia on 10 October 1940.
Riccardi described an extension across the continent of the solidarity which
already existed within the Axis, and called for the creation of an economic
hierarchy among the nations, which would determine access to raw materials;
for this purpose the old colonial empires would be redistributed.33 Another
Italian figure whose writings were studied was the Venetian financier and
minister, Count Volpi di Misurata. Their combined writings and speeches led
Diogo de Almeida to exclaim, ‘how shameless these gentlemen are! Theirs is
not an axis, it is a skewer with which to roast the agricultural countries of
Europe once the war is over.’34 The most important piece of research on the
true nature of the proposed New Order was carried out by the MNE’s
economic consultant, Tomaz Wylie Fernandes. Wylie Fernandes pored over
speeches and statements made by German and Italian officials, before coming
to his pessimistic conclusion: ‘In its political aspect, the foreseeable future for
small nations within the New Order is that of a de facto diminution of their
independence, even if de jure this is not, on the surface, affected.’35 Throughout
1941 there were monthly assessments by the MNE on the economy of occu-
pied Europe. Reporting on the creation of the Reichskohlenvereinigung, an organi-
zation designed to regulate and operate a Europe-wide coal trade, one Portu-
guese diplomat stated that a move was being made from wartime improvisation
to the actual laying down of a new European order: other signs were the crea-
tion of an insurance syndicate designed to replace Lloyds, and the operation of
a central clearing, in Berlin, to regulate the trade between neutral states such as
Switzerland, and occupied countries, such as Belgium, the Netherlands or
Norway.
Salazar’s collaborators, when they caught wind of information about the
New Order, rushed to inform him. Augusto de Castro, journalist and sometime
33. AOS CO NE 2J. Copy of a translation into French of an article by Raffaello Riccardi, Exchange and
Currencies Minister, in Il Popolo d’Italia, 10 October 1940, published by the Banque des Réglements Inter-
nationaux (Bank for International Settlements). Forwarded to António de Oliveira Salazar by Álvaro Pedro
de Souza, Estoril.
34. AOS CP 6, letter, 29 October 1940, Diogo de Almeida to António de Oliveira Salazar.
35. AOS CO NE 2J, A Futura Paz: Estudo de Tomaz Wylie Fernandes, Consultor Económico do Ministério dos Negócios
Estrangeiros, Janeiro de 1941.
diplomat, met Baron Werner von Rheinbaben, German diplomat and member
of the Reichstag, in Lisbon, in May 1941. Von Rheinbaben had just arrived
from Paris, where he had delivered a lecture on the subject of ‘The New
Europe’.36 Von Rheinbaben assured his Portuguese interlocutor that Salazar
had nothing to fear from Hitler, who both understood well Portugal’s predica-
ment and admired the order and organization to be found there (which con-
trasted sharply with the situation to be found in Spain, of which the Germans
were now despairing). Rheinbaben then went on to state that Hitler, given his
‘realistic temperament’, had not yet made up his mind about the New Order,
reassuring Castro that there was no plan to force the whole continent into a
‘rigid Germanic formula’:
Germany knows that Europe’s strength and character lie in its plurality. There is
no question of eliminating it; rather, it will be a case of orientating it towards a
modality of common economic and social defense: to make Europe European.37
Augusto de Castro sent some extracts from von Rheinbaben’s lecture in

Paris to Salazar, who underlined passages about the need to create a common
economic organization in Europe and about the subordination, to this organi-
zation, of the African continent. It would be tempting to establish a parallel
between von Rheinbaben’s views and a conversation between Salazar and
Huene, that same month, in which, according to the German minister, a very
‘serene’ Salazar had proclaimed his sympathy for the ‘new European order’: its
beginning was ‘unmistakable’, and ‘to ignore it, as Britain does’, was ‘incompre-
hensible’.38 But it is clear that by September 1941, Salazar was under no illusion
about the real nature of the New Order. He wrote, to one of his most trusted
confidants,
Ignoring the fact that, beyond the economic organization or reordering of Europe,
there are other factors of equal or higher value—independence, national per-
sonality, culture, freedom, religion—and restricting ourselves to the economic
camp, I am very much afraid that this new Europe is simply the organized exploi-
tation of the agricultural countries by the super-industrialized countries, in this
case, principally, Germany.39
36. Baron Werner von Rheinbaben published a work on that theme in 1941: Vers une Europe Nouvelle (Paris:
Groupe Collaboration, 1941).
37. AOS CO NE 4, letter, May 1941, Augusto de Castro to António de Oliveira Salazar. Later that night
Rheinbaben was called to the telephone, only to return to the dinner table with a worried air: Rudolf Hess
had fled Germany and landed in Scotland.
38. Louçã (ed.), Portugal visto pelos Nazis, doc. 22, report, Lisbon, 17 May 1941, from the German legation to
the Auswärtiges Amt, pp. 80–81.
39. AOS COE 3, letter, 1 September 1941, António de Oliveira Salazar to Mr le Comte Gonzague de
Reynold.
A new entity had to be created in order to prevent this catastrophic scenario
from being played out; Salazar believed that only a Latin union might be
capable of standing up, by whatever means, to the German colossus. Salazar
added, ‘I consider it a calamity for Europe that […] Nazism should impose
itself everywhere with its virulence and the rigidity of some of its principles.
For those who see civilization from a moral point of view, it will be a step
backwards.’ Meeting the German minister in March 1942, Salazar complained
of the lack of information about the future with which everyone was having to
cope. Extreme opinions could be heard, according to which the ‘Germaniza-
tion’ of Europe was on its way. Unless Germany revealed its plans, and contra-
dicted these calls, suspicion would continue to mount. In his account of the
meeting, Salazar wrote that
the loss of political independence, ignorance about each country’s culture, and the
fusion of European nations in a political creation of which Berlin would be the
center, would lead Europe to lose its character and its extra-European influence,
and maybe even its civilizing potential.40
It was ironic, then, that the creation of a new and fairer European
economic order proved to be one of the strong points in German propaganda,
designed to exploit the mounting resentment, in Portugal, over the British
blockade of the continent and the workings of the navicert system. The British
consul in Lisbon was seen by many businessmen as an impediment to legiti-
mate trade with the rest of the continent. Portugal fought back against the
blockade in whatever way it could; cracking down on favorable press coverage
of the British war effort was one weapon in its arsenal.41 For all the complaints
and the interminable negotiations over economic matters (see below), however,
Salazar understood that the blockade was a result of wartime conditions, and
would be removed once the conflict was over. The same could not be said of
the Nazis’ New Order.
The fall of France, apart from handing the initiative over European affairs
to Germany, posed another problem for Portugal and for Salazar. Portugal
became the last available point of departure for all those wishing to leave, as
quickly as possible, a Nazi-dominated Western Europe. The number of
foreigners in Lisbon soared, and controlling their movements and actions
became a priority for the security services, as did the many attempts, legal or
otherwise, to profit from the refugees’ presence and needs. All told, some
40. AOS CO NE 7, report on a conversation between the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the German
minister, 9 March 1942.
41. AOS CO PC 3E, ‘Exclusive’ report, 28 February 1941, from the censorship authorities to the President
of the Council of Ministers. Illegible signature.
100,000 refugees passed through Portugal, fleeing the Nazis. The peak of this
movement occurred in the summer of 1940: in June 1940 alone, some 20,000
people entered the country. This resulted in many problems for a regime such
as Portugal’s, since many of those entering Portugal were fleeing a Nazi-
dominated continent for political reasons—which would automatically place
them under the supervision of the PVDE—and doing so with the support of
the Allied authorities, notably the British consulate in Lisbon, found to be at
the heart of smuggling networks.42 The cat-and-mouse game which ensued led
to more conflicts with the Allies. In any case, Portugal was not a particularly
welcoming destination, and had, since the 1930s, along with much of the
world, tried to erect barriers to restrain the arrival of foreigners. But for those
who did make it in, it should be stressed, conditions were not bad; there were
no camps for refugees, even those with who did not possess the necessary
papers. Instead, foreign refugees were housed around the country, notably in
tourist resorts with much spare capacity as a result of the war, being assigned a
fixed residency while their case was resolved. Salazar’s overriding aim was to
move people out of the country as quickly as possible, not allowing them to
compete in the labor market at a time of economic difficulty.
That a wave of refugees should have hit Portugal, in the summer of 1940,
was largely the work of a single man, Aristides de Sousa Mendes, at the time
Portuguese consul in Bordeaux. Sousa Mendes was well known to Salazar; the
two were from the same part of the country, although the Sousa Mendes were
an aristocratic family. His twin brother, César, had served in as Minister of
Foreign Affairs in Salazar’s first cabinet. More significantly, Salazar’s diary entry
for 13 January 1935 (a Sunday) reads
12—Dr Aristides Sousa Mendes—continuation of the 1930 investigations into the

budget sent to Portugal.43
In other words, Sousa Mendes’ financial dealings had been thought suffi-
ciently doubtful to be brought to the attention of Salazar, even before Salazar
became Foreign Minister. In January 1940, already in Bordeaux, Sousa Mendes
was reprimanded by Lisbon for having conceded visas against the existing
regulations, which were constantly being revised in favor of a tightening up of
the border. Bordeaux and, to the South, Bayonne, began to fill up, from May
42. AOS CO IN 8B, letter, 2 August 1941, Director of the PVDE to Secretary General of the MNE.
43. Aristides Sousa Mendes (1885–1953) was, in 1930, Consul in Antwerp. He was the subject of an inquiry
by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs into his financial dealings, notably the delays involved in transferring funds
to Lisbon. The fact that he had fourteen children militated against him, since, quite clearly, his domestic
budget was enormous. See Diana Andringa, ‘Aristides de Sousa Mendes do Amaral Abranches’ in Rosas &
Brandão de Brito (eds), Dicionário de História do Estado Novo, vol. 1, p. 8.
1940, with refugees from countries invaded by Germany—Norway, Denmark,
Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg; there were also German and
Austrian exiles, mostly Jewish, who feared arrest, having been released from
their internment by French authorities. Sousa Mendes again broke existing
rules by conceding visas to a group of some seventeen Belgians, despite already
having received instructions that forbad the issuing of visas without the express
approval of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.44 On 17 June, as the number of
refugees mounted, Sousa Mendes took a fateful step, deciding to issue free
entry visas to all who asked him for them. The time had come, he would later
say, to make up for Portugal’s persecution of Jews in the Fifteenth and Six-
teenth Centuries. Over the course of the next few days, he would issue thou-
sands (the actual number is impossible to establish, given the improvised and
hurried nature of Sousa Mendes’ work) of visas without observing any regula-
tions, and ordered the consul in Bayonne to do likewise. Spanish authorities
complained to Lisbon, since they had to process all the Portugal-bound
refugees; the British, meanwhile, complained in Lisbon about a special tax
apparently being charged by Sousa Mendes, in the name of ‘Portuguese
charity’.45
It was not just Jews that benefited from Sousa Mendes’ actions. Archduke
Otto Von Habsburg entered Portugal with a visa signed by Sousa Mendes; so
too did many prominent Luxembourg and Belgian politicians, including Paul
van Zeeland, a former Belgian Prime Minister. On 22 June, the Portuguese
legation in France, itself in Bordeaux, was ordered to bring Sousa Mendes’
activity to an end. The situation was so bad that even Teotónio Pereira was
dispatched to the French border from Madrid, arriving there that same 22
June; the following day he would speak by telephone with Salazar, detailing the
situation, and informing the Spanish government that Portugal no longer
recognized as valid the visas issued by Sousa Mendes.46 On 24 June the
Portuguese border was formally closed, while Spain announced that it would
no longer accept Portuguese visas as valid. However, there was a time-lag
between announcing such a decision and enforcing it. Defying his superiors,
Sousa Mendes persevered in issuing visas, even after the German forces had
arrived in Bordeaux. The result was that the number of people awaiting entry
into Portugal, on the Portuguese-Spanish border, mounted. Since the Spanish
44. Irene Flunser Pimentel, Judeus em Portugal durante a II Guerra Mundial (Lisbon: A Esfera dos Livros, 2006),
103.
45. Flunser Pimentel, Judeus em Portugal, p. 104. Sousa Mendes would deny having charged any such tax.
46. What upset Teotónio Pereira most was having to deal with the political fall-out of the situation in
Madrid, where a ‘political campaign’ had begun, protesting against Portugal’s protection of Madrid’s political
enemies. Telegram 101 from the Madrid embassy to the MNE, Lisbon, 25 June 1940, cited in Flunser
Pimentel, Judeus em Portugal, p. 105.
authorities would not let them back into Spain, Lisbon gave way and allowed
them all in. In July Sousa Mendes was ordered back to Lisbon, where a major
investigation was launched into his actions by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Sousa Mendes defended himself as best he could, explaining that he had acted
out of humanitarian concerns, but also out of historical—restoring Portugal’s
good name after the excesses of the Inquisition—and practical—allowing
people of prestige, influence, and talent into the country—considerations. He
also pointed out that Portugal was profiting politically from his actions, since
the humanitarian welcome given to so many people was being highlighted all
over the world.47 The investigation’s authors, taking into account the terrible
backdrop to Sousa Mendes’ actions, recommended that he should be demoted
but kept in the foreign service. Salazar did not agree; he suspended Sousa
Mendes for a year, on half-pay, and then dismissed him. Without work, with a
large family to look after, Sousa Mendes quickly sank into poverty.
Aristides Sousa Mendes’ international recognition came too late to rescue
him from this poverty, and occurred at the expense of Salazar’s reputation.
Having punished a man who had saved thousands of innocent lives, Salazar’s
actions in June and July 1940 seemed inexplicable; it was natural to place him
among the perpetrators of evil than among its victims for, in the face of
Nazism, there could be no middle ground. As we have seen, though, Sousa
Mendes had a reputation as a loose cannon—a kind of civil servant Salazar did
not tolerate, especially since, by virtue of his professional activity, his actions
had immediate repercussions abroad. Teotónio Pereira, who was in direct con-
tact with Salazar during the crisis, would later write that a Spanish military
commander on the border with France had warned him that ‘“Portugal should
not complain when Germany goes after its refugees.”’48 Teotónio Pereira’s
biographer reminds us that ‘in order to understand the attitude adopted by the
Portuguese authorities in relation to this problem, we must not only consider
the juridical question but also the political delicacy of the moment.’ German
tanks were rolling towards the Pyrenees: ensuring that they stopped there was
the overriding priority for Salazar. An action such as Aristides Sousa Mendes’
might set off a serious diplomatic incident, capable of making impossible the
47. In this Sousa Mendes was absolutely right. See, for example, the long article entitled ‘Helping hand to
refugees: What Portugal has done’ in The Times (London), 15 October 1940: ‘The official attitude of the
government was the only one to be expected, for it was the expression of the fundamental kindliness of the
Portuguese people. The wave of human wreckage which passed through their country gave the ordinary
people innumerable opportunities to show their humanitarian instincts. The hotelkeepers of Lisbon and
Estoril may have put up their prices so as to gather the rich harvest from this brief crop of prosperity. That is
the nature of hotelkeepers the world over. But where the need was apparent, the Portuguese, rich and poor,
rallied round to help’.
48. Pedro Teotónio Pereira, Memórias vol. 2 (Lisbon: Verbo, 1973), pp. 219–20.
prosecution of Salazar’s policy of neutrality.49 Salazar believed that this policy
could only be brought to a successful conclusion if he was able to control every
aspect of foreign policy. Every action had consequences which those who saw
only part of the picture could not foresee—and centralization was essential to
control the flow of information.50
As France buckled under the weight of the German attack, Salazar
received a piece of news which would prove to be a triumph for British
interests in Portugal, and a demonstration that these did not mind associating
themselves fully to Salazar’s cause, believing it to be, ultimately, closer to
British than to German war aims. Douglas Veale, Registrar of the University of
Oxford, informed Salazar that the University’s Hebdomadal Council had
‘unanimously decided at its meeting last Monday to invite you to accept the
Honorary Degree of Doctor of Civil Law’, understanding, however, that the
University would have to ‘deny itself the pleasure of receiving you in person.’ A
delegation could be sent to Portugal ‘to confer the Degree at some time and
place which would be arranged to suit Your Excellency’s convenience.’51 In
other words, Oxford was signing a blank check to the Portuguese propaganda
machine. Some months later, Winston Churchill added his weight to the cam-
paign to keep Salazar onside, writing to congratulate Salazar on his ability to
keep Portugal out of the war, adding that ‘as so often before during the many
centuries of the Anglo-Portuguese alliance, British and Portuguese interests are
identical on this vital question.’52 By this time, and as part of a reshuffle carried
49. Martins, ‘Pedro Teotónio Pereira’, p. 620. The same could not be said of the actions of two other
Portuguese diplomats who, through their actions, saved up to 1,000 Hungarian Jews from Auschwitz. In
1944, Carlos de Almeida Fonseca de Sampaio Garrido and his successor at the head of the Budapest
legation, Alberto Carlos de Liz-Teixeira Branquinho, were able, through a number of subterfuges, to provide
diplomatic protection in the shape of safe-houses and schutzpässe (protection passports) to all those who had
even the remotest connection with Portugal and Brazil (whose interests in Hungary Portugal was now
representing). This was done largely in co-operation with the MNE, with the proviso that these men and
women would not, in the future, seek to obtain Portuguese nationality. See Flunser Pimentel, Judeus em
Portugal, pp. 343–350.
50. The extent to which Salazar trusted his diplomatic corps, which had never been purged, at the time of the
war, is open to debate. Manuel Anselmo, a turbulent character on the far Right of the regime, served during
the early years of the war as consul in the Brazilian city of Recife. His intense political activity led to an early
return in disgrace—a fact that did not interfere in his voluminous, if one-sided, correspondence with Salazar.
Undoubtedly a crank, as well as an unsolicited snitch, Anselmo begged Salazar for a new foreign posting
through which to clear his reputation. ‘You will do as you wish’, he would write in 1943, ‘but I have no
interest in remaining in this ministry, where the majority of the staff is your enemy. My nerves are not up to
the task of hearing what everyday is said here about you’. AOS CP 11, letter, Lisbon, 23 September 1943,
Manuel Anselmo to António de Oliveira Salazar.
51. AOS CO PC 8B, letter, 15 May 1940, Douglas Veale, Registrar of the University of Oxford, to António
de Oliveira Salazar.
52. AOS CP 64, letter, London, 24 September 1940, Winston Churchill to António de Oliveira Salazar.
Churchill concluded by assuring Salazar that Great Britain could emerge triumphant from the conflict:
Germany’s aerial assault had been of little practical consequence apart from serving ‘to strengthen the
resolution of all classes’, as a result of which ‘we mean to do them in’.
out late in August, Salazar had lightened his workload by entrusting the
Ministry of Finance to Costa Leite.
By February 1941, the Oxford delegation had been selected: J. R. H.
Weaver, president of Trinity College; Professor William Entwistle, a specialist
in Portuguese medieval literature; and T. F. Higham, the University’s Public
Orator. The propaganda value of the enterprise, from the British point of view,
was made clear in a telegram to Salazar by the Chancellor of the University,
Lord Halifax: ‘The University’s degree […] is also a symbol of the deep friend-
ship that has kept our two countries united since the far off days when
Coimbra and Oxford themselves were young.’53 The three British academics
were received with all pomp and ceremony in Lisbon, before making their way
to Coimbra, where, in the University’s Senate hall, the honorary doctorate was
conferred on Salazar.
What is in many ways most significant about this event, is that Salazar,
while hoping for some negotiated settlement to the conflict, and not seeing
how Germany could be defeated, was nevertheless unwilling to surrender
political initiative to Berlin, keeping open as many options for Portugal as
possible for as long as possible. British authorities in Portugal, of course, en-
couraged this position, an incoming ambassador wasting no time in making it
clear that he distrusted ‘the Portuguese who come to him as friends, with the
intention of manifesting their opposition to the present government.’54 This
was an attitude that was preserved despite the mounting difficulties in the
everyday relationship between the two countries. As we have already seen, the
navicert system was one such source of difficulties. Another was the murky
world of espionage, which the PVDE was finding hard to contain, something
which British officials imputed to pro-German leanings of many of its agents.55
British suspicions were heightened—unfairly, perhaps—when the PVDE
uncovered, in 1942, and dismantled, a British-run network, which involved a
number of individuals working for the Shell oil company, designed to carry out
important acts of demolition and sabotage in case of a German invasion. This
incident can be seen as the point in which the PVDE’s actions swung most
decidedly in favor of Germany: there were some seventy-five arrests, and the
53. AOS CO PC 8B, telegram, 23 April 1941, Halifax to António de Oliveira Salazar.
54. AOS CP 49, letter, 6 January 1941, Esmeraldo Carvalhaes to António de Oliveira Salazar.
55. See, for example, AOS CO PC 3E, report, 3 February 1941, ‘Factos imputados à PVDE’, in which it was
claimed that, for example, ‘the correspondence of the British consul in Oporto has been systematically
violated. Many of the letters he sends are removed from their envelopes and subjected to a chemical
treatment which destroys, the signature aside, the original writing, which is replaced by another, of a
compromising nature […] The Germans are not disrupted or even subjected to surveillance while they carry
out these services, while employees of the British embassy’s press services, whose tasks are modest and
inoffensive, are arrested and interfered with without, in most cases, any explanation that might justify such
measure being provided […]’
PVDE requested the departure of four Special Operations Executive agents
from Portuguese soil.56 A British diplomat, reflecting on the event, wrote that
the PVDE’s investigation of the affair had been ‘conducted with thoroughness
worthy of a better cause.’57 Eventually, though, and despite much distrust on
both sides, PVDE and British services began to cooperate in Portugal.58 What
had most irked the Portuguese in relation to the Shell network was that so
many of those recruited by the British were opposition figures, which gave the
action a decidedly political aspect and which broke what was, for all practical
purposes, the cardinal rule of politics under Salazar: different suspect groups
were not allowed to come together, whatever the purpose. This is not to say
that the PVDE was immune to German espionage and its methods. There
were informers within its hierarchy who passed intelligence on to the Germans.
It was a Portuguese source who informed German intelligence of the passenger
lists for a KLM flight shot down over the Bay of Biscay. Aboard were ‘several
important British secret agents and a Jewish refugee organization executive’; so
too was Oscar-winning actor Leslie Howard.59 Along with other events, this
shooting-down led to the passing of a decree, some days later, making spying
in Portuguese territory an illegal activity.
Through these crises the desire for cooperation of all kinds with
London—including military—was evident. Military missions continued to be
sent to Britain to accompany the development of warfare, from a British point
of view, the one still deemed to be most meaningful to Portugal. One such
mission, organized at the beginning of 1941, was dispatched to London to
examine the city’s anti-aircraft measures.60 And when the British presented lists
of German spies and contacts within Portugal, Salazar acted to curb their
actions, not without complaining, however, about Britain’s own actions, in-
cluding the recruitment of Portuguese contacts. Salazar also maintained a
steady stream of complaints about the compromising of Portugal’s neutrality.61
Britain wanted quick action against German spies; Salazar did not want com-
promising and embarrassing situations to be made public.62
56. Wheeler, ‘In the Service of Order’, p. 8.

58. AOS CO PC 8D, draft of letter, May 1943, António de Oliveira Salazar to the British ambassador to
Lisbon.
59. Wheeler, ‘In the Service of Order’, p. 11.
60. Correspondência de Santos Costa, doc. 20, letter, 11 February 1941, Santos Costa to António de Oliveira
61. See, for example, AOS CO PC 8 D, personal and secret letter, 17 April 1942, António de Oliveira Salazar
to the British ambassador.
62. Thus, for example, when lawyer Elmano Cunha e Costa was identified as a German collaborator, trying
to harness support for Germany in Portuguese Guinea, the Portuguese authorities were above all concerned
with preserving him in the limbo of Cape Verde, rather than allowing him to be seized by the British on the
high seas. See AOS CO UL 10, telegram, 18 September 1942, Minister of the Colonies to governor of Cape
Verde.
The need to influence British public opinion positively led also to the
commissioning of a book on Salazar by Colonel F. C. C. Egerton, a devotee of
colonial affairs who was contacted initially by Armindo Monteiro. As usual in
these cases, Egerton was to receive all possible help from the SPN in the
preparation of the book, eventually published, after a long delay, in 1943 as
Salazar: Rebuilder of Portugal.63 Egerton would remain a defender of the New
State for decades to come, eventually moving to Portugal and fighting a losing
battle to interest the British press in the Portuguese point of view on colonial
issues. It is worth noting, however, that the book’s publication in wartime
Britain was not easy. Monteiro wrote, in September 1942, ‘the editors have
turned it down. Some do not want to give publicity to the ideas of non-Allied
countries; others disagree with the doctrine defended by the author’; others still
doubted its commercial potential.64
Most of the evidence points towards Salazar’s deep sadness over the war,
an event which, as he saw it, would bring about the passing of the European
age. Salazar feared Germany and its intentions more than those of the Western
allies, among which stood Great Britain, with whom Portugal, by necessity, was
forced to have close dealings. But there are some documents—which should
not be ignored—which suggest the reverse. In April 1941, for example, the
German minister, Hoyningen-Huene, wrote from Lisbon reporting Salazar’s
words on the war, as recorded by Huene’s Italian counterpart, Renato Bova
Scoppa.65 According to Huene, Salazar was convinced that, at best, Britain (at
this time fighting alone) could earn a draw, should the United States enter the
war on its side. Salazar added, according to this source, that the ‘only thing that
could save Europe would be an Axis victory, of which he was convinced and
which, in his heart he would welcome with joy, as long as his country could
preserve its independence and national existence.’66 What Huene and Bova
Scoppa did not realize, however, was that very often what they took for
support for their cause was actually Salazar fishing for information about their
governments’ plans. This, twinned with his openly expressed frustration with
Allied economic measures and restrictions, created an impression that the
Portuguese leader desired to bring Portugal’s existing relationship with Britain
to an end. On 15 May 1941, the day in which an economic deal was signed
with Salazar, Huene, who was about to travel on official business to Berlin, had
63. F. C. C. Egerton, Salazar: Rebuilder of Portugal (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1943).
64. Rosas et al. (eds), Armindo Monteiro, doc. 56, letter, 27 September 1942, Armindo Monteiro to António de
Oliveira Salazar, pp. 321–27.
65. Salazar met Bova Scoppa on 1 April 1941, for an hour. They discussed, according to Salazar’s diary,
‘commercial negotiations—problems of transit through Spain—war problems’.
66. DGFP Series D vol. 10 (London: HMSO, 1957), doc. 374, Lisbon, 19 April 1941, from the minister in
Portugal to the Foreign Ministry, pp. 589-90.
a long conversation with Salazar.67 According to this diplomat, ‘Salazar was
more emphatic than ever before in embracing the cause of the reorganization
of Europe, and it was incomprehensible to him that England should fail to
recognize it.’ Tellingly, though, Huene added that ‘Salazar showed great interest
in the effects of future intra-European economic cooperation and asked
detailed questions about the experiences to date, particularly in the matter of a
central clearing system.’68
Salazar’s most interesting, if brief, wartime correspondence, is the one he
maintained with Swiss conservative thinker and academic, Comte Gonzague de
Reynold, who had, in the mid 1930s, been in, and written about, Portugal. He
had come to admire the New State and attempted to impress on others its via-
bility as an alternative to both democracy and the more aggressive Fascist
model. The two men, in their correspondence, described each other as friends,
something almost unique in the surviving Salazar papers: a recommendation
from Reynold was a passport to a friendly hearing from the Portuguese dicta-
tor, or a guarantee of a quick and safe passage out of Europe. With Reynold,
whom he obviously trusted, Salazar opened up and gave his views on the war.69
In September 1941, Salazar agreed with Reynold’s stated fears regarding
America’s intervention in the conflict, seeing in that development the
possibility of an endless conflict between an enlarged Europe—one which
might possibly include, if the war went well for Germany, North Africa and
much of the Soviet Union—and the rest of the world. The result would be
misery and, eventually, anarchy in a Europe starved of resources and markets.
More interestingly, and tellingly, Salazar went on to discuss another danger
inherent in American intervention: the consequences of an Allied victory and a
renewed bout of American interference in European affairs, similar to Wilson’s
heyday in 1918–1919. Salazar wrote,
I have had a chance to speak to some of the men they [the Roosevelt administra-
tion] have sent to Europe, on important and delicate missions. They are pleasant,
intelligent, simple, almost childish, with a strong streak of kindness, apt to sacrifice
67. This is confirmed by Salazar’s diary, in which the long conversation is noted. Among the topics covered,
according to the diary, were ‘problems of peace and war’, ‘Franco-German relations’, ‘England’s morale’, and
‘Hitler’s personality’.
68. DGFP Series D (1937–1945), vol. 10, doc. 530, Lisbon, 15 May 1941, the minister in Portugal to the
Foreign Ministry, pp. 838–39.
69. On 20 February 1940 Gonzague de Reynold met King Leopold III of Belgium at the royal palace in
Brussels. On 11 March of that year Reynold sent Salazar his notes on the meeting, adding that only two
Swiss politicians (one the country’s President), had received this ‘confidential’ paper. The document in ques-
tion states that ‘I should note here the profound admiration that Leopold III feels for President Salazar.
Once I told him that not only did I personally know Salazar, but that we were friends, there was a real
opening up, and from that moment on his shyness came to an end as if switched off, and the King began to
confide in me’. Included in AOS CP 239, letter, Château de Cressier-sur-Morat, 11 March 1940, Comte
Gonzague de Reynold to António de Oliveira Salazar.
themselves for the broad ideals of humanitarianism which move them in their
country. But it seems to me, as it does to you, that they do not understand this
complicated European soul, because of the simplicity of their own.70
Where Salazar did not go along with Reynold, however, was in the opinion that
American intervention in the war would necessarily bring about the eclipse of
the British Empire, or its absorption into the American sphere. There is no
doubt that, by late summer 1941, Salazar had become impressed with the
British spirit of resistance, and saw in it a bulwark against the coming American
steam-roller:
[…] the magnificent resistance which it [the British people] has demonstrated in
this war; its persistence when, after France’s defeat, any other nation would have
considered that everything was lost; the heroism with which it has armed itself
under fire and withstood the devastation provoked by the German air force; [all of
these] reveal the survival of admirable qualities reawakened by danger. Beneath the
selfishness, the love of luxury, the magnificent contempt for the other peoples, the
softening provoked by the excess of wealth; beneath all this one can find the same
qualities that built the Empire.
And should there be any doubt in Reynold’s mind, Salazar spelt out for him
who the greater danger was:
You fear the “desire for power” of North America, far from Europe and ignorant
of its spirit, whose intervention could not for that reason be convenient, lasting
and persistent. But do you really think that German imperialism would be con-
tented, in the European whole, with a simple “presidency”, and a deciding vote?
What hope can we have of any respect for national independences?
Salazar’ view on this point will have been reinforced by a report sent by the
minister in Ankara, detailing a conversation with a German diplomat recently
returned from Germany, Dr Hans Kroll. Having been assured that the USSR’s
defeat was imminent, Francisco de Calheiros e Meneses asked what would
follow that defeat:
Then, he answered, since peace seems impossible and no-one believes in it in

Berlin, Europe will have to be organized along new bases, England being driven
out of all European and Mediterranean affairs. When we have, he went on, the
70. AOS COE 3, letter, 1 September 1941, António de Oliveira Salazar to Comte Gonzague de Reynold.
whole of Europe, from Gibraltar to the North Pole, and an army with 200
divisions and formidable armament, who will be able to beat us?71
Calheiros e Meneses continued,
He did not say a word about Portugal, not even a geographical reference, when he
spoke about Europe, but I thought that if the scenario he painted does come
about, we will find ourselves in difficulties.72
Traditionally interpreted as a response by Salazar to the changing fortunes

of war, his later cooperation with the Allies was also a belated contribution to
the success of what he considered the lesser of two evils, once it had become
possible to make such a contribution. In September 1942, Reynold wrote again
to Salazar, having finished the second volume of one of his most important
works, Qu’est-ce que l’Europe? He was more than ever convinced that the war
would be a disaster for Europe, which would soon be plunged into anarchy
and caught between the giants of America and Asia. Europeans ardently
desired peace, he argued, even the English. But the great obstacles on the road
to peace were the United States and the nature of the German occupation of
Europe. Should these be resolved—and there were hints that Germany was
fast changing under the impact of the war, becoming less radical and more
open to the army’s point of view—then peace was a possibility, provided
Germany were allowed some room for expansion in the East.
Salazar replied the following month, inviting Reynold to spend some time
in Lisbon:
We would make the most out of a few hours of the days that you might wish to
pass amongst us and exchange impressions and judgments about the situation and
actual or future possibilities […] and in the hope that you will soon come to visit
your many Portuguese friends and that I will have the pleasure and the benefit of
listening and talking to you, I will not write down, regarding your interesting letter,
more than some uncoordinated thoughts, as the pen glides.73
Salazar then presented his views on where the greatest threats to Europe lay. It
was not true that only the Americans stood in the way of peace: the British
71. Rosas et al. (eds), Armindo Monteiro, doc. 40a, report by the Portuguese minister in Ankara, Francisco
Calheiros, sent with a personal letter to the Secretary General, 1 September 1941, and forwarded on 5
October 1941 by António de Oliveira Salazar to Armindo Monteiro, p. 202.
72. Ibid. It is worth noting, as the editors of the Salazar-Monteiro correspondence did, that Calheiros e
Meneses had an excellent relationship with his German counterparts, so much so that the British ambassador
in the Turkish capital accused him of being an informant of the German ambassador, Von Papen.
73. AOS COE 3, letter, 29 October 1942, António de Oliveira Salazar to Comte Gonzague de Reynold.
people were totally devoted to the war. The United States was gaining from the
conflict, it was true: its position across the Atlantic, and throughout the Ameri-
can continent, had been greatly reinforced, and would not be reversed. From
this side the war would continue, but so too was Germany committed to the
war. Allowing Germany a free hand in the East was no solution, since she
would not be content with any gains, but seek to use them for further con-
quest:
There are nations which, in spite of lack of space and the misery or poverty which
from it result, are quiet and stable. There are others among whom the allegation of
lack of space is an expression of its rising force. This is the German case, which is
further aggravated by the fact that Germans love strength and have an irresistible
tendency towards external discipline, uniformity, and organization in accordance
with the principles of their philosophy and social formation. A German hegemony
over Europe would never be, I think, the “honorary presidency” to which you
referred, but rather an effective domination, maybe with some regard for national
spirit or nature […] This, however, would be the death of Europe as it was
constituted and formed in the wake of the Roman Empire.
Salazar granted, however, that an Allied victory was not without its
dangers, since it would spell a Soviet advance into central Europe; all of his
attempts to point this out, Salazar explained, had been met with nonchalance
by his British interlocutors:
The English are not endowed with great imagination and, unlike the Germans,
they cannot, without the greatest of difficulties, create systems. They allow them-
selves, prudently, to be conducted by facts and are content to resolve, when
possible, difficulties, without worrying about the principles on which they base
their solutions. […] Your Excellency will have noted how [those] on the British
side answer the general apprehension caused by the possibility of a communist
expansion in Europe to be produced by the crushing, or dissolution, of German
forces. Their reasoning is not only inexact, it is childish, and does not allay any-
one’s worries—rather, it strengthens them through the incomprehension, real or
feigned, of the problem and the danger, just because the necessities of war turned
Russia into an ally of Britain.
In December 1942 Reynold wrote again, this time expressing the view that
the time had come for a new economic organization to be created in Europe,
one that would have an obvious impact on national sovereignty, part of which
would be surrendered to an international body more effective than the old
League of Nations. There was no question of the disappearance of the small
nations, of course: but there would be a need to reconcile their economic
dependence with their political independence.74
Another source of information as to Salazar’s true intentions, and their
evolution, is to be found in his dealings with Romanian officials, whose gov-
ernment valued his opinion. Asked by the Romanian minister, in September
1942, what his views were on the war and the possibility of peace, Salazar
replied cautiously, reminding his interlocutor that the Romanian Conducatore,
Marshal Antonescu, would have a much better idea than he, Salazar, of the
military situation. He was less guarded, however, when it came to the question
of peace. Germany might be impossible to dislodge from her dominant
position in Europe, but Europe could not exist by itself, given its shortcomings
in terms of resources and markets. That being the case, predicting the victor
was for the moment impossible: but, Salazar continued, some opinions might
be advanced in terms of what peace might look like:
If we guide ourselves somewhat by what we know of the nature of the peoples in

question, we can guess that should England win, she will respect the independence
of states, the freedom of conscience, and individual and national liberty. No doubt
she will arrange, or try to arrange, matters so as to increase her security and multi-
ply her business affairs; but that aside, England is, by education and political
interest, traditionally respectful of others’ rights. And that is something in itself.75
Salazar was less charitable towards the United States—‘the way in which the
American nation was formed, its wealth, its size and the small number of in-
habitants, compared with that of most European countries, do not predispose
it towards understanding our problems’—and openly skeptical of Germany:
I read and thought about the work which Mr Antonescu had written and sent me,
on the building of the Roman Empire; I could not be convinced, however, that
the construction which civilized Rome once made with the barbarians it civilized
could be repeated with the already civilized nations of Europe, unless we all
considered ourselves to be barbarians in the face of Germany, as Iberians and
Franks had done in the face of Rome. Germany has a taste for force, for material
and external order, it has an obsession with systems. How shall such a spirit […]
operate in the reorganization of Europe, should it be dealt with in a sovereign way
by Germanic might?
74. AOS COE 3, letter, 23 December 1942, Comte Gonzague de Reynold to António de Oliveira Salazar.
75. AOS CO NE 7B, ‘Most Confidential’ report on a conversation between the Minister of Foreign Affairs
and the Romanian minister, 26 September 1942.
The Romanian diplomat was harshly critical of Hitler, considering him a
culture-less savage; Salazar would not follow him in this judgment, at least not
in the current circumstances: ‘I poured water on the fire, saying that, in spite of
everything, Hitler was a political genius, who had realized a colossal work.’76
The Failed Attempt to Control Public Opinion
The fall of France, Salazar believed, forced Portugal to reach some sort of
accommodation, as yet impossible to discern, with the Nazis. The period which
followed it, and which ushered in new dangers, necessarily led to a more
thorough clampdown on public opinion and the press. It also ushered in an
official campaign highlighting the benefits of peace and the need to obey
Salazar if peace was to be preserved. Henrique Galvão, on the radio, was one
element of this campaign, arguing that
We are today a privileged country in Europe—perhaps the only one to live in such
a dignified and austere peace that it can commemorate gloriously its long age. This
is the magnificent work of a man who certainly does not enjoy, amidst all of his
preoccupations, the peace which he bestows on us.77
To his confidants, Salazar spoke of the need to build up faith in the

country’s future and to fight despondency and despair.78 This was part of an
earnest wish to create a distinctively Portuguese interpretation of the war,
founded upon confidence in things to come and, inevitably, faith in its leader.
The Oxford doctorate fitted into this policy, being inserted into a week-long
series of events which, coinciding with Salazar’s birthday and the anniversary of
his coming to power, culminated in a large rally in the Terreiro do Paço.79 But
the wish never became a reality, because the feuding parties, even in muted
form, prolonged their wars, aided by the representatives of foreign powers in
76. The Romanian minister would continue to act as an important source of news from the Eastern Front.
On 16 July 1943 a MNE official, Viana, informed Salazar that this diplomat, who had returned from
Romania via Rome, wished to brief him on events, for no-one in power in Bucharest now believed in the
possibility of an Axis victory. Nevertheless, with the German military dominating Romania, no action could
be taken other than assuring the Allies—secretly—that should they land in the Balkans no action would be
taken against them. AOS CO NE 2F1, report, H. Viana, 16 July 1943.
77. AOS CP 123, transcript of lecture by Henrique Galvão on the Emissora Nacional, July 1940.
78. AOS CP 38, letter, Madrid, 17 December 1940, Dona Filipa de Bragança to António de Oliveira Salazar.
79. Salazar made a brief address to the crowd, ending it with an appeal for unity and patriotic faith: ‘[…] Let
us be confident! Let us have faith in loyalty, our own and that of others; in order; in work; in the serenity and
seriousness with which we will attend to problems and meet difficulties. Let us trust above all—more than in
the force of arms—in the cohesion and strength of our national unity, in the profound and living love for the
Portuguese land, in those high examples—the values of our History and the ideals of our civilization—which
iron cannot kill and which fire cannot destroy!’ António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘Todos não somos demais’ in
Discursos, vol. 3, pp. 297–300.
Lisbon. In February 1941 the Catholic daily Novidades, in whose pages Salazar
had once shot to prominence, was reprimanded by the censorship authorities
for its clear pro-British bias. These same authorities noted also how more and
more copies of Novidades were finding their way into Spain, ‘possibly due to the
action of the British Intelligence Services.’80 The German legation, meanwhile,
kept up its efforts. Early in 1941 an outrageously biased and anti-Semitic
account of Anglo-Portuguese relations appeared under the suggestive title
Acuso a Inglaterra! (I Accuse England!). Supposedly written by ‘Afonso de
Albuquerque’,81 it bore in its last page a small note marking it as a product of
the German legation’s information service. The printers were fined for not
having submitted the proofs to the censorship authorities, and an order for the
seizure of the volume was made.
Access to Salazar, and through him to the censorship authorities, was
closely disputed between journalists. We have already seen that Alfredo
Pimenta wrote constantly to Salazar during the conflict, and complaints about
truncated or overruled articles made up much of this correspondence. In
return, Salazar could, at times, be brutal in his appreciation of Pimenta’s
journalistic efforts.82 Eventually, his patience exhausted, Salazar informed
Pimenta that he wanted the practice to end.83 Diogo de Amorim was another
figure who repeatedly informed Salazar that articles had been cut.84 The two
men held diametrically opposed views of the conflict. That the censorship
machine was aimed as much against Axis supporters as Allied supporters was
made clear by a letter written in August 1941 by António Eça de Queiroz,
Ferro’s deputy at the SPN. Eça de Queiroz denounced what had happened in
Portugal since the German invasion of the USSR: on the one hand, a known
opponent of the regime, Lieutenant Colonel Lelo Portela, was interpreting the
news from the Eastern Front in a clearly pro-Soviet way in the pages of the
Catholic daily A Voz (and, in doing so, he was boosting the newspaper’s sales,
since the 2 August 1941 edition was kept on sale for three days on end,
80. AOS CO PC 3E, ‘Exclusive’ report for the President of the Council, 28 February 1941.
81. Afonso de Albuquerque, Acuso a Inglaterra! (Lisbon: Serviço de Informação da Legação da Alemanha,
1941). Afonso de Albuquerque was one of the founders of Portugal’s empire in India in the Sixteenth
Century.
82. AOS CP 215, draft of letter, 25 September 1941, António de Oliveira Salazar to Alfredo Pimenta. In this
document Salazar, having read an article written by the germanophile author for the Berlin-based Europaische
Revue, wrote, ‘I must not hide from you that the work will not increase your renown and I doubt that it will
constitute a service to the country’.
83. AOS CP 215, letter, 1 November 1941, António de Oliveira Salazar to Alfredo Pimenta.
84. See, for example, AOS CP 9, letter, 2 September 1941, Diogo de Amorim to António de Oliveira Salazar,
in which the writer thanked Salazar for his explanation of how smugglers of foodstuffs into Spain were
making use of their illegally obtained pesetas (which meant that Salazar was aware of the crime being
committed) while complaining about the latest actions of the censors against his articles for the Comércio do
Porto, which criticised the actions of the Grémio of Oporto Meat Traders.
newspaper sellers shouting ‘Buy the article on Russia!’85); on the other, a film
entitled 1812 Overture was playing in a Lisbon cinema:
For a week the Lisbon public was able to view a daring and crafty maneuver of
pro-Russian propaganda against the invading troops of the “Anti-Christ”, all of it
subtitled in such a way as to fool only those who want to be fooled.86
Eça de Queiroz returned to the point in November, after an advertisement

paid for by Blackstone & Co. appeared in The Times of 30 October, which,
under a large hammer and sickle, stated, ‘We salute the Hammer and Sickle,
and through them the suffering millions of the Soviet Republics, who are
fighting back against the forces of darkness and aggression in a way which
commands the admiration of the whole world.’ This advertisement, carried in a
conservative newspaper, had caused wonder among some, rejoicing among
others, and bitter arguments everywhere. ‘Many people have asked me’, he
continued, ‘whether one can tolerate the free entry in Portugal of such flagrant
communist propaganda’.87 There are countless examples of direct interference
by the government and the higher reaches of administration in the running of
the censorship machinery, all in pursuit of the impossible task of keeping all
belligerents happy.88 In opposition lore, censorship was part of the police state
which kept Salazar in place, but it was clearly more than this; it was a necessary
part of preserving Portugal’s neutrality. Censorship was not, according to many
within the regime, working well. There was a great lack of coordination
between its action and that of the SPN, and newspapers exploited this gap well,
refusing much of the copy provided by the latter body.89 In this regard, a
85. This article, entitled ‘Speed Against Space’, and the reaction it provoked, were sufficiently important to
warrant a mention in the British embassy’s review of 1941. NA FO 371/34641 C 361, Review of Events in
Portugal during 1941.
86. AOS CP 231, letter, August 1941, António Eça de Queiroz to António de Oliveira Salazar. The film,
presumably, was Vsevolod Pudovkin’s General Suvorov (1941), which presents the old officer as a democratic
enemy of the aristocracy. As for Portela, he would figure in a complaint by the German minister to
Esmeraldo Carvalhais, in August 1942, for his articles in a new weekly, O Sol. AOS CP 49, report, Esmeraldo
Carvalhais, 11 August 1942. Eça de Queiroz would return to the subject of Portela in May 1943, complaining
about declarations Portela had allegedly made to the French military attaché, colonel D’Amade, regarding the
future usage by the Allies of the Atlantic islands: in return for this use, the Allies would land a force of 200-
300,000 men in Portugal. AOS CP 231, ‘Confidential’ undated letter, received on 7 May 1943, António Eça
de Queiroz to António de Oliveira Salazar.
87. AOS CP 231, letter, 3 November 1941, António Eça de Queiroz to António de Oliveira Salazar.
88. See, for example, AOS CP 48, letter, J. Carneiro to António de Oliveira Salazar, 22 September 1941.
Carneiro, Director General of Political Affairs in the MNE, had just met Nicolás Franco, and had assured
the ambassador that recently published articles on political troubles in Spain would be reined in. He
continued, ‘I asked the Censorship to halt that kind of publication until a new order, telling the officer on
duty that I had not been able to speak to Your Excellency, but that I would then inform him of any
instruction which you might give. And I would be very thankful if you allowed me to keep my word […]’
89. AOS CO PC 12 E, Report, A. Tavares de Almeida, SPN, December 1941. Minuted by António de
Oliveira Salazar on 5 January 1942.
comment made by the Count of Tovar, from Berlin, is highly significant.
Writing of Germany, in January 1942, Tovar pointed out, without apparent
irony, that ‘in this country, in which one can say that the press does not exist,
personal relations are the sole means to orientate himself at the disposal of a
foreign diplomat.’90
Censorship and, when necessary, repression, were not limited to Portu-
guese individuals and journalists. Walter Edward Lucas, Lisbon correspondent
of the London Times, and owner/director of the Lisbon-based Anglo-Portuguese
News, wrote a series of articles for the Brooklyn-based magazine P.M. which
attracted the attention of Portuguese authorities for their depiction of Portugal
as powerless in the face of German espionage, and for the rather insulting
claim that ‘Lisbon’s Admiralty is in Whitehall’. Interviewed in the offices of the
PVDE on Christmas Eve, 1940, Lucas failed to impress: when he had
described the National Assembly as ‘well-drilled’, he now claimed, he had
meant only that, in contrast to its republican predecessor, it had become a
model of order. As for the Whitehall quip, Lucas now claimed that he had been
merely pointing that no such body existed in Portugal, where the Navy
Minister was responsible for both the fleet and the merchant navy. His PVDE
interlocutor was not taken in, writing that ‘without worries of any kind, and
without the slightest regard for the country whose hospitality he benefits from,
he did not hesitate to twist or make up facts, writing not just nonsense but also
untruths which clash with national pride and which falsify Portugal’s inter-
national stance.’91 Lucas apologized to António Ferro and Captain Lourenço,
the PVDE’s commander, but to no avail; he was given forty-eight hours to
leave the country. After a short reprieve, he left Portugal on 10 January 1941.
Lest this be seen as the start of a new anti-British offensive, however, the
Portuguese authorities soon drove out an Italian journalist, Cesare Rivelli.
Repression, censorship, and alienation from the political life of the nation
make it hard to establish a clear picture of the scale of popular support for each
of the belligerents in Portugal. What must be remembered is that for the broad
mass of the population the war simply meant added anxiety and hardship.
Dealing successfully with this hardship in a way that reinforced trust in the new
institutions was to prove too great a challenge for the New State and above all
its corporative structures, and this was to prove disappointing to Salazar, since
it meant, ultimately, that despite preserving the country’s neutrality, the New
State had not been able to withstand the shock of a global conflict better than
90. AOS CD 21, letter, 27 January 1942, Count of Tovar to António de Oliveira Salazar.
91. AOS CO IN 8, transcript of the declarations made by W. E. Lucas in the Investigation Section of the
PVDE on 24 and 28 December. Forwarded to António de Oliveira Salazar by Captain Lourenço,
commander of the PVDE.
the First Republic, against which it constantly measured itself. Food and fuel
became increasingly scarce during the war, partly because of the long border
with Spain, where prices were higher. Illegal exports were never halted;
confusion and corruption over the supply, distribution, and—too late to have
any meaningful effect—rationing were the norm. Given his rural origins,
Salazar was under no illusion about what was happening in the countryside.
Reports from the PVDE made the situation clear, while acquaintances such as
Diogo de Amorim gave added detail to the mounting crisis in the provinces
and along the border.92 In general, though, quality of life was declining for all
those social classes that had hitherto given their support to the New State and
its leader. Worryingly, of course, these included military officers, not all of
whom could accumulate their basic salary with other forms of income.
Salazar’s chef de cabinet at the Ministry of War, Monteiro do Amaral, wrote in
July 1942 asking to be allowed to act as a judge in the Tribunal Militar Especial,
which would allow him to earn an extra 1,500 escudos per month: a move
which, it appears, Salazar had opposed:
[…] I have to accept the extremely disagreeable fact of having to exchange, for a
better material situation, the great honor of being chef de cabinet, in the Ministry of
War, of the Man whom God sent Portugal for its salvation and greatness.93
One important element of this new attempt to firm up domestic support

was the improved relationship with monarchists, which included the wel-
coming to Portugal of members of the royal family such as the Infanta Filipa de
Bragança, sister of Dom Duarte, Pretender to the Portuguese throne. Salazar
would maintain a long and highly personal correspondence with her for the
rest of his life.94 The final phase of the Centenary celebrations, dedicated to the
restoration period which began in 1640, with the enthronement of the
Bragança dynasty, set the scene for this process. Salazar toyed with moving
towards a restoration of the monarchy, and immersed himself fully in
monarchist politics; he encouraged, for example, the marriage of Dom Duarte
to a Bragança-Orléans princess, that is, a member of the Brazilian royal family,
92. AOS CP 9, letter, 4 August 1941, Diogo de Amorim to António de Oliveira Salazar.
93. AOS CP 9, letter, 14 July 1942, José Augusto Monteiro do Amaral to António de Oliveira Salazar.
94. On 7 May 1943, for example, Dona Filipa de Bragança wrote Salazar, explaining how upset she had been
not to have met him during her recent, brief passage through Portugal, after a stay in Brazil. The reason
advanced by Salazar was that such a meeting might have upset President Carmona—the same excuse already
employed not to meet Dom Duarte after his wedding in Brazil. The Princess continued, ‘I was left wondering
if some flowers and a little welcome card, discretely sent, would really worsen the mood of the poor Gentle-
man in Cascais [Carmona], and if there had been no other [outra] reason, apart from the one indicated […]
for you to keep me at arm’s length, maybe some private reason?’ AOS CP 38. It is impossible not to read
into the choice of the word ‘outra’, and its underlining, the suggestion that Salazar was meeting another
woman that day.
which occurred in November 1942. This marriage between distant cousins
represented the end of the rift between the absolutist and liberal branches of
the family, and was viewed by the Pretender as a sure sign that he would soon
play a more prominent role in Portuguese politics.95 Alfredo Pimenta en-
couraged this pretension, and believed Salazar to be in league with him. What
he did not know, however, was that his correspondence with other mon-
archists, in which he boasted of his influence over Salazar, was being inter-
cepted by the and read by Salazar himself.
Relations with Spain
The opening years of World War II saw a renewed attempt by Salazar to

secure Spain’s neutrality, culminating with the signing, on 29 July 1940, of an
additional protocol to the existing Treaty of Friendship and Non-Aggression.
This new document stated that
the Portuguese and Spanish governments agree, and through this Protocol commit
themselves, to accord with each other the best way of safeguarding their mutual
interests, whenever there occur, or are predicted, acts which, by their nature, might
compromise the inviolability of their respective metropolitan territories or consti-
tute a danger for the security or independence of either or both Parties.
Ramón Serrano Suñer, Spanish Minister of the Interior, might have been
behind the protocol, seeing it as a way of fixing Portugal firmly in Spain’s orbit,
but the actual text, which frustrated his aims, reflected Salazar’s interests.96
Salazar’s intention, as had been the case since the early days of the Spanish
Civil War, was to diversify Franco’s diplomatic options, breaking his
dependency on the Axis by providing him with an alternative diplomatic
stance, however flimsy it might be. Creating the impression of a stronger
Iberian Peninsula intent on preserving its neutrality and concerting its efforts
on a world stage, notably on the American continent, was seen by Salazar as a
necessary part of this all-important task. An Iberian-Latin American sphere of
peace and cooperation was the stated aim of this initiative. Both Germany and
95. Many years later Dom Duarte would complain to an envoy sent by Salazar that he had agreed to his
marriage since he believed that it was a political necessity for the Portuguese and Brazilian governments. This
envoy explained to Salazar that, according to Dom Duarte, ‘it was God’s wish that he should have found a
companion with whom to create a happy home, but the opposite may well have been the case, especially
since he had no intention to marry, if nothing else because he lacked the material means with which to do so.
But marry he did and now he feels cheated, since nothing has changed in relation to the political problems
which he had believed the marriage was meant to resolve’. AOS CP 38, unsigned report, 21 September 1954.
The document bears the note ‘Answered 22/XI/54’, but there is no specific reference to the document in
Salazar’s diary.
96. Stanley G. Payne, Franco and Hitler: Spain, Germany and World War II (New Haven: Yale, 2008), pp. 74–75.
Great Britain saw the Protocol as a positive sign, an indication that Spain and
Portugal were preparing to defend themselves from their respective enemy.97
Writing to Alfredo Pimenta (who, taking the German lead, saw in the Protocol
a response to the ‘British danger’), Salazar congratulated himself on what had
just happened and on the international response to the Protocol:
It is in any case advantageous for our country that the two opposing camps
have thought well of the accord, and if on top of that it should become an
efficient instrument of peninsular politics, one which enshrines, alongside
the independence of our foreign policy, the solidarity with Spain dictated
by current circumstances, then all of us should rejoice.
He added,
I suppose that the policy pursued over the past few years has not been either easy
or risk-free, but I for one do not mind if future historians make certain errors of
interpretation in relation to it.98
It is hard to assess the exact impact which Salazar’s actions had on the
spirit of Franco; the latter’s diplomatic designs during this period have pro-
vided historians with much to debate. Nevertheless, it seems to be the con-
sensus among Portuguese historians of all political backgrounds that this im-
pact was in fact considerable. It would certainly give rise to much praise from
British sources during and immediately after the war. One British diplomat
described the position Portugal found itself in after the fall of France in the
following terms:
Portugal was indeed in the presence of a danger that has often menaced her during
the course of her history, but with this difference, that her ally, who in the past
had always come to her assistance, was now herself menaced by invasion and was
in seemingly desperate plight. History will reveal to posterity the extent of the
influence which, as a result of services rendered during the Spanish Civil War, Dr
Salazar was able to exert over General Franco to avert disaster.99
97. One British diplomat would write of the Protocol that ‘there is no doubt that [it] exerted a far-reaching
influence on the destinies of the peninsula. It advertised the solidarity of Spain and Portugal at the same time
as it recognized the obligations of Portugal towards England according to the ancient alliance.’ NA FO
371/34641 C 361, Review of Events in Portugal during 1940. The German minister in Lisbon wrote, ‘the
signing amounts to a forward step and to encouragement for Portugal to continue on the path of separation
from England’. DGFP Series D vol. 10, doc. 225, 29 July 1940, the minister in Portugal to the Foreign
Ministry. Subsequent documents confirm this explanation of the Protocol for German ears.
98. AOS CP 215, draft of letter, 10 August 1940, António de Oliveira Salazar to Alfredo Pimenta.
99. NA FO 371/34641 C 361, Review of Events in Portugal during 1940. One important favor, carried out
in May 1940, was advocating an economic scheme proposed by Britain in May, designed to stabilize the
Lieutenant Colonel Carvalhais, having met Sir Samuel Hoare in Lisbon,
summarized for Salazar’s benefit the views on Salazar’s Spanish policy of the
British ambassador at Madrid: ‘[Salazar] sees everything with tranquility, clarity
and deep intelligence. His influence on the mind of Generalissimo Franco is
great, and it should be exercised frequently in order to counter the action of
Serrano Suñer and the Falange. A meeting between […] Doctor Salazar and the
Caudillo would be of great use […]’100 It would also be the case in the future
that the Portuguese would be active in defending their wartime Spanish policy.
Teotónio Pereira, by then ambassador in London, would write in 1955,
reacting to what he saw as a slur in a biography of Franco,101 that
the Treaty of Friendship and Non-Aggression between Portugal and Spain was
signed at Lisbon on the 17th March, 1939 […] Franco’s decision to link Spain to
Portugal by the Treaty was a fact of transcendent importance which revealed, to all
who were capable of seeing clearly, what was to be the attitude of Spain […] Much
more important […] was the Protocol to that Treaty, signed on 29th July 1940.
When one thinks of that was the situation in Europe at that time […] one cannot
but acknowledge that a new and firm step was taken by Franco to keep the Penin-
sula out of the War and free from Hitler.102
Teotónio Pereira continued:
Hitler was under no illusion as to the significance of the Protocol of July 1940
between Spain and Portugal. His ambassador at Madrid fully realized that Franco
had taken up a clear position which he would be able to maintain thanks to his
friendship with the other country in the Peninsula and a real military force which,
on Spain’s difficult terrain, was provided by an army of young and well-trained
men whose morale could hardly have been bettered.
The nature of the relations between Salazar and Franco, and between
Portugal and Spain, was not, however, as linear as Teotónio Pereira would have
us believe, and there were moments of high tension, whatever the nature of the
earlier protocol. Paul Preston is convinced that Franco and other members of
Spanish economy and wean Franco away from the Axis (it might well have been presented too late, given
what was happening in France). Britain proposed to provide Spain immediately with 100,000 tons of wheat,
and to bankroll Spanish purchases of Portuguese colonial goods, provided that there were guarantees that
these would not be sold on to Germany. The official historian of Britain’s economic war writes, ‘regarding
Dr Salazar as the strongest factor making for peace in the peninsula, the British government did not hesitate
to ask him to undertake the difficult and delicate task of securing from Spain certain practical assurances
concerning her intention and ability to remain neutral.’ W. N. Mendlicott, The Economic Blockade, vol. 1
(London: HMSO, 1952), p. 513.
100. AOS CP 49, letter, 18 March 1941, Esmeraldo Carvalhais to António de Oliveira Salazar.
101. Sydney Coles, Franco of Spain: A Full-Length Biography (London: N. Spearman, 1955).
102. AOS CO PC 39, file 5.
the military, as well as Serrano Suñer and the Falange, harbored dreams of
imperial conquest in the west; for them Portugal was a larger Gibraltar. How-
ever, Spanish statements of aggressive intentions, for the benefit of German
ears, had the advantage of buying time and room for maneuver. The position
that Spain and Portugal found themselves in was in many ways similar: it was
easier to criticize the Allies whenever they trod on Spanish neutrality, because
they represented less of a threat. Salazar and Teotónio Pereira did not place
much trust in Franco, but they still saw him, and most of the army, with very
different eyes than those reserved for the Serrano Suñer, the cuñadisimo. There
was always caution in Portugal’s dealings with Spain; above all there was a con-
stant effort to evaluate Spain’s military readiness, as well as the state of the
German forces in southern France. But at no stage in the conflict did Salazar
believe that a Spanish invasion was imminent.
German diplomatic sources reveal that Serrano Suñer was playing a
dangerous game, the consequences of which he could not control. In July
1940, for example, Serrano Suñer assured the German ambassador to Madrid
that Portugal was on the verge of entering into a military alliance with Spain,
and that Salazar was willing to renounce the British alliance.103 He returned to
this point in September, informing Ribbentrop that a concerted Spanish-
German diplomatic maneuver in July would have succeeded in detaching
Salazar from London. At the same meeting Serrano Suñer, still only the
Interior Minister, also told Ribbentrop that ‘one could not avoid the realization
in looking at the map of Europe that geographically speaking Portugal really
had no right to exist.’104
Salazar lost control of the situation when Hitler unleashed Operation
Barbarossa. This was the moment in which, through the sending of the Blue
Division to the Eastern Front, Spain’s collaboration with the Axis, which
Salazar desperately wanted to scale back, reached its highest point.105 The
103. DGFP Series D vol. 10, doc. 176, Berlin, 17 July 1940, the Foreign Minister to the legation in Portugal,
pp. 223–25.
104. DGFP Series D vol. 10, doc. 63, Berlin, 17 September 1940, record of the conversation between Reich
Foreign Minister and the Spanish Minister of the Interior, Serrano Suñer, on September 16, 1949, at 11:00
a.m., pp. 83-91. Some days later, however, Serrano Suñer made a fool of himself before Hitler, insisting that
the Cape Verde islands could be defended by artillery placed on the coast of Africa; ‘he was surprised when
the Führer proved to him that these islands were located 200 km off the coast’. DGFP Series D vol. 10, doc.
117, Berlin, 28 September 1940, record of the conversation between the Führer and the Spanish Minister of
the Interior, Serrano Suñer, in the presence of the Reich Foreign Minister and State Secretary Dr Meissner, in
Berlin on September 27, 1940.
105. Detailing a meeting with Salazar on 1 July, Huene noted how both he and his interlocutor had agreed on
what Portugal should do to demonstrate support for the German campaign in the East. For the moment,
standing firm against any possible aggression seemed the right thing to do, although Salazar mentioned
reactivating the Legion as a vehicle of anti-communist propaganda. The matter was brought up by Huene a
number of times throughout 1941, however. See DGFP Series D vol. 13, The War Years June 23-December 11,
1941 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1964), doc. 60, Lisbon, 1 July 1941, the minister in Portugal
to the Foreign Ministry, pp. 69–70 and footnote.
vitriolic nature of Franco’s speech of 17 July 1941 to the Falange’s National
Council left Teotónio Pereira in no doubt that Franco was about to throw his
lot in with the Axis. Monteiro informed Anthony Eden ‘that his government
feared the possibility of an early attack’; a British diplomat wrote that ‘there is
good reason to suppose that Dr Salazar was straining every nerve to exercise a
restraining influence over General Franco’, which meant reining in the usually
pro-Allied press.106 Portuguese newspapers which printed the official Soviet
war communiqué (that they were allowed to do so is in itself noteworthy) were
again prevented from entering Spain.107 But nothing happened or, given the
state of the Spanish economy, could happen. As Allied economic pressure was
placed on Madrid, all thoughts of immediate intervention disappeared. Preston
writes that by September 1941—a mere two months after his speech—‘Franco
had arrived almost imperceptibly at the position of pretending to be a friend to
both sides although his heart lay with the Third Reich.’108 Later that year,
Spain’s unwillingness to enter the war was described to Carvalhais by the
British military attaché in Madrid, Brigadier Torr: the country was simply too
divided on the issue, and there was much anti-German feeling. The fact that
badly needed foodstuffs were leaving Spain for Germany added to it.109
Teotónio Pereira tried to add to this pressure by encouraging the work of Jesús
Pabón, Professor of Modern History at the University of Madrid, who
published the first volume of his account of the rise of Salazar, La Revolución
Portuguesa, at this time.110 On 29 October 1941, for example, Teotónio Pereira
wrote to Salazar:
Speaking of admirable things, I have the great pleasure of sending Your

Excellency the first volume of Pabón’s book on Portuguese politics. The prologue
is very good and the final chapters—especially the one on our participation in the
war—ended up as well as could be expected. I succeeded without difficulty in
getting him to pass over certain facts and not to twist the knife in the wound. The
book will cause quite a stir here and in Portugal and will render us a great service
[…] I am sure that the Camões prize of this year already has found its winner.111
Central in Pabón’s narrative was Portugal’s participation in World War I, a

conflict which, he argued, correctly, Portugal need not have entered and which

107. Ibid.
108. Preston, Franco, p. 445.
109. AOS CP 49, letter, 16 December 1941, Esmeraldo Carvalhais to António de Oliveira Salazar.
110. Jesús Pabón, La Revolución Portuguesa (De Don Carlos a Sidonio Paes) (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1941).
111. Correspondência de Pedro Teotónio Pereira para Oliveira Salazar vol. 2 1940–1941 (Lisbon: Comissão do Livro
Negro sobre o Regime Fascista, 1989), doc. 112, letter, Madrid, 29 October 1941, Pedro Teotónio Pereira to
had disastrous consequences for what Pabón called the ‘war team’—the inter-
ventionist politicians who took the country into the war. These men had been
characterized by ‘that quality common to all democratic sectarianism, a feature
of all sectarianism: the unbreakable persistence conferred by tenacity and blind-
ness; the capacity to reach a stated goal against everything and against every-
one.’112 Teotónio Pereira believed that such words might come as a warning to
Spain’s own ‘war team’. For him, as for Salazar, the sending of the Blue
Division to participate in the German conquest of the Soviet Union had been
an immense setback, since it deepened Spain’s commitment to the Axis powers
and was a tangible demonstration of the power of the Portuguese ambassador’s
nemesis, Serrano Suñer. It was an action, Teotónio Pereira believed, that was
opposed by the rest of the country. On 29 October he wrote,
The “blue division”—as the falangists insist on calling it—is in the central sector
of the Russian front. The first names of dead officers have been published and it
is general knowledge that the division has already suffered terrible casualties.
There is no confirmation but I am convinced of it.
[…] Serrano is carrying out the propaganda surrounding the blue division in his
way and everyone agrees that all of this is a setting of the stage before the
hecatomb becomes known to all.
[…] This case of the blue division has many points in common with what
occurred in Portugal with the sending to France of the CEP [Portuguese
Expeditionary Corps] by the Democratic party.113
In other words, it was an action undertaken for misguided political reasons and
represented the antithesis of Spain’s national interest. On 4 November 1941,
Teotónio Pereira met Serrano Suñer at the Foreign Ministry in Madrid.
According to a letter written the next day,
I asked for news of the blue division. He answered that it is true that the losses are
big—both because of the war and because of the climate—and confessed that this
is despite the fact that the Spaniards have not yet been used in any serious action.
I advised him to send warm clothes to the unfortunate fellows they have sent to
Russia and told him to read about the effect which the climate had on our soldiers
in France, as retold in Pabón’s book. I made this reference with the secret hope
that he was find other important lessons there.114
112. Pabón, La Revolución, pp. 243–44.

113. Correspondência de Pedro Teotónio Pereira, vol. 2, doc. 112, letter, Madrid, 29 October 1941, Pedro Teotónio
114. Ibid., doc. 113, ‘Secret’ letter, Madrid, 5 November 1941, Pedro Teotónio Pereira to António de
Salazar’s correspondence with Teotónio Pereira reflects the fear of Serrano
Suñer, seen as the engine of Spanish interventionism. The feeling was mutual,
since the cuñadisimo had long seen Portugal’s quiet diplomacy as an obstacle to
be overcome. Serrano Suñer used his influence to publish ‘a savage attack on
Portugal’ (in truth, on the Portuguese press) in the Falangist newspaper Arriba,
on 26 February 1941, to ban the Portuguese press in Spain, and to denounce
Portugal’s, and Salazar’s, cowardice to the Italian ambassador.115 All of this
occurred because of the insistent rumors that a Franco-Salazar meeting was
being prepared.116 As the summer of 1941 gave way to the fall, with the Soviet
Union still fighting and the Spanish economy in a dreadful state, and then to
winter and America’s entry into the conflict, conditions were set for Salazar to
reconcile Franco with the dream of a neutral, peaceful, Iberian Peninsula. The
two men met in Seville—Salazar’s first foreign trip since 1927. The arrange-
ments for the trip were simple. On 11 February, Salazar traveled by car, with a
modest police escort, to the border.117 The drive continued until Seville, Salazar
arriving in the late afternoon. According to Franco Nogueira, Salazar met with
Franco that very night, but Salazar did not mention this early meeting in his
diary. All told there were, on 12 February, two working sessions; Salazar met
with Franco and Serrano Suñer from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and from 4 p.m. to 7
p.m. Lunch, like the talks themselves, was also held at the Alcázar, where
Franco was based. There was some sightseeing on the night of the 11th, in the
evening of the 12th, and in the morning of the 13th, before the return trip to
Lisbon, carried out in the company of Nicolás Franco.
What was discussed? According to the short and laconic official
communiqué, both ‘political and economic problems of a general nature posed
by the world’s present state’ and ‘private problems of the two States’ had
formed the subject of the talks; there had emerged the resolution ‘to preserve,
in the future, the closest of contacts in order to safeguard mutual interests.’
Preston has Franco telling Salazar that an Allied victory was impossible, adding
that ‘behind the courteous tone of the meeting there could be discerned
Franco’s long-nurtured ambition to wean Salazar from the Anglo-Portuguese
alliance and into a dependent relationship with Spain.’118 But the conversation
was not so one-sided. According to Franco Nogueira, Franco detailed Spain’s
dire economic situation, blaming the Allies, who did not allow sufficient

116. See, in this regard, DGFP Series D vol. 10, doc. 66, Madrid, 19 February 1941, the ambassador in Spain
to the Foreign Minister, pp. 119–20.
117. According to Serrano Suñer, the second car brought Agostinho Lourenço, director of the PVDE, and
two other agents. Ramón Serrano Suñer, Entre Hendaya e Gibraltar (frente a una leyenda) (Madrid: Ediciones y
Publicaciones Españolas, 1947), p. 268.
deliveries of food and essential items to be made. Franco also denounced
Britain for her alliance with the USSR, although he did not mention any special
hostility to London. He was determined to preserve Spain’s neutrality, there
being only two possibilities that would lead him to war: an attack on Spain’s
Moroccan Protectorate, and the deliberate worsening of the Spanish economic
situation by the Allies. Salazar volunteered less—an explanation of the Portu-
guese situation and the commitment to neutrality, unless national interests and
honor determined the opposite. Franco Nogueira concludes,
In the course of the Seville interview, Salazar acquires one certainty: Franco does
not envisage any initiative that might result in the Peninsula’s loss of neutrality. He
has exercised his calming, lucid, firm influence over the caudillo. Salazar thinks that
he reinforced his policy of preserving the peace zone and resisting external
pressures.119
In other words, the Seville meeting was a lot less sinister than Preston
paints it, and Salazar came away feeling that the talks had been a success. A
more recent overview stresses that Franco had insisted, ‘moderately and with-
out threats’ on a defensive pact in case of a British attack on Portugal or its
Atlantic islands, something which Salazar politely declined.120 Serrano Suñer, in
his memoirs, published in 1947, paid Salazar a great compliment, falsely
claiming to have admired him from the start, unlike some of his collaborators:
There, in that end of Europe, there lives and silently deploys his energy and his
talent one of the most refined politicians of our time. A remarkable man, who
combines all the rigor of a Professor with all the passion of a mystic. When one is
close to him, one quickly discerns a human sympathy mixed with a very personal
ironic quality, typical of a shy man who nevertheless possesses an enormous moral
worth.121
According to Serrano Suñer’ postwar account, Salazar asked about Spain’s

diplomatic activity, especially the Hendaye and Bordighera meetings; Franco
described Spain’s economic situation and ‘restated before him our steadfast
commitment to defend Portugal should it be the object of any aggression.’122
Common ground was found in the difficulties encountered by both countries
with the Allied blockade, notably the vexed question of navicerts, which
119. Franco Nogueira, Salazar, vol. 3, As grandes crises (1936-1945) 3rd edition (Oporto: Livraria Civilização
Editora, 1986), p. 375.
120. Carlos Gaspar, ‘Relações com a Espanha’ in Barreto & Mónica (eds), Dicionário de História de Portugal vol.
7, p. 654.
121. Serrano Suñer, Entre Hendaya, p. 268.
122. Ibid., p. 269.
Salazar stated took up more of his time than any other, and about which he
remarked ‘it is an inglorious task!’ What the work-shy Franco made of a head
of government who devoted himself to such matters is not hard to guess.
The Seville meeting was shrouded in considerably secrecy. Understandably,
foreign governments sought to establish what had taken place. On 19 February
the German ambassador at Madrid, Stohrer, sent Berlin a long telegram
detailing what had transpired in Seville, in the wake of a meeting with Serrano
Suñer.123 Years later this document was translated and sent to Salazar, who read
it with interest, as a number of notes on the pages attest. This document,
which must be treated with the greatest of caution, fleshes out the discussions.
According to Stohrer, Salazar, on the whole, did not like Britain, but was
forced to respect her strength, especially since Portugal was defenseless. More
difficult still was the growing relationship with the United States, a country
which showed no deference whatsoever to Lisbon’s wishes, especially on
economic matters. Both Iberian nations had common cause for complaint
when it came to navicerts. Salazar suggested to Franco that the Bolshevik
threat should not be exaggerated, since Britain and the United States would
always seek to contain it; after a putative Allied victory, Germany would remain
a bulwark against the East. Serrano Suñer was not so sure. Moreover, Salazar
went on, in line with what we have already seen in other documents, to express
greater concern with a German victory: ‘he fears the Germanization of Europe,
as a consequence of which countries like Portugal would lose their status as
independent countries, with their individual characteristics and traditions’.
According to Stohrer, Serrano Suñer disagreed, since Germany had ‘learned a
great deal since the First World War and the Führer, with his genius, no doubt
is aware of the importance of the specific character of the individual nations.’
Salazar also expressed fear of a possible German intervention in the peninsula,
and noted how little understanding he found in Berlin on issues of trade.
Stohrer was keen to inform Berlin as well that Salazar was curious about
the pressure put on Spain by Germany to enter the war, and was surprised to
hear that relations had not been harmed by Spain’s negative response to the
German approach for military cooperation. According to Stohrer, Salazar was
amazed by this account, and greatly relieved by it. When asked by his Spanish
interlocutors which side he hoped would win the war, Salazar had replied that
he would like, ‘most of all, the war to end with neither side being victorious.’
Nevertheless, it seems that he suggested that a British victory was more likely
123. The report in question, from Stohrer to Ribbentrop, dated 19 February 1942, is cited by David
Wingeate Pike in his Franco and the Axis Stigma (London: Palgrave, 2008). This author consulted it in
Documentos secretos sobre España: Documentos secretos del Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores de Alemania sobre la Guerra
civil española, translated from the French by Eduardo Méndez Riestra (Madrid: Ediciones Júcar, 1978).
and less problematic. There was some disagreement when it came to
Germany’s military prospects, with Franco making a ‘detailed exposition of the
military situation’ in order to show that Germany could not lose the war.
Salazar replied that ‘he had at his disposal another sort of intelligence about
Germany’, which suggests that he was not convinced, but still Stohrer con-
cluded that after Franco’s lecture Salazar had become convinced that he must
not rely on a British victory.
As for purely Iberian matters, Franco was keen to stress the commitment
to defend Portugal and the Atlantic islands from foreign aggression, even if this
aggression was carried out with Portugal’s tacit agreement; in other words,
Spain would not stand idly by while Portugal was bullied into surrendering its
sovereignty over a part of its territory. Salazar thanked Franco for this declara-
tion, but stated that he did not believe that either Germany or Britain was
planning such a move, adding that even from the United States, where some
voices were calling for the occupation of the Azores, no danger would be
forthcoming. Should an attack come, however, Portugal would defend itself
with all means at its disposal. Asked by Stohrer if he believed this would be the
case, Serrano Suñer stated that he did, adding that Franco had promised Salazar
all possible aid in such an endeavor, adding as well that Germany would also
come to Portugal’s rescue. Franco also added that in the case of an attack
against Spain, he was counting on Portuguese help. The two sides then dis-
cussed political developments, with Salazar, as usual, taking a more moderate
stance. He did not believe, despite the arrest of a number of communists in
Portugal, that they represented a clear threat to his government, or that the
British were actively attempting to remove him from power. He also assured
Franco that the same was the case in Spain, despite Serrano Suñer’s insistence
on the contrary. Noting that the two countries had agreed to a closer collabora-
tion on the economic front, Stohrer wrote, ‘there is no doubt that after the
meeting an entirely new “climate” has been created in Spanish-Portuguese
relations.’ As for Serrano Suñer, he had become a fan of Salazar:
In contrast with Serrano Suñer’s previous appraisals of Salazar, entirely un-

favorable, he now speaks of Salazar’s personality, sometimes enthusiastically. He
describes Salazar as being extremely nice, well mannered, well educated, pleasant,
entirely serious and precise in his way of expressing himself. Even if he expresses
himself, sometimes, somewhat timidly, he is a morally courageous man.124
124. From Lisbon, Huene also did his best to inform Berlin of what had occurred in Seville. He met Salazar
on 20 February, and found him to be ‘very satisfied’ with the meeting: ‘he [Salazar] rejoiced above all for
having entered into direct contact with minister Serrano Suñer, whom he referred to in especially friendly
terms.’ Both Spain and Portugal were agreed, Salazar continued, that Germany represented the only hope of
salvation from bolshevism. Salazar was also impressed by the poor economic state of Spain, which could
Serrano Suñer may well have been won over by Salazar, but the latter still
rejoiced when the cuñadisimo fell from power. A second personal contact with
Spanish ministers occurred when Count Jordana, now Spanish Foreign
Minister, visited Portugal in December 1942, arriving on the 18th, a Friday.
The following morning, during a three-hour meeting between the two men,
there developed ‘complete trust and a current of sympathy which were at the
base of the trip’s success.’125 In his diary, Jordana wrote that Salazar had pro-
duced a ‘magnificent effect’ on him.126 The two countries, it seemed to Salazar,
were finally in agreement over the course to take for the remainder of the con-
flict, working together to preserve a neutrality which, even if arrived at for
different reasons, was best placed to meet their interests. A note from
Teotónio Pereira served as an indication of the matters discussed; interestingly,
one point was the ‘defense of the Peninsula in case of a wave of anarchy
resulting from an Axis defeat.’ That the two countries, acting in concert, could
have a decisive role to play at the end of the conflict seemed axiomatic; hence
another point in the conversation:
Role of the Peninsula as a political, economic, and military base for assistance to a
Europe in chaos. Promotion of that idea among the United Nations. Convenience
of obtaining from these guarantees of non-interference in the domestic politics of
the two countries.127
Salazar was also keen to see this spirit of cooperation manifest itself in the
economic links between the two countries, which were traditionally weak, but
which the circumstances of the war had made more important.128 Greater
understanding of each other’s needs would allow for the swift resolution of a
number of trade disputes which had been dragging for months, with no end in
sight.129 At the Auswärtiges Amt, Tovar denied that any deal had been struck at
only be saved with great effort and ‘the preservation of peace’. Of all these points, only the last should be
taken seriously. Louçã (ed.), Portugal visto pelos Nazis, doc. 60, Lisbon, 20 February 1942, from the German
legation to the Auswärtiges Amt, p. 158.
125. Francisco Gómez-Jordana Souza, Milicia y diplomacia: Los diarios del Conde de Jordana, 1936-1944 (Burgos:
Editorial Dossoles, 2002), p. 187. It is interesting to note that one of the members of Jordana’s travelling
party, Valdés, the Falange’s Vice-Secretary for Popular Education, was watched with caution by both sides.
Teotónio Pereira suggested that his principal interlocutor in Portugal be the politically sophisticated Marcelo
Caetano, head of the Mocidade Portuguesa, and not someone from the Legion. In his diaries, reflecting on the
journey, Jordana would write that Valdés had produced a discordant note, being ‘reserved and frankly
unpleasant’. Jordana also pointed out that the Falangist press had been reticent about the entire enterprise.
Jordana, Milicia, p. 188.
126. Jordana, Milicia, p. 186.
127. AOS CO PC 8B, notes by Pedro Teotónio Pereira (talking points for conversation with Count Jordana,
December 1942).
128. AOS CO PC 8B, notes on Portuguese-Spanish economic relations.
129. Stanley G. Payne writes, of the meeting, that it was ‘Jordana’s first notable initiative to create an
alternative orientation in foreign policy’. His success was tempered, however, by continued Falangist
the meeting, as none had been reached at Seville: what had taken place were
simple consultations between friendly governments, as laid down by the Proto-
col of 1940.130
It is clear that Salazar viewed the intense diplomatic activity designed to
keep Spain neutral as a success. As he wrote to his new ambassador in London,
the Duke of Palmela, in September 1943,
The position of neutrality assumed by Portugal deserved at all times the agreement
and approval of the British government, which could not ignore, or contest, the
advantages it derived from it, especially in relation to Spain, whose non-participa-
tion in the war was possible only thanks to Portugal’s own non-participation in the
conflict. More than once our policy was thanked by the British government, be it
in written messages, be it in verbal declarations.131
Late in his life, after his fall from power, a diminished Salazar would reflect
on his wartime actions:
Hitler came to Hendaye, but he did not dare to cross the Peninsula. Franco,
knowing my opinion, convinced Hitler not to enter Spain. I convinced Franco that
England would immediately enter Portugal, its ally, and he would be unable to do
anything about it. There were some disagreements with the English; but, with
regular servings of port, we managed to get our way sometimes.132
Salazar’s plan for the preservation of Iberian and Latin America’s neutrality was
a pipe-dream, given the limited influence that Spain and Portugal had in
Central and South America, compared with the very real power exercised there
by the United States. Salazar had hoped, of course, that a close alignment with
Brazil—that is, a situation in which Portugal led and Brazil followed—would
allow the smaller country a greater say in international affairs. But in 1942,
under mounting American pressure, Brazil went to war with Germany, Italy,
and Japan, and Salazar had to accept the new circumstances. By then, however,
opposition to a good relationship with Portugal, and by the fact that Franco ‘refused to do anything to follow
up on it’. Payne, Franco and Hitler, pp. 190–91.
130. Louçã (ed.), Portugal visto pelos Nazis, doc. 131, Berlin, 23 December 1942, From the Auswärtiges Amt to
the German legation, pp. 271–72. Ribbentrop would send instructions to the Lisbon legation the following
day, asking if any arrangement had been reached regarding the common response of the two countries to
foreign aggression, including an attack on their Atlantic islands: ‘According to intelligence received here from
a strictly secret source, there was at least the intention of discussing this matter during the visit’. Louçã (ed.),
Portugal visto pelos Nazis, doc. 132, Berlin, 24 December 1942, From the Minister of Foreign Affairs to the
German legation, p. 273.
131. DAPE vol. 12, doc. 169, Lisbon, 27 September 1943, António de Oliveira Salazar to the Duke of
Palmela, pp. 319–20.
132. Coelho & Macieira Coelho, Salazar, o fim e a morte, 46. According to Eduardo Coelho, the last sentence
was said with a ‘malicious’ smile.
the situation in the Iberian Peninsula had been defused. The loss was not of
immediate concern, and Portuguese moral support for the Brazilian war effort
would later be used to strengthen Portugal’s credentials as a pro-Allied country.
The Empire Under Threat
That the war was going to pose a threat to Portugal’s overseas possessions,
including its Atlantic islands, was clear to any observer. As early as 21
September 1939 an article in the leading Lisbon daily, the Diário de Notícias, had
been totally censored for pointing out the strategic importance of the Azores,
from which a modern air force could, the author alleged, strike crippling blows
against the United States. According to the censorship authorities, ‘the writer
drew attention to what, in America, people in positions of responsibility have
written in this regard in a number of publications, thus suggesting that America
intends to seize the archipelago quickly should it fear any danger.’133 After the
fall of France and Germany’s failure to defeat Britain, matters became more
pressing. In March 1941 Nicolás Franco asked Salazar, at a private audience,
whether there had been any pressure or request from the United States or
Great Britain for the military use of the Azores, or other Atlantic islands, and
how Portugal would reply to such pressures or requests. Salazar replied that
there had been no contacts over the Azores. On 6 May 1941 United States
Senator Claude Pepper, in a landmark speech asking for increased American
intervention in European affairs, called for the occupation of the Azores and
Cape Verde. Two days later, an official note penned by Salazar was published
in the Portuguese press stating that there was no need for alarm, since the
proposed occupation was not the aim of the Roosevelt administration. He had
not received any request for the use of port and other facilities in the islands,
and the Portuguese could rest assured that the government was looking after
the defense of the Atlantic archipelagos. Later that month, however, Roosevelt
made reference to the islands’ strategic importance in one of his ‘fireside chats’,
which led to a Portuguese note of protest on 30 May, and an American reply—
by Cordell Hull, written on 10 June—stating that the United States had no
plans to attack any Portuguese possessions. On 8 July 1941, Roosevelt sent
Salazar a personal letter, assuring him that it was in the American interest to see
the Azores ‘and certain other outlying possessions’ remain under Portuguese
control, and offering all possible help to the government of Portugal should
such control come under foreign threat. In order to make the offer less
menacing, Roosevelt added that he would be happy to include Brazilian forces
133. AOS CO PC 3E, Directorate of Censorship Services, ‘Confidential’ bulletin of cuts made n. 255, 22
September 1939.
in the protection to be offered to the Portuguese Atlantic islands.134 The
potential for trouble arising from these American statements was immense.
Alfredo Pimenta interpreted Roosevelt’s speech as a solemn declaration of
intent to occupy the Portuguese islands135—and if he did so, there was no
reason to believe that the Germans were thinking otherwise. Salazar’s reply to
Roosevelt was dated 29 July. It contained a justification for the alarm in
Portugal over recent American declarations, clumsily reproduced in the Ameri-
can press, and reiterated that given British control of the Atlantic, the measures
being undertaken by the Portuguese authorities to make the islands safe were
nearly complete: all that was lacking was some artillery and aviation which the
British had already promised to deliver. Salazar did add, however, that should
Britain prove unable to supply such materiel, Portugal might very well turn to
the United States for it, given the importance the President had attributed to
the islands’ defense. Finally, Salazar revealed his displeasure at Roosevelt
speaking on Brazil’s behalf to Portugal:
Evidently, I am at this moment considering merely permanence of the neutrality

which Portugal adopted from the start of the European conflict; should this, how-
ever, be altered by a violation of our sovereignty, the resulting situation would
have to be re-examined in light of the new position. I do not want to predict, at
this moment, such a future, but I am measuring carefully the reach and worth of
your declaration and, given the intimacy of our relations with Brazil, I believe that
Portugal could, in such an emergency, count as well on its solidarity and all of its
support.136
Brazil was evidently a sore spot, Salazar assuring Nicolás Franco, at a meeting
in September 1941, that there was no truth in the rumors that Washington had
asked Rio de Janeiro to secure the Atlantic islands in order to make the action
more palatable to the Portuguese.137
It was not just the Azores and Cape Verde, which continued to be over-
flown by American aircraft,138 that were a mounting cause for concern. As the
probability of war in the Far East grew, so too did concern grow in Lisbon for
the fate of its most far-flung possessions, Macao and Timor. In February 1941
the Colonial Minister, Vieira Machado, instructed the governor of the latter
colony to keep a close eye on all foreigners. The main threat at this stage was
134. Ibid., letter, Washington D.C., 8 July 1941, Franklin Delano Roosevelt to António de Oliveira Salazar.
135. AOS CP 215, undated letter, Alfredo Pimenta to António de Oliveira Salazar. Bears the handwritten
note: ‘replied to 29/V/41’.
136. AOS CO PC 3E, letter, Lisbon, 29 July 1941, António de Oliveira Salazar to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
137. AOS CO NE 7, notes on a conversation between the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Spanish
ambassador, 18 September 1941.
138. AOS CO UL 10, telegram, 31 July 1941, from the governor of Cape Verde to Ministry of Colonies.
the Dutch East Indies whose officials, fearing that Japan would use Portuguese
Timor as a base for expansionist operations, might just be tempted to carry out
a pre-emptive occupation of the colony.139 At this stage, Timor had absolutely
no means of defense. As its governor explained, in April 1941, the colony’s
destiny was entrusted to one locally recruited company, ‘whose military
qualities do not deserve any confidence.’140
Despite a series of warnings, the Portuguese colonies in what became the
Pacific theater of operations were totally unprepared for what was to happen,
and totally reliant on approval from Lisbon for any step that might seem
politically controversial. In Macao, for example, the governor, at a time when
Hong Kong was already under attack, wondered whether he might be allowed
to enforce the acceptance of Hong Kong currency, which much of the
population carried, but which merchants had begun to refuse, with obvious
dangers for the peace of the territory. Here, too, was another leading official
with no doubts about which side Portugal should favor: ‘Should England lose
the war I do not believe we will remain in Macao; should she win our gesture
can be advanced as a demonstration of trust and friendship […]’141 Some days
later he summarized his predicament:
The simple truth of the political situation is that the Japanese will not touch us so
long as we are willing to accede to the request they make smilingly, but are ready
to transform those requests into orders should we resist.142
Still later, on 30 December, he returned to this theme: ‘Should Singapore

fall all previous problems with the Japanese will seem like nothing compared
with what will come; we should be ready for the worst.’143 The situation for
Portugal’s Chinese enclave was dire. Its economy, dependent on the sale of
opium and on gambling, was in turmoil, and the arrival of refugees from Hong
Kong made matters worse. In April 1942, the governor would report that, after
nineteen days without supplies of rice, outbreaks of cannibalism had occurred
among the Chinese refugees. So distressing was the case that the governor did
not want the men in question to be brought to trial: ‘I will send them as far as
possible in a smuggler’s junk but spread the rumor that they have been shot in
139. AOS CO UL 10 A, telegram, February 1941, from the Minister of the Colonies to the governor of
Timor.
140. AOS CO UL 10 A, telegram, 9 April 1941, from the governor of Timor to the Minister of the Colonies.
141. AOS CO UL 10 A1, ‘Confidential’ telegram, 10 December 1941, from the governor of Macao to
Ministry of the Colonies.
142. AOS CO UL 10 A1, ‘Secre’ telegram, 22 December 1941, from the governor of Macao to Ministry of
the Colonies.
143. AOS CO UL 10 A1, ‘Secret’ telegram, 30 December 1941, from the governor of Macao to Ministry of
the Colonies. The governor added that he thought it best to send the sole Portuguese warship in the colony,
the sloop João de Lisboa, back to Portugal, since it would add little to the defense of Macao.
order to discourage others.’144 As the crisis in the East mounted, Vieira
Machado found himself on a visit to Portuguese Guinea and Cape Verde,
hoping to resolve the mounting crisis in the latter colony, the latest in a long
line of famines that bedeviled life on the archipelago. On 18 December, from
Guinea, he wrote, ‘I would appreciate all possible explanations on the Eastern
situation. I am very worried.’145 The following day he asked whether he should
return immediately to Lisbon, or continue as planned in order to oversee the
distribution of aid in Cape Verde. Of the Allied action in Timor he wrote,
‘above all it is stupid, and I believe this is how it should be described to the
English.’ The danger was evident: the presence of Australian and Dutch troops
made Timor a target for Japanese attacks.146
Vieira Machado was referring to the occupation of Portuguese Timor by
Dutch and Australian troops on 17 December 1941. It is important to stress,
before addressing this matter, that the Portuguese had not buried their head in
the sand in the hope that the war in the East would go away. Although they
had not reinforced the Timor garrison, they had agreed, in principle, to invite
Allied forces to protect Timor if and when the Japanese attacked. The British,
Portugal’s interlocutors in this matter, were being pressured by the Australian
and Dutch governments to plug the Timorese gap in their defenses, and were
also victims of infighting by government departments and even different desks
within the Foreign Office. They could not work out a coherent line in this, to
them, relatively minor crisis. British diplomats took the expression ‘attacked’ to
mean, given the speed with which the Japanese acted, ‘threatened to attack’.
While militarily sound, this was a politically absurd interpretation, since it
implied that Salazar would willingly entrust the governor of Portugal’s most
insignificant colony with the power, potentially, to bring Portugal in to the
conflict. Salazar, however, refused to accept such an interpretation and therein
lay the root of a problem that would quickly escalate. For the Dutch and the
Australians, this point, and indeed wider issues of British-Portuguese relations,
mattered little. As far as they were concerned, Portuguese Timor was a weak-
point in the defensive barrier against the Japanese, and it had to be reinforced.
That this was in fact a barrier with no strong-points had not yet been under-
stood. Seizing on sightings of Japanese submarines in the Timor Sea, the
governor of Dutch Timor sent a Dutch-Australian military expedition to Dili,
by sea, which was scheduled to arrive at 9 a.m., 17 December (local time), two
144. AOS CO UL 10A1, ‘Confidential’ telegram, 1 April 1942, from the governor of Macao to Ministry of
the Colonies. The theme of cannibalism resurfaced in a private letter, dated 23 July 1942, intercepted by the
Censorship authorities, part of which was copied and sent to Salazar. AOS CO UL 10 A1, untitled
document, 18 December 1942.
145. AOS CO UL 10, ‘Secret’ telegram, Minister of the Colonies, 18 December 1941.
146. AOS CO UL 10, ‘Urgent’ telegram, Minister of the Colonies, 19 December 1941.
hours after an envoy—who had also traveled by sea, given the poor roads in
Timor—had informed the governor of Portuguese Timor that a Japanese
attack was imminent, advising him as a result to request assistance from the
Allies. The Allied military force, which, with its 350 soldiers, was entirely inade-
quate for the task at hand (even before dysentery set in) had orders to land
irrespective of the governor’s response. Informed of the scheduled arrival of
the expedition by the British ambassador, Teixeira de Sampaio was furious:
Doctor Sampaio said that essence of arrangement was that governor was em-
powered to engage in discussions locally in order that assistance which he was
authorized to invite in the event of attack might be forthcoming in the best condi-
tions and with a minimum delay. If forces were to be landed before any attack had
materialized Portugal would automatically become belligerent and the first but not
last result would be seizure of Macao.147
The fate of Macao was a genuine worry, but one which paled into insig-
nificance compared to the possibility of Portugal becoming a belligerent, after
more than two years of Salazar’s exhausting diplomatic activity. Instructions
were rushed to the governor of Timor to accept the meeting with the Dutch
envoy, but not to agree to the landing of foreign troops. The occupation,
despite these instructions, went ahead. The British felt little sympathy for
Salazar’s plight; not realizing that there had been a misunderstanding over the
governor of Timor’s proposed freedom of action, the Foreign Office, dis-
orientated by the speed of the Japanese advance, now decried the Portuguese
volte-face and seemed to harden its stance. Salazar spoke at the National
Assembly on 19 December: as part of his ‘policy of truth’, he had to inform the
nation of what had occurred. His speech was relatively moderate, consisting
essentially of an exposition of the diplomatic contacts that had preceded the
Allies’ action. He opened the door to a solution, stating that the government
would endeavor to send a military force to Timor capable of defending it,
before delivering his chastising words to London:
What we, small and weak, are not allowed to do, the governments of the large
empires are not allowed to do either. They are not allowed to lose the calm
necessary to distinguish between favors and insults. Trust in the courage of their
soldiers should not lead them to confuse diligence and rashness. The first might
147. FO 371/27797 F 13808, quoted in Carlos Teixeira Motta, O caso de Timor na II Guerra Mundial:
Documentos Britânicos (Lisbon: Instituto Diplomático, 1997), p. 41.
well have led to negotiation, respecting the rights of others; the second led to the
invasion of the territory of a neutral, a friend, an ally.148
Others spoke in his wake, and were more extreme in their statements. João do
Amaral, one of the founders of the Integralist movement, and a long-time
acquaintance of Salazar, provoked British resentment with his words:
The government has ignored the formation of a sincere and intelligent opinion in
favor of neutrality. It has consented to a partial propaganda campaign, sponsored
and organized by the enemies of the social order defended by the New State, a
campaign which has shored up in the spirit of many Portuguese the idea that
violence, theft, and attacks against the sovereignty of the peoples have been
caused systematically by only one of the contending parties. This propaganda must
cease, because, in the final instance, it helps to create attitudes of hesitancy and
incomprehension at the precise moment when the government needs to have
alongside it all Portuguese, in order to defend, with unanimity, with rage, with
their bare hands, the honor and dignity of Portugal.149
To their credit, both British and Portuguese (which, of course, meant Salazar,
with the collaboration of Teixeira de Sampaio) drew back from confrontation,
despite the occasional misunderstanding, clash of cultures,150 and mischief by
the Axis, hoping to turn an argument into an unsolvable row. The official
history of the Foreign Office in wartime records the situation:
A break with Portugal—which was not unlikely, in view of Dr Salazar’s

temperament—might lose use the chance of getting the use of the Azores and
Cape Verde islands in the event of a German occupation of the Portuguese main-
land. We might even find that facilities in the islands were being given to the Axis,
and we had not at present the forces required for an expedition to seize and hold
the islands for ourselves. We should lose and Germany would obtain the whole of
148. This speech was not included in the relevant volume of Discursos e notas políticas. It can be consulted in
the Diário das Sessões or the daily press.
149. The fact that João do Amaral was chosen to accompany Dom Duarte on his Brazilian journey, in 1942,
was a motive for preoccupation for the British authorities. But Salazar dismissed any suggestion that he had
included him in the party in order to counter-balance the Pretender’s pro-British sentiments.
150. Campbell, the British ambassador in Lisbon, worked extremely hard to find a solution, and at times
warned London that Portugal’s government could not be expected to go any further, whatever the needs of
others, including the Australian authorities. At times, though, Campbell was guilty of racist generalizations
and psychological misreadings of Salazar’s actions: ‘Portuguese react to emotion rather than to reason. They
are capable of plunging into grievous folly before realizing what they have done.
Doctor Salazar has no understanding of war mentality. He has acquired the autocrat’s dislike of being
thwarted. He reasons normally with cold logic in his monastic seclusion. But under stress of emotion (he was
livid when he received me the other day) he is capable of reverting to type.
This is why the situation is fraught with grave danger and why any solution must make an instant appeal to
the emotions. It will be vain to put forward any formula based solely on reaon.’ FO 371/27799 F 14327, in
Teixeira da Motta, O caso de Timor, pp. 74–75.
the Portuguese supply of wolfram. Furthermore a break with Portugal might well
have as its consequence a total break with Spain […]151
The Japanese piled on the pressure, stating that Portuguese Timor would
be fair game for their forces for as long as it was occupied by the Allies. How-
ever, Portuguese and British alike had too much to lose from a break. As the
days passed, and no Japanese attacked materialized, a deal was put together: A
Portuguese military expedition, some 700-strong, would be dispatched from
Mozambique to Timor, and upon its arrival, and not before, the Allied
occupying force would leave; moreover, staff conversations would be held in
relation to the defense of Timor. The Foreign Office hoped that during these
talks the Portuguese might be induced to accept the need to call for help
before a putative invasion actually began.152 Neither the Dutch and Australians
nor General Wavell, the British commander in the region, were pleased,153 but
the deal was done nevertheless. What this Portuguese force might have been
expected to do, when all around them the Allies were in retreat, is open to
question. Additional weapons were to be sent from Macao. In Goa, the
governor-general warned that if the Japanese brought the war to the Indian
Ocean, then Goa too would be occupied by the British, given the importance
of the port facilities at Mormugão and the presence of Axis merchant vessels in
it, a circumstance which greatly agitated the local British authorities. News of
the departure of the Portuguese expedition was, according to the governor of
Timor, greeted with joy in the colony.154
The Portuguese force, aboard a merchant vessel escorted by a single
warship, left Mozambique on 26 January. Its progress was extremely slow. No
troops ever reached Timor, which was, from the point of view of Portugal’s
neutrality, just as well. They never had to be confronted by the still possible
refusal of Australians and Dutch to leave Portuguese territory; conversely, the
Japanese willingness to invade Timor if defended by Portuguese forces was
never put to the test.155 Late in the afternoon of 19 February the Japanese
minister in Lisbon announced that, in order to protect the flank of the forces
invading Dutch Timor, Portuguese territory would be temporarily occupied by
151. Sir Llewellyn Woodward, British Foreign Policy in the Second World War, vol. 4 (London: HMSO, 1975), p.
43.
152. Woodward, British Foreign Policy, p. 44.
153. On the basis of Wavell’s complaint, Winston Churchill wrote that the Allied force should not withdraw
once the Portuguese had arrived, but Anthony Eden objected strenuously to this, and carried the War
Cabinet with him. Woodward, British Foreign Policy, pp. 44–45.
154. AOS CO UL 10A, telegram, 26 January 1942, from the governor of Timor to the Ministry of the
Colonies.
155. One historian writes, ‘luck protects Salazar’s policy, making the timing of the events as favorable as
possible, due to factors unforeseen by, and alien to, Portugal’. António José Telo, Portugal na Segunda Guerra
(1941–1945) vol. 1 (Lisbon: Vega, 1991), p. 56.
the Japanese army. The following day the Japanese legation announced,
through its news bulletin, much the same thing. Once Portugal was again in a
position to enforce its neutrality, the legation explained, Japanese forces would
leave.156 Portuguese ships making their way to Dili, which the Japanese warned
should not, in view of the fighting around Java, move beyond 90º E longitude,
turned back towards Ceylon, while the governor of Timor was powerless to
halt the actions of this second invading force, much more violent than the first.
The Australians retreated into the mountains and attempted to carry out
guerrilla raids against the Japanese forces; their failure to mount an effective
conventional resistance in February necessarily led many to ask why the
diplomatic crisis with Portugal had taken place, given the Allies’ failure to
defend the East Indies.157 While this fighting was taking place, there could be
no question, for the Japanese, of negotiating their withdrawal with Lisbon.
On 21 February, Salazar returned to the National Assembly, this time to
inform it of the Japanese aggression. Despite British hopes, conveyed to
Teixeira de Sampaio, that he would be brutal in his denunciation of Tokyo,
Salazar was, as he had been in December, sober in his speech:
The correct terms of the communication received by the government from the
Imperial government does not diminish the gravity of the facts. It is not for us to
discuss the motives for the operation simultaneously carried out against the two
parts of the island, which, from a technical point of view, one which ignores the
rights of others, may seem well founded. We have been consistently loyal to the
following thesis: Strategic need does not outweigh the rights of States. And to this
point: that the violation of a right by some does not legitimize the violation of the
same, or of another right, by others.158
Much has been made of Salazar’s private reaction to the Allied occupation
of Timor, which was much more vehement than the reaction to the subse-
quent, and more brutal, Japanese occupation. However, Salazar could
denounce the Allies with, if not impunity, then a considerable margin of free-
dom; he could not do the same to the Axis without inviting retaliation. In the
Far East, Macao was vulnerable to Japanese aggression; preserving it was the
order of the day. More importantly, angering Japan might provide Germany
156. AOS CO UL 10A, Boletim da Legação do Japão, 20 February 1942.

157. One Foreign Office official, Roger M. Makins, wrote, ‘I should like to point out that the Timor affair is
an excellent illustration of the thesis that aggression does not pay. If we had insisted on the recall of the
Dutch-Australian expedition, either Timor would not have been attacked, or the Japanese would have been
the sole aggressors and we should have been in a very strong position in Portugal. As it is, we may count
ourselves lucky not to have suffered more damage than we have done as a result of this business’. Minute to
FO 371/31731 F 1743, in Teixeira da Motta, O caso de Timor, p. 117.
158. Diário das Sessões (Lisbon), 23 February 1942.
with an excuse to move against Portugal. Those who could not understand the
game that Salazar was playing believed him finished. Alfredo Pimenta was one
such correspondent: ‘England wants rid of Your Excellency, wants revenge for
your nobility and independence during the Spanish war. She has thrown this
orange peel in your path, so that you will slip.’159 But this did not occur, of
course. Conditions in the forlorn colony worsened considerably. Contact with
the governor became difficult, but sufficiently regular for the Portuguese gov-
ernment to be aware of the hardship now being endured in Timor, and the
humiliation imposed by the Japanese military on the Portuguese, whom they
blamed for the failure to deal successfully with the Australian forces still
operating in Timor.160 There were Portuguese and British initiatives designed to
ensure the reciprocal occupation of Timor, but these came to naught; the
matter would only be taken up again, seriously, towards the end of the conflict.
From a strategic point of view, and considerations for the Portuguese
colonies aside, Salazar, as a committed defender of Western values and of
Europe’s place in the world, was aghast by the scale and speed of the Japanese
triumph. Meeting the German minister, in March 1942, Salazar was clear: with-
out access to the British Empire, the Orient, and South America, the German
victory in Europe would be pointless. The fall of the Dutch and British
Empires in the East, which meant the rerouting of their raw materials to Japan,
and the growing North American influence in South America, would cost
Germany, and Europe, dearly. All that Huene could answer was that responsi-
bility for the collapse of these empires could not be laid at Germany’s door,
since Hitler had often spoken of the importance of the British Empire in world
affairs.161
159. AOS CP 215, undated letter, Alfredo Pimenta to António de Oliveira Salazar. In Salazar’s handwriting:
‘23/XII/41’.
160. AOS CO UL 10A, ‘Secret’ telegram, Dili, 8 May 1942, from the governor of Timor to Minister of the
Colonies. A report on governor Ferreira de Carvalho’s actions before, during, and after the conflict, dated 1
April 1948, can be found in AOS CO UL 10 A. It was sent by Teófilo Duarte to Salazar a week later.
161. AOS CO NE 7, notes on a conversation between the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the German
minister, 9 March 1942.
Chapter V
World War II
The Allied Threat, 1943–1945
The Azores Negotiations
T he world did not awake to the strategic importance of the Azores in 1939.
Some 1,500 kilometers west of continental Portugal, they serve as a naval
base without rival for anyone contesting the mastery of the northern Atlantic
Ocean; they had already performed that role for the U.S. Navy during World
War I. Subsequent improvements in anti-submarine warfare centered on aerial
detection and attack, and added to the Azores’ importance, for should the
Azores be pressed into service by the Allies, Britain-bound convoys could
remain under the protection of long-range patrol planes for the whole of their
crossing. Speculation over a British or American strike against the Azores was
rife, and greatly annoyed Salazar, since he feared that it might provoke a pre-
emptive strike against Portugal by Germany, a move which would be im-
possible to resist, and whose ultimate consequences were impossible to foresee.
We have already seen that German and Spanish diplomats in Portugal were
keeping a close eye on this situation.1 As a result, Portugal had to dispatch con-
siderable number of troops, at great expense, to the islands, in order to demon-
1. DGFP Series D vol. 10, doc. 120, Lisbon, 3 March 1941, the legation in Portugal to the Foreign Ministry,
pp. 212–13.
strate to Germany that Portugal would fight to defend its Atlantic possessions,
and to show the Allies that German special troops would not be able to seize
the Azores by a coup de main. Yet in 1943, with surprising ease, Salazar would
agree to the establishment of a British base on the islands, and later still he
accepted that the British would provide a front for a greater American
presence in the base. This was remarkable not only because of the incredible
caution which, as we have seen, Salazar employed at every stage of the conflict,
but also because of the general apprehension over too great an American say in
Azorean affairs. That the United States, fast becoming the dominant Atlantic
power, and home to a sizable Azorean community, should have a military
presence on the islands was something which the New State’s leadership
naturally found troubling.2
In March 1943 Esmeraldo Carvalhais reported to Salazar that both British
and American military attachés were adamant that the time had come, thanks
to the success of operations in North Africa, for Portugal to abandon its neu-
trality and join the ranks of the Allies, ostensibly as a response to a request
from Britain, under the terms of the old Alliance. Portugal could contribute to
the common cause by ‘ceding its bases on the islands and the continent in
order to facilitate the anti-submarine campaign’.3 Not surprisingly, the German
military attaché was putting a different interpretation on forthcoming events.
Speaking to Júlio Botelho Moniz, an officer who would pass on the in-
formation to Santos Costa, this German officer, Schmitt, warned that the Allies
were about to launch a military operation against Portugal and its Atlantic
islands, not just as a result of the Battle of the Atlantic, but also in order to
acquire a starting point for the invasion of Europe. This operation, if resisted
by the Portuguese authorities, would be followed-up by a foreign-instigated
rising designed to oust Salazar and put in his place a pro-Allies figure willing to
provide a fig-leaf of legality to the Allies’ actions.4 It is worth noting, in this
respect, that the PVDE admitted its inability to carry out investigations within
the more likely players in any coup attempt, the other police forces and the
army.5
The Azores played a vital role in the protracted British/Portuguese military
planning in the middle years of the war, which Salazar oversaw directly. It was
eventually agreed that should a German invasion of Portugal take place, for
whatever reason, there would be a token defense of the continental territory
2. Huene, for example, mentioned receiving intelligence about an American plan to cause disturbances in the
Azores which might be exploited in order to cause a secession. Louçã (ed.) Portugal visto pelos Nazis, doc. 134,
Lisbon, 13 May 1943, from the German legation to the Auswärtiges Amt, pp. 281–82.
3. AOS CP 49, letter, 30 March 1943, Esmeraldo Carvalhais to António de Oliveira Salazar.
4. AOS CO PC 3H, letter, 8 April 1943, Júlio Botelho Moniz to Santos Costa.
5. AOS CO IN 8D, PVDE weekly report, 27 April 1943.
World War II: The Allied Threat, 1943–1945 277
while the government moved to the Azores. Since an invasion of Portugal
could only take place once Spain was at war with the Allies, this scenario also
included the fall of Gibraltar: for that reason retaining control of the Azores
was crucial to the Allies. To help in their defense, and following British advice,
the Portuguese had begun to build, in 1943, two runways for military use. As
these neared completion, in June, and in the wake of the securing of North
Africa by the Allies, which made a German intervention in the Iberian
Peninsula less likely,6 a British request for the use of the Azores in the anti-sub-
marine campaign arrived.7 There was a long delay between the Torch landings
and the request for the use of the Azores, and the explanation for this lies in
the differences of opinion between different branches of the British govern-
ment over the best course of action: on the one hand the Foreign Office,
fighting a rearguard action against forcible intervention in the Azores, and on
the other the military authorities and, increasingly, Churchill, who pressed for
making use of the bases, whatever the consequences. Neither side bothered to
find out what Salazar actually thought of the matter. This began to change on 1
April 1943 when the British ambassador, Campbell, informed London that,
given the increased political effervescence in Portugal, Salazar might very well
respond affirmatively to a formal request, under the terms of the ancient
alliance, for the use of the Azores—even if he would then add a string of con-
ditions.8 Many in military circles still believed, at this stage, that Salazar would
refuse to hand over bases, and were therefore resolved to seize them by force;
this view prevailed at the Trident Conference, held in Washington, in May,
when Americans and British realized that they were in agreement, in principle,
6. The Admiralty, responsible for protecting vital shipping on the high seas, had long been pressing for some
arrangement that allowed it to use the Azores as a base. The Foreign Office had fought against any move in
this direction, because of the volatility of politics in the Iberian Peninsula: but it withdrew its objections once
North Africa had been made secure. Telo, Portugal na Segunda Guerra, p. 138.
7. The success of the Torch landings had also increased American interests in the Azores, notably as an
airbase allowing for intercontinental flights: ‘In January 1943 the Air Transport Command of the Army Air
Force requested Pan American Airways, Inc., to explore the possibility of securing land airport facilities in
the Azores. Pan American was to seek these facilities supposedly for commercial purposes but the real
reason […] was to have these facilities available as a ferrying point for the transfer of heavy military aircraft
from the United States to European and African theaters of operation when authority to do so was granted
by the Portuguese government’. The Pan American request was meant to underpin a service from New York
to London, via the Azores and Lisbon. Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) 1943, vol. 2 (Washington:
Department of State, 1964), letter, Washington, 7 July 1943, Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief of the
Army and Navy (Leahy) to the Secretary of State. The American military too were pushing, roughly at the
same time as the British, for an occupation of the Azores with or without Portuguese approval. By 16 May
1943, the American occupation plan ([NA], JCS319 Joint War Plan Committee on the Azores) had been pre-
pared. Telo, Portugal na Segunda Guerra, p. 144. One division was allocated to the task, acting in conjunction
with a naval taskforce centered on an aircraft carrier and a battleship.
8. NA FO 371 34625 C 3921, Lisbon, 1 April 1943, Campbell to Eden.
over the need to seize the islands.9 Delighted with the American stance,
Churchill cabled home with instructions: Portugal should be informed that if it
refused to hand over the base, the Azores would be occupied.10 The Foreign
Office, increasingly confident that a peaceful resolution could now be found,
was aghast, and Eden successfully united the War Cabinet against Churchill.11
A military occupation would take some time to prepare, the Foreign Office
argued, while a peaceful request under the terms of the Alliance might be
agreed to immediately. There was nothing to lose, therefore, with advancing
with the latter; two whole months might indeed be gained. Military staff on
both sides of the Atlantic (along with the politicians) had worked themselves
into a terrible state over nothing, purely because they believed that Salazar
would turn down a request for the use of the Azores: they quite simply ignored
the fact that the British alliance was the cornerstone of Portuguese foreign
policy, overriding any other consideration. Given sufficient guarantees for
Portugal’s defense from any reprisals, Salazar was bound to agree to a
reasonable request.12
Campbell had been absolutely right in his prediction, on 1 April 1943, that
Salazar would accede to a British request for the use of the Azores, but there
was more than apprehension over domestic affairs affecting Salazar’s recap-
tivity to the offer. As long as the German army remained in the Pyrenees,
Portugal was under threat; but events on the Eastern Front seriously sapped
Hitler’s ability to open up a historically difficult front in the Iberian Peninsula.
9. The British insisted, however, that it fell to them to carry out the action, since Portugal was part of their
sphere of influence. The forces committed to the operation were also fewer in number than in the American
plan.
10. Years later, Salazar was informed by a Portuguese officer on NATO duties that an American counterpart
he had met was extremely well versed in the Azores, and openly admitted to having been part of the team of
officers who had planned an invasion of the islands during World War II. ‘I asked him if the Americans had
been aware that the islands were occupied by Portuguese troops disposed to defend them. He answered that
yes, they had been aware of the troops stationed there, the defense works carried out, and even the troops’
morale, but that the operational plans took all these elements into account’. AOS CD 1, report, illegible
signature, ‘Plan for the invasion of the Azores by the United States’, 11 March 1955.
11. Telo, Portugal na Segunda Guerra, p. 146. See also Woodward, British Foreign Policy, p. 49: ‘The Foreign
Office held most strongly that a forcible seizure of the islands would be unjustified morally, and that it was
undesirable from the general political and economic point of view’. Churchill was hard to shift on this issue;
Woodward provides a sizable extract from Churchill’s reply to the Cabinet, in which he explained that he
could not see ‘any moral substance in the legalistic point involved in overriding the neutrality of Portugal in
respect of these islands which are of no peace-time consequence, but have now acquired vital war
significance. The fate of all these small nations depends entirely upon our victory’. Churchill proposed to
sweeten the pill by leasing the islands, and to return them with all physical improvements made in the
meantime. Woodward, British Foreign Policy, p. 50.
12. Some of the British officers who had collaborated in the building of the Lagens facilities in the Azores
were keen that the Alliance be invoked as quickly as possible in order to make sure that the new landing strip
was put to use immediately after its completion. See R. E. Vintras, The Portuguese Connection (London: Bach-
man & Turner, 1974), pp. 41–42. Vintras was dismissive of all the talk of invading the Azores and the com-
plications that surrounded the affair, and believed, correctly, as it turned out, that a direct appeal to Salazar
would resolve the issue.
The Torch landings in North Africa had shown the United States to have
become a serious military force in Europe. By December 1942 Tovar, from
Berlin, was writing that the Soviet resistance exceeded all predictions, the latest
winter offensive being carried out by ‘enormous masses of men (which is not
surprising), as well as of tanks, airplanes and artillery.’13 That same month,
news began to filter through of contacts taking place in Lisbon between Italian
and British officials. According to one Portuguese diplomat, a deal might be
made along the lines of that reached with Admiral Darlan, and the Italian
officials in question were all deeply opposed to the Fascist regime.14 The
following, month, the same official reported that it was now American officials
who were in touch with the Italians, and that these Americans desired the
presence of a mediator—either the Holy See or, better still, Salazar himself.15
Viana went on, adding that the situation was reminiscent of the attempts made
by Austrian officials towards the end of World War I to extricate their country
from the fighting:
This time it isn’t Austria, but it is still the satellite states, Italy and Romania, trying
to save themselves, like rats abandoning a ship when it begins to take in water.
Evidence that the tide of the war was turning continued to mount. In
February 1943 Tovar reported that the Reich’s leadership had come to the con-
clusion that the task before them was too great for the resources at their dis-
posal. Peace with Britain being impossible, they were now resolved to seek
terms with the USSR, in order to put an end to the bloody struggle on the
Eastern Front—and it was their opinion that the Soviets were not as
committed to total victory over Germany as the British and Americans. Tovar
went on,
In order for a deal to be reached with Russia there is only one possible basis: the
bolshevization of Germany. This is the solution the Reich’s leaders are resolved to
put into practice if circumstances continue to be adverse […] the institutions of
the two countries are today much closer than they were years ago: bolshevism has
moved to the right and national-socialism to the left.16
The move to create a state of total war in Germany would facilitate this
process of bolshevization. Tovar, in Berlin, was also reporting directly on the
13. AOS CD 21, letter, 10 December 1942, Count Tovar to António de Oliveira Salazar.
14. AOS CO NE 2F, report, H. Viana, 28 December 1942.
15. AOS CO PC 3H, report, H. Viana, 18 January 1943.
16. AOS CD 21, ‘Secret’ letter, 14 February 1943, Count Tovar to António de Oliveira Salazar.
effects of Allied bombing of German cities.17 Portuguese consulates in
Germany were being closed one after the other because of the bombing;
eventually the embassy in Berlin itself was hit. A German victory was now
highly unlikely.18
The turning of the war’s tide, and growing restlessness in Spain, as rival
forces jockeyed for position, led Salazar, unknowingly, to reinforce the hand of
the Foreign Office when it came to the Azores question. On 8 June Campbell
met with Salazar to state that the British government was now able to offer
Portugal a considerable quantity of artillery. Although annoyed with the terms
employed by Campbell,19 Salazar seized on the meeting to suggest that, in light
of the changing international circumstances, British and Portuguese military
staffs might hold conversations over a combined response in case of
aggression against Portugal; the old formula, agreed earlier in the war, of a
delaying action on the continent and a withdrawal of the government to the
Azores seemed outdated.20 This, Campbell suggested to London, was an ex-
tremely positive sign, since it showed that Salazar now understood that the
Allies were favorites to win the war, and the War Cabinet agreed: the time
seemed ripe for a formal request, under the terms of the alliance, for use of the
bases in the Azores, forestalling more dramatic action. Formal conversations
on the use of the Azores began on 18 June 1943, when Campbell first
broached the subject with Salazar; a request was made for the use, by
reconnaissance aircraft, of São Miguel and Terceira islands, and unrestricted
fuelling for escorts at either São Miguel or Faial. Salazar asked for some days to
consider his response.21 Two days later, though, Armindo Monteiro wrote
17. Ibid., 4 May 1943, Count Tovar to António de Oliveira Salazar.

18. António José Telo goes as far as to say that the British request for the Azores was like a life-raft for the
Salazar regime, increasingly isolated in Portugal and in Europe. Telo, Portugal na Segunda Guerra, p. 151.
19. ‘Since the ambassador invariably approaches issues in an unpleasant—when he is not actually irritating—
manner, and since he used the kind of language we know only too well from former negotiations, I did not
address the point’. DAPE vol. 12, doc. 78, notes on a conversation between the Minister for Foreign Affairs
and the British ambassador in Lisbon, 8 June 1943, pp. 109–10.
20. DAPE vol. 12, doc. 80, notes on a conversation between the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the British
ambassador in Lisbon, 12 June 1943, pp. 111–12.
21. In December 1966, well after these events, the Duke of Palmela, who replaced Monteiro at the London
embassy, sent Salazar the written account of a conversation with Sir Ronald Campbell, after the latter’s
retirement from the foreign service. Campbell ‘told me how he had been called with the greatest urgency to
London by the British government, and he had been received that very afternoon at 10 Downing Street, the
residence of Prime Minister Churchill. When he entered the great hall where the Prime Minister receives his
official visitors and also holds cabinet and other important meetings, he saw at once that Churchill was
surrounded by his war advisors and also by a large number of high-ranking American officers.
Churchill, going straight to the point, informed Campbell that the joint High Commands had resolved that
the conduct of the war in North Africa made the availability of facilities in the Azores indispensable;
Campbell would have to inform the Portuguese government that the Azores were going to be occupied by
the Allies, to be returned intact after the war. Campbell immediately replied that he could not conceive that,
there being an ancient alliance that Portugal had never reneged on, the necessary facilities should not be
requested under the terms of that alliance.
Salazar, clearly attempting to pressure him into accepting the British request.
On 21 June Armindo Monteiro suggested the possibility of a visit by Anthony
Eden to Lisbon, although Salazar denied the need for such a move, which if
discovered would be highly dangerous for Portugal. On 23 June, Salazar gave
Campbell a favorable answer. There would have to be, however, negotiations,
and these would be both long and held in Lisbon: Salazar would oversee them
himself, and he did not want hear complaints from London, at a later date,
regarding the length of the process.22 He also noted that the Azores bases
should only be discussed as part of the wider strategic negotiations he had
suggested on 8 June. Salazar then pointed out to Campbell that Portugal was
not ready to go to war: among other factors, the food situation was catastro-
phic. He added that the Azores were no longer as valuable as they once had
been, since the U-boats were now losing the war. With the Allies now able to
move freely through the Mediterranean, the shipping situation was no longer as
critical as it had once been. As a result, and since there was no new and sudden
emergency which dictated the immediate handing over of bases in the Azores
to the Allies, negotiations need not be conducted under pressure. By not
countering this impression there and then, Campbell allowed a fundamental
misunderstanding to arise, which would give rise to much anguish on both
sides.
The agreement in principle to British use of the bases did not mean that it
could go ahead while the details were worked out. Another meeting between
Salazar and Campbell, on 26 June, resulted in agreement on the negotiations
being held in Lisbon, but Salazar was non-committal on when these should
commence. Soon after that U.S. Ambassador Winant, from London, informed
Washington that on 29 June a delegation would depart for Lisbon to carry out
the agreed-to negotiations.23 A number of ministries and branches of the
armed services were represented in the delegation, headed by Air Vice-Marshal
Medhurst—although its most significant contributor would be Frank Roberts,
acting head of the Foreign Office’s Central Department. The British were
clearly pushing for an early resolution, Eden believing that the matter might be
This statement of Campbell’s was received with laughter and it was said (he did not say by whom) that the
“Doctor” would not consent to anything. Throughout a certain amount of argument among those present,
more or less violent, Campbell continued to stick by his point of view, so much so that Churchill finally gave
way, demanding nevertheless a rapid answer by Dr Salazar […] As he was leaving the room, Churchill told
him, in front of everyone, “Ronnie, you’re going to lose”, to which he answered that he was sure of winning’.
AOS CP 100, notes on the British request for facilities in the Azores in 1943, attached to a letter, Lisbon, 5
December 1966, Duque de Palmela to António de Oliveira Salazar.
22. DAPE vol. 12, doc. 94, notes on a conversation between the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the British
ambassador in Lisbon, 23 June 1943, pp. 145–55.
23. FRUS 1943, vol. 2, London, June 29 1943, the ambassador in the United Kingdom (Winant) to the
Secretary of State, pp. 533–34.
resolved in a fortnight. Churchill wanted it all wrapped up by 15 July.24 Salazar
did not see that this was the case; instructions distributed on 29 June to the
Portuguese negotiators (Admiral Botelho de Sousa, Commander Uva, Colonel
Barros Rodrigues, Lieutenant Colonel Botelho Moniz, Major Humberto Del-
gado, and Captain Luís Pina) stressed that they should not be hurried, and
pointed out, as Salazar had done to Campbell, that the request had come at an
odd time, when the gains did not match the risks of involving the Peninsula in
the conflict.25
Negotiations began on 5 July, moving slowly. There seems to have been a
substantial gap between the Portuguese expectations of British needs and the
reality. There was also a completely different approach to the negotiations
(excessively legalistic, the British believed), on the Portuguese part. On 19 July
Salazar met Campbell and Frank Roberts. Difficulties had arisen in the negotia-
tions, and this meeting represented an initial attempt to overcome them. One
of the difficulties was the obvious one: when could British operations from the
Azores start? This depended, for Salazar, on the British willingness to prepare a
response to any possible German/Spanish intervention. Another problem
resulted from the scale, and nature, of the British forces to be based in the
Azores, much greater than the Portuguese had envisaged. On 23 July, a British
diplomat informed his Portuguese interlocutor that London had hoped to
begin landing the first units on 1 August, in order to be operational in the first
week of September at the latest. It is clear that, at this point, the Ger-
man/Spanish threat continued to be a sticking point since, at their meeting
with Salazar, on 24 July, Campbell and Roberts told him that Portuguese plans
for the start of operations in Azores (to be held back until Portugal was in a
position to defend herself effectively) would lead to too long a delay. The
British Admiralty wanted a date, and the sooner the better. Salazar replied, at
last, that if certain anti-aircraft artillery was delivered swiftly, operations might
begin two and a half months later, on 15 October. Campbell and Roberts
seemed to accept it well, but their government did not.

25. FRUS 1943, vol. 2, London, 29 June 1943, the ambassador in the United Kingdom (Winant) to the
Secretary of State. This telegram contained a message from Churchill to Roosevelt, in which the Prime
Minister wrote, ‘in view of the fact that the approach to the Portuguese was made on the basis of the treaties
of alliance, I hope you will agree that we should conclude an agreement with the Portuguese on the lines
desired by Dr Salazar. I think that at a later stage, if it became necessary, it should be possible to secure
Portuguese assent to the use of the facilities by the forces of other of the United Nations.’ Roosevelt replied
the following day: ‘We must expect Germany to launch concentrated air and submarine attacks upon
Portugal as retaliation and in order to impress neutral nations. It is inevitable that grave consequences would
result if adequate provision were not made by the United Nations to meet this contingency’. According to
Churchill, in a telegram dated 3 July, it was unlikely that the Germans would bomb Portugal, whose neutrality
served them well, both as a listening post and as a source of tungsten.
By this time, Salazar had already read a PVDE report elaborated on the
basis of ‘a conversation with leading German personalities’, which stressed a
number of significant points: that Germany was committed to keeping Salazar
in power, while the Allies were not, planning for his replacement by, possibly,
Armindo Monteiro; that the Allies were placing pressure on Lisbon to permit
the use of the Azores; that this would lead to German military intervention;
and that from their bases around Bordeaux, German planes could reduce to
ashes any Portuguese or Spanish port. “Germany,” continued the report,
“cannot believe that the Portuguese government, by ceding the Azores, will
contribute, even if only indirectly, to the Russian victory and therefore to the
victory of communism, which it fights against and of which it might become a
victim.”26 How much the Germans actually knew, and through what channels
they had learned of the on-going negotiations, was not clear.
It was the view of the British Chiefs of Staff that weather conditions in the
Atlantic meant that there would be, in the fall, a six-week delay between arrival
of the first units and the start of operations. The later in the year the first units
arrived, the longer the delay before the start of operations would become. As a
result, on 30 July London put forward the view that 15 October was too late.
Churchill, for one, was furious: either agreement was reached by 15 August, or
the military expedition against the Azores would move.27 The force assembled
for this purpose, however, had been dispersed as a result of operations against
Sicily. Once again, it seems, Salazar had been very lucky, since the British could
not be everywhere at once. On 31 July, at yet another meeting between Salazar,
Campbell and Roberts, the British pointed out that, thanks to the Italian with-
drawal from the conflict, the threat to Portugal had been reduced. Salazar paid
little heed to this, and blamed the British for making the Azores request so late
in the year. Little or no progress was made, with Salazar insisting on 15
October as the date for the first landing in the Azores.
In the meantime, on 2 August, in a stormy session, the British Cabinet
examined the Azores question. Once again, after Churchill had shouted himself
hoarse, Eden got his way; it was better to preserve the link with Portugal, even
if at the cost of losing some days of the airbase’s use. The Foreign Office’s
recommendations were cabled to Lisbon, stressing 1 October as the cut-off
date: but even armed with the promise of plans for a defense of Portugal in
26. AOS CO IN 8D, report, 19 July 1943, on a conversation with leading German personalities held on 11
July 1943.
27. ‘The Prime Minister wrote to Mr. Eden on July 24 that we could not accept a policy of procrastination.
We had fixed August 20 as “the date when ultimate sanction could be applied. But then came the hope of
parley, invoking the alliance and so forth…. Now, after all this vast verbiage and haggling”, Sir R. Campbell
was suggesting that September 1 was to early a date “to be insisted upon”, but the Prime Minister considered
that the Portuguese had “ample argumentative munitions to spread the matter out into the winter weather.
The time has come to let them know that this nonsense must cease”.’ Woodward, British Foreign Policy, p. 55.
case of Spanish attack, which the British thought most unlikely, and the offer
of lend/lease military material to be supplied to Portugal by Britain, Salazar
managed to extract another week from his interlocutors. On 16 August, finally,
with Eden close to despair, 8 October emerged as the new date, and the
following day the heads of the military negotiation teams signed the agreement
regulating the use of the Azores base.28
Remarkably, very little concrete information leaked out in respect of the
talks, possibly because attention was focused elsewhere. On the heels of
Mussolini’s first disappearance from the scene came the destruction of Ham-
burg by the Anglo-American ‘round-the-clock’ bombing raids. Tovar, in Berlin,
found it hard to describe what had happened to ‘Germany’s second city’, but
concluded that ‘from the point of view of “total war” Hamburg no longer
exists, and its surviving population, far from contributing to the war effort,
now constitutes an obstacle to the collective work of the nation.’29 The result
was an atmosphere of great apprehension in Germany. In Lisbon, too, tension
was mounting. Huene visited Sampaio on 21 August and announced that he
knew that important British military figures, hidden in their embassy, were con-
ducting meetings with their Portuguese counterparts—and he complained
about the enthusiasm that Monteiro was displaying on his visits to British mili-
tary establishments.30 Sampaio reassured the German minister that nothing was
going on. Nevertheless, on 2 September, an official note in the press
announced major military exercises, attempting to put an end to rumors. On 27
September Portuguese embassies were informed of the deal, and Salazar issued
instructions to his new ambassador in London, the Duke of Palmela. These
provide a good summary of the situation, and of Salazar’s thoughts on the
matter.31 On 4 October, lend-lease, economic/shipping, and Azorean security
28. The main points of the deal were: supply and repair of Allied ships at Horta; use of Ponta Delgada,
subject to all the restrictions of a neutral port; limitless use of the Lagens base by British aircraft; use of Rabo
de Peixe as an emergency strip; and building of a submarine cable between the islands of Horta and Terceira,
where Ponta Delgada and the airstrips are located. The Portuguese government received a guarantee of
support against reprisal bombings of Portugal; cooperation in the preparation of a defense plan; the supply
of weapons under a lend-lease arrangement; Allied protection of Portuguese shipping; goodwill in relation to
subsequent arms shipments; and a favorable revision of economic agreements.
29. AOS CD 21, ‘Secret’ letter, Berlin, 9 August 1943, Count Tovar to António de Oliveira Salazar.
30. AOS CO NE 7, notes on a conversation between Ambassador Teixeira de Sampaio and the German
minister, 21 August 1943.
31. This long letter is remarkable for the clarity with which Salazar spelled out how Palmela should approach
the task before him. He should remember that ‘the Portuguese government’s foreign policy is that of the
responsible Cabinet under the constitutional supervision of the Head of State. No matter how high their
rank or intellectual ability, Portuguese diplomatic agents do not have, cannot have and should not have their
own policy. They have, and they serve, the policy of their country’s government’. Salazar delivered lapidary
statements in relation to other subjects—the economic blockade, war commerce, the rights of neutrals,
Portugal’s diplomatic action in Spain, the current state of diplomatic relations with Great Britain, and
Armindo Monteiro’s actions as ambassador. DAPE vol. 12, doc. 169, letter, Lisbon, 27 September 1943,
António de Oliveira Salazar to the Duke of Palmela, pp. 316–324.
agreements (including the closure of all foreign consulates on the islands) were
signed between Portugal and the United Kingdom.32
Three days later, on 7 October, Salazar, officially in Vimieiro, crossed the
border into Spain in secret to brief Count Jordana on what was about to
happen, departing at 9 p.m. and entering Spain at midnight. Jordana, for his
part, had left Madrid under cover of a hunting trip. Salazar’ explanation for this
notable departure from his hitherto cautious diplomatic stance, summarized in
some handwritten notes still in his archive, went like this: preserving Portugal’s
neutrality was increasingly difficult, in part because of the strategic position of
the Azores. To refuse their use by Britain would be to call the alliance into
question, and to ruin the future relationship with the United States. A refusal
being impossible, Salazar had attempted to limit the size and scope of the base
(which could only be used for the protection of merchant shipping) so as not
to imperil neutrality on the continent, had refused the cooperation of
Portuguese forces in Allied missions, and had protected Portugal’s freedom to
trade with Germany. Portugal had gained, in the negotiations, an improved
standing with Britain, collaboration in the case of an Axis attack, improved
access to Allied arms, and some—not much—economic advantage, notably a
higher priority in the allocation of merchant shipping, in order to constitute
some strategic reserves. Salazar also stressed that this in no way meant that
Portugal was turning its back on Spain, and insisted on closer diplomatic
cooperation between the two countries, which should strive to act as a ‘penin-
sular bloc’. There was no question of a decisive brake with Germany. Jordana’s
response was more positive than Salazar might have hoped for,33 given the
obvious weakness of the notion of a ‘slight’ neutrality in the islands and a
“greater” neutrality on the continent, and over the course of the next few days
the Spanish Foreign Minister would be involved in a hectic round of negotia-
tions, hoping to minimize the German response to the news of the Azores
deal.34 On 8 October, the British began to land their forces in Lagens (Lajes, in
Portuguese): a flight of Hudsons (from 233 squadron), two squadrons of
Flying Fortresses (206 and 220), a headquarters (247 group) and ground-staff.
Finally, on 12 October, Winston Churchill announced the Azores deal in the
House of Commons with a high degree of pomp and ceremony, stressing the
age-old links between Britain and Portugal:
32. See FRUS 1943, vol. 2, Washington, 6 October 1943, President Roosevelt to the British Prime Minister,
for Roosevelt’s explanation of the Azores’ importance to the American war effort.
33. Franco Nogueira, As grandes crises, p. 470.
34. Jordana, Milicia, p. 214.
I have an announcement to make to the House arising out of the Treaty signed
between this country and Portugal in the year 1373 between His Majesty King
Edward III and King Ferdinand and Queen Eleanor of Portugal […]35
He concluded,
I take this opportunity of placing on record the appreciation by HMG, which I

have no doubt is shared by Parliament and the British nation, of the attitude of the
Portuguese government, whose loyalty to their British Ally never wavered in the
darkest hours of the war.
That same day, Sampaio informed Huene of the British landings in the
Azores. Berlin had already been informed, through other means that something
was up. The German embassy in Madrid had sent the Auswärtiges Amt copy of a
telegram from the Brazilian ambassador in Madrid to Rio de Janeiro, in which
the Brazilian diplomat attempted to detail the talks held by Salazar and general
Jordana, Spanish Foreign Minister. This account of the meeting has Salazar in-
forming Jordana that he would put Portuguese bases in the Atlantic and the
Orient at the disposal of the Allies, partly because of British and American
pressure, partly because of Japanese outrages in Timor. The ambassador con-
cluded, ‘I do not know if Portugal will merely cut diplomatic ties with the Axis,
or if the latter will declare war. I do not know and cannot predict what will be
the reaction of this [Spanish] government […]’36 Reporting his meeting with
Sampaio, Huene stressed the lack of choice which, according to Sampaio, the
Portuguese had had in the matter: Britain had invoked the alliance as an ultima-
tum; Portugal had been hamstrung and could not avoid its commitments.
Nevertheless Sampaio had assured him that Portuguese sovereignty was not
under threat, and that once the war was over Portugal would regain control of
the bases. Sampaio, Huene concluded, ‘hopes that the German government
will be comprehensive and manifested his conviction that, on the continent,
bilateral economic relations will continue on the same footing.’37 Portugal’s
diplomatic position was too nuanced for German diplomats to understand;
35. DAPE vol. 12, doc. 216, London, 12 October 1943, Duke of Palmela to António de Oliveira Salazar,
390–91. Palmela wrote: ‘When the Prime Minister said today in Parliament that he was going to make a
declaration related to the treaty signed in 1373 there was some laughter in the Chamber, which quickly was
reined in once the importance of the declaration was realized.’ See Vintras, The Portuguese Connection, for the
full text of this and other Anglo-Portuguese treaties.
36. Louçã (ed.), Portugal visto pelos Nazis, doc. 137, report, 10 October 1943, from the German embassy in
Madrid to the Auswärtiges Amt, pp. 285–86. That same day, an Abwehr report from Portugal stated that,
overnight, two Azorean islands, Faial and Flores, had been occupied by and Anglo-American force, and that
Salazar would soon announce Portugal’s non-belligerency. Doc. 138, report, Lisbon, 10 October 1943,
report, from the Abwehr organization in Portugal to Abwehr I.
37. Louçã (ed.), Portugal visto pelos Nazis, doc. 139, report, 12 October 1943, from the German legation to the
there was a touch of Jesuitical duplicity about the notion of a ‘partial neutrality’,
or of a neutrality conditioned by an existing alliance.38 However Huene may
have felt about being deceived on the Azores issue there was no wish, in
Berlin, for outright confrontation, especially since the Germans still needed
Portuguese tungsten; there was nothing to be gained from a revenge bombing
of Lisbon, or some such atrocity that would bring Portugal into the war,
allowing the Allies an added foothold on the continent. There was a touch of
humor when Huene, meeting Sampaio, inquired about the Salazar-Jordana
meeting, whose very occurrence Sampaio denied: ‘Dr Salazar has not left
Portugal for a single day!’ He continued to deny it in the face of Huene’s
insistence until the German relented: ‘How can it be? I was assured of it in the
most certain of ways, from a trustworthy source!’ When Sampaio replied that
this was how false news were always spread, Huene’s frustration became evi-
dent: ‘Oh, how difficult it is to work here!’ Berlin was content to deliver a
measured protest about the action.39 The prose and logic employed by Salazar
in his reply to the protest (‘Given the vast area and the complex conditions in
which the war is being waged, a violation, even if permanent, of a neutral
country’s right or duty, when confined to a limited space, need not imply, and
in truth has not implied, the negation of the said country’s neutral status’) left
Huene more puzzled than ever.40 He told Teixeira de Sampaio that translating
it into German was proving so difficult that he had enlisted the aid of a
professor of modern languages to help him.41
The ceding of the Azores bases to the Allies had an important political
dimension when it came to Salazar’s dealings with the Portuguese army. Its
rearmament had proceeded slowly during the war, through a recourse to a mix
of British and German weaponry. As we have seen, the latter was not Salazar’s
first choice, but was essentially the result of Britain’s inability to meet Portu-
guese needs. As a result of this, as well as the need to garrison colonies and
islands, the metropolitan army was in poor shape. The Azores deal would mark
the point when German deliveries of weapons came to an end. Substantial
deliveries of British anti-tank and anti-air artillery, as well as mortars, were
made; the Portuguese air corps receive more modern, if used, combat planes,
38. See, for example, AOS CO NE 7, notes on a conversation between Ambassador Teixeira de Sampaio
and the German minister, 2 November 1943.
39. DAPE vol. 12, doc. 241, note, 15 October 1943, from the German minister in Lisbon to the Minister for
Foreign Affairs, pp. 410–12. The only spiteful passage in the document is a historical appreciation of the
Anglo-Portuguese alliance, describe as a mechanism to subjugate the Portuguese economy to Britain’s will
and to usurp Portuguese colonies.
40. DAPE vol. 12, doc. 286, note, 30 October 1943, from the Minister of Foreign Affairs to the German
minister in Lisbon.
41. AOS CO NE 7, notes on a meeting between Ambassador Teixeira de Sampaio and the German minister,
2 November 1943.
notably Hurricanes and Blenheims. Subsequent reports by British officers in
Portugal made it clear that all of this materiel had done little to improve the
efficiency of the Portuguese armed forces, but Salazar was not unduly worried
about this—what mattered to him was that the army now had modern equip-
ment with which to busy itself.
The Diplomatic Duel with Armindo Monteiro
Salazar’s undoubted aversion to the Nazis and their planned New Order,
revealed most clearly in his correspondence with Gonzague de Reynold, had to
be kept secret. No one, apart from Teixeira de Sampaio, must know or suspect
the Portuguese leader’s true thoughts regarding the war. Only Salazar could
plan and draw up policy; others must inform him, and enforce his decisions;
above all they must obey. Not all found it possible to act in these circum-
stances. Armindo Monteiro became the most famous casualty of this secretive
and ultra-centralized approach. Monteiro had railed since his arrival in London
about the lack of information that reached him from Lisbon. This sense of
being a simple subordinate had led him to request his resignation on a number
of occasions. As the war began, this sense of isolation deepened, and, caught
up in the Blitz, he developed a natural affinity for those who, all around him,
had to endure night after night of bombing:
People have become accustomed to walking, without emotion, among the ruins:
and they do not contemplate the ruins for more time than what is necessary to
note whether or not they are recent. Life effervesces around the ruins, unin-
terrupted and violent—almost rabid. The city insists on defying fate, working
among debris, holes, fires, collapsing buildings, explosions, as if that was the way
life had always been. The soul of this people seems to have received, in the caul-
dron where it was forged, a steeliness which allows it to face, calmly, incredible
calamities. And what is most admirable, to me, about this British serenity, is above
all the general conviction that the lowest point of the suffering curve has not yet
been reached: more and more is on the way; the anxieties and sacrifices are a long
way from over.42
Salazar and Monteiro, conservative by nature, had many affinities, and Britain’s
wartime lurch to the Left was a common source of concern—as was the insis-
tence on the conflict being a war for ‘democracy’, which naturally gave hope to
the Portuguese opposition. That the British colony in Lisbon, diplomatic corps
included, was generally well disposed to the opposition, because democratic
42. Rosas et al. (eds), Armindo Monteiro, doc. 31, letter, London, 16 January 1941, Armindo Monteiro to
and, apparently, willing to intervene in the conflict on Britain’s side, was, to
Salazar, axiomatic. Monteiro tried hard, over the course of 1941, especially
after the launch of Operation Barbarossa, to curb a growing anti-Portuguese
sentiment manifested in the press, and especially in the BBC, whose Portu-
guese-language broadcasts many at home had access to. However, differences
soon began to appear in the two men’s vision of the war, and their interpreta-
tion of Britain’s actions. Salazar, for example, was deeply frustrated by the
British unwillingness to provide concrete plans of action for the eventuality of
a German attack, with Spanish permission, on Gibraltar, which would almost
certainly be followed by a German, or joint German-Spanish, invasion of
Portugal. Bereft of an army worthy of that name—due in part, Salazar believed,
to the British refusal to sell arms to Portugal—Lisbon could be seized by
motorized troops before any foreign aid could arrive. In February 1941 Salazar,
in a long document, outlined his thinking to Monteiro:
There are a certain number of points which we can take to be fixed. Thus, a) there
can be no doubt that the best for Portugal would be to preserve neutrality and
peace; b) if neutrality must be lost, then it is indispensable that it should be lost by
a Spanish or a German action, an action which, for not having been provoked, will
give us greater moral strength in the world; c) since we are not allowed to choose
sides—these are conditioned, or should I say, pre-determined by geography, we
must avoid the slightest gesture on the part of England or the United States that
might constitute the slightest violation of our territorial integrity or of our
sovereignty; d) we must go further than this: avoid any action which the probable
enemies or enemy might take to be the start of an intervention or the preparation
for an intervention, thereby finding a motive, and if not a motive, a pretext, for
their own intervention.43
Another source of contention were Britain’s prospects for winning the

war. Monteiro, in London, could understand where victory would come from:
the Dominions and Empire, in part, the occupied peoples of Europe, in
another part, and above all the United States of America. Salazar was less sure:
I am above all worried by the aerial and submarine campaign against British
transports. From spring, England might find itself completely blockaded. One sees
enemy submarines and even surface vessels at sea, while bombers fly ever further
and cause formidable damage […] if they took off from the Portuguese and
Spanish coasts, with their range, navigation would become impossible over an
43. Ibid., doc. 34, letter, 14/15 February 1941, António de Oliveira Salazar to Armindo Monteiro, p. 148.
enormous area; links with Africa would have to suffer enormous detours, taking
them close to South America […]44
At roughly the same time, Monteiro was trying to explain the war to Salazar as
it was understood by the British and, no doubt, by him. That Britain had not
been ready for war had become painfully obvious in 1939, but the reaction to
the challenge posed by Germany had been tremendous, and the feeling of
standing alone against the whole continent, after Dunkirk, had reinforced the
positive attitude of the British people, their desire for action, and their ability to
work towards victory. The Luftwaffe had been defeated in the Battle of Britain,
and had resorted to terror tactics of doubtful military value, being again
defeated by the ‘serene heroism’ of the population. Every week that passed saw
Britain becoming stronger, courtesy of the Empire, and acquiring the elements
needed to wage offensive war, above all a capable and modern army. In this
economic and industrial phase of the war, with the two sides gearing up for the
next stage of the conflict, Britain held the trump cards:
While the English, with free access to the sea, can avail of all the resources of four
continents, the Germans, with their limited movements, can only exercise their
initiative on one continent—probably the poorest of all, the one most dependent
on others and most crowded.45
That Britain’s military might was growing was evidenced by the desert war, in
which the Italian enemy was being routed with near impunity. Monteiro wrote,
‘I was told by a general days ago that all of the casualties suffered by the British
were the result of heavy artillery. Only in Bengazi did the British suffer the first
casualties by bullets’. For Armindo Monteiro, who had dealt with the conse-
quences of Mussolini’s invasion of Abyssinia, the moment was clearly sweet:
‘The League of Nations’ revenge was more extensive and swift than it might
have dreamt of.’ This experienced army, forged in the desert, might then be
able to strike when and where it wished; Greek resistance to Italy, meanwhile,
had given Britain a foothold in the Eastern Mediterranean, basing itself in
Greek islands from which, Monteiro believed, its forces could not be driven
out. What is more, Britain might lose battles in these far-off places, but unless
defeated at home, it would continue to fight; German forces lured into the
Middle East, or even as far as India, would be seen as occupiers and tied down,
further dispersing Germany’s hard-pressed strength. As for Spain and Portugal,
44. Ibid., p. 154.

45. Ibid., doc. 35, letter, London, 17 February 1941, Armindo Monteiro to António de Oliveira Salazar, p.
161.
Monteiro was sure that Franco, in his recent meetings with Hitler and
Mussolini, had given nothing way, remaining as free to act as he had ever been.
But whatever had happened at those meetings, Monteiro continued, it was in
the British Isles that the war would be resolved.
We have already seen how Salazar, in October 1941, sent a report from
Calheiros e Meneses, which predicted a swift victory in the East for Germany,
to Monteiro. However, Salazar knew that not all the intelligence confirmed this
report. From Berlin the Portuguese minister, the Conde de Tovar, a career dip-
lomat, sent Salazar his early impressions as Barbarossa was launched. Tovar
was struck by the lack of enthusiasm for the war or for Hitler, despite the tech-
nical excellence of German propaganda. The prevailing apathy, or even dis-
couragement, was aggravated by the increasing importance of British air raids
against and around Berlin. As he put it, ‘being woken up in the middle of the
night by the air-raid sirens, having to spend hour upon hour in underground
shelters—five nights a week—has a depressing effect, and influences the state
of mind I have referred to.’46 Tellingly, this report from Tovar was not sent to
Monteiro. Some months later Salazar learned of an interview between a MNE
official and the Japanese minister, who had just returned from Madrid. There,
the Japanese diplomat had been told that Germany was being forced to send
additional troops to the Eastern Front, that taking Moscow was no longer
possible, and that Germany had so far suffered losses amounting to between
800,000 and one million men.47 By January 1942, Salazar was being informed
via Ankara of the extent of the German losses in the East, many of which were
caused by the lack of preparation for a winter campaign.48
On 6 March 1941 Monteiro conveyed a request for British teams—not in
uniform—to investigate the defense of the Azores and Madeira. A similar
request was presented to a Portuguese military mission in Britain at the time.
The British believed in the possibility of a German action to seize the islands,
and insisted on the Azores being able to hold out for sixty hours, and Madeira
for twenty-four, until British help arrived. Salazar replied on the 12 March:
such a presence was out of the question. Garrisons in the islands were being
reinforced, and would have been much stronger had Britain sold Portugal the
46. AOS CD 21, letter, Berlin, 18 August 1941, Conde de Tovar to António de Oliveira Salazar.
47. DAPE vol. 9, doc. 2258, notes on a conversation between the Director-General of Political Affairs (J.
Carneiro) and the Japanese minister, 3 September 1941. A week later, Salazar informed the Portuguese
minister in Berlin of a meeting between Ambassador Sampaio and minister Huene, ‘who seemed pained by
the sacrifices made in the Russian campaign which, we are told through other channels—Bucharest and
Budapest—are very great.’ DAPE vol. 9, doc. 2277, 10 September 1941, from the Minister of Foreign
Affairs to the Portuguese minister in Berlin.
48. DAPE vol. 10, docs 2967 (3 January 1942, from the Portuguese minister in Ankara to the Minister of
Foreign Affairs) and 2972 (5 January 1942, from the Portuguese minister in Ankara to the Minister of
Foreign Affairs).
weaponry it was looking for. In addition, Portugal was having to strengthen the
garrison in Cabo Verde ‘not so much because of Germany but due to some
unwise comment in the United States, which has started talking too much
about the value of the archipelago.’49 Salazar’s response was a setback for
Monteiro, who was eager to set the two countries’ relationship on a firmer
footing.
Tension between the two men increased over the Allied occupation of
Timor. On 19 December 1941 Monteiro, who the previous day had had a
bruising encounter with his interlocutors at the Foreign Office,50 wrote on the
subject of Timor, attempting to explain the British position, and calling the
whole affair a ‘sorry mess’. The Portuguese government was absolutely in the
right, and its action should be a source of pride for future generations. The
British had behaved badly, taking it for granted that Portugal would accept an
Allied occupation of Timor; when this was not granted they went ahead and
occupied it anyway. But, Monteiro pointed out, this was neither a case of bad
faith or malice, merely of poor preparation and planning, of the sort that has
plagued the British war effort since 1939:
Reverses followed reverses, as per good British tradition, without respite, until
they reached catastrophic levels. In the space of a week the Allies’ slight naval
superiority became a clear, if temporary, inferiority […] Australia entered the fray,
complaining about the conduct of the war and of the Empire in a frenzied
manner, driven by the fear of a yellow invasion.
The voice of that Dominion became the supreme consideration of English policy
[…]51
The Foreign Office had swung into action at the behest of the military
authorities, asking for permission for the Allied forces to occupy Portuguese
Timor. When this was not granted by Lisbon, the Foreign Office could no
longer halt the military machine. But for all the hurt that the Australian-Dutch
occupation had caused, it now fell to the government to respond in a way that
best suited Portuguese interests. For Monteiro, the possibility of an Allied
withdrawal was simply unrealistic: how, and from where, could sufficient
Portuguese troops be sent? How would they get there, given wartime condi-
tions? And how would Portugal react if the Japanese (as did, of course, occur)
occupied Timor under the pretext of the Allied presence there? Urging Salazar
49. Rosas et al. (eds), Armindo Monteiro, doc. 36a, letter, 12 March 1941, António de Oliveira Salazar to
Armindo Monteiro, p. 179.
50. DAPE vol. 10, doc. 2839, London, 18 December 1941, Armindo Monteiro to António de Oliveira
51. Rosas et al. (eds), Armindo Monteiro, doc. 44, letter, London 19 December 1941, Armindo Monteiro to
António de Oliveira Salazar, pp. 230–31.
to focus on the national interest, and the importance of the British alliance,
Monteiro suggested a solution to the problem:
a) England commits itself not to withdraw, but to dissolve the units that
occupied Timor without our authorization;
b) The Portuguese government orders the governor to recruit immediately a
corps of volunteers to ensure the defense of the colony;
c) All individuals on the island will be allowed into this corps, whose upkeep will
be paid by the Portuguese government (which does nor rule out that, through
other means, its members might earn their salary, in accordance with rank, as
well as munitions, supplies, etc.). The Allies sell or cede the necessary
weapons.
Monteiro then went further. Admitting that the solution he outlined brought
Portugal a step closer to the war, Monteiro suggested that this occurrence
should not be left to fate: that, in other words, the Portuguese government be
in control of the process that brought it into the war. ‘Our neutrality—like that
of all other peoples who have not yet been touched by the conflagration—is
expiring.’
In the time that it took for the letter to reach Salazar, the latter recalled
Monteiro from London. On 26 December, by telegram, Monteiro openly ques-
tioned the policy being followed by Salazar, including his recall.52 Such a recall
might lead to a similar British reaction. Might it not be announced that he had
been called to Lisbon for consultations? Portugal’s policy had to rest on reality;
and the reality was that the Allies would not soon remove their troops from
Timor, because
1) The Japanese need to attack Australia, and to do this they must occupy
Timor;
2) If the Japanese take the island, part of Australia will be in grave danger;
3) The Australian government and public opinion, irritated by the weakness of
the Portuguese garrison, which represents a serious danger, demand that the
occupation remain in place;
4) The allied High Command in the Far East will not run the risk of removing
the troops and the government will not go against their decision;
5) English public opinion unanimously approved the occupation and would
condemn the withdrawal.
52. DAPE vol. 10, doc. 2923, London, 26 December 1941, Portuguese ambassador in London to Minister of
Foreign Affairs, pp. 399–401.
Portugal had to resolve the matter as quickly as possible and mend its relations
with Britain, since the war’s pendulum, even with Japan’s triumphs, had swung
decisively in favor of the Allies: without British good-will, Portugal would be
left at their mercy, with no friends in the world:
We must seek out the things that bind us to England, and not those that separate
us, in order to resolve the Timor issue in reasonable and honorable terms. That is
why I appeal to you to resolve this incident quickly in a spirit of friendship with
the allies—because they will win, because only they can guarantee the indepen-
dence of our national life and, through this, the integrity of the Empire, because
our moral and legal obligations bind us to England, because a long tradition,
elaborated by men of great talent and love of fatherland, shows us this path.
By contrast, Germany’s friendship could be of little value only—and no-one

trusted Germany’s leaders any more. Salazar’s reply, while not brutal, was very
definitely forceful. Who was going to win the war, Salazar said, had had no
bearing on his decisions—and the suggestion that Germany’s friendship might
have had some bearing on his decision ‘must be eliminated because of both its
inconvenience and its most grave injustice.’53 After a brief reflection on his life,
which had taught him ‘to disbelieve the rich, the powerful, and the great’,
Salazar turned his attention to Portuguese national existence, and the basis of
the nationalism he had been trying to promote since coming to power,
suggesting, of course, that Armindo Monteiro no longer shared in its assump-
tions:
We were all educated in the thesis that Portugal’s independence and integrity are a
gift from England, since the country does not possess the conditions necessary for
a free life. Even if this doctrine was an undeniable historical proposition, we
should consider it politically wrong. Political truth should demand for the nation
the sufficient basis for effective independence. And this is not affirmed only by
words, but by actions and the correct opportunities.
I know that the doctrine that I defend has not yet conquered the whole mass of
Portugal. An important still confuses national consciousness and national interest
with pure pro-British servility, out of inertia, comfort, and cowardice.
Awareness of the importance of the British alliance had guided Portugal in its
response to the occupation of Timor: it had limited that response to the mini-
mum compatible with the preservation of Portugal’s honor.
53. DAPE vol. 10, doc. 2938, Lisbon, 28 December 1941, Minister of Foreign Affairs to Portuguese am-
bassador in London.
As for me, I believe it more useful for the country’s education that the conflict
[over Timor] should drag on without a solution than to find that solution in a dis-
honoring concession that will make us lose the exact notion of our rights and
duties.
This would not be the last time in Salazar’s career that similar sentiments
would be expressed. The ambassador’s recall to Lisbon, thus, must be the
result of a truly selfless decision: personal wishes and interests ‘must, once
more, be sacrificed to the country’s needs.’ Monteiro felt the blow, and
acknowledged Salazar’s right to define policy: not only as a result of his hier-
archical superiority, but also as a consequence of his political acumen.54 But in
the months that followed the ambassador to the Court of St James’s continued
to urge Salazar and Sampaio to change tack, basing himself on what he saw as
growing anti-Portuguese sentiment in London. The failure to agree a
commercial treaty, he believed, was a consequence of this sentiment. That
Salazar’s patience was fast running out is shown by an extraordinary letter to
his ambassador in Madrid, Teotónio Pereira.55 In this document Salazar urged
Teotónio Pereira to inform Sir Samuel Hoare of Salazar’s growing preoccupa-
tion about the worsening circumstances in Anglo-Portuguese relations. Salazar
essentially dictated every word that Teotónio Pereira should say. He then
explored, for Teotónio Pereira’s benefit, the nature of these difficult relations,
felt especially in all dealings with the Ministry of Economic Warfare (MEW).
Taking it for granted that there were a number of circumstances, dictated by
the war, which could not be altered, Salazar laid much of the blame at the door
of the two ambassadors in question: Sir Ronald Campbell, who ‘brought to
Portugal the terrible and false idea that he was coming to a British colony or
protectorate’, and, of course, Monteiro. Of the latter, Salazar wrote,
The Portuguese ambassador in London carries out the démarches that are asked of
him and in them uses correctly, or, better still, improves on, the reasons given by
his government. But he is so deeply immersed in the London atmosphere that,
while having great understanding for the English reactions, he has none for the
reactions of his own country. Deep down, the ambassador believes that the gov-
ernment is wrong; he often thinks that Portuguese policy is anti-British, or not
sufficiently pro-British, and is not the one that best suits a country that is risking,
in this war, if not its independence then at least its colonial integrity […] Who-
soever should, in some years’ time, read the reports sent to the ministry, knowing
neither the people involved nor the circumstances, will think that the ambassador
54. Rosas et al. (eds), Armindo Monteiro, doc. 45, letter, London, 29 December 1941, Armindo Monteiro to
55. Correspondência de Pedro Teotónio Pereira, vol. 3, doc. 29a, letter, Lisbon, 27 July 1942, António de Oliveira
Salazar to Pedro Teotónio Pereira, pp. 153–161.
in London had taken upon himself the difficult task or not allowing the govern-
ment to slide into the betrayal, ignoring, or denouncing of the English alliance.
And it is thus that History will present him.
This view that Monteiro believed him to be wrong, and was essentially writing
for posterity, would stay with Salazar for a long time to come, as we will see.
Monteiro did not help his own cause; he conveyed news of the poor im-
pression made in London by Salazar’s broadcast speech on 25 June 1942, with
its criticism of the MEW and of the Anglo-Soviet alliance.56 The speech itself,
Monteiro wrote, did not justify the reaction in London: but the problem was
that it seemed to cap a period of poor relations inaugurated by the Timor crisis.
‘The fact’, wrote Monteiro, ‘is that today, no-one here considers you a friend of
England. Even those who until recently spoke your name with hope have now
adopted an attitude of reservation, even of doubt.’57 From this point the letter,
written over a period of three months, moved into politically dangerous
territory, Monteiro suggesting that the policy of strict neutrality was politically
doubtful, since one side, the Axis, represented a clear threat to the survival of
Portugal, while the other did not. To pretend otherwise, and to criticize those
in Portugal who supported the Allies as harshly as those who supported the
Axis (a minority, argued Monteiro), was going to cause serious problems for
the country in the future:
It is true that many of the most strident supporters of the Allies are moved above
all by the passion derived from their hatred for the present political situation. But
in their defense of the alliance and of the obligations which it implies—in peace, in
neutrality, and in war—they are in line with the permanent interests of the nation.
Only these are of importance: if we defend them, we will deprive our internal
adversaries of all strength, since we will oblige them to applaud the government’s
policy.
This letter marked an important step in Monteiro’s move away from Salazar:
he was not only arguing that the true national interest lay in a clearly pro-Allied
position, but also that some in the opposition had understood this, thus
benefiting from the good wishes of the British authorities. His conclusion was
unavoidable: ‘With frankness I tell you that it seems to me a mistake to
preserve Portuguese foreign policy in its current course.’ On 26 October 1942,
Monteiro suggested, in another long letter, that the Western Allies were
56. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘Defesa económica—Defesa moral—Defesa política’ in Discursos, vol. 3, pp.
321–352.
57. Rosas et al. (eds), Armindo Monteiro, doc. 54, letter, London, 6 September 1942, Armindo Monteiro to
allowing the Soviet Union to bleed, if not quite to death, then at least to
impotence; for all the words of support and praise for Stalin and the Red
Army, Great Britain was not forcing the pace of its own preparations for the
sake of rescuing the USSR.58 A Soviet military presence on the Rhine was, of
course, one of Salazar’s worst fears.
Little seemed to change with the passing of time. The Allies’ position im-
proved, with victory in North Africa, but still Salazar held firm to his beliefs
and his policy; the tungsten question (see below) was reaching its climax. For
Monteiro, in London, with full access to the British leadership, it seemed that
Salazar was trying to dig himself out of a hole. In May 1943 Monteiro, who had
met the U.S. ambassador in London, John G. Winant, warned his superior that
the Allies no longer viewed fear of Germany as a sufficient excuse for non-
cooperation. Portugal was seen as a fascist state, or pro-German, by many, and
was also deemed to be increasingly hostile to British economic interests. In any
case, neutrality no longer counted for much:
Neutrality has long been considered, by generalized opinion, an institution of the

past, a relic no longer deserving of attention. Such a state of mind will accept and
deem justifiable any violence against the neutrals—which are universally
detested.59
The answer, for Monteiro, was to place Portugal’s neutrality unreservedly

at the disposal of the future winners of the conflict, the Allies. This would
allow Portugal to run the fewest risks in the future, and ‘spare our people the
greatest quantity of suffering.’ Time in which to carry out this change of tack
was fast running out. Some weeks later, the clash came to a head when the
British request for the use of the Azores was made. Monteiro, of course, was in
favor of agreeing to the request. He reminded Salazar that ‘we must suppose
that the Allied High Commands are working to plans with a fixed timetable.’60
To ignore this was to risk the occupation of the Azores by the Allies. Con-
sidering what had happened in Timor in December 1941, such a scenario was
by no means strictly hypothetical. The Azores request was, for Monteiro, a
godsend, a last opportunity to hitch the Portuguese wagon to the Allied train at
a time when Portugal could still contribute meaningfully to the Allied victory.
There was, in Monteiro’s opinion, a small window of opportunity at the dis-
posal of the Portuguese government. With every day that passed—with every
sign of Germany’s growing weakness—that window grew smaller still.
58. Ibid., doc. 60, letter, London, 26 October 1942, Armindo Monteiro to António de Oliveira Salazar, p.
352.
59. Ibid., doc. 67, letter London, 31 May 1943, Armindo Monteiro to António de Oliveira Salazar, p. 411.
60. DAPE vol. 12, doc. 88, London, 20 June 1943, ambassador in London to Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Salazar, as we have seen, informed the British that he would comply with
the request for the Azores, but only as part of a wider diplomatic bargain, and
then began to slow the process down. As far as he was concerned, a process of
negotiation was needed in order to close the deal, specifying what Portugal
would obtain as compensation and when. For Monteiro, this was the worst
possible approach.61 On 1 July 1943 he sealed his fate. After a long exposition
on the need for Salazar to act in order to preserve his good name and
reputation, still a source of political capital, and to protect the regime, Monteiro
suggested that certain number of changes to the New State were necessary.
These could be limited, he suggested, to some changes in personnel and
cosmetic changes to the regime which would not undermine its guiding prin-
ciples. Opposition to the Allies being futile, only two options remained: a
collaboration built on goodwill, or one built on begrudgery. The first would be
seen as a good deed, which might result in some gratitude; the second would
leave in the Allies no sense of a favor done, and would thus generate no corre-
sponding sense of obligation.
Monteiro then left a hostage to fortune, in the sake of a serious error of
fact. He wrote of a photograph he had recently seen of a Spanish airfield, close
to Gibraltar, wherein were based 400 British warplanes on their way to North
Africa. Monteiro wrote,
The Spanish government did not have, against this brief occupation of their terri-
tory, a single word of complaint or of protest. It pretended to see nothing.62
Monteiro’s reasoning was clear: if Spain, a neutral with no formal ties to

Britain, was now willing to help the Allies, even if covertly, then Portugal,
against whom, despite the alliance, more and more complaints were being
nursed, had to follow suit:
The British embassy in Lisbon lives in a state of war against us. You live in a state
of perpetual irritation against the English. I know that you think that they are to
blame—but they say the opposite. And what matters is the fact itself and the
urgent, vital, need to remove it—independently of who is to blame.63
61. António José Telo suggests that still unpublished British documents might reveal that Eden told
Monteiro that should Salazar refuse to allow the British to establish a base in the Azores, then an invasion of
the islands would be launched. He goes further: such an operation might be carried out alongside an anti-
Salazar coup that might result in Monteiro being installed as Prime Minister. Telo, Portugal na Segunda Guerra,
p. 153.
62. Rosas et al. (eds), Armindo Monteiro, doc. 68, letter, London, 1 July 1943, Armindo Monteiro to António
de Oliveira Salazar, pp. 422–23.
63. Ibid., p. 423.
Monteiro questioned Salazar’s negotiating tactics, which he described as always
giving in at the last minute, after so much frustration had been accumulated on
the British side that no gratitude was forthcoming. The British always got their
way, Monteiro wrote, but were always left upset by the process. And since
Salazar involved himself directly in the negotiations, his name and reputation
were now indelibly attached to this way of working, so distasteful to the
British. A change of attitude might lead to many of the problems facing Portu-
gal being resolved quickly, given the amazing economic and technological
resources of the Allies; here, too, the Azores request was a godsend. As the
letter neared its end, Monteiro went further and further into politically un-
charted territory, actually telling Salazar what he had to do in the national
interest:
The government’s duty is to avoid an incident with the Allies over the Azores.
You must understand that this is the situation. Against it, our irritation and our
despair are of no consequence. Is it not better to accept the circumstances man-
fully and take from them, as is our duty, what is best for the national interest? Do
you not think that curses and criticisms, instead of bringing us closer to solutions,
only serve to obfuscate our vision of events, probabilities, and possibilities?64
What Salazar did next is probably unique in the history of twentieth-century

dictatorships, and is certainly revealing about his understanding of Portugal’s
diplomatic circumstances, his historical legacy, and his bureaucratic mindset.
His bitter and wounding reply to Monteiro’s letter was written on the letter
itself, using the margins and the reverse of the first page. If Monteiro’s letter
was to survive, and be used by historians (whom, as we have seen, Salazar
believed would generally side with Monteiro), then so too would his words. In
other words, for all his personal power, Salazar could not bring himself to
destroy a document which he believed had been written to destroy his his-
torical legacy. It was history that was on Salazar’s mind as he replied to
Monteiro, taking up the theme that had already been outlined in the earlier
letter to Teotónio Pereira:
Our ambassador in London continues to write for History. His intent is to docu-
ment and leave a register of the intense efforts he made to bring to the correct
path a President of the Council who, in the years 1940–1943, governed Portugal
and whose policy, conscious or unconscious, was to break the English alliance,
throw himself into the arms of Germany, and compromise the territorial integrity
64. Rosas et al. (eds), Armindo Monteiro, doc. 68, letter, London, 1 July 1943, Armindo Monteiro to António
de Oliveira Salazar, p. 432.
of his country, notably in the colonies, sacrificing everything to his bad humor and
his personal whims.
The attack was relentless. In a more distant future historians in the full
possession of the facts would understand what Salazar had done, to Monteiro’s
disappointment. Within a few years, though,
the ambassador will reread this and other letters of which he has undoubtedly kept
a copy, and then he will find them unfair, pretentious, and even somewhat ridicu-
lous. He will blush before passages which flirt with impertinence; he will be
amazed by how he ignored facts, or how he confused them with their interpreta-
tion by the English Left; he will be ashamed of his bizarre displays of snobbery.
A lifetime of frustration was now discharged in a single passage, more powerful

for its uniqueness:
This letter betrays the airs of a gentleman who lives in London, is connected with
the world’s leaders, and speaks of it all with an air of superiority to a poor man
from Santa Comba […]
After ridiculing Monteiro for mistaking the British aerodrome in Gibraltar for a
Spanish airfield and informing him of Sir Samuel Hoare’s recently established
contrast between Portuguese support and Spanish obstructionism, Salazar con-
cluded,
Many other things might have, and perhaps should have, been said, but I will note
only the following. I have not allowed, through all these manifestations, any idea
that questions the absolute sincerity of our ambassador in London to take root,
and I have convinced myself that it is a malign spirit that prevents him, at this
moment, from serving his country well at his post.
Franco Nogueira quotes from a more formal letter of exoneration that

Salazar sent to Monteiro, probably in August, although this document has dis-
appeared. Monteiro’s fate was sealed. Despite the excellent reputation he
enjoyed in London (which many have seen as the real reason for Salazar’s
actions against him),65 Monteiro was brought home in semi-disgrace. He was
65. The ongoing political crisis in Italy did not help Monteiro’s cause. On 19 July 1943, less than a week
before Mussolini was deposed and arrested, Salazar met Sir Ronald Campbell and Roberts. He complained
about the bombing of Rome, not being the sole neutral leader to do so, and argued that Rome, like Athens
or Cairo, was intrinsically different to London: a hostile reaction from the ‘civilized world, especially among
the Catholic population’, could be expected. Salazar went on, adding that by their intransigent attitude
towards the imperiled Fascist leader the Allies were bound to create confusion in Italy, where there was no
political alternative to Fascism: in Italy, the Fascist party and the nation were almost the same thing, and by
still a member of the Council of State, and would eventually be invited to
become a procurador in the Corporative Chamber. However, despite the con-
stant suggestions from some quarters that Monteiro was still willing and able to
serve the New State, he would never again hold a prominent public position.
He was replaced as ambassador by the aristocratic Duke of Palmela, who was
well received, thanks to both his anglophilia and the good feeling generated by
the Azores deal. Churchill devoted thirty-five minutes to Palmela on the latter’s
arrival in London, explaining that his father’s best friend had been the Marquis
of Soveral, a former Portuguese minister in London, and stating how useful
Portugal’s neutrality, to which he was committed, had been to the Allies.
Churchill explained as well that he had always refused to ask for Portugal’s help
before Britain had been in a position to protect Portugal from any retaliation,
which was now the case. Palmela, quoting Churchill, wrote, ‘if Spain reacts,
England will declare war against Spain that very instant and her air force will
attack immediately, everything humanly possible being then sent to Portugal.’66
An equally friendly welcome was given by Lord Selbourne, the Minister of
Economic Warfare, who offered to purchase Portugal’s tungsten output.
Should Portugal agree, Britain would switch its purchases of wine, cork, pre-
serves, and olive oil from Algeria to Portugal.67
American Involvement in the Azores
As we have already seen, British and Americans had, to a certain extent,

competed for the right to establish bases in the Azores. Once the idea of a
negotiated solution to the issue emerged triumphant in Britain, however, the
Americans agreed to step back, although they continued to exert pressure on
London to ensure that whatever deal was hammered out in relation to the
Azores might apply to their forces as well. This the British resisted, fearing that
a request along those lines would sink the deal. It was better, the British said, to
wait until the base was up and running before making a request in relation to
insisting on Mussolini’s removal, the Allies were possibly prolonging the war. Salazar said, laughing, that his
interlocutors seemed reluctant to discuss the future of Europe, and that he himself could not speak openly
about it, ‘because I too am considered a fascist.’ Campbell and Roberts denied this assertion: the warm way
in which the Portuguese ambassador had been received by industrial workers in Birmingham, on a recent
visit, showed that it was not the case. Mussolini did fall, of course, and this was to prove a blow to the
regime. There was an immediate upsurge in opposition activity and, according to the PVDE, ‘an expansion
in communist-democratic celebrations’. The BBC’s Portuguese language broadcasts did not help matters, the
PVDE added, since they spoke of the first fascist dictator to fall, a man who had ‘collaborated in the ruin of
Spain’. This was too close to the bone, as was the large picture of Mussolini on the shop-front of the British
Airways offices, to which had been affixed messages like ‘He had his political enemies killed’, or ‘He used
poison gas’.
66. AOS CD 11, ‘Secret’ letter, 13 October 1943, Duke of Palmela to António de Oliveira Salazar.
67. AOS CD 11, letter, 16 November 1943, Duke of Palmela to António de Oliveira Salazar.
its use by American forces—and in the meantime, the British would try to
include, in the final draft, a reference to ‘transit facilities for all aircraft of the
United Nations.’68 This waiting game did not suit American military needs,
however, and in the beginning of September 1943 the American Chiefs of Staff
submitted a proposal for their involvement in the Azores; according to one his-
torian, these ‘amounted to an American occupation of two islands with a force
of about 10,000 men […] They were thus asking for much more than we had
been able to obtain with considerable difficulty and after invoking our special
alliance with the Portuguese.’69 Churchill backed the American proposal, Eden
opposed it: Air Vice-Marshal Medhurst was dispatched to Washington to brief
the Americans on what had been achieved in Lisbon, while Eden explained to
Churchill that
It is important that the Americans should realize that modern Portugal, which for
all practical purposes means Dr Salazar, is not a second Guatemala, from whom
anything the Americans desire can be obtained simply by threats or bribes.70
On 6 October, President Roosevelt intervened again, passing on to

Churchill a recommendation received from the Joint Chiefs of Staff regarding
the urgent need for American access to the Azores;71 Churchill asked him to
wait for a few days, until the German reaction to the Azores settlement had
become known. On 14 October Roosevelt informed Churchill that he had
obtained information that Salazar would probably accede to the American
request for facilities on the islands, and proposed to approach the Portuguese
68. Woodward, British Foreign Policy, p. 56. See also FRUS 1943 vol. 2, Washington, 12 August 1943, the
Secretary of State to the ambassador in the United Kingdom (Winant), pp. 541–42, according to which
American chiefs of staff had told their British counterparts that ‘any agreement restricting facilities in
Bracken [the Azores] to British aircraft is unacceptable to this country and would not be in harmony with the
Trident Agreement. They have further indicated the vital importance that Bracken facilities be accorded air
ferry, transport and military operations for this country. Obviously this would necessitate adequate protective
and ground maintenance personnel.’ On 18 August the British embassy in Washington sent an aide-mémoire
to the State Department pointing out that ‘HM’s Ambassador at Lisbon has now reported that to raise the
request of the American Chiefs of Staff with Dr Salazar at the present crucial stage in the negotiations would
risk undoing all the progress made, and the complete failure of the negotiations, at a moment when it is
hoped that the agreement is on the point of signature.’ According to this document, the best course was to
wait until the operation was up and running, when the British would ‘make every endeavour to extend the
benefit of them to the United States’.
70. Quoted in Woodward, British Foreign Policy, p. 59. Eden further pointed out that Salazar did not wish to
hop on the Allied bandwagon, which made dealing with him all the more difficult.
71. FRUS 1943 vol. 2, Washington, 6 October 1943, President Roosevelt to the British Prime Minister, 547–
48. This document is valuable in that it spells out the overall importance of the Azores to the American war
effort: a potential saving, over six months, of 51½ million gallons of high octane fuel (‘sufficient to support
5,400 heavy bomber sorties per month for the same period’); savings to engine use sufficient to allow an
extra six or more sorties before engine overhaul; and the release of 100 transport aircraft, and 15,000 ground
personnel, for other theatres of operation.
government personally:72 the British, by then, were only too happy to allow the
Americans to follow this path, ‘since it relieved them of the difficulty of going
to the Portuguese government and “asking for more”’, and from any respon-
sibility for the American request being refused.73 Instructions were sent out to
the American chargé d’affaires in Lisbon, Kennan, on 16 October, and a mere
two days later he replied,
I am reluctant to enter into a discussion with the Department or to ask the

Department to do so with the President, over an instruction given me by the
President. For this reason, I shall not cite here the various reasons for these
opinions […] I should welcome it if the Department instead of requiring me to
proceed at once with the execution of the instruction would permit me to return
immediately to Washington and to explain, if necessary, personally to the
President, the reasons for my views.74
After some more transatlantic wrangling, an American promise to ‘respect

Portuguese sovereignty in all Portuguese colonies’,75 and a new letter by
Roosevelt to Salazar,76 Kennan met Salazar on 23 November. What emerged
was a compromise deal—the port facilities at Horta could be used by American
ships—something already covered by the agreement with Britain—while
American airplanes could use the bases on Terceira island provided that they
might be described as part of the Commonwealth forces: Americans would be
riding on the shoulders of the British agreement, not concluding their own.
This was not the end of the matter. There was, somewhere, a problem in
communications, since Salazar did not realize that the United States was
intending to run a squadron out of the Azores on a full-time basis and that, in
order to prepare the existing base for this additional demand on infrastructure,
72. FRUS 1943 vol. 2, Washington, 14 October 1943, President Roosevelt to the British Prime Minister, p.
553.
73. Woodward, British Foreign Policy, p. 60. Churchill informed Roosevelt that the text of the Alliance treaty,
signed in 1373, included the phrase ‘friends to friends’.
74. FRUS 1943, vol. 2, Lisbon, 18 October 1943, the Chargé in Portugal (Kennan) to the Secretary of State,
556–57. If nothing else, it was still too soon to make requests of the Portuguese: it was not yet clear what the
German reply to British use of the Azores would be. However, the central problem was the scale of the
American demands: two naval bases, a seaplane base, and an aeroplane base for the navy, as well as two
additional air bases for the Army Air Force; and, alongside this, a revamp of the islands’ communications.
The United States had nothing to offer Portugal in return, and, by its actions, would be confirming the scare-
mongering German propaganda, which warned the Portuguese that having let the British in, they would now
be swamped by requests from the other Allies, their sovereignty being undermined piecemeal. See FRUS
1943, vol. 2, Lisbon, 20 October 1943, Kennan to the Secretary of State, pp. 558–61. Kennan’s advice was
given the added weight of Winston Churchill, who, in a letter to Roosevelt dated 19 October 1943 warned
that the American Joint Chiefs of Staff were simply asking for too much. FRUS 1943, vol. 2, p. 558.
75. FRUS 1943, vol. 2, Washington, 30 October 1943, the Portuguese Minister (Bianchi) to the Secretary of
State, p. 562.
76. FRUS 1943, vol. 2, Washington, 4 November 1943, President Roosevelt to the President of the
Portuguese Council of Ministers, pp. 564–65.
construction personnel would be dispatched—indeed, they were under way by
the time Salazar was informed of the matter. Thanks to British intervention, he
allowed the construction workers to disembark, but refused to allow the
squadron to operate from the Azores. As ever on this issue, Churchill sided
with the Americans, while Eden did not.77 Why did the Americans need to base
a squadron in the Azores, duplicating the anti-submarine tasks already being
performed by the RAF? Why could they not re-badge their aircraft and uni-
forms, in order to display, superficially, some form of incorporation into the
British forces? The issue rumbled needlessly for months, until, at last, a deal
was produced in mid-July 1944: American personnel would wear joint British
and American insignia. Salazar had got his way.
There was a political price to be paid for the use of the Azores by the
Allies, especially the Americans: the local population, whose links with the
United States were real and a motive of suspicion by Lisbon, would be amazed
by the power and wealth available to the American forces. As Marcelo
Caetano, writing in November 1944, put it,
After the rather poor experience of the relationship between our expeditionary
troops and the population (including requisitions made two years ago or more
which have yet to be paid for) along came the English and then the Americans.
And the Americans pay for everything, give with generosity, decide, repair, build,
reform with incredible ease. The inhabitants of Terceira, according to my in-
formers, are completely in awe of the Americans! Hence the alarm raised by our
more loyal friends, who remind us of the urgent necessity of providing moral and
material aid.78
The Economic War: Tungsten
As has already been mentioned, Salazar’s wartime diplomatic action en-

compassed the economic sphere as well. The decision to exercise his usual level
of control in this area meant that his already full working days were now greatly
extended. The resulting paper trail is enormous, and pursuing it falls somewhat
outside the scope of a work such as this. There is nevertheless one aspect of
Portugal’s wartime economic diplomacy that should be noted—the struggle to
remain in control of the production and export of tungsten (often referred to
as wolfram). The value of this mineral soared as a result of its importance in
the production of armor-piercing ammunition. Portugal was Europe’s leading
producer, its pre-war output averaging 3,000 tons/year out of a total worldwide

78. Freire Antunes (ed.), Salazar e Caetano, doc. C 37, letter, 28 November 1944, Marcelo Caetano to António
output of 37,000 tons. While the sudden interest in an ore abundantly found in
central and northern Portugal represented an enormous financial opportunity
for Portugal, it was also an enormous headache for Salazar, since it intensified
his dealings with Germany, to the annoyance of the Allies. Appeasing both
sides while preserving Portugal’s right to profit from the situation would prove
an almost impossible task. Once Operation Barbarossa was launched, Chinese
tungsten was denied to Germany, which had to turn westwards for this
mineral, to Spain and Portugal. Germany was forced sell industrial goods—
arms, steel, iron, medicine, and machinery79—to Portugal in order to obtain
escudos with which to buy tungsten. Great Britain responded with ‘preventive’
purchases in order to deny Germany what it needed (tungsten, as well as hides
and wool), even though it had its own supplies. At the same time, the MEW
tightened the screws on Portugal through the navicert system and a ‘black list’
of firms which had business dealings with Germany.80 Through these
mechanisms, Portugal became part of Britain’s blockade of Germany, to the
extent that even colonial goods from Portuguese Africa making their way to
the metropolis required a navicert. The MEW in London determined Portu-
gal’s regular consumption of various imported goods that might interest Ger-
many and her allies, and would only provide navicerts for prewar levels.81 The
German need for tungsten thus created two new problems for Salazar. Firstly,
he had to preserve, as far as possible, Portugal’s economic freedom, in the face
of the two contending war machines and despite Portugal’s continued reliance
on the outside world for food and energy.82 Secondly, he was forced to mini-
79. Telo, Portugal na Segunda Guerra, p. 187.

80. The War Cabinet decided to ration strategic goods to the two countries on 13 July 1940. Mendlicott, The
Economic Blockade, vol. 1, p. 509.
81. An attempt was also made by the British to purchase existing stocks of such goods in Portugal in order to
deny them to the Axis powers. See Louçã (ed.), Portugal visto pelos Nazis, doc. 19, Lisbon, 23 November 1940,
from the German legation to the Auswärtiges Amt, pp. 69-76. British attempts to control Portuguese trade
were as old as the war, but were successfully resisted by Salazar, with the excuse that since Britain had not
supplied weapons to Portugal, the latter country was in no position to defend itself, and could not antagonize
Britain’s enemies. In January 1940 Portugal signed a commercial agreement with still-neutral Italy which
raised eyebrows in London, since it provided for a very large volume of trade: much if it, no doubt, was sold
on to Germany. Mendlicott, The Economic Blockade, p. 513. Since agreement on Portuguese quotas proved
impossible to obtain, the British simply imposed their own estimates; in September, to force agreement,
further oil imports were prohibited. Mendlicott, The Economic Blockade, p. 515. Negotiations on this topic
would continue until February of 1941, with oil as a major problem. Agreement was expressed by an
exchange of notes between governments, rather than a more formal document signed by both parties.
82. The official history of the Foreign Office in wartime states that there ‘was a certain paradox in the fact
that economic negotiations generally were more difficult with Portugal than with Spain. One reason was that
in Spain General Franco himself took little direct part in these negotiations’, which ‘were settled (in spite of
the trouble deliberately caused by Señor Suñer during his tenure of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) in
accordance with Spanish material interests’. In Portugal, however, ‘Dr Salazar himself undertook the
negotiations and brought into them his own sensitiveness about Portuguese sovereignty’. Woodward, British
Foreign Policy, p. 65.
mize the disruptive effects which the sudden interest in tungsten had on the
traditionally staid Portuguese economy.
Britain had accepted at the start of the war that continued Portuguese trade
with Germany would be inevitable: Britain was in no position to supply some
of Portugal’s needs—iron and steel—and ‘the Germans were likely to respect
Portuguese neutrality only as long as they gained advantages from it.’83 The
sudden German need for tungsten, and the corresponding British need to frus-
trate Germany, upset this balance. The results were immediate: in the summer
of 1941, a scramble for tungsten broke out in Portugal, which Salazar moved
to contain. Huene, wrote, on 21 August 1941,
According to confidential information from the local German firms entrusted with
the export of tungsten to Germany, one will have to count on intervention by the
Portuguese government in the near future. Because of the increase in the price of
tungsten, a real “gold rush” has set in, particularly in the northern part of the
country, as a result of which the necessary workers are being withdrawn both from
agriculture and the big mining companies. This development has already led to a
doubling of wages of farm workers and has drawn the attention of the tax
authorities, because the profits made from the “wild” tungsten companies cannot
be reached by taxes […] one can count on governmental measures, possibly even a
governmental supervision of the ore production.
The legation will continue to watch this development and if necessary make the
necessary representations against such measures, which could restrict the export of
tungsten to Germany in some form or other.84
Such legislation did, eventually, emerge, and the Germans, who had
provoked this gold-rush by their willingness to pay any price for tungsten,
proved powerless to halt it.85 A Comissão Reguladora do Comércio de Metais
(CRCM—Regulatory Commission for the Commercialization of Metals), repre-
senting both producers and the State, was created and entrusted with the pur-
chase and distribution of all tungsten produced in Portugal, be it from British-
owned, German-owned, or Portuguese-owned mines. This was potentially
disastrous for Germany, since German-owned mines produced only a small
proportion (8½%, as opposed to over 50% by British-owned mines) of
Portugal’s tungsten, and Germany relied extensively on the Portuguese-owned
83. Ibid.
84. DGFP Series D volume 13, doc. 224, Lisbon, 21 August 1941, the minister in Portugal to the Foreign
Ministry.
85. Interestingly, Huene explained that the decree had not been the result of British pressure on Portugal, but
rather of Portuguese needs, social, economic, and financial. Louçã (ed.), Portugal visto pelos Nazis, doc. 28,
Lisbon, 10 November 1941, from the German legation to the Auswärtiges Amt, 99-100. Interestingly as well,
such ‘legislation would not have suited the British at all, for they controlled the greater part of the output’.
Mendlicott, The Economic Blockade, p. 529.
mines, and the new breed of privateers, to meet its needs.86 Discussions took
place in Berlin on 18 November 1941 over what to do next. Present were
Huene, Hans Eltze (chairman of RheinmetallWerke, head of a war-equipment
exports working group, and said to have ‘the special confidence of the Portu-
guese Minister President’), and representatives of the Ministry of Economics
and the Wehrmacht’s High Command. Eltze claimed that Salazar had assured
him of a constant supply of tungsten in return for certain articles urgently
needed in Portugal:
The internal political reason for the establishment of the control organ for
tungsten production and trade in Portugal lay in the realization that the enormous
increase in the price of tungsten might lead to heavy damage to Portugal’s
economic structure and to the derangement of the heretofore stable wages and
price level of the population.
For that reason Salazar was intent on bringing its price down—but in
order to sell this reduction politically, Salazar needed something to show for it,
such as the availability of essential goods at ‘special prices’ for all.87 At the
meeting a German proposal was drawn up. In return for regular deliveries of
tungsten, Germany would deliver 60,000 tons of iron material (for railways,
shipbuilding, etc.) at monthly rates of at least 5,000 tons; up to 15,000 tons of
ammonium sulfate; 300 railway cars; and, among other articles, mining
machinery. An offer along these lines was made by Eltze to Salazar in the wake
of the sinking of the Portuguese steamer Corte Real, an undisguised act of
German intimidation. A deal was concluded in January 1942, at the height of
indignation in Lisbon over the Timor occupation. Facing, as we have seen, the
prospect of a new, German-dominated economic Europe, and eager to score a
point against the British, Salazar was happy to sign up to Eltze’s proposed deal.
Guarantees were given by Germany on the safety of Portuguese merchant
vessels traveling to the United States, provided information was forthcoming
on their cargo. Portugal would, in return for German goods, supply 2,800 tons
of tungsten (nearly half of its current output) over twelve months, starting on 1
March. By then, the price of tungsten was at an all-time high (£6,000/ton);
86. Louçã (ed.), Portugal visto pelos Nazis, doc. 46, Lisbon, 16 January 1942, from the Commission for the
Purchase of Sardines to the German legation, pp. 135–36. Unlike Huene, this Commission attributed the
legislation to the influence of ‘pro-English’ Portuguese, who had convinced the Minister of the Economy
that the prospectors now looking for tungsten had been lost to agriculture.
87. DGFP Series D vol. 13, doc. 489, Berlin, 22 November 1941, the Head of Division W II in the
Economic Policy Department to the legation in Portugal, Enclosure, 20 November 1941, pp. 809–10
Germany was buying as much as it could, and attempting to purchase actual
mines.88 All mines, whoever their owners were, were experiencing a boom:
The wolfram battle during the second half of 1941 had made three points clear.
One was the upsetting of Portuguese economy; another was the Portuguese fear
of German intervention if adequate supplies were not forthcoming; the third was
the dependence of the British on Portuguese goodwill in financing their own
operation.89
Salazar now introduced legislation to fix the price of tungsten at the

relatively low price of 150 escudos/kg.90 All tungsten ore, wherever it had been
mined, had to be sold to the CRCM; only existing mine-owners were permitted
to sell to the Commission.91 Ore would then be released to foreign buyers in
accordance with the trade deals established individually by foreign powers with
the Portuguese government. This was the high point of wartime economic
collaboration with Germany, but it could not last long since, when all was said
and done, Germany could not provide what Portugal most needed: food and
fuel. The 1942 deal with Germany, announced in March, shocked and sur-
prised the Allies, since Britain was itself in the process of negotiating an agree-
ment on tungsten with Portugal. There was immediate retaliation,92 but the
search for an Allied tungsten deal was not abandoned, lasting until August,
with Britain taking the lead and the United States, now a belligerent, playing
‘bad cop’, but one which rarely coordinated his actions with the ‘good cop’.
Salazar centralized, in his person, strategic and military considerations, foreign
affairs, and economic warfare. Allied views were split between politicians,
officers, diplomats, and civil servants enforcing two different blockades of
Germany. They were, naturally, uncoordinated in their dealings with Portugal,
which meant that negotiations took an eternity. Salazar hoped that such a deal
88. German economic interests employed a Portuguese firm, Companhia Minero-Silvícola, as cover.
According to Stanley G. Payne, the price for Portuguese tungsten had increased from $1,000 per ton in 1941
to $6,000 by the end of 1942. Payne, Franco and Hitler, p. 239.
89. Mendicott, The Economic Blockade vol. 2 (London: HMSO, 1959), p. 323. Britain’s preventive purchases
were being carried out on credit.
90. The Portuguese government found it impossible to prevent the smuggling of tungsten, be it by the Allies
into their mines, which could then be passed off as their own production and neutralized, or into Spain, and
from there on to Germany. There was also a network for smuggling tungsten by ship to Gibraltar. British
intelligence believed the German haul, in 1942, to be somewhere between 1/2 and 1/3 of the quantity
secured by legal means. Badly paid customs officials profited greatly on this occasion. Telo, pp. 214–16.
91. The Commission took some time to get going, since it found it hard to recruit technicians. There was
more money to be made in mining than in supervision.
92. According to Huene, once the deal with Germany was announced the British refused all navicerts for
some weeks, which meant that even gasoline, coal, and products from the Portuguese colonies were refused
access to the high seas. The Portuguese retaliated by refusing to accept Sterling and to grant licenses for the
departure of tungsten for Britain. Louçã (ed.), doc. 71, Lisbon, 27 March 1942, From the German legation to
might be negotiated alongside a general commercial agreement with the Allies.
Britain was exerting strong economic pressure on Portugal through the
navicert system, and releasing essential goods in small quantities. Both sides
made endless denunciations of each other’s actions (one problem was
smuggling through the post, with packages of colonial goods being sent to
Germany in huge quantities;93 another was smuggling over the badly guarded
border with Spain, with or without the connivance of border guards on both
sides; a third was the issue of ‘similar products’, which was applicable to vegetal
oils, which Germany badly needed: a good year in the production of olive oil in
Portugal should result, the British argued, in a cutback in the importation of
ground-nut oil from Africa). Salazar threatened to blame Britain publicly for
the shortages, and retaliated any way he could.94 A deal was finally reached, late
in the summer, notes being exchanged on 24 August, when Allied military
leaders, who wanted a positive situation in the Iberian Peninsula in order to
allow the Torch landings in North Africa to go ahead with little disruption,
forced the hand of their countries’ negotiators.95
This prolonged row may have been poisoning relations between the Allies
and Portugal, but it should be remembered that the situation for Germany was
not much better, since there was, despite the agreement, little tungsten (and tin,
which the Germans were also purchasing) coming out of Portugal. Transport
difficulties were one reason; British interference was another. Both the Allies
and Germany tried to evade their responsibilities as set out in the tungsten
accords negotiated with Portugal. They purchased tungsten produced in
Portuguese mines but never declared to the authorities, and ore mined by
privateers, and transferred it illegally back to their mines, so as to make it
appear as theirs. They also shipped tungsten out of the country labeled as
something else, or simply smuggled it out of Portugal, overland in the case of
Germany, by sea in the case of Britain. The importance of tungsten to the
German war effort created set in motion a campaign of dirty tricks by foreign
agencies which the hard-pressed Portuguese could not contain. Another British
tactic was to ‘immobilize’ ore: British agents paid Portuguese producers to hold
on to their output, rather than surrendering it to the Metals Commission,
which might pass it on to German purchasers.
93. Mendlicott, The Economic Blockade vol. 2.

94. In one instance, Salazar introduced a measure by which tungsten from foreign-owned mines would be
purchased by the CRCM at a lower price—80 escudos—than that purchased from Portuguese-owned
mines—120 escudos. Mendlicott, The Economic Blockade, vol. 2, p. 331.
95. The main terms of the deal were the following: Britain and the United States to be granted export
licenses for up to 4,000 tons of tungsten; there were seven British concessions, five German, and one
American; 75% of ‘free’ wolfram to be sent to Germany, 25% to the Allies. The mines of the three countries
sold ore to the CRCM at £800/ton, and importers paid £1,200/ton: there was an additional export tax of
£300/ton. Mendlicott, The Economic Blockade, vol. 2, p. 334.
The policy of preventive purchases, at a time of increased prices, was
costing the British exchequer money it could ill afford. The British debt to
Portugal was growing at £2 million/month by mid 1942. Purchases covered
tungsten, tin, sardines, animal hides and skins, and wool products; even
blankets, badly needed by the German army in the USSR, were being snapped
up. A decision was made to increase the price of strategic goods being sold to
Portugal in order to recover lost money. This was only too easy for the Allies,
since they effectively held a monopoly on certain goods (foodstuffs, oil, and
copper sulfate for vines), and Portuguese exports were not vital. Salazar, who
had seen a commercial treaty signed in November 1942, after long negotia-
tions, as a personal success, felt betrayed. Striking a new deal with Germany
over tungsten was one way to retaliate.
German authorities had also begun to think, by then, of a new agreement
to regulate the purchase of tungsten in Portugal. The first deal, negotiated in
the expectation of victory over the USSR, would expire early in 1943. Hans
Eltze was once again sent to Lisbon to present Germany’s latest proposal.
Germany offered weapons and hard currency in return for tungsten: ‘Berlin
could see that generous gestures were needed to boost Salazar: so in early
December 1942 Hitler gave his unconditional approval to the Portuguese wish-
list for weapons supplies in exchange for German imports of tungsten and
sardines in oil.’96 Even so, deliveries were limited to 2,100 tons, rather than the
hoped for 2,500. Germany could purchase up to fifty percent of the ore pro-
duced by the Portuguese-owned mines, at unchanged prices, in order to reach
the 2,100 tons. More tungsten was now going to the Allies, but, given the
moral effect of the Torch landings, even the Germans were surprised by the
generosity of the deal. The Allies learned its details in April, and once again
were extremely upset. Not only had they not been consulted, but, because their
own deal came up for renewal later in the year, they could not really improve
their own terms. Americans and British now took a different approach. On 12
May the State Department informed the British that Salazar should be ‘taken to
the cleaners’. As usual, however, the British were more conciliatory. Since a
request for the use of the Azores seemed to be on the cards, Campbell urged
caution. Salazar, after his display of independence, was being cautious too.
According to Telo, this caution was one of the reasons for his request, in June
1943, for a revision of defense arrangements. A temporary arrangement was
96. Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt (ed.), Germany and the Second World War, vol. V: Organization and
Mobilization of the German Sphere of Power, part 2, Wartime Administration, Economy, and Manpower Resources 1942–
1944/5, by Bernhard R. Kroener, Rolf-Dieter Müller & Hans Umbreit (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003), p.
556.
entered into by which the British received the ore they wanted, while the
Portuguese received American-supplied strategic goods. Telo writes,
For Portugal, the Azores negotiations are manna from heaven, at a time when
economic relations with the allies are reaching crisis point. Everything suggests
that the precipitous decision to negotiate first with Germany would have produced
a new trial of strength with the Allies, had it not been for the Azores. The promise
of cession of the bases not only resolves the crisis, but it also leads the Ministry of
Economic Warfare to accept right away an increase in the export quotas and the
USA to cede another 60,000 tons of oil.97
American entry into the war had originally made it easier for Britain to put
Portugal under pressure on the tungsten issue. Washington, the British warned,
was hard to control, Americans seeing everything in their usual ‘simplistic and
radical’ fashion.98 Washington was not, however, content with playing a
supporting role to London indefinitely. Having begun to negotiate directly with
Lisbon over the use of the Azores, the State Department believed that the time
had come to have an independent voice on economic matters as well. Ameri-
cans wanted to curtail economic dealings between neutral states and Germany
in an immediate and definitive fashion. In the Portuguese and Spanish cases,
this was a pointless exercise, since the Allied landing in France would by defini-
tion put an immediate end to trade with Germany; there was no need to sour
relations in the meantime. In addition, in relation to Portugal, Americans
wanted their own Azores deal to go ahead. Should these twin objectives not be
met, then, after February 1944, when the current commercial deal expired, the
United States would severely curtail its strategic supplies to Portugal. However,
when Palmela met Churchill in October 1943, the latter told him that he
approved of Portuguese shipments of tungsten to Germany, a price worth
paying to keep Germany out of the Peninsula; many other signals were
received that the British did not mind the continuation of the trade.99 As a
97. Telo, Portugal na Segunda Guerra, p. 213.

98. AOS CO NE 7A, notes on a conversation between Ambassador Teixeira de Sampaio and the repre-
sentative of the Ministry of Economic Warfare in Lisbon (David Eccles), 17 March 1942.
99. Salazar, however, was in no hurry to strike a deal with the ever weaker Germans. Thus, having been
called upon by Huene, on 23 December 1943, to contribute to the anti-Bolshevik struggle through a better
economic climate with Germany, in the wake of the ‘violation of neutrality’ in the Azores, Salazar replied that
while Portugal deeply appreciated Germany’s anti-Bolshevik stance, it could not impress its importance in
Britain; every argument for continuing trade with Germany had been tried by Portugal, and rejected by
Britain. He would not, however, give up his defense of the principle of neutrality: ‘On this point, he said,
with great emphasis, “I will fight, fight, fight”.’ Louçã (ed.), Portugal visto pelos Nazis, doc. 140, Lisbon, 24
December 1943, from the German legation to the Auswärtiges Amt, pp. 290–91. Mendlicott naturally fails to
square the circle of Churchill’s statement: ‘Mr. Churchill’s apparent condoning of the wolfram exports per-
haps created some genuine misunderstanding, which Lord Selborne sought to remove on his first meeting
with the new Portuguese ambassador, the Duke of Palmela, on 16th November, by having a lump of
result of these mixed messages, Salazar did not bite when, in January 1944, a
joint British/American delegation asked for a complete embargo on the sale of
tungsten to Germany, offering apparently advantageous compensation.
Fearing a strong response from Germany in the wake of the Azores deal,
Salazar had, in fact, offered Berlin a number of economic concessions. The
Portuguese State intervened to force the country’s commercial banks to con-
tinue to provide credit for German purchases of tungsten and tinned fish,
which increased as evidence mounted of a coming Allied assault on France.
Striking a new deal on tungsten, however, was to prove impossible. By
February 1944, Huene was at the end of his patience on the tungsten question:
there were only three days left before the existing agreement expired and
nothing had been negotiated to replace it, while at the same time the ore due
for delivery was being held up by British interference and sabotage.100 Salazar
had promised there would be no embargo, but could this promise be believed,
Huene wanted to know.
There is, with hindsight, an air of unreality pervading the whole issue of
the tungsten discussions in 1944. Huge pressure was placed by the Allies on
Spain and Portugal to impose an embargo on Germany, at a time when the
Allied commanders knew that the coming liberation of France would render
trade with Germany impossible. Germany, moreover, had reasonable stocks of
tungsten, capable of lasting another year (more than the Allies thought). By
supplementing this stockpile with tungsten obtained through smuggling,
Germany never ran out of the ore. Salazar’s response, every time that tungsten
was mentioned by the British and the Americans, was that he was waiting for a
resolution of the simultaneous impasse concerning Spain: only once the Allies
had concluded a deal with Franco would he deal with them. This was a way of
showing solidarity with Franco, then in political difficulties, but also of holding
out for a better deal. By waiting for the Allies’ deal with Spain to be concluded,
Salazar was also keeping the Germans waiting, and for a motive that Germany
had to respect, and did respect.
The Allies were unhappy about this stance, since they wanted the situation
resolved quickly and a full embargo placed on the export of tungsten to
Germany. In March 1944, Campbell was recalled for talks in London—a
standard way of showing displeasure. Salazar’s hand was also weakened by the
continuing dire situation at home, above all a worsening food crisis. On his
return, Campbell brought a letter from Churchill to Salazar, asking why an ally
wolfram on the table and giving it priority in the conversation’. Mendlicott, The Economic Blockade, vol. 2, p.
599.
100. AOS CO NE 7, notes on a conversation between Ambassador Teixeira de Sampaio and the German
minister, 25 February 1944.
should want to provide ‘Germany with the essential means to pierce British
armor, kill British troops and so prolong the war.’101 This personal appeal failed
to move Salazar: the Spanish situation, he continued to maintain, was para-
mount. Britain was furious; Selborne urged Eden to play the Alliance card and
bring Portugal into the war, in order to make more effective the blockade of
Germany.102 Palmela, stuck in Portugal because of the Allied preparations for
D-Day, met Campbell, who informed him that the British government was
feeling the weight of political and public opinion. Everyone, it seemed, was
demanding that Portugal should halt the export of tungsten to Germany,
refusing to accept that supplies should continue in the wake of the Azores
deal.103 Palmela countered that the Azores deal, of such great value to the
Allies, had represented a serious risk for Portugal, and in no way touched on
the tungsten issue; Campbell answered that while the existing deal with Ger-
many would be allowed to expire, it should not be renewed. Palmela changed
tack: there was more that tungsten at play. Why were the British demanding
concessions on a drop-by-drop basis, wringing them out one at a time from the
Portuguese?
Could Campbell tell me with all honesty what else they would want, should—and
I thought this impossible—an embargo on tungsten be declared?
The ambassador was surprised by such a forthright question and answered, “I can
only answer ‘off-record’. What we really want is the cutting off of relations with
the Axis.
I am very worried, I am afraid of my Prime Minister who at times is insane, I am
very nervous as well”.104
101. Woodward, British Foreign Policy, p. 68. Salazar replied that the Allies, who counted the Soviet Union in
their number, could hardly claim, as Churchill had done, to be fighting for Christian civilization.
102. Mendlicott, The Economic Blockade, vol. 2, p. 601.
103. Echoes of this demand reached Ribbentrop, who urged Huene to make it ‘categorically and un-
equivocally’ clear to Salazar that a total embargo was completely unacceptable to Germany. Louçã (ed.),
Portugal visto pelos Nazis, doc. 150, Fuschl, 15 April 1944, from the Minister of Foreign Affairs to the German
legation, pp. 315–16. In a letter to Hitler written roughly at this time, Ribbentrop suggested that Germany
had enough tungsten to last another fifteen months, with some difficulties beginning in nine months’ time.
Louçã (ed.), Portugal visto pelos Nazis, doc. 152, Fuschl, 26 April 1944, from Ribbentrop to Hitler, pp. 319–23.
Huene and Ambassador Eisenlhohr met with Salazar on 27 April (his fifty-fifth birthday) to deliver
Ribbentrop’s message. Salazar assured his interlocutors that he would continue to uphold international law,
but that it was only too easy for the Allies to bring pressure on Portugal, whose reserves of a number of vital
commodities could last only one or two weeks. With or without him, Portugal would have to give way when
the Allies decided the time had come. Thus, Salazar argued, to reach an agreement with Germany along the
lines desired by Ribbentrop would be to ensure instant Allied reaction, with many consequences, only one of
which was foreseeable—a total embargo of Portuguese exports to Germany. Louçã (ed.), Portugal visto pelos
Nazis, doc. 153, Lisbon, 28 April 1944, from Eisenlohr and the German legation to the Auswärtiges Amt, pp.
324–30.
104. AOS CD 11, ‘Secret’ letter, 8 May 1944, Duke of Palmela to António de Oliveira Salazar.
Contact was maintained, but the news got worse. Less than two weeks
later Campbell informed Palmela that a total embargo was needed, given the
military importance of tungsten. The British government, under pressure from
the Americans and from public opinion, was ready—Churchill had said so—to
denounce the alliance, or to ignore it henceforth.105 An allied deal with Spain
was eventually done in April, and signed on 2 May; there followed a British
press campaign asking Portugal to follow suit.106 In May 1944, the Foreign
Office, eager to show the State Department that it too could be tough with
Portugal, worked out a plan to force Portugal to accept a total embargo of
tungsten to Germany; it went as far as plotting the overthrow of Salazar, to be
achieved by piling pressure on Carmona to dismiss his prime minister. This
end would be brought about by a violent public campaign against the regime, a
concerted drive among anglophile officers to denounce Salazar’s leadership,
and an American embargo on exports to Portugal until Salazar had left power
and the sale of wolfram to Germany had come to a stop.107 BBC broadcasts
suddenly became highly damaging to Salazar.108 Even Brazil was brought in on
the act, but when its ambassador asked Salazar for the desired embargo, he was
given short shrift.109 Whether such a plan would, in the end, succeed, is open to
105. AOS CD 11, letter, 21 May 1944, Duke of Palmela to António de Oliveira Salazar.
106. According to this deal, Spain would export twenty tons of tungsten per month in May and June, and
forty tons per month for the rest of the year. The Times (London), in an editorial entitled ‘Spain complies’,
published on 3 May 1943, put pressure on Portugal: ‘Nor does the story end there. Germany drew one-third
of her purchases of wolfram from Spain and draws two-thirds from Portugal. Negotiations with the
Portuguese government have been in progress for some time, and an early and satisfactory conclusion may
be looked for. Portugal is not a neutral; she is Great Britain’s ally. It would be indeed surprising of the
Portuguese continued to help Germany with their wolfram to prolong the war.’
107. NA FO 371 39573 C 6002. Discussed in Telo, Portugal na Segunda Guerra, p. 231. Initial moves were
made; contacts with discontented Army officers began, while a direct line of communications with Carmona
was initiated through his daughter, Maria Inês Carmona Santos (wife of the Portuguese minister in
Switzerland), who had previously assured Campbell that she was willing to serve as a conduit for information
for her father: news of Britain’s unhappiness thus reached Carmona through two means at the same time.
Franco Nogueira’s account of the incident is rather different: he describes it as an ill-thought out solo run by
a deeply frustrated Cambpell, who, rebuked by the Foreign Office, realized that he had overstepped the
mark—only to see Churchill urge Eden to put pressure on Salazar, which he did by a press campaign, a
question in Parliament, and urging Campbell to contact Carmona’s daughter. In the end, and after two
prolonged of conversations between the two men, Carmona remained loyal to Salazar. Franco Nogueira, As
grandes crises, pp. 514–18. Salazar’s diary records only one of these conversations, on Sunday, 7 May: ‘14½ -
17—to the residence of the president of the Republic—the latest facts relating to tungsten—press
campaign—the demarche of the Brazilian ambassador—possible political repercussions’.
108. In this context, The Times’ obituary for former President of the Republic Bernadino Machado makes
interesting reading: he was described as ‘a stout supporter of the allies and an earnest resister of German
intrigue. Effective participation in the war was in no small measure due to his efforts […] In his Presidential
capacity he visited England and the Western Front’. The contrast with Salazar could not be greater. ‘Dr B.
Machado: Former President of Portugal’ in The Times (London), 1 May 1944.
109. Salazar was exasperated by this event. Franco Nogueira writes, ‘Salazar becomes emotional, raises his
voice, unburdens himself before the Brazilian envoy. The English want to secure all the advantages of
Portuguese neutrality, but then make requests that compromise it; it’s as if England is adopting the American
method of maltreating neutrals, as if these had no rights; both had just humiliated Spain in a way that she
would take over a century to forget; and everything points to Russia getting the most out of the war’. Franco
Nogueira, As grandes crises, 519. The following month Campbell wrote, ‘my Brazilian colleague, who, of
question. Authoritarian regimes have proved themselves adept at surviving
politically inspired sanctions, and it would make little sense to keep up the
embargo after D-Day. In the middle of it all, incongruously, there came a sign
of American goodwill; the Lisbon legation was upgraded to embassy. A hard-
pressed Salazar understandably derived new courage from this, telling the
American minister, R. Henry Norweb, that unless there was progress on
tungsten, there could be no deal on the Azores.
In May 1944 Salazar offered a new deal to the British: all Portuguese-
owned mines would close, their existing stock being delivered to the Allies;
German-owned mines could continue to operate, Portugal delivering 700-900
tons to Germany over the course of the next year. The Foreign Office,
pressing for a full embargo, refused, but Churchill, who ultimately did not want
Salazar overthrown, intervened. Eden, he thought, was going too far, too fast.
The Allies, Churchill now made it known, would be happy with Portugal’s
exports being reduced to the same level as Spain’s.110 The BBC was reined in,
but not the secret contacts with Portuguese army officers, which continued.
There was now an enormous ambiguity in the British position, which the
Portuguese found it impossible to decipher. Sampaio and Palmela urged
Salazar to strike a deal on British terms. That same month, as talks on a tung-
sten deal started with the Allies,111 they started with Germany as well—but the
Portuguese were merely stalling. No deal with Germany was possible in 1944.
A resolution was found only when the British used the most obvious
weapon at their disposal. On 24 May they invoked the Alliance and asked for a
total embargo on the sale of tungsten to Germany. They did so, however, only
when it was suggested to them by Salazar as a way out of the crisis:
The irritation provoked in the United Kingdom by Dr Salazar’s obstinate attitude

largely discounted the popularity which Portugal had earned at the time of the
Azores Agreement […] It was he who hinted to His Majesty’s ambassador that it
was an appeal to the alliance which alone could cut the Gordian knot. The appeal
was made and on the 3rd June Dr Salazar addressed a note to His Majesty’s am-
bassador intimating his decision to issue a decree making the exploitation and
exportation of wolfram illegal.112
course, has a number of very intimate contacts here, tells me that he knows for a fact that Salazar considered
resigning rather than give way over wolfram, and that he actually got as far as consulting the President of the
Republic (who no doubt begged him to put any such thought out of his mind.)’ NA FO 371/39598 C 8684,
Lisbon, 16 June 1944, Sir R. Campbell to Sir A. Eden.
111. Salazar had agreed on an embargo on the export of tungsten to Germany while the talks with the Allies
were on, but smuggling continued.
112. NA FO 371/49474 Z 4818. Annual Survey by His Majesty’s embassy in Lisbon, 1944
Even this was not the end of the story. At a long meeting, Campbell and
Salazar discussed the embargo. Salazar took the matter to a Council of
Ministers, discussing it with Carmona as well. The whole process was delayed
by the 28 May celebrations until another Council of Ministers, on 29 May;
according to Salazar’s diary, this went on from 5:15 until 9:30, which made it
unusually long. Meeting Campbell, Salazar informed the ambassador that an
embargo would be declared (under the auspices of a complete shutdown of
production), but only when the outstanding commercial aspects of the Azores
deal had been resolved—an issue on which the Allies were dragging their
heels—and when 100 further tons of tungsten, which had not been delivered
under the terms of the 1943/44 deal, had been sent to Germany. Campbell was
frustrated, and turned to Palmela, who gave him little comfort, including on
the 100 tons, the validity of which the British contested; according to their
numbers, Germany had received all of the tungsten promised under the 1943
agreement, if not more (thanks to smuggling and other illegal activities).113 D-
Day, and the resulting transformation of France into a battle zone, made the
continued discussion academic, since deliveries of the metal had to come to an
end.
The Home Front
As 1941 ended, America’s entry in the war and the Wehrmacht’s failure to
deliver a knock-out blow to the Red Army suddenly altered the European
chess-board. Suddenly, with the bulk of the German forces in the East, the
Allies were in a position to land a sizeable force in the West. Although Portugal
was sometimes mentioned as a possible first foothold on the continent,114 it
was clear to most observers that the preservation of the Iberian Peninsula’s
neutrality would be required in order to allow major Allied operations to occur
without flanking attacks. In April 1942, Allied and Axis propaganda aimed at
the Portuguese officer corps was stepped up. Private dinners, followed by the
showing of war films, were a favorite device. Esmeraldo Carvalhais kept an
increasingly wary eye on this ‘active propaganda’, which was ‘hard to
control’.115 The one country whose military receptions were boycotted by the
Portuguese was Japan, as a result of the Timor situation. These sessions
113. AOS CD 11, letter, 2 June 1944, Duke of Palmela to António de Oliveira Salazar.
114. See, for example, AOS CO PC 3H, ‘Secret’ memorandum, Ambassador Teixeira de Sampaio, 4 July
1942, in which the Secretary General of the MNE details a conversation between the first secretary of the
Italian embassy (Giatini) and the Head of Protocol at the MNE during which Giatini assured his Portuguese
interlocutor that the British were about to invade Portugal, timing their action to coincide with a monarchist
revolt in Spain.
115. AOS CP 49, memorandum, Esmeraldo Carvalhais, 18 April 1942.
continued into the summer of 1942, with the numbers of officers attending
increasing. Measures were eventually adopted, in August and October, to
prevent such gatherings from taking place. It is worth noting, in this respect,
the size of the various diplomatic missions in Portugal. The British embassy
alone employed 180 people, to whom were added 101 others working in a
number of consulates. The German legation employed 146 people, and the
Italian eighty-two. Even Poland, devoid of territory, had thirty-two people
staffing its Lisbon legation.116 Inevitably, these representatives of foreign
powers added to Salazar’s difficulties through their actions, and in the search
for support among Portuguese public opinion stirred an increasingly volatile
mixture.
If externally the future course of the war was becoming easier to predict,
internally Salazar’s problems were mounting. The cost of living continued to
rise, despite, or, better, because, of the corporative structure of the state, and
this situation gave rise to a political challenge to the regime. The PVDE’s situa-
tion reports became more alarming every month, and, of course, the growing
prospect of an Allied victory emboldened an opposition for which there was
much to gain from depicting Salazar as a friend of Germany. Danger lurked
everywhere, in the eyes of the secret police:
One can note a revolutionary atmosphere, similar to that which used to precede
the old internal convulsions and, although the danger is not immediate given the
present circumstances, it is latent with a tendency to grow with the ongoing march
of international events. Army officers, usually considered nationalist, are no
strangers to this.117
A more personal note of warning was repeatedly sounded by Marcelo Caetano,

whose complaints about the government’s actions were sufficiently shrill to
force any reader to re-evaluate his or her beliefs about Salazar and his regime.
Caetano, at the time a renowned professor, leader of the Mocidade Portuguesa,
and procurador in the Corporative Chamber, wrote, during his holidays in
September 1942,
116. AOS CO IN 8C, file 17, PVDE report on the diplomatic corps accredited in Lisbon and respective
family members (1943), undated.
117. AOS CO IN 8D, PVDE weekly report on the Portuguese internal situation and the international
situation, 30 January 1943. José Pacheco Pereira captured the situation with the following words: ‘The con-
fidential reports that the various police forces and administrative authorities filed for the eyes of the Minister
of the Interior and Salazar only showed a country very different to that of the 1930s. Example after example
showed that the “street” was pro-Ally and that the working-class and student “street” was pro-Soviet’. José
Pacheco Pereira, Cunhal: Uma biografia politica vol. 2 «Duarte», o dirigente clandestino (1941–1949 (Lisbon: Temas
e Debates, 2001), pp. 229–30.
I confess to being seriously impressed by the climate I have found in Beira: lack of
faith, discontent, and irritation everywhere, in all sectors. All that one hears are
complaints, especially about how the economy has been—or is being—bureau-
cratically directed.118
The following month Caetano returned to the New State’s problems, and the
difficulties faced by those at the top:
The New State—which, still lacking objectively long-lasting institutions, remains a

situação rather than becoming a regime—has the major shortcoming of not per-
mitting those who govern to be well informed. If the press says that not every-
thing is well, the respective minister or director-general considers his prestige to be
at stake. If one talks with a minister, his preoccupation, as a rule, is not to listen,
but rather to show his interlocutor that he is wrong.119
In February 1944 Caetano again warned Salazar of the present dangers:
I am now embarrassed to speak on the subject of corporatism. No doubt you will

become excited and think: “This man has no common sense! What about the
collective contracts, the provision of welfare, the affordable houses, etc?” But you
know as well or better than I that corporatism does not mean simply the con-
cession of some benefits to the workers, as an act of generosity. The truth is that
there is no corporative spirit, that the corporative apparatus is incomplete and dis-
credited, and that we have forfeited the trust of employers, workers, and the
youth. Failure. Pure failure, whatever others might say, as a result of a lack of con-
tinuous and opportune action.120
Caetano went on to suggest that Salazar had distanced himself too much from
his collaborators, beginning with ministers: and since he insisted on the final
word in all matters, the result was paralysis:
I consider the system by which only the President has political initiative within the
government to be frankly a matter for condemnation. That is not to say that there
should not be one who decides and has the final say: but it is imperative that the
government be given a team spirit, giving the ministers the impression (at least)
that they have a role to play in the definition of policy, which would give them a taste
for the job and a directing consciousness.121
118. Freire Antunes (ed.), Salazar e Caetano, doc. C 15, letter, Gouveia, 12 September 1942, Marcelo Caetano
to António de Oliveira Salazar, p. 105.
119. Ibid., doc. C 16, letter, Lisbon, 8 October 1942, Marcelo Caetano to António de Oliveira Salazar.
120. Ibid., doc. C 25, letter, 10 February 1944, Marcelo Caetano to António de Oliveira Salazar, p. 118.
121. Ibid., p. 119.
Salazar replied to this unveiled criticism of his government, and his way of
governing, by asking for precise examples of what might be improved:
For example: the suffering of my nearest collaborators, who have no direction or

means of action. Do you not think it useful to let me know who they are, so that
with no further delay I might give them [what they lack]?122
Caetano was undeterred, knowing himself to be in the right. The situation was
indeed serious. According to the PVDE, soldiers were among the crowds that
jostled for a glimpse of the war map placed outside the offices of the Lisbon
daily O Século, where everyday the advance of the Red Army was marked with a
red ribbon. So great was the excitement that sometimes it spilled over into
violence against supporters of the New State. The newspaper was eventually
ordered to take down the map. In trams people were overheard saying, ‘we
have reached the Don’, and everywhere there were complaints about the lack
of food and other essential goods, or their poor distribution.123 A later PVDE
report indicated a new phrase being heard: ‘There is a strong wind blowing
from the East and things here won’t last long.’124 The situation was made
worse by the difficulties involved in securing essential supplies. If in Lisbon
there was frustration over the slow introduction, and later inefficiency, of the
rationing system, in the countryside there was outright hunger and despair as
foodstuffs vanished. By September 1943, the PVDE reported that men were
offering to work for food in the grape harvests of the Minho province.125
What, then, were the difficulties faced by Salazar on the home front? The
first, and most important, was the spiraling cost of living. That it should rise in
wartime was normal, given that Portugal was unable to feed itself. What made
this situation politically damaging was the fact that the complicated corporative
machinery now in place should have ensured that collective need triumphed
over the greed of selected individuals, a scenario that was clearly not being
played out. Most hated of all the corporative organizations were the Grémios,
the producer’s associations. How could it be, observers asked, that in a
corporative environment, in which the Grémios controlled the stocks of their
122. Ibid., doc. S 15, letter, António de Oliveira Salazar to Marcelo Caetano, 15 February 1944, pp. 119–20.
Caetano replied, in a lengthy letter, stating that although he would not mention recent cases of such
suffering, two previous ones did come to mind: the last months of Pedro Teotónio Pereira in the Under-
secretariat of Corporations and the last years of Carneiro Pacheco as Minister for National Education.
Caetano went on to list off some urgent measures that the government might engage in, ranging from the
freeing of the press in order to denounce abuses and corruption, to hastening the introduction of rationing,
increasing the number of settlers in the African colonies, and looking after the material and moral wellbeing
of soldiers. Doc. C 26, letter, 17 February 1944, Marcelo Caetano to António de Oliveira Salazar, pp. 121–22.
123. AOS CO IN 8D, PVDE weekly report, 13 February 1943.
124. Ibid., 27 February 1943.
125. Ibid., 9 September 1943.
respective produce, a black market could flourish, and goods could be
smuggled into Spain? Another problem was the lack of transport and of fuel.
This meant that quite apart from food shortages, which were due to poor
harvests and insufficient imports, it was difficult to move available foodstuffs
around the country. On 28 November 1942 Huene wrote, ‘the transport of
foodstuffs, wood and coal to the large cities is stuck, as is the transport to
Germany of important resins, cork, and turpentine, from the forests. The
fishing fleet cannot set out, in its entirety, to sea, so that the catch is smaller
and the supply of tinned sardines to Germany is down.’126
Shortages of food and increased prices for essential goods, when com-
bined with a sense that sacrifices were not being borne equally, naturally
resulted in mounting labor strife. As Caetano wrote to Salazar, in January 1943:
The moral situation is very bad and steadily worsening. A climate is being created
which is tending towards something, already forecast openly, as openly as are
expressed opinions that run counter to the government and to Social Order,
amidst a general silence and general approbation. When the last strikes occurred,
the public (all of us…) found the strikers to be in the right. The police seemed
surprised (when all strikes could be forecast with ease) and acted as if blind; I
believe that even today it is not ready to act intelligently in case of similar dis-
turbances which will very probably occur, this time on a greater scale.127
A final problem that an embattled Salazar had to face was political apathy.
Salazar’s ability to deal with this swelling resentment was relatively limited.
Authorization was given for increases in public-sector pay, notably through
family allowances, but increased pay usually led to increased prices, so that
there was little gain. There was also little coordination between the various
agencies whose mission it was to carry out domestic propaganda and to ensure
that the government’s message was heard loud and clear. This, of course, was
ultimately because Salazar himself saw no need for the kind of mass propa-
ganda that might limit his policy options. Complaints reached him nevertheless.
António Ferro is the likely author of a long document that reached Salazar in
May 1943, detailing the reasons for the ‘disturbance of certain Portuguese at
the present moment’, which was blamed on the nature of propaganda and the
media in Portugal, as well as on the Portuguese character. Ways of overcoming
the difficulties were suggested: Salazar had to speak regularly on the radio, a
medium which could be much better exploited; the SPN and the censorship
126. Louçã (ed.), Portugal visto pelos Nazis, doc. 126, Lisbon 28 November 1942, from the German legation to
127. Freire Antunes (ed.), Salazar e Caetano, doc. C 18, letter, 29 January 1943, Marcelo Caetano to António
de Oliveira Salazar, pp. 110–11.
authorities had to be better coordinated, and given a greater role in guiding the
press, while keeping an eye on all modes of artistic production; above all, the
SPN’s actions had to be given greater official backing:
The SPN should be freed, once and for all, from the inferiority complex that does
not allow it to fulfill its program in its entirety. The SPN will soon celebrate its
tenth anniversary, and despite of much opposition, especially at the start, it can
take pride from the fact that it never, through many crises, committed a political
gaffe embarrassing for the President of the Council, the government, or the nation
[…] If the director of the SPN was able to carry out, abroad, a body of propa-
ganda which no-one could attack, it was because beyond our borders he never met
the limitations so often encountered domestically […] It is clear, however, that the
SPN has not acted, decisively, in the creation and consolidation of a good atmo-
sphere within the regime.128
These views were accepted by Salazar, and in February 1944 the SPN meta-
morphosed into the Secretariado Nacional de Informação, Cultura Popular e Turismo
(SNI—National Secretariat for Information, Popular Culture, and Tourism).
Despite its less threatening name, the SNI’s powers had been reinforced. Cen-
sorship now fell under its authority, as did the Inspecção Geral dos Espectáculos and
the Emissora Nacional. In practical terms, little changed. Alfredo Pimenta,
writing the following year, gave vent to his frustration:
The government has a newspaper—the Diário da Manhã—which is the most

ambiguous, the most opaque thing imaginable. That newspaper confuses doc-
trinaire propaganda with praise for the ministers. For that newspaper, all ministers
are geniuses, for as long as they are ministers. That is not what we need. As for the
Emisorra Nacional, what a waste of time! Its people seem to have no backbone. You
tell me: “We have a doctrine”. You have one. The nation ignores what it might be,
because no-one has taught it.129
Given the worsening situation in the country, which affected the poorest
most immediately, it is not surprising that World War II should have witnessed
a dramatic increase in opposition activity. There was unrest within the broad
coalition that supported Salazar but, more significantly, forces outside the New
State consensus benefited enormously from the new circumstances. Of these,
none was more important than the PCP. After a difficult period which had
seen two rival leaderships, each printing its own version of the party newspaper
128. AOS CO PC 12E, unsigned, undated report, read by António de Oliveira Salazar on 8 May 1943.
129. AOS CP 215, letter, Guimarães, no date (replied to on 23 August 1944), Alfredo Pimenta to António de
Oliveira Salazar.
Avante!, a ‘reorganization’ took place in the early 1940s, under the leadership of
Álvaro Cunhal and Júlio Fogaça (the latter being arrested in 1942), which made
the party more professional, secretive, and fearsome. For the first time the PCP
would be in a position to carry out the policies dictated by the Popular Front
strategy: carrying out mass propaganda and establishing contacts with other
opposition forces.130 In December 1943, thanks to its efforts, a nation-wide
opposition alliance involving all forces, from communists to disgruntled
monarchists, would be formed—the Movimento de Unidade Nacional Antifascista
(MUNAF)—under the presidency of General Norton de Matos.
One of the priorities of the PCP in wartime was to go where the workers
were. This meant abandoning dreams of a separate trade-union movement and
instead infiltrating the corporative ‘national syndicates’, which allowed
members some say in the choice of their spokesmen. In October 1942 a first
strike wave broke out in Lisbon. There had been hopes earlier that year that
the corporative organization might come to the aid of embattled workers, but
pleas for help traveled up the hierarchy of the national syndicates, all the way
to Salazar, with little effect. A number of eye-catching initiatives, including a
speech by Salazar in response to the workers’ plight, were organized, but with
little positive impact. Workers in railway workshops, followed by transport
workers in the capital, went on strike, in an action which coincided with
legislative elections held on 1 November. This was one protest which the
Censorship authorities could not stifle, since everyone in Lisbon could see that
the trams had come to a halt. Strike breakers were stoned by their colleagues.
On 2 November the Anglo-Portuguese Telephone Company saw part of its
staff go on strike; other firms were soon affected in the Lisbon area, including
the port, where the loading and unloading of vessels came to a stop. Salazar,
whose work was largely shelved for a week to deal with the new situation,
reacted to the strikes as they occurred, using either brute force or the military
mobilization of workers, which meant that striking was equated with desertion
in the eyes of the law. Salazar convened a Council of Ministers on the
afternoon of 5 November to discuss events and their resolution. From 10 to 11
p.m. he drafted an official note with the Minister of the Interior and the
Undersecretary of State for Corporations; from 11 to 11:30 the three men were
joined by António Ferro to discuss the launch of a press campaign;131 and from
11:30 to 1 a.m. Salazar stayed up with Santos Costa, discussing the latest
events, as well as measures already taken and still to be adopted. The note by
130. D. L. Raby, Fascism and Resistance in Portugal: Communists, Liberals and Military Dissidents in the Opposition to
Salazar, 1941–1974 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), p. 54.
131. Salazar met, in the afternoon of 6 November 1942, with newspaper editors, informing them of what
was happening around the country, and suggesting the launch of a press campaign highlighting the dangers
of the international situation.
which Salazar informed the country of what was happening explained the
nature of the threat now facing Portugal,132 and sought to detail the absurdity
of the claims advanced by the striking workers in a number of firms, who
should have trusted the corporative machinery rather than engage in illegal
action. Consideration of the actual facts led to one conclusion: ‘[…] only a
small minority knows the objective of the criminal attitude which the majority
did not have, at the start, the courage to repulse.’ It was for this reason that the
government was ‘repressing with the maximum energy’ actions intended to dis-
turb public peace and social discipline. Government sources suggested that up
to 14,000 workers had been involved.133 The PCP was surprised by the strike’s
outbreak and also, it has been suggested, by the influence it suddenly enjoyed
over workers, hungry for political guidance.134 Cunhal would call the 1942
strikes, in which class solidarity had been much in evidence, the proletariat’s
first great offensive against Salazar.135
Álvaro Cunhal was impressed by the new situation in Portugal, and was
especially keen to develop party cells in factories, spelling out how this should
be done in his 1943 text, A célula da empresa (The Company Cell). That year,
despite some concessions won by striking workers, living conditions continued
to decline. With the economic organization of the country so closely bound up
with the State, thanks to the corporative structure, an easy link could be estab-
lished between the regime—including Salazar—and food shortages. German
purchases of food in Portugal facilitated this task. All over the country, and in
an embarrassing replay of scenes from World War I, the rural population took
up arms over the lack of food. The government had to be seen to act, and
‘began to take well-publicized measures against speculators and to regulate
food distribution.’136 Curbing the black market was now a priority, but a black
market could only exist in a corporative state if those who controlled produc-
tion—the Grémios—were willingly diverting part of that production to illegal
means of distribution. The State was thus policing itself. Food protests were
well rooted in Portuguese history; they were part of a lingering moral economy
in the countryside and need not be organized by the PCP. Strikes for higher
salaries in the cities, however, were another matter. The summer months of
1943, while Salazar negotiated the Azores deal with the British and Mussolini
132. ‘Such facts, criminal in normal conditions, are all the more deplorable at the present moment, be it
because they endanger the moral unity of the country, be it because of their effect on our economy,
weakened as it is by the state of war’. ‘O Governo esclarece o País’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 6 November
1942.
133. Pacheco Pereira, «Duarte», o dirigente clandestino, p. 241.
134. Ibid., p. 243.
135. The party leadership paid a heavy price for its involvement in the strike, four leading militants, including
Fogaça, being arrested in the aftermath.
136. Raby, Fascism and Resistance, p. 73.
was removed from power, would see a second strike wave, more significant
than the first, and this time the role of the PCP was clearer. On 21 July the
PCP, aware of the growing effervescence of certain workers, made a call for a
general strike in Lisbon: its aims were a general increase in wages, double pay
for overtime, and an end to the practice of salary deductions for family allow-
ances, to speculation, and to food shortages.137 A strike committee was also put
in place to coordinate the coming protests. The whole party machinery was
employed in the strikes. Walkouts began to occur five days later, notably in the
increasingly industrialized southern bank of the Tagus. At the heart of the
movement stood the town of Barreiro, home of the massive Companhia União
Fabril (CUF) works and, at the time, the unquestioned communist capital of
the country.138 Other areas were affected, notably the cork factories in Almada
and the CUF-owned Lisbon shipyards. The PCP would claim that 50,000
workers went on strike in and around the capital; the thought that Salazar
would be the next dictator to fall animated the protest. There were, however,
some failures, notably the attempt to extend the strike to the railway workers
and to the Companhia dos Carris, which ran the Lisbon trams. The authorities
tried hard to minimize what was happening, as is evidenced by the Diário da
Manhã:
Everything was restricted, as is known, to certain groups of workers from Lisbon

and the other bank, who downed tools and were then, naturally, forced to aban-
don their workplace.
In truth, nowhere was there what might be termed a mutiny. Nowhere.139
Mário Pais de Sousa, the Minister of the Interior, told the press that the
authorities had given workers a day and a half to consider the implications of
their actions before moving in to break up the strikes. Pais de Sousa minimized
the conditions faced by workers, better than those of others around the
country, and called attention to the role played by women in the propagation of
the strike.140 Repression was severe. Factories in which strikes had broken out
were closed while the workforce was purged and the actions of the employers
investigated; arrests of political suspects took place on a massive scale. Barreiro
137. Ibid., p. 76.

138. ‘In Barreiro, it was not just the industrial workers who were communists, but also the service workers,
municipal employees, and shopkeepers […] Barreiro was becoming a place in which communism was not
just a political phenomenon, but a cultural one as well’. Pacheco Pereira, «Duarte», o dirigente clandestino, p. 249.
139. ‘No rescaldo’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 30 July 1943.
140. ‘Afirmações do Ministro do Interior’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 30 July 1943. Pais de Sousa was, of
course, raising fears that Lisbon might be harboring a generation of pétroleuses, and casting doubt on the
virility of men who let women do the fighting for them; the PCP, however, was only too aware of the
important role women could have in revolutionary situations, and tried to find ways to organize and marshal
their efforts.
was flooded with police and troops, PVDE snatch squads operating at night.
One historian writes,
Although the government did regain control after a week or so and did impose
widespread reprisals, the movement could be considered a qualified success both
for the workers and the communist party. Many employers did make concessions
on wages, and the government did take further measures to improve food distri-
bution and combat speculation. But most important was the increased confidence
of the working class and the blow to the myth of the regime’s invincibility.141
Whatever reforms were introduced did not impress foreign observers. One
wrote,
The internal position continues to be bad and there are no signs of a serious
attempt being made to cope with the supply situation. There have been many
arrests and punishments of firms found to have been hoarding but these
measures, though popular, do not tackle the root of the trouble, which lies in the
failure of the government to introduce an effective system of rationing.142
A third strike wave occurred in May 1944, this time on the northern
fringes of Lisbon and the surrounding countryside, including the flood plains
of the Tagus in the province of Ribatejo. Thousands of workers were
involved—‘construction, cement, stone quarries, glassworks, transportation,
and shipbuilding’143—acting in the wake of a PCP call to arms. More confident
than ever, the communist party now sought to display openly its position as the
paramount opposition force in the country; for the first time, the PCP willed a
series of coordinated strikes into existence, even if many within its leadership
were skeptical of the enterprise’s success. The strike was planned from the start
as a two-day operation, for 8 and 9 May, during which tools would be downed
and public protest would be engaged in. Workers in the city should march
demanding food and better wages; in the countryside, peasants and workers
should converge on the towns and demand food:
The great demonstrations and hunger marches should be directed against the gov-
ernment and the authorities, and they should demand Bread and Supplies. Unfurl
black flags—the flags of hunger. Bring signs that proclaim that you are hungry and
that your want bread.
141. Raby, Fascism and Resistance, pp. 78–79.

142. Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses (ed.), Correspondência diplomática irlandesa sobre Portugal, o Estado Novo e Salazar,
1941–1970 (Lisbon: Instituto Diplomático, 2005), doc. 25, report, Lisbon, 20 September 1943, Colman
O’Donovan to Secretary, Department of External Affairs, Dublin, pp. 48–50.
If, on 8 and 9 [May] the fascist government does not use violence against the
demonstrators and the strikers, return to work on Wednesday 10.144
The government’s response was identical to that of the summer of 1943, with
workers’ purges and arrests. The wide distribution of the pamphlet calling on
workers to strike had given the authorities advance warning of what was
coming. Salazar was visited at 10:15 p.m. by the Minister of the Interior, and
stayed up until midnight preparing a response. Perhaps because the machinery
of repression was already in place, or perhaps because of the critical juncture
reached by the tungsten negotiations, Salazar intervened less directly in the
1944 strike wave; he was briefed on the situation in the afternoon and evening
of 8 May, on the afternoon of 9 May, and on the evening of 10 May.
The PCP’s success on these days was far from complete. Once again the
transport workers failed to join the strike; this failure had a series of knock-on
effects, with other sectors refusing to down tools. CUF and the cork factories
which had been at the heart of the 1943 strikes did not close. But construction
workers stopped working, as did stevedores: and the neighboring Ribatejo
province proved to be a revelation, with the PCP surprised by its success in
attracting what was, in effect, a rural proletariat, with some industrial workers
acting as a nucleus. The Diário da Manhã, while praising the rural population,
was violent in its denunciation of the strikers:
In all the crossroads of the Empire there are soldiers watching over the honor of
Portugal. In all corners of Portugal there are journeymen and farmers anxiously
scouring the sky for signs of that rain or that sun which might save, or destroy,
their crop.
And still there are some who believe themselves entitled to forego the part allotted
them in the great national task?
Such people have truly abdicated their status of Portuguese… The others, how-
ever, can rest assured that they will be defended, so that they may, in Order and in
Peace, continue their glorious effort to save the dignity of the nation […]145
Not surprisingly, the deterioration of the economic situation placed great

pressure on those branches of the Catholic Action movement whose action
was carried out amid the working class—the JOC and the LOC. Their figure-
144. PCP Manifesto reproduced in Pacheco Pereira, “Duarte,” o dirigente clandestino, p. 396. Some 40–50,000
copies of this document were distributed.
145. ‘Apêlo à ordem e ao trabalho!’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 9 May 1944. Another article, ‘As paragens de
trabalho serão duramente castigadas’, added that ‘the reckless adventurers, who insist on dragging workers to
their doom, and who profit from it—because they are incapable of living honorably from their labors—will
be unmasked and punished with full rigor. But the workers who fall for their charms no longer have any
excuse—none whatsoever […]’
head, Fr Abel Varzim, whose newspaper O Trabalhador (The Worker) had often
been the mouthpiece for working-class complaints, and for a critique of the
top-down nature of the regime’s corporatism, had not seen his mandate as a
deputy renewed in the 1942 election; in 1943 members of the LOC resigned
their posts within the national syndicates, wishing to preserve their freedom of
action.146 Tensions within Portuguese Catholicism and between the State and
the Holy See were evident to the departing Irish chargé d’affaires. In his fare-
well round of interviews, Colman O’Donovan met with Cardinal-Patriarch
Cerejeira, whom he described as a former close friend of Salazar, the relation-
ship having cooled ‘owing to the absence of measures to relieve the miserable
condition of the poor.’147 O’Donovan asked Cerejeira for his opinion on the
current state of the country:
He said: “There is grave discontent in the country—you know it”. I said that I had
heard that that was the case. Laying emphasis on the opening words he continued:
“To a large extent it is due to the war”. Speaking very gravely he repeated the
words “to a large extent” in such a way as to convey that it was due to something
else.
This something else consisted of corruption and the nature of the corporative
regime, which had not been structured in accordance with Salazar’s original
thoughts on the matters. O’Donovan heard a more telling denunciation in his
last meeting with the Papal Nuncio, who was obviously happy to speak openly
to the representative of a Catholic country:
He regarded the corporative state in Portugal as a camouflage and an imposture

and holds out that it will collapse without Salazar. It had not “caught on” with the
people, on whom it was imposed by force. It had nothing in common with the
ideals behind the encyclicals though great propaganda had been made of them to
put it over, and most of the men around Salazar were anti-clericals. It was only
Salazar’s personal prestige which kept the régime afloat.148
Because it was delayed until late in 1944, the introduction of a system of

rationing in Portugal, when it finally came, was an admission of defeat by
Salazar’s government, a recognition that, in the end, the corporative system had
146. João Miguel Almeida, A oposição católica ao Estado Novo 1958–1974 (Lisbon: Nelson de Matos, 2008), p.
32.
147. Ribeiro de Meneses, Correspondência diplomática irlandesa, doc. 49, report, Lisbon, 22 February 1945,
Colman O’Donovan to Secretary, Department of External Affairs, pp. 72–77.
148. O’Donovan concluded this long report with a gloomy prognosis: ‘I leave Portugal with a definite
opinion that the present regime will not last […] The condition of the poor is miserable beyond description
and nothing effective is being done about it […]’
failed to shield Portugal from the worst of the conflict. What was worse,
though, was that the system’s introduction was problematic. The Irish chargé
d’affaires in Lisbon, in October 1944, asked to be supplied with butter from
Dublin, for ‘a rough and ready rationing of traders here was introduced
recently which led me to hope that I could obtain supplies here but it has com-
pletely broken down.’149 By January 1945, open criticism of the Grémios was
being expressed in the national press, which would have been unthinkable
without government permission. Emboldened by this press campaign, that
same Irish diplomat, at his farewell meeting with Salazar, inquired, on behalf of
Eamon de Valera, about the workings of the corporative system:
Dr Salazar then said that the corporative organizations had been set up with
certain aims but that owing to the war they had to pursue other aims and that the
two sets of aims had often been harmful to each other. It became a question of
living rather than living in a particular way. They had not made as much progress
as they had hoped and as they would have were it not for the war. They had not,
for instance, yet reached the stage of setting up the corporations which were to be
the “crowning” of the edifice. Speaking in a low voice he said: “we continue in the
conviction that the present system is the best (I am not sure if he said “the only
one”) for our country. A régime of liberty would mean Bolshevism and chaos”. I
could not but feel that his manner lacked enthusiasm.150
As the war came to an end, the domestic situation, if anything, seemed to be

worsening. Morale in the civil service and the armed forces was especially
low,151 the latter representing the most serious threat to the continuation of
Salazar’s political existence, since MUNAF’s military wing was developing con-
tacts with disgruntled officers across the country, hoping to overthrow the
New State by the traditional means of a sudden armed coup.
149. Ribeiro de Meneses (ed.), Correspondência diplomática irlandesa, doc. 43, report, Lisbon, 12 October 1944,
Colman O’Donovan to Secretary, Department of External Affairs, Dublin, p. 67.
150. Ribeiro de Meneses, Correspondência diplomática irlandesa, doc. 49, report, Lisbon, 22 February 1945
Colman O’Donovan to Secretary, Department of External Affairs, Dublin, pp. 72–73. Salazar went on to
add that ‘“the greatest danger we have encountered has been the monopolistic tendency of the
organizations”’. O’Donovan explained that according to Salazar, the corporative organizations had been
found ‘to be actuated by selfish aims and a desire to exclude or obstruct new competing enterprises and to
hamper other initiatives aimed at the general good’.
151. AOS CO GR 11, letter, Lisbon, 8 March 1945, Santos Costa to António de Oliveira Salazar. This docu-
ment contains an extract from a report referring to morale in the Lisbon garrison in February 1945 by the
military governor of Lisbon. See also AOS CP 9, letter, Coimbra, 19 May 1945, Diogo Pacheco de Amorim
to António de Oliveira Salazar, in which Salazar’s former colleague wrote that ‘many will tell you (I have
heard it myself) that the troops are well paid and that the civil servants have enough. Those who will tell you
so, will be lying. Despite my modest life, and the fact that my two sons are already working, I, on the highest
salary paid by the University, would not be able to meet all the most urgent expenses were it not for what I
earn from other sources […]’
From D-Day to the End of the War
As the war wore on and Portugal grew safe from Axis counter-measures,
its commitment to the Allied cause increased. The ultimate aim of the Salazar
government in this phase of the war was to contribute militarily to the recovery
of Portuguese Timor, in order to ensure that sovereignty over the colony
would be restored as quickly as possible, and in order to maximize whatever
Portuguese prestige remained among the local population. Relations with Japan
would thus deteriorate, and one of the great Portuguese intelligence coups of
the war—relatively unknown, it seems—was achieved in the attempt to second
guess Japanese intentions.
Tensions within the Japanese legation in Lisbon became obvious when the
military attaché was found in a public garden, on Lisbon’s Praça da Alegria,
hacking down plants (possibly with his officer’s sword, although this is not
clear) and with the lower half of his body exposed to passers-by.152 It later
emerged, however, that this officer had been ritually humiliated by the Japanese
minister, Morito Mosishima, who had by that action gained the affection of the
attaché’s mistress, designated ‘Frau W’ by the PVDE, for whom she was an in-
formant.153 The legation’s car could now be seen ferrying ‘Frau W’ to her
various appointments and shopping expeditions. The quality of the informa-
tion reaching the PVDE, and therefore Salazar, thus improved. Worsening
relations with Japan caused some worries at the German legation, which let it
be known that a Portuguese military action against the Japanese would be seen
as a decisive and irrevocable abandonment of neutrality.154 Huene, the German
minister, was eager to prevent misunderstandings developing between Portugal
and Japan, and acted as best he could to correct any poor impression made by
his Axis counterpart.155 It must be remembered that Salazar, while ready to par-
ticipate in the military recovery of Timor, was in no position to determine the
timing and manner of the colony’s liberation. That no such recovery took place
was due to decisions made within the Allied high command; nevertheless, as
soon as the war ended, the Portuguese governor and those Portuguese who
152. AOS CO NE 2F1, report received from the Polícia de Segurança Pública, 22 May 1943.
153. See, for example, AOS CO IN 8D, PVDE weekly report, 19 August 1943.
154. AOS CO IN 8C, PVDE report, 10 January 1944.
155. See, for example, AOS CP 123, letter, Lisbon, 24 October 1943, Henrique Galvão to António de
Oliveira Salazar, in which Galvão detailed a conversation held with Huene, at the latter’s request. Huene was
worried by what he knew of a recent meeting between the Japanese minister and Salazar, in which a
reference by the minister to Mozambique had been, apparently, interpreted by Salazar as a desire by Tokyo to
establish one or more bases in the colony, when all the minister had sought to know was whether Britain
would now establish a base in Portuguese East Africa. According to Galvão, Huene ‘attributes the
misunderstanding to the confused oriental spirit of the minister, made worse by the fact that neither you nor
he had spoken in your national languages’.
remained in the colony acted quickly to restore Portuguese authority in the
island, even before the arrival of a military expedition.
As relations with Japan continued to deteriorate, relations with the United
States never stopped improving. The logic behind this movement was in-
exorable. With the United States becoming the dominant Atlantic power, the
basic premises of Portuguese foreign policy now forced Salazar to swallow his
distaste for American interference in European affairs and seek a new under-
standing with Washington. In the Autumn of 1943, in the wake of the initial
Azores deal, the American military attaché, Colonel Solborg, let it be known
that ‘we are entering a phase of strengthening of direct relations between
Portugal and the United States.’ He was also keen to correct certain misunder-
standings that existed in Portugal about his country, adding that ‘the history of
the United States’ development demonstrate that as a country it favors order
and discipline, hallmarks of the dignity of a free people.’156 By 1945 the Cold
War was looming, and Portugal’s strategic position made it an obligatory ally
for Washington. In March a new ambassador arrived in the shape of Herman
Baruch, brother of Bernard Baruch, one of the best connected men in
Washington. According to the American military attaché, Baruch’s nomination
reflected ‘the importance which the United States attach to Portugal in the
postwar period, especially when it comes to economic relations.’157 Lisbon
urged Madrid to follow a similar policy, which it defined loosely as seeking a
better understanding with Washington without presenting it as an affront to
London.158 In April 1945 Baruch arrived in Lisbon and met Salazar. A Portu-
guese diplomat who visited the American embassy to sign the book of con-
dolences opened in honor of the deceased Franklin Roosevelt was invited to
see the ambassador. Baruch then engaged in tremendous praise of Salazar.
Describing the scene to Salazar, Lima Santos wrote,
Mr Baruch told me that yesterday he had had the honor of being received by you.
And then he launched into a supreme compliment, employing words of the
highest admiration. You had received him in a captivating manner and for all
issues raised, whatever their nature, you had found the fair and precise solution.
He had met and dealt with many men, but in you he had found a truly superior
spirit who had to be relied on. And upon leaving your house he had been very
moved by all that he had heard and the admiration you had awoken in him. Mr
156. AOS CP 49, letter, Lisbon, 23 October 1943, Esmeraldo Carvalhais to António de Oliveira Salazar.
157. Ibid., letter, 2 March 1945, Esmeraldo Carvalhais to António de Oliveira Salazar.
158. AOS CO NE 7, notes on a conversation between the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Spanish
ambassador, 3 March 1945.
Baruch finished this part of the conversation by saying “I left with tears in my eyes
and in my heart”.159
Despite the desire to collaborate in the war in the East, and the admiration
expressed by Baruch, the closing year of the war would continue to see new
problems emerging between Portugal and the Allies, largely because of
Salazar’s single-minded pursuit of what he perceived to be Portugal’s interest.
Salazar resented any Allied interference in Portuguese affairs, whatever its
nature, and remained decided to profit as much as possible from the war. In
July 1944, from London, Palmela warned him that the newspapers were
reporting the arrival in Lisbon of German gold for the Bank of Portugal, which
would be very negatively appreciated in London.160 Similar questioning of
Portuguese policy would soon occur over the notion of war criminals, a con-
cept which Portugal seemed slow to accept, preferring to respect pre-war
notions of the right of asylum. Palmela was warned by the British authorities
that Salazar’s silence on the matter was counter-productive and bringing the
wrong kind of attention to bear on Portugal.161 Days later, Salazar was urged by
the Foreign Office to issue a declaration about those suspected of, or charged
with, war crimes.162 This was no longer a juridical question, it had become a
political one, but Salazar resisted accepting this transition.
In September 1944, sensing that the war was ending and that the worst of
the crisis had passed, Salazar reshuffled his government. It was this new
cabinet which handled the transition from war to peacetime conditions, in the
process meeting an unexpectedly stiff political challenge from the renewed
opposition in 1945. Some dismissed it at the time as a government scraped
together from the remains of a dwindling elite, but there were some notable
figures in it, including Marcelo Caetano at the Colonial Ministry (which shows
that Salazar was willing to countenance criticism, provided it was delivered
privately) and Júlio Botelho Moniz at Interior. Santos Costa was promoted
from Undersecretary to Minister of War, a position Salazar now relinquished. It
was the Botelho Moniz’s mission to galvanize the battered União Nacional,
imbuing it with a sense of confidence it would need in forthcoming elections;
he had also to tour the whole of Portugal, ascertaining the loyalty of civil
servants and other State employees now that the international climate was
undergoing massive change. This was, given the nature of the New State, one
159. Ibid., notes on a conversation between Lima Santos and the ambassador of the United States of
America, 13 April 1945.
160. AOS CD 11, letter, 7 July 1944, Duke of Palmela to António de Oliveira Salazar.
161. AOS CD 11, ‘Secret’ letter, 4 October 1944, Duke of Palmela to António de Oliveira Salazar.
162. AOS CD 11, notes on a conversation between the Duke of Palmela and Sir Orme Sergeant, Foreign
Office, 9 October 1944.
of the most important government tasks, since loyalty and competence did not
necessarily go hand in hand, and membership of the União Nacional was never
demanded of State employees. As Minister of the Interior, Botelho Moniz
would also be nominally responsible for the transformation in October 1945 of
the PVDE into the Polícia Internacional e de Defesa do Estado (PIDE—
International Police for the Defense of the State). Just as the word
‘propaganda’ had been dropped from one of the regime’s most emblematic
creations, so too the word ‘vigilance’ was dropped from the name of its
political police—but this was essentially a cosmetic change. Costa Leite
remained at Finance, but Luís Supico Pinto was promoted Minister of the
Economy.163 Future President of the Republic Américo Tomás was appointed
Navy Minister; José Caeiro da Mata164 returned to the cabinet as Minister of
National Education.
Salazar spoke for over an hour at a Council of Ministers on 9 February
1945, carrying out what he called a political examination of conscience. He
divided his wartime activity into high, middle, and low politics (principles, prac-
tical application of the principles, personal attitudes, and interventions), and
concluded:
• where we are right: convince and fight

• where we are not right: change.165
Marcelo Caetano also spoke, and was very critical of how the country was
being governed. His list of topics entitled ‘where, in my opinion, we have not
been right’, was very extensive; one of his targets was the regime’s corpo-
ratism. As Caetano put it succinctly in his notes, ‘there has been none’.166
World War II played a vital part in Salazar’s career. Devoting himself
wholly to the diplomatic arena, in an effort—ultimately successful—to pre-
serve both Portugal’s neutrality and the colonial empire’s territorial integrity,
Salazar put his still young regime to the test. It is fair to say that its structures,
163. Clotário Luís Supico Pinto (1909–1990) graduated from the University of Lisbon with a Law degree and
quickly became involved in politics, serving as a deputy in the National Assembly before he turned thirty. In
1940 he was appointed Undersecretary of State at the Ministry of Finance. He would serve as Minister of the
Economy until February 1947. He would later be appointed President of the Corporative Chamber, and
remained a close collaborator of Salazar, best known for his help in the recruitment of cabinet members.
164. José Caeiro da Mata (1883–1963) graduated from the University of Coimbra with a degree in Law in
1905, joining its teaching staff and then moving to the University of Lisbon, where he lectured and later
became Rector. He served in three governments, as Minister of Foreign Affairs (1933–1935 and 1947–1950)
and Minister of National Education (1944–1947). He also represented Portugal at the League of Nations
(1935–38) and, briefly, Vichy (1941). Although older than Salazar, Caeiro da Mata, not immediately
associated with any existing faction, served in the government out of loyalty to the President of the Council.
165. Freire Antunes (ed.), Salazar e Caetano, doc. C 46, ‘Conselho de Ministros de 9 de Fevereiro de 1945’, p.
148.
166. Ibid., p. 149.
its principles, and its leaders—some of Salazar’s closest collaborators—were
found wanting. A country living on limited means—its vital supplies rationed
by an outside power down to the last ounce—in the middle of a general con-
flagration can only survive unscathed if its people possess a deeply ingrained
sense of equality and citizenship and if the authorities charged with the
rationing of vital goods behave as if responsible before their fellow citizens.
This was patently not the case. Corruption and abuse of privilege were rife,
and generated a wave of revulsion that effectively undermined the political
capital accrued by Salazar in his tireless efforts. Salazar would, as a result,
suffer severe setbacks in the years to come, and his style of governance, as
well as the nature of the New State, would undergo considerable changes.
Chapter VI
The Postwar World
I n October 1945, the Spanish embassy in Lisbon informed the Ministerio de

Asuntos Exteriores of the latest rumor doing the rounds in the Portuguese
capital: Salazar was about to marry, if he had not done so already.1 The bride-
to-be was Carolina Correia de Sá, daughter of the Viscount of Asseca, a widow
in her mid forties and mother of two. She had spent much of her life in
England, as part of Manuel II’s exiled court. According to the Spanish
embassy, there was nothing extraordinary in what seemed about to happen,
and it had little in the way of political consequences. Nevertheless, ‘it has
caused surprise and even astonishment in certain circles, since the head of gov-
ernment was believed to be an inveterate bachelor.’ Carolina Correia de Sá, her
name mangled, would feature prominently in Time magazine’s long article on
Salazar, published on 22 July 1946. According to this article, whose publication
would lead to the magazine’s ban in Portugal, Carolina Correia de Sá, having
been invited to a reception in honor of Queen Dona Amélia,2 and having taken
upon herself ‘the flower arrangement for the party’, had deeply impressed
Salazar, so much so that ‘he wrote her a short note. She replied with a long
letter and Salazar asked permission to call on her.’ Her influence was obvious:
Salazar was playing host more often, and his manner had become ‘less intro-
spective and austere. He takes more interest in clothes and food, and even in
1. MAE, Madrid, Política n. 513, letter, Lisbon, 13 October 1945.

2. Time erroneously described Dona Amélia as the mother of ‘Dom Duarte Nuño [sic], the pretender to the
Portuguese throne’; she was, of course, the mother of Dom Manuel II, the last king of Portugal.
The Postwar World 335
the pomp and trappings of office.’3 Franco Nogueira, writing much later,
pointed out that there was a political dimension to the rumors flying around
Lisbon:
A relationship is spoken of, a wedding, Salazar’s withdrawal to his farms in the

Beira Alta. Salazar believes marriage, and family life, to be incompatible with total
devotion to public service, to serving the State. He will relinquish power; there can
be no other conclusion.4
Salazar’s ward, Maria da Conceição de Melo Rita (better known as Micas),

as well as his governess, the redoubtable Dona Maria, were convinced that this
time round Salazar would indeed marry. Carolina’s letters, like those of her
predecessors strewn about the house, revealed the depth of her feelings. Her
fate was the same as that of those other women; as Micas writes, ‘such letters
crashed, after a certain moment, into a wall of indifference.’5 The Carolina
Correia de Sá incident is important not only as a key episode in Salazar’s
private life, but also as evidence of a generalized belief that Salazar had run his
political course as the war came to an end. The war, it seemed, had not only
exhausted Salazar physically, but it had also altered the European chess-board
to such an extent that the continuation of his rule, and of the actual New State,
no longer made sense. However, although he was tempted by the thought of
leaving Lisbon (if not actually of marrying), he decided to stay on.
It is often argued that had Salazar retired from the Presidency of the
Council after World War II, he would have exited with grace and dignity, riding
high on the success of having preserved Portugal from the war. Such a move
might also have allowed Portugal to play a more central role in the rebuilding
of Europe and the creation of its new institutions. To argue this, however, is to
ignore the circumstances in which Europe found itself in at the end of the con-
flict, and the nature of the Salazarist reform program. If, on the one hand,
there was the fear of a generalized communist seizure of power in Western
Europe, or at least of an attempt to unsettle the Iberian Peninsula, then, on the
other, the war had done nothing to ease Salazar’s distaste for parliamentary
democracy, which he judged unable to cope with the coming difficulties. More-
over, it must be remembered that Salazar had still to enjoy the benefits of a
positive international economic situation; in his mind, there was still work to be
done that he had never even been able to attempt. Far from retiring, then, the
3. ‘Portugal: How Bad is Best?’ in Time, vol. 48, 4 (July 22, 1946), pp. 28–33.
4. Franco Nogueira, Salazar vol. 4 O ataque (1945–1958) 3rd edition, (Oporto: Livraria Civilização Editora,
1986) p. 11.
5. Rita & Vieira, Os meus 35 anos, p. 106. ‘Micas’ adds that twice she asked Salazar why he had never married,
and twice she was told that his dedication to matters of State could not coexist with married life.
priority for Salazar in these circumstances, once he had decided to stay in
office, was to preserve his full freedom of action, which meant preserving the
balance of power between various groups of supporters. For those committed
to change, in any direction, the period between the end of World War II and
the start of the colonial wars, in 1961, was therefore a frustrating time, a
succession of lost opportunities. As Marcelo Caetano wrote to Salazar, in
October 1954, ‘everything, politics and administration, seems still; above all,
the inertia in creating the corporations, after the promises solemnly made, is
disheartening.’6
Portugal, 1945–1960: Economic and Infrastructural Modernization
The end of the war, surrounded as it was by political turmoil domestically

and across the globe, did not spell the end of Salazar’s worries about both the
solidity of his regime and the future of Portugal and its colonies (the two things
being, as we have seen, twinned in his mind). However, the return to peacetime
conditions held out the prospect of economic progress on a scale that had so
far eluded him. While a Europe at peace presented Portugal with an oppor-
tunity for prosperity, it also presented Salazar with a tremendous political
challenge: could his style of government, and the regime he had painstakingly
created, co-exist with the modernization of the economy? If not, what should
come first—the regime or the economy? Would Salazar still preserve his ability
to control events as the country moved forward? The years 1945–1960 are as
important a period in Salazar’s career as the 1930s. Most commentators,
because of the importance of the debate on the nature of fascism and the New
State’s relation with it, assume that the 1930s were the defining period of
Salazar’s rule, after which it lost its character. This is not the case. Just as in the
1930s Salazar—and much of Portugal—had borrowed some of the trappings
of fascism in order to survive, so too in the 1950s foreign influences would
play a crucial part in the shaping of the regime. Portugal was too small and
dependent on the outside world for the situation to be otherwise, and Salazar
was not strong enough to shape his regime from top to bottom; his energy had
to be directed towards preserving his personal power and freedom of action.
After the war Western Europe began to move towards integration, and Salazar
moved with it, trying to keep abreast of discussions on the future of the con-
tinent.
As World War II came to an end, the Portuguese government believed that it
could look forward to a period of stability. The coming peace held out the
6. Freire Antunes (ed.), Salazar e Caetano, doc. C 195, letter, 18 October 1954, Marcelo Caetano to António de
Oliveira Salazar.
promise of a return to normal international contacts and trade, of the kind that
had been fading since the Great Depression, being then obliterated by the war.
Portugal seemed to be in a good position to take advantage of this new circum-
stance, since it was seemingly able to invest in the modernization of its
economy. The State had amassed exceptional gold and foreign currency
reserves; there were added reserves in private banks which had been loath to
invest in wartime. These funds were crucial, since to move the economy for-
wards, imports of raw materials and capital goods—new industrial equip-
ment—were needed. March 1945 saw the publication of a Law of Industrial
Reorganization, drawn up by the Undersecretary for Industry, José Ferreira
Dias, previously head of the Junta de Electrificação Nacional (National Electrifica-
tion Authority). This new law built on two earlier pieces of legislation, the Law
for the Nationalization of Capital, of April 1943, and the Law of National
Electrification, of December 1944. The first had sought to overcome the
frequently mentioned reluctance of Portuguese investors to channel their
capital into productive enterprises, assigning Portuguese-controlled firms a
protected position (in some cases an exclusive position) in selected fields
identified as crucial to the national interest. Where there were foreign firms
which held a dominant position in these areas, they would be forced to sell a
majority stake in the enterprise to Portuguese investors. Wartime, it had
seemed, was the ideal moment to achieve this aim, since foreign capital had
become scarce and Portuguese capital was searching for safe investment
opportunities. But its impact would be limited, since it was restricted to the
metropolis, not the colonies, and since, even in a protected environment,
Portuguese capital did not move to take advantage of the new opportunities.
Some high-profile foreign firms, such as the Anglo-Portuguese Telephone
Company, were not affected by the law, despite its apparently unambiguous
terms.7 The second piece of legislation proclaimed that the primary aim of the
dams being built was to provide electricity for industrial development; all other
considerations—irrigation and the resulting resettlement of the rural popula-
tion—were mere side issues. The law foresaw a national electric grid to store
and distribute the energy generated by the dams, and at all levels the State
assigned itself control of the process.
Ferreira Dias hoped that the application of these laws would mark a new
departure for the Portuguese economy, one resting on a bold industrial policy.
This bold departure rested heavily on State intervention, rather than on the
simple interplay of market forces, and on an economic nationalism that would
soon show itself out of step with the rest of Western Europe. The State, in
7. Rosas, Salazarismo e fomento, p. 91.

order to lure Portuguese capital out of its hiding places, promised protected
markets, and in some cases monopolies. It promised also to coerce manu-
facturing firms into pooling their efforts, concentrating them in more rational
enterprises. The age of the artisan’s workshop was coming to an end, it was
proclaimed: the law promised that such workshops would finally be replaced
by modern, efficient, productive, and safe factories. Each industry would be
called on to reorganize itself, but if it failed to do this, the State could employ
coercion to achieve its end. Where there was no existing industry capable of
meeting a strategic national goal, it would be created from scratch. The law
unveiled five ‘core’ industries: iron and copper metallurgy, and the production
of ammonia sulfate, calcium cyanide, and cellulose. Unexciting as they may
seem, they were focused on because they relied on domestically available raw
materials and had an intimate link with agriculture (still the basis of most
Portuguese exports). Again the State allowed itself a driving role in the whole
process, pumping capital in the enterprises created to exploit these areas. Other
economic activities were presaged, such as lead smelting and the manufacture
of tires and electric conductors, which complemented enterprises that had
developed during the war, notably the oil refining company SACOR, and
Covina, a glass manufacturer. Portuguese industrialists gave to these measures,
and the promise of more government interference, a guarded welcome. Along-
side this legislation, Salazar’s government announced a new bout of investment
in infrastructure, such as the improvement of ports, roads, and railways—these
being concentrated in the hands of a single State-owned operator and, as much
as possible, electrified—and the development of the merchant navy.
Ferreira Dias was clearly the latest continuator of a long line of thinkers
who refused to accept the poverty of Portugal and its people as a given, and to
accept as axiomatic the primacy of the rural over the industrial. Fernando
Rosas describes Ferreira Dias and his supporters as being engaged in a
‘“scientific”, technical, industrializing crusade’ to modernize Portugal, over-
coming the reluctance of politicians, civil servants, and key economic players to
see industry as a force for good—and to see the pursuit of wealth as a legiti-
mate activity.8 The drive to replace imports during the World War clearly
strengthened his case, but how Salazar himself felt about the change of tack
being proposed, and how he envisaged resolving the problems it created, is
rather less obvious. The next few years would see a perplexing series of zigzags
as Salazar, anxious first and foremost to preserve his powerbase, hesitated over
which economic course to follow. On the one hand, wartime shortages and the
inadequacies of the corporative regime made it clear that something had to
8. Ibid., 101–6.
change. Wartime inflation, protests, and strikes, and the opposition to the
regime which had manifested itself over the course of the 1945 election (see
Chapter 7), meant that carrying out an improvement in the material conditions
of the population would have to be accepted as a priority for the government
and the regime. Clearly, agriculture on its own would not be able to support
both the activities of a modern country and an improvement in living
standards. On the other hand, turning his back on the powerful agricultural
lobby would represent a leap into the unknown for Salazar. Industrialization’s
proponents believed agricultural reform to be essential, since workers had to be
released for industry; those who remained behind had to earn higher wages, in
order to become consumers, and this meant a more intensive, commercial
agriculture, which itself could only come about from a deep intervention—
necessarily State-led—in the nature and geography of agricultural property.
Were Salazar to go down this route, he would be opening a veritable Pandora’s
box. The powerful rural lobby quickly showed, in its press, in the National
Assembly, and in its conferences, that it was not willing to go without a major
fight, one in which it could invoke all of the basic principles on which the New
State had been forced to rest during the 1930s and indeed the war.9 Its basic
arguments were veritable pillars of New State orthodoxy, as elaborated in the
first decade of its existence: Portugal was, and always should be, a country
whose wealth rested on the land; to lose contact with the land was to lose sight
of the ‘essential’ nation; reforms could and should be made to agriculture
which did not mean an alteration to the nature of property, but rather helped
those who already had it; and those involved in agriculture should have a say in
the transformation of their produce into marketable commodities. Farmers had
lost out during the war, because of the attempt to steady the price of basic
foodstuffs, essential for the preservation of order in the cities; they had to be
shown some good grace now that peace was coming.
In other words, having preached the virtue of the rural life, and having
described itself as the countryside bringing order to a chaotic, de-nationalized
Lisbon, the New State could not turn, without doing itself major political
damage, to all-out industrialization; having preached the virtue, if not of
poverty, then at least of modesty, Salazar could not easily advocate the national
pursuit of economic growth, and its individual corollary, the private pursuit of
wealth. Cosmopolitanism, industry, international finance, an increase in the
9. Fernando Rosas writes that ‘Capitalizing on their comfortable majority in the National Assembly, the
ruralists turned it into their principal and constant tribune, in a crescendo of criticism and protest that cul-
minated in the discussion of the industrial reorganization and stimulus bill in January 1945.’ These defenders
of the primacy of agriculture had other weapons to hand—their congresses, their grémios, and access to the
regional and national press, through which open and covert threats were made. Rosas, Salazarismo e fomento, p.
111.
numbers of the working class: this was a world of which the New State, and
Salazar, were innately suspicious. Salazar, faced by the mounting tension
gripping his economic power base, wavered. In September 1944 the rural
world scored well in the cabinet reshuffle that saw Minister of the Economy
Rafael Duque10 replaced by Luís Supico Pinto, and Ferreira Dias by Albano
Sarmento.11 This new team oversaw the passage of the Law of Industrial
Reorganization through the National Assembly, where it drew considerable
criticism, with, as Fernando Rosas points, out, very little support from the
cabinet,12 after which it was quietly parked. In the years that followed, the
agrarian world scored further notable triumphs (such as the creation, in 1946,
of an Agricultural Improvements Fund), securing the State’s support without
the promise of structural reform. Such lack of clarity in economic policy, and
the open power struggle taking place to define it, led Santos Costa to write,
Some of the people to whom I have spoken—and they are but a few, not even
half a dozen—have left me with the impression that the economic portfolio is, at
this moment, a sacrificial post, destined to immolate those who come near it, with
nothing positive or concrete having been accomplished. To appoint someone to
that portfolio is the same as to cast one’s worst enemy into hell.13
Occasionally, and perhaps understandably, given his dispersal over so

many vital issues, one gets the impression that Salazar was not particularly con-
cerned with what was happening on the economic front. Writing to Marcelo
Caetano, in October 1946, Salazar claimed that ‘I think that the most serious
complaints are now leveled against industrial conditioning, where, it seems,
10. Rafael Duque (1893–1969) graduated with a degree in Law from the University of Coimbra, and
practiced as a lawyer while administering his estate in the province of Ribatejo. He was invited by Salazar to
serve as Minister of Agriculture in 1934, but his plans for reform, centered on irrigation and internal
colonization, were misunderstood by the lavoura, and halted by the war. In 1940 he was promoted to the new
Ministry of the Economy, serving there until 1944. He continued to serve the New State as a deputy in the
National Assembly.
11. Albano do Carmo Rodrigues Sarmento (1889–1970) graduated with a degree in Philosophy from the
University of Coimbra, and in Civil Engineering from the University of Ghent (Belgium). He lectured in the
University of Oporto and held a number of managerial positions in among others, mining and railway firms,
and in 1942 was asked to serve as mayor of Oporto. Two years later, he was brought into the cabinet as
Undersecretary of Commerce and Industry, remaining in this post until 1946. He also served as procurador in
three Corporative Chambers, and was a great defender of the interests of Oporto, whose expansion he
contributed to.
12. Rosas, Salazarismo e fomento, p. 120. One supporter, not surprisingly, was Ezequiel de Campos, who wrote,
‘I was pleased to see that what I preached twenty-five years ago is about to be carried out by the government.
I was right [...]’. AOS CP 45, letter, Leça do Bailio, 24 May 1945, Ezequiel de Campos to António de Oliveira
Salazar.
13. AOS CO PC 3K, letter, Lisbon, 22 December 1946, Santos Costa to António de Oliveira Salazar.
Incredibly, Santos Costa went on to offer his services to Salazar as Minister of the Economy, should he find
no other candidate for the position.
atrocities have been carried out.’14 If such ‘atrocities’ had been committed, mis-
takes which marred the performance of his governments, he might have shown
some contriteness. Salazar distrusted economic liberalism, and the market,
because they made him vulnerable; he distrusted powerful economic groups,
with their incessant demands; he distrusted even a powerful middle class,
whose values and habits lay beyond his control. Economic freedom has
political consequences, something which Salazar understood very well. He
would eventually embrace it, as the price to pay for closer economic contact
with the rest of Europe, but would never be comfortable with the drift towards
a laissez-faire approach: it was, at best, a necessary evil. In any case, progress
would prove to be slow:
The corporatist model established the infrastructure for the development of

Portuguese capitalism in the 1950s. The debate on the impact of its “modernizing”
legacy is, however, a far from peaceful one: the system was based on protection-
ism, import substitution, the development of infrastructure, and the containment
of labor. Simply speaking, it favored traditional agriculture and prolonged its social
importance without modernizing technology; it “froze” the weak and dispersed
traditional industrial sectors in time, guaranteeing protected markets in the
colonies; it offered protected employment to skilled workers at miserable wages,
maintaining a good number of the active population occupied with subsistence
farming. By the 1950s this part of the population again began to emigrate.15
In February 1947 the economic pendulum swung again towards the

modernizers, with Daniel Barbosa16 taking over the Economy portfolio from a
politically worn-out Supico Pinto. Barbosa would become one of the emblema-
tic figures of the late 1940s in Portugal, a man driven by the desire to propel
Portugal’s economy forward through industrial development. His later corre-
spondence with Salazar, as we will see, was also remarkable for the forth-
rightness which characterized it. Barbosa’s time in office proved to be a deeply
frustrating one, however, since instead of concentrating on his cherished plans,
he was forced instead to resolve the vital issue of the lack of essential goods on
the shelves. The postwar harvests being poor, Portugal had to resort to massive
imports of supplies (according to one source, ‘imports in real terms rose by
14. Freire Antunes (ed.), Salazar e Caetano, doc. S 65, letter, 18 October 1946, António de Oliveira Salazar to
Marcelo Caetano, p. 197.
16. Daniel Maria Vieira Barbosa (1909–1986) graduated from the University of Oporto with a degree in Civil
Engineering in 1935, joining its lecturing staff. He served as civil governor of Funchal, being then a
somewhat surprising choice for Minister of the Economy in 1947. Popular with consumers, Barbosa found
himself the target of a concerted campaign which accused him of wasting public resources, and resigned the
following year. He continued to serve in the National Assembly, and his subsequent correspondence with
Salazar is remarkable for its forthright nature.
52.4 percent in 1946 and 34.3% in 1947’17). However, since European
economies were still in shock from the war, there was simply no market for
Portuguese exports, none of which was essential in peacetime. A shattered
Germany, which in 1938 had accounted for 13.1% of Portuguese exports,
accounted, in 1947, for a mere 0.3%.18 Meanwhile, imports from the United
States, which in 1938 had accounted for 11.6% of Portuguese imports, shot up,
in 1947, to 31.6% (falling again, by 1952, to 13.7%).19 Precious national
reserves, carefully amassed during the war, had now to be spent on purchasing
supplies for Portuguese cities; moneys accumulated during the lean war years
were now spent at prodigious pace on basic foodstuffs at a time when these
were still overpriced due to lingering economic effects of the war. Given the
1945 elections, the lack of affordable supplies was a serious problem, one
which affected the regime’s popularity, and possibly even its survival. A long
and vital Council of Ministers’ meeting, from 30 September to 4 October,
spent much of its time discussing the high prices and limited availability of
essential supplies; one of the problems was that the fiscally conservative Supico
Pinto had been the victim of public criticism by the two military ministers,
Santos Costa and Botelho Moniz, who had broken ranks with his cabinet
colleague and made a populist call for the protection of consumers.20 Daniel
Barbosa’s corrective action had immediate reflexes on public opinion, a
number of reports indicating that Barbosa was becoming very popular across
the country.21 But the situation was not tenable for long, since Salazar remained
sensitive to criticism when it came from financial circles, which feared the
growing imbalance in the country’s accounts, with its consequences for the
escudo’s stability. Producers, meanwhile, railed against deflation, and a steady
campaign of attrition led to Daniel Barbosa’s resignation in the fall of 1948,
despite continued support from Carmona and Salazar.22 According to Marcelo
Caetano, an ally of Barbosa, writing some days before the final crisis,
17. César das Neves, ‘Portuguese Postwar Growth’, p. 337.

18. Nicolau Andresen Leitão, Estado Novo, Democracia e Europa, 1947–1986 (Lisbon: ICS, 2007), p. 208.
19. Andresen Leitão, Estado Novo, p. 206.
20. Freire Antunes (ed.), Salazar e Caetano, doc. C 90, ‘Conselho de Ministros de 30 de Setembro de 1946 com
continuação em 1, 2, 3 e 4 de Outubro’, p. 195.
21. See, for example, the monthly reports on the state of military and civilian morale contained in AOS CO
GR 1D.
22. One episode, in August-September 1947, serves to highlight the pressure surrounding Daniel Barbosa.
When the largely autonomous Undersecretary of State for Agriculture resigned, Barbosa suggested that his
position might be left vacant for a time, so that he might get to know the brief better, and coordinate
economic policy for all areas. Salazar did not agree; if on the one hand the administrative side of the job
would swamp Barbosa, then, on the other, ‘it is not wise to wound the pride of the lavoura, which has always
looked forward, whenever possible, to having its own Ministry. It is my opinion that you should not be
without an Undersecretary of State for Agriculture beyond the short period of time in which it might seem
that a new person was being sought.’ AOS CP 23, letter, 27 August 1947, António de Oliveira Salazar to
Daniel Barbosa. Barbosa, however, held out, and the replacement for Albano Homem de Melo, Luís
Quartim Graça, was appointed only on 12 July 1948—and this because the rural lobby was believed to be
There are great complaints in the country against the Minister of the Economy.
Despite them (and there have always been complaints against ministers of the
Economy), it is undeniable that he enjoys a certain prestige, especially among the
lower classes in the cities, and that his exit will be exploited as a plutocratic
triumph (which would, unfortunately, be true).23
In many ways, however, this was a pointless crisis, since there was little
that the government could do to remedy the situation. Conditions in postwar
Europe had revealed a set of inescapable truths: that political stability in
Portugal now depended on an improved standard of living, a consequence of
economic growth; that economic growth could only be brought about by a
modernization of the economy, which depended, in turn, on an increase in
Portuguese exports to finance the purchase of capital goods and raw materials;
and that given the nature of Portuguese exports, the sole reliable markets for
Portuguese exports were to be found in the advanced economies of Western
Europe. All of these being the case, Portugal, whatever Salazar’s misgivings,
had to hope for a swift recovery of the various European economies, and for
their convergence into a large economic space, to which Portugal must abso-
lutely belong. César das Neves writes, ‘“progress” was to become the key word
of the regime.’24 Progress, as a program for the future, had an added advantage.
In a poor but conservative country, progress would only be embraced if it was
controlled, if the surge forward did not come at too great a cost to Portuguese
society. In other words, progress required a firm hand to guide the country
through its implementation. It required Salazar. He himself wrote, in the
preface to the fourth edition of the first volume of his collected speeches, pub-
lished in 1948, that
the demands of the Portuguese economy, be it in terms of its re-equip-

ment, be it in terms of new endeavors, are of such magnitude that neither
category would be viable without the extraordinary accumulation of
reserves, the re-education of Portuguese capital, and an increase in the pro-
ductivity of labor.25
Salazar went on, showing that reserves had been husbanded by the State; that
capital had learned to trust in the State, investing in its financial offerings, and
organizing a meeting from which would emerge a plea to Salazar for the urgent appointment, if not of a
Minister of Agriculture, at least an Undersecretary of State. AOS CP 23, letter, Lisbon, 22 June 1948, Daniel
Barbosa to António de Oliveira Salazar.
23. Freire Antunes (ed.), Salazar e Caetano, doc. C 120, letter, Oporto, 30 September 1948, Marcelo Caetano
to António de Oliveira Salazar, p. 238.
25. António de Oliveira Salazar, Antologia, 1919–1966 (Coimbra: Coimbra Editora, 1966), p. 160.
that it was increasingly willing to back the private enterprises supported by the
State, although not yet ready to commit itself to the ‘economic mise-en-valeur of
the Metropolis and the Colonies’; and that labor, in order to play its part,
would have to learn a valuable lesson: that one learns to work best when one
works with competent bosses.26 Caution and prudence had to be the hallmarks
of the plan, because of the international situation. Thoughts were turning
across the West to the possibility of a new war, this time against communism.
Should the United States and Britain choose to rearm, the economic conse-
quences would be considerable—and it was impossible to predict how much
Portugal would have to pay in order to play its part in the defense of the West.
In such circumstances, to opt for an open-ended program of change was im-
possible; but a modest program, designed to address some of the most urgent
necessities of the people, was still desirable.27
This being Salazar’s attitude, Daniel Barbosa’s resignation must have come
as no surprise. As so often happened in the New State, it was dressed up as a
personal question. On 11 October 1948 he wrote Salazar stating that he could
no longer continue to work in an executive that contained Costa Leite as
Minister of Finance: ‘I have endured conflicts and insults, in these twenty
months of government, which wounded me deeply, and from you I suffered
acts of negligence which hurt me, for I did not deserve them—but all will heal
with time.’28 Having been warned that morning by Cancela de Abreu, the
Minister of the Interior, that this resignation letter was on its way, Salazar
consulted Marcelo Caetano once it had arrived, before replying, on the
morning of the following day. Salazar asked Barbosa to reconsider and to stay
at least until the presidential election: ‘At that moment the departure of a
minister would not be endowed with special meaning and would not run the
risk of suggesting fundamental alterations to the government’s economic
policy.’29 Salazar asked Barbosa to come see him that evening. In the after-
noon, though, Salazar called on President Carmona to inform him of what was
happening. The meeting with Barbosa lasted for an hour, with no visible result.
On 13 October, Salazar conferred with Costa Leite for three hours, and the
two men together drafted a second letter to Barbosa: in it, Salazar admitted that
26. Ibid., pp 160–61.

27. Ibid., p. 162. In this speech to the União Nacional on 12 December 1950, Salazar alluded to Ezequiel de
Campos, without mentioning his name: ‘An old friend sends me, from time to time, a reminder of his
worries, and always commends to my care these two simple and yet fundamental things: bread and hoe. In this
abbreviation I discern a program of investment in irrigation, fertilizers, electricity and iron, at least for the
hoe and the plough […]’
28. AOS CP 23, letter, Lisbon, 11 October 1948, Daniel Barbosa to António de Oliveira Salazar.
29. AOS CP 23, draft of letter, Lisbon, 12 October 1948, António de Oliveira Salazar to Daniel Barbosa.
Salazar professed himself to be ‘painfully surprised’ by Barbosa’s accusations, and explained that when he
had earlier pledged to investigate the incidents about which Barbosa had complained, he had not established
a time limit for doing so.
there had been delays in dealing with questions that arose within the Ministry
of the Economy, but such delays had been the result of excessive work, not of
any opposition to an economic strategy adopted by the whole government.30
On 14 October Daniel Barbosa replied, this time widening the scope of his
complaint:
[…] I believe it sufficient, to provide you with the answer I owe you, to focus on
the following point: for organic reasons, the Ministry of Finance enjoys hegemony
over all other ministries, a hegemony which I accept for reasons that I need not
now address.
However, only when imbued with a spirit of absolute trust in whosoever should
hold that portfolio can one accept such subordination without reaction and
conflict: herein lies the real problem, from which there emerged, as a lamentable
consequence, a personal question.31
A loss of trust in the Minister of Finance, caused by countless delays in

addressing the issues raised by him, made it impossible for Daniel Barbosa to
continue in his position. Salazar knew the game was up. That day he spoke to
the Undersecretary of State for Commerce, José Augusto Correia de Barros,32
Albino dos Reis, and Marcelo Caetano, who had already sounded the next
Minister of the Economy: António Castro Fernandes. At 7 p.m., Castro
Fernandes himself arrived at Salazar’s residence; the crisis was over.
Progress had to come, and did; the country’s economy had to move
forward, and without a doubt it did. An emblematic display of this progress
was the renewal of the country’s merchant marine, especially the purchase, by
the Companhia Colonial de Navegação, of brand-new cruise liners, the Vera Cruz
and the Santa Maria, for the Brazil run. The Navy Minister, Américo Tomás,33
kept Salazar abreast of their progress and was occasionally called to account for
any failings in their operation, as reported by the press.34 Nevertheless, life for
most Portuguese remained very hard. It was to prove the regime’s good
30. AOS CP 23, draft of letter, Lisbon, 13 October 1948, António de Oliveira Salazar to Daniel Barbosa.
31. AOS CP 23, letter, Lisbon, 14 October 1948, Daniel Barbosa to António de Oliveira Salazar.
32. Salazar’s diary describes the conversation in the following manner: ‘The last answer from the Minister of
the Economy—exchange of views about his desire to retire—real causes’.
33. Américo Deus Rodrigues Tomás (1894–1987) entered the navy in 1914. In 1936 he was asked to serve as
the head of the Minister of the Navy’s cabinet. In 1944 he replaced Ortins de Bettencourt as Minister, and
remained in that position until 1958, when he became President of the Republic. This natural inclination not
to rock the boat, allied to the regime’s own immobility, meant that he would still be President in 1974, when
the army put an end to the New State’ long existence.
34. At other times, the news was good. Américo Tomás cabled from Rio, after the maiden voyage of the
Santa Maria, that ‘docked side-by-side the Santa Maria and the Vera Cruz are today the reason for the
legitimate pride of the Portuguese in Rio de Janeiro. Experiencing the enormous joy of the Portuguese
colony I could not but salute warmly and respectfully Your Excellency’. AOS CP 269, telegram, Rio de
Janeiro, 8 December 1953, Américo Tomás to António de Oliveira Salazar.
fortune, as we will see in greater detail, that Europe’s reconstruction and then
the economic boom that lasted until the 1970s generated a seemingly inex-
haustible demand for labor. Mass emigration to the countries beyond the
Pyrenees, in the 1960s, while showing just how much the Portuguese were
willing to endure in order to escape their life in still-rural Portugal, also reduced
the pressure on the government to deliver improvements in living standards.
Salazar knew fully well that poverty remained widespread; there was no
shortage of warnings from friends and supporters about the realities of life
beyond the high walls of his residence in São Bento, or the complete failure of
corporatism as a doctrine capable of mobilizing all sectors of the economy and
of society. Without direct government intervention, now implemented through
the Ministry of the Corporations and Social Welfare, the system would fall
apart. An Azorean deputy, Armando Cândido de Medeiros, who defended the
systematic settlement of Portuguese in Africa, detailed, in a letter to Salazar,
conditions in his native islands: ‘In March 1950 there was a survey about the
number of malnourished children frequenting the schools of the district of
Ponta Delgada. Of the 14,655 who were enrolled, 1,450 had not eaten lunch
and 1,220 had not eaten dinner.’35 Caetano, writing to Salazar on his return to
Lisbon after the summer holidays of 1954, did not shirk the issue:
I had a few days of excellent rest, such as I do not recall in very many years. I had
the opportunity to make a number of trips around Trás-os-Montes and Minho: I
saw magnificent works, but I cannot say that I was comforted by the rest: much
poverty, incredibly low salaries, no respect for working hours in industry and
public works, exploitation of minors; the Casas do Povo reduced to mere folklore
museums, etc.36
Later that year Salazar was informed that a deputy, Camilo de Mendonça, was
considering raising the issue of salaries in the National Assembly, since he dis-
agreed completely with the policy being followed: ‘He defends that salaries are
very low and that it is important to raise the population’s purchasing power,
35. AOS CP 174, letter, Lisbon, 11 February 1953. In the letter, Cândido de Medeiros included individual
cases that he had refrained from mentioning in his speech to the National Assembly on over-population
(Diário das Sessões, 3 March 1952): ‘I could present some tableaux which, in their descriptive power, are most
eloquent, but I do not want it said that I exploit the social tragedy, when my intention is not to speculate
with the truth, but rather to find solutions for it.’ In the letter, Cândido de Medeiros mentioned that he had
discussed his intervention with Mário de Figueiredo and with Albino dos Reis, as a result of which ‘I changed
much […] I erased much’; he mentioned as well the fact that in 1950 37,000 bags of second-hand clothing
and shoes had arrived in the Azores from North America. It was thanks to these items, and those brought by
returning emigrants, that the people of the islands could clothe themselves. ‘“Were it nor for America, we
would have nothing to wear”: one hears this said frequently. What such a lament could produce in the
political and social arenas, Your Excellency can guess better than anyone else.’
36. Freire Antunes (ed.), Salazar e Caetano, doc. C 194, letter, 27 September 1954, Marcelo Caetano to
through an improvement in wages and in the salaries of civil servants. He
added that this policy should be accompanied by measures designed to prevent
the accumulation of fortunes and to encourage greater investment in the
economic development of the country.’37
The growing maturity of Portuguese economic experts, and their desire to
be in the vanguard of European practice, led to the appearance, in 1953, of the
First Economic Plan, the first of many that would follow over the course of
the next three decades. The State made clear where it would be spending its
development capital over the course of the six years covering 1953-1958 (it did
not as yet issue ‘guidelines for the rest of the economy’).38 The largest recipient
of government investment was to be the production of electricity; this was
followed by transport and communications. Investment was also to be carried
out in basic industries, those capable of underpinning further development:
iron, cellulose and paper, fertilizers, and oil refining. Education brought up the
rear, behind agriculture; both were largely ignored. The Plan, standing along-
side reforms to industrial conditioning, was designed above all to ensure that
new factories would be viable. It laid the foundation for the massive develop-
ment of the Portuguese economy in the 1960s. Growth, which was achieved,
was measured. Launching the plan, Salazar, while emphasizing the disciplining
effects that planning would have on the naturally chaotic Portuguese society,
also spoke also of its basic aim:
We should not be immodest as we weigh up, launch, and execute our plan for the
next six years. But we are entitled to feel proud to state that it springs from, and
integrates itself, in the noble intention of providing, not with literary phrases but
with concrete, tangible, realities, a plough for every arm, a home for every family,
and bread for every mouth.39
Marcelo Caetano, in his memoirs, was keen to stress how the Plan was
accompanied by a renewed drive towards adult education, in the hope of
reducing illiteracy, still abnormally high by European standards.40 He also pro-
vided a verdict on the Plan: during its six years, the population increased by
300,000 people and GNP grew by 25%, being kept down only by lingering
problems in agriculture, worsened by a series of poor harvests.41
37. AOS CP 110, letter, Lisbon, 20 December 1954, Soares da Fonseca to António de Oliveira Salazar.
39. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘O Plano de Fomento—Princípios e pressupostos’ in Discursos e notas políticas,
vol. 5 1951–1958 (Coimbra: Coimbra Editora, 1959), p. 126.
40. Marcelo Caetano, Minhas memórias de Salazar, 4th edition (Lisbon: Verbo, 2000; reprinted 2006), p. 578.
41. Caetano, Minhas memórias, p. 581.
Portugal continued to welcome foreign investment, although to outsiders
there seemed to be some capriciousness in the decisions to accept, or reject,
foreign capital. Attempting to clarify this matter, after a request from the
British ambassador in relation to a deal involving the Rio Tinto mining
concern, Salazar wrote that
As a rule, the government views as sympathetic and useful the collaboration of

foreign capital, provided that it restricts itself to the economic field and does not
have political ends. Our economy needs the support of that capital in order to
develop itself and the government acts in accordance with that need, that is, it
recognizes and guarantees its existence and worth, and assures its transfer abroad,
or the transfer of its dividends.
Salazar continued, ‘we are nationalists in the economic arena, but we mean
by that nationalism only this: the integration of foreign capital and technique,
without denying their origin and individuality, in the national economy.’42 In
other words, foreign investment was welcome provided it did not upset the
prevailing political order.
The Search for a Place in Europe
If the decisive push for the modernization of the economy came because
of domestic politics, then the shape adopted by that modernization was the
result of the process of European integration, from which Salazar realized that
Portugal could not be excluded. This was not, however, a Damascene conver-
sion to supranationalist doctrines: it was a gradual evolution towards the accep-
tance of partnership with the rest of Europe, one which left many misgivings
in its wake. Supranationalism was a threat to both Portugal and Salazar’s
power; the evolving European ideal posed a direct challenge to the New State’s
authoritarian principles, and had thus to be combated.43 Salazar was a
nationalist; nations were for him the basic building blocks of his ideal world
order, and any attempt to build a new world order which ignored them was, he
believed, doomed to fail. Salazar was especially suspicious of the engine driving
the European ideal forward, which he identified as American diplomacy. In a
speech delivered in November 1947, Salazar warned that Europe must be
aware of implications of American aid, and must find within itself the energy
for renewal; it was not yet too late for it to do so, since Africa and its resources
42. AOS CO NE 2E2, letter, Lisbon, 23 March 1953, António de Oliveira Salazar to Sir Nigel Ronald.
43. Andresen Leitão also points out the inherent danger of federalism, which might be applied to the
Portuguese empire, with disastrous consequences for Portugal’s place within it and for the New State’s
political principles and methods. Andresen Leitão, Estado Novo, p. 59.
were still available to Europe. One can never, with Salazar, discount any
reasons for the delivery of such a powerful speech; it may have been delivered
as part of the strategy for extracting the best possible deal from the United
States in return for the continued use of the Azores base, or even to frighten
away investigations over the acceptance by the Bank of Portugal of Nazi gold
of illegal provenance. Still, sentiments similar to those of the speech can be
found in a letter to the Duke of Palmela, in October 1948,44 at a time when a
major American initiative on European defense was awaited. In this document
Salazar, having taken credit for the notion of a Western bloc (Western Europe
and Africa, aided by the United States) capable of standing up to Moscow,
went on to describe the twin dangers that faced this bloc: the ideas of ‘im-
penitent ideologues’ strengthened by those whom fear had deprived of reason
(these two groups were, in a concerted effort, calling for a European federa-
tion), and the conception of Europe held by American policy makers, who
sought to save Western Europe by applying their own principles to it: a single
sovereign European state was Washington’s answer to Europe’s problems. It
was one thing to cooperate on the material issues involved in the application of
the Marshall Plan, Salazar warned, but quite another to pool sovereignty.
Salazar added that many of those exploring such possibilities were doing so
only to keep the United States active in Europe, trading away their countries’
future in return for immediate military protection. Portugal, by virtue of her
geographical position and her treaties, did not have to follow suit.
It has been suggested that Salazar was more concerned with keeping up
appearances of national sovereignty than actually preserving it: he would prove
quite pragmatic, in fact, when it came to concrete actions. Thus, for example,
while maintaining a guarded public stance on the issue, he had looked forward
to Portugal’s participation in the United Nations, until it was vetoed by the
USSR, along with that of other wartime neutrals, in August 1946. Moreover,
his actions on Europe spoke louder than his words. Europe was largely
helpless in the wake of World War II. A serious commercial and financial crisis
threatened to destroy what remained of Western Europe’s economy, at a time
when Eastern Europe was increasingly under Moscow’s control. The United
States was forced to intervene, doing so through the European Recovery Plan
(ERP), better known as the Marshall Plan. One of the most important stipula-
tions of the ERP was that Europeans must cooperate in the application of the
funds made available by Washington; for this purpose the organization for
European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) was created. Salazar, initially,
seemed to be totally opposed to the basic premises of the Plan. He refused to
44. AOS CP 100, letter, Lisbon, 25 October 1948, António de Oliveira Salazar to the Duke of Palmela.
agree that European countries lacked the resources necessary to ensure their
reconstruction and that, as a result, they needed massive outside help, which
only the USA could provide. He also rejected the notion that such aid could
only be used properly if the countries of Europe cooperated with each other.45
Despite this unrealistic stance, however, Portugal was involved from the start
as a founding member of OEEC, participating in the negotiations that
surrounded the Plan—even if for a time its representatives announced that the
country did not need foreign aid46 and that it saw itself as a potential donor,
along with the United States and Switzerland.47
What Portugal needed, above all, was the resumption of international
trade: that was what drove it to be one of the ‘sixteen’ present, in Paris, in April
1948, as the OEEC was brought into being. In order to fund its moderniza-
tion, Portugal had to import capital goods and raw materials, as well as bring in
essential goods. To afford these, it had to find markets for its own export
products, which were generally of low value and not essential. By 1948, the
effects of poor harvests and a lack of foreign markets had already led to a
worsening of the balance of payments and a destabilization of the country’s
finances. Inflation was on the rise again, threatening social stability. Thus, in
September, Portugal’s initial haughty attitude to the ERP came to an abrupt
halt. American aid was suddenly acceptable to the Portuguese government, and
the more the better, since attempts to secure credit outside the context of ERP
had failed. In November 1948 Portugal presented the OEEC with a plan for
economic reconstruction, to last until 1952-3, which required 625 million
dollars (100.6 million for 1949–50 alone). A lot less money was in fact pro-
vided between 1949 and 1951: 54 million dollars of direct aid and 18.3 million
of indirect aid.48 There was considerable disappointment in the Portuguese
government and in those economic circles which were betting on industrializa-
tion.49 But this aid in fact ended in 1951. Once the financial situation in
Portugal had been righted, Portugal did not seek further Marshall aid.
ERP funds helped to overturn the deficit of payments by relieving the
government of the need to fund projects vital for the industrialization of
Portugal, such as the construction of hydro-electric dams, an improvement in
the road network, and the import of essential goods. The prioritization of the
country’s needs for ERP purposes also provided the necessary experience for
the future elaboration of economic plans. ERP funds for Portugal may have
been smaller than Lisbon had hoped in the fall of 1948, and a mere drop in the
45. Fernanda Rollo ‘Salazar e a construção europeia’ in Penélope 18 (1998), pp. 51–76.
46. Ibid., p. 57.
48. Ibid., p. 45.
49. Rollo, ‘Salazar e a construção’, p. 63.
ocean of American aid to Europe, but what was really important about the
whole experience was membership of the OEEC and all that flowed from it:
‘international economic obligations increased, as if the country had been seized
by a cyclone. Portugal was one of the founding members of the European Pay-
ments Union (EPU), whose aim was to fulfill the OEEC’s objective of im-
proving the international payments system, heretofore based on bilateral agree-
ments and inconvertible currencies.’50 Buoyed by the resumption of normal
trade patterns, and the Korean War, Portuguese exports began to find their
markets once more, and the balance of payments righted itself. The OEEC im-
posed a dropping of foreign tariffs by Lisbon, and this was accepted; belonging
and helping to shape decisions alongside other governments was better than
isolation. The OEEC also demanded annual reports on the state of the
economy, drafted in accordance with the organization’s guidelines;51 these too
were complied with. There was no longer a hiding place on economic matters,
a private sphere which the government could manipulate for its own purposes.
Salazar’s ‘policy of truth’ was no longer a high-minded option; it was an inter-
national obligation to be met in yearly intervals.
Membership of the OEEC, while an economic necessity, was also a
practical demonstration of Portugal’s status as a Western country, part of a
group banding together for protection in the face of the Soviet threat. Salazar
had spoken of the impossibility of remaining neutral in a future conflict, which
meant, in effect, accepting an active role in a putative confrontation with the
USSR. It was natural, thus, for Portugal, in 1949, to be one of NATO’s
founding members. The Portuguese wished to belong to NATO, and the
Americans wanted them there, thanks to the continued strategic importance of
the Azores.52 In these circumstances, Portugal’s wartime neutrality was largely
meaningless, as was the nature of Portuguese politics, at odds with the pre-
vailing democratic culture to be found in NATO. The contrast between Salazar
and Franco at this stage is self-evident. By joining in the elaboration of NATO,
Salazar could pose domestically as a valued member of the West; Franco, how-
ever, remained an embarrassment to that same West, a throwback to the
1930s.53 Membership of NATO, in effect a way of recognizing American hege-
50. Andresen Leitão, Estado Novo, pp. 46–47.

51. Ibid., p. 47.
52. In February 1948 an agreement was signed between Portugal and the United States (whose military had
remained on the islands once the war was over) allowing the latter to make use of the Azores base for the
next five years. By this time the importance of the Lagens base had grown well beyond its initial anti-sub-
marine role.
53. As we have seen, Salazar invested much time and effort into the attempt to bring about the reconciliation
of Spain and the West. For him, a restoration of the Spanish monarchy to be carried out by Franco, despite
the fact that this would mean the Generalissimo’s political retirement, was the way forward, and Salazar was
willing to argue this point with Nicolás Franco: ‘I told the ambassador what I had already told him before:
that we fear that the opportunity to make a monarchy will be lost, so that the only alternative left will be to
mony, and accepting the passing of the British Alliance’s overall importance,
allowed for further economic and military aid, relieving the government of
some of the costs of maintaining an efficient fighting force (and, of course, of
keeping officers happy and out of politics).54 From then on, thus, and despite
occasional flashes of hostility, Salazar accepted the basic Western pecking
order, even if he would privately and publicly bemoan the effects of American
influence, and use every conceivable opportunity to press the case for inclusion
of Spain in the Atlantic alliance.55 Joining NATO also required a smoothing of
ruffled Spanish feathers, with Salazar assuring Franco that Portugal would
consult with Spain before stating its position in NATO matters affecting the
Iberian Peninsula.56
The early moves to cement NATO meant that in February 1952 the West
came to Lisbon, as Salazar played host—from afar—to a summit of the
Atlantic Alliance held in Lisbon, the meetings taking place in the Instituto
Superior Técnico. One by one Salazar met the leaders of the Allied delegations,
and deployed his considerable charm, making quite an impression on some.
On 19 February Salazar lunched with Belgian diplomat André de Staerck,
hearing his praise for the Portuguese organization of the summit and dis-
cussing the possibility of a European army as they strolled in the park at São
Bento; that evening, Salazar discussed German rearmament and the waning of
French objections to it with W. Averell Harriman. On 21 February it was the
turn of Belgium’s van Zeeland, with whom Salazar talked of the European
economic situation, notably the crisis in the European Payments Union, the
difficulties in paying for rearmament, and the special conditions colonial
powers found themselves in. The following day, Salazar interrupted a Council
of Ministers for External Commerce to meet Anthony Eden, with whom he
had a ‘vague conversation’ recounting war stories before discussing the state of
make a republic […] the monarchy must be made and supported by those who carried out the revolution and
who serve the Generalissimo […]’. AOS CO NE 7, notes on a conversation between the Minister of Foreign
Affairs and Nicolás Franco, 3 April 1946.
54. Salazar addressed a special session of the National Assembly on the subject of NATO (25 July 1949),
preceding the vote to join the organization, which took place two days later. Salazar took the opportunity to
vindicate his views about the ‘mistakes’ made by the Allies in their handling of World War II: in seeking to
destroy the possibility of German hegemony, they had made possible a Soviet hegemony. Salazar’s view of
the conflict’s outcome was that ‘if glory belonged to some, victory effectively belonged to others.’ The whole
of the West now had to bear the consequences.
55. An already referred to letter to the Duke of Palmela, on 25 October 1948, outlined Salazar’ strategic
thinking and the importance that Spain played in it. From his conversations with military leaders, Salazar had
formed the view that the Pyrenees formed the only impenetrable line of defense against a Soviet attack; only
there could the initial Soviet onslaught be halted. The Peninsula was thus vital as a staging area for the Allied
counter-attack that would, in time, defeat the Red Army. This could only occur, of course, if Spain was
included in the alliance. That this strategic view chimed was in harmony with Salazar’s political needs was,
however, more than a coincidence.
56. AOS CD 10, memorandum on conversation between the Portuguese ambassador in Madrid, António
Carneiro Pacheco, and the Spanish Minister for External Affairs, Alberto Martín Artajo, 30 April 1949.
relations between the two countries, the conference taking place, the future
seat of NATO, and the British position in the face of the proposed European
Defense Community. On 23 February Salazar played host to Dean Acheson,
who read out a message from President Harry S. Truman on the subject of the
Azores; Salazar then brought the conversation around to the need to include
Spain in the defense of the West and America’s opinion on a war with the
Soviet Union—was it imminent or not? That afternoon, it was the turn of
France, with Prime Minister Faure heading a delegation that discussed French
politics, the nature of the political parties in France, and the role of the French
Communist Party; Salazar rounded off the discussion by speaking of France’s
intellectual influence in Portugal (although one can imagine that his own
intellectual influences were different to those of his interlocutors). After a
second meeting with de Staercke, on 24 February, Salazar concluded the
meetings by speaking to Italy’s Alcide de Gasperi on the 26th. Italian politics
were discussed, as was Lisbon, which de Gasperi claimed to be impressed by,
notably in terms of social housing.
This was not the end of this round of talks, however. Consistent with his
policy of integrating Spain into the West, Salazar then made a car journey to
Ciudad Rodrigo, in Spain, to appraise Franco of the international situation; he
left in the afternoon of 14 April, arriving at the summit in time for dinner. That
night the first of three conversations with Franco was held. The mood was
somber, with Franco especially despondent about the state of Europe. The
possibility of a communist victory in local elections in Rome, and the
implications for the Holy See, was one issue the two men addressed; others
were the possibilities of defense of Western Europe, given the state of
Germany, Italy, and France; the economic situation of Spain; and Spain’s
program of dam building and irrigation, leading to internal colonization. At 3
p.m. of 15 April, Salazar started the trip back to Portugal, arriving at Santa
Comba Dão four hours later. On the journey to and from Spain Salazar and
Foreign Minister Paulo Cunha discussed internal matters of the MNE.
Whatever the intrinsic value of the discussions he engaged in, this series of
meetings was highly beneficial to Salazar, who, as ever, made a deep impression
on his interlocutors. A year later, on Salazar’s sixty-fourth birthday, Robert
Schuman, one of the founding fathers of the European Economic Community,
would write,
I am still under the effect of the conversation you were kind enough to have with
me in February 1952 […] You gave me a lesson in serenity, of firmness and of
clear-sightedness that will never lose its value for me, even if our problems and
our paths are not always the same. I ask Providence to give you the strength and
the courage to last a long time in your never-ending labors.57
Many other European leaders would meet Salazar in these years. In

September 1953 Eamon de Valera, who shared many traits with Salazar, called
into Lisbon as part of a religious journey across southwest Europe; Salazar,
who had long expressed an interest in meeting the Irish leader, interrupted his
holiday in Santa Comba Dão to meet de Valera. As he departed Lisbon, de
Valera cabled Salazar that ‘we wish well to the Portuguese nation and our
prayer is that it may continue to advance and prosper and that you may long be
spared to guide its destiny.’58
There is a great gap between economic cooperation, such as that
prescribed by the OEEC, and actual integration leading to the surrender of
national sovereignty to an international body. Salazar and his ministers viewed
the latter with suspicion; the Portuguese remained aloof from all early postwar
moves towards such integration.59 The creation of the European Coal and Steel
Community (ECSC) and the proposed European Defense Community left
Salazar cold, but the European Economic Community (EEC), bringing the
ECSC-six into an economic and fiscal union with undoubted political under-
tones, was a different matter. Here were some of Portugal’s most important
trading partners creating a common economic space, with a common external
tariff. Decisions which would affect dramatically the future of the Portuguese
economy would be made in a forum in which Portugal could not be present,
while Portugal would have little bargaining power when negotiating with the
EEC as a whole. The situation was critical. Fortunately for Portugal, it was not
alone in its apprehension. Caetano, who as Minister of the Presidency
represented Portugal at the OEEC Council meetings, would later write that ‘in
the OEEC Council it was felt that a disloyal act had been committed’ by the
EEC-six when they embarked on a common market.60 Other European
countries now realized the importance of the Treaty of Rome and its potential
impact on their domestic economies. Foremost among these was Great Britain,
57. AOS CP 252, letter, Paris, 28 April 1953, Robert Schuman to António de Oliveira Salazar.
58. AOS CP 272, telegram, Lisbon airport, 24 September 1953, Eamon de Valera to António de Oliveira
Salazar.
59. Paulo Cunha would tell a German newspaper, the Diplomatische Korrespondenz, while on a visit to Bonn,
that Portugal viewed with interest the movement towards European union, and collaborated where it could
in order to increase ‘coordination’ between Western countries, but that it abstained whenever there was talk
of ‘integration’ or ‘fusion’, as well as ‘supranationalism’. This was both because of the country’s overseas
empire, and its special relationship with Brazil, and because ‘we do not believe, in Portugal, in the practical
possibility of a European federation in our time. The merits and the faults of Europe lie in its variety and
diversity—of languages, of races, of cultures, of temperaments—although all of these factors combine to
form a harmonious whole: complex and irreplaceable Europe.’ AOS CO NE 18 File 19, undated transcript
of interview by the Minister of Foreign Affairs to the Diplomatische Korrespondenz.
which had earlier ruled itself out of EEC membership and warned the ‘six’ not
to move towards a customs union, to no avail. In July 1956, at an OEEC
Council of Ministers, a last-ditch proposal was put forward for an alternative to
the EEC: a free-trade in Europe encompassing the OEEC countries. The
countries belonging to this area would have no common external tariff, which
meant, in effect, that Britain’s links with the Commonwealth would not be
adversely affected. An inter-governmental committee, headed by Reginald
Maudling, was eventually set up to pursue this option, although its work would
be slow and ultimately barren: the EEC went ahead and its members, spear-
headed by France, rejected the proposed free-trade area.61 Portugal was not
initially a part of this committee, but eventually, while its discussions were still
ongoing, decided to apply for special status—not full membership—within the
free-trade area. A panel of OEEC experts led by the president of the Nor-
wegian Central Bank, J. A. Melander, visited Portugal in October 1958, meeting
with cabinet ministers, civil servants, and economic interest groups. One his-
torian writes, ‘as can be expected, the visit was guided towards displaying
Portugal’s ability to carry out large undertakings, an objective which was
successfully met.’62 Melander and his team produced a report which was
favorable to Portuguese aspirations, since it argued for Portugal being granted
an exceptional status, with a longer period of transition to full membership and
the resulting tariff obligations. Portugal should even able to introduce new
tariffs, according to the report, in recognition of the Lisbon government’s
attempt to create new industries. According to Andresen Leitão, ‘the single
most important fact’ in the success of the negotiation ‘was the skill and the
negotiating flexibility of the Portuguese diplomatic team, headed by José
Gonçalo Correia de Oliveira, as well as the desire of Salazar and the govern-
ment to compromise in order to avoid exclusion from a European-wide agree-
ment.’63
Correia de Oliveira would play a key role in the evolution of the regime in
the final third of Salazar’s career. More than anyone else he personified the
desire to update the regime, keeping it abreast of developments in Europe
while not surrendering certain aspects of traditional Portuguese society and life.
This was ultimately an impossible task, but Correia de Oliveira embodied the
desire to keep the New State relevant in an age of change. The son of a well-
known poet favored by the State, António Correia de Oliveira, and a pious and
well-educated mother from an old Minho family, Correia de Oliveira followed
61. Elsa Santos Alípio, Salazar e a Europa: História da adesão à EFTA (1956–1960) (Lisbon: Livros Horizonte,
2006), pp. 22–23.
62. Ibid., p. 73.
the traditional route to power in the New State—the university—attending
Lisbon University’s Law Faculty. After his graduation in 1944 he found em-
ployment at the top of the corporative organization, the Corporative Technical
Council, which later became the Comissão de Coordenação Económica (CCE—
Commission for Economic Coordination), which he headed. This was a key
position:
[Correia de Oliveira] began to direct the CCE at a juncture when foreign economic
relations increasingly conditioned not just the evolution of the Portuguese
economy but also (in time) the country’s political future.64
Monarchist, and Catholic, Correia de Oliveira did not belong to the União
Nacional, but he soon developed a lasting admiration for Salazar, whom he
would laud, in an almost messianic way, as a national savior. His speeches dis-
played a mystical appreciation of Portuguese history and its colonial dimension,
the defense of the colonies remaining a constant in his public rhetoric. It was
perhaps this devotion to Salazar, and to certain ‘eternal truths’ about Portugal,
as much as his undoubted technical abilities, that allowed Correia de Oliveira to
develop the enormous influence he would eventually have over Salazar; an
early sign of this was his ability to convince Salazar to accept the idea that
Portugal would not have a veto on all matters within this proposed free-trade
area, a notable feat. Correia de Oliveira was invited to join the government, in
1955, as Undersecretary for the Budget; in August 1958 he was switched to
Secretary of State for Commerce, a position tailor-made for him, at the
Ministry of the Economy, which was headed once again by the pro-industry
Ferreira Dias, making a comeback after some years in the political wilderness.
The EEC-six’s rejection of a common free-trade area left the rest of
Europe reeling, but Britain, after some hesitation, rapidly seized the day,
pushing for the creation of the European Free Trade Area (EFTA) as an alter-
native to the EEC. EFTA, as described by its proponents, was much more
attractive to the Portuguese government than the EEC. It made fewer political
demands, and was easier to reconcile with Portugal’s other obligations, notably,
of course, its colonial dimension, since it had no external tariff. Negotiations
began for its formation and Portugal, while present from the start, thanks
largely to Correia de Oliveira’s initiative and vigilance, kept quiet on the need
for a special status, as suggested in the Melander report. The Portuguese feared
asking for exemptions and special arrangements too quickly, since they might
have been shown the door by the other six countries involved in the project,
64. Manuel de Lucena, ‘José Gonçalo Correia de Oliveira’ in António Barreto & Maria Filomena Mónica
(eds), Dicionário de história de Portugal vol. 8, p. 633.
many of which harbored suspicions about Portugal’s right to be counted
among their number. Nevertheless, the continuing flexibility of the Portuguese
negotiating team, so at odds, for example, with wartime economic negotiations
led in person by Salazar, as well as the recommendations of the Melander
report, paved the way for Portuguese membership of EFTA when that organi-
zation was created in 1960. The Portuguese only presented their moderate
requests for special treatment within EFTA when a failure to include them in
the organization would have represented a political embarrassment for its puta-
tive partners.65 The overall insignificance of Portuguese trade facilitated the
granting of this special status (as before, related to a slower dismantlement of
tariffs, as well as the possibility of introducing new ones), as did Portuguese
agreement to keep this status secret until the organization had come into being,
not trumpeting its diplomatic ‘victory’ too soon. The preservation of excep-
tional status was vital. Pedro Lains writes, ‘the industries that emerged in
Portugal from the 1920s to the 1940s—fertilizers, chemical products, oil,
cement—were simply not competitive at an international level, and, conse-
quently, could not be abandoned to free market forces.’66 They would grow, at
an incredible pace, in the decade that followed, thanks to the new opportunities
available to them.
What is most remarkable about Portugal’s participation in EFTA is, in
many ways, its timing. This opening up to the outside world, this acceptance
that, eventually, the government’s power over the economy would have to be
wound down, occurred at a time of growing repression and lack of dialogue,
that is, the aftermath of Humberto Delgado’s presidential bid (see Chapter 8).
EFTA was a powerful domestic propaganda tool, a sign that the domestic
opposition did not have much input into foreign opinion of the New State.
More importantly, however, by fighting for Portugal’s entry into EFTA, Salazar
was showing that he was not immune to the cold calculation of interest. EFTA
would, in the end, be beneficial to the economy; it would allow for an expan-
sion of exports in fields in which Portugal was strong (and others that might
become strong, given some of the advantages that Portugal held: labor costs,
political stability, guarantees on repatriation of profits); it was the way forward,
whatever the damage it might pose to the rural idyll so dear, if the 1930s
propaganda is to be believed, to Salazar’s heart. The same cold logic governed
Portugal’s accession to the International Bank, and the International Monetary
Fund, in 1960.

66. Pedro Lains, Os progressos do atraso, p. 177. Lains continues, ‘among the sectors ready for exports were
some in which Portugal already had some experience of foreign markets, such as cork, wines, tinned foods,
and others in which experience was limited to colonial markets, such as clothing, which would turn out to be
the great success in the EFTA market’. Lains, Os progressos do atraso, pp. 178–79.
Stability and Progress in the Empire?
The end of World War II saw the appearance, and the growing acceptance
by the West, of nationalist movements in Asian and African colonies. Salazar
was horrified by this development. Rather than simply restating Portugal’s legal
right to its colonial possessions, however, Salazar now adopted a two-prong
strategy. On the one hand, he stressed the unique nature of Portuguese
colonialism, highlighting the durability and results of the country’s colonizing
mission. On the other, he noted the importance of the colonial world to the
preservation of Europe’s (and the West’s) place in the world. Thus, while
appealing to other colonizers not to forego what was legitimately theirs, Salazar
also detached Portugal from its former colonial rivals. This approach would
allow him to buy some time, but could never provide a permanent solution to
the problem facing Portuguese colonialism, since the whole of the West,
admittedly with significant stops and starts, was moving in a direction contrary
to Portugal’s. Salazar’s strategy, which ultimately consisted of arguing that
everybody else was wrong, became more and more difficult as the years passed.
It was not, however, without intellectual depth. Brazilian sociologist Gilberto
Freyre had shot to prominence in his own country through the publication, in
1933, of Casa grande e sanzala (translated into English as The Masters and the
Slaves), in which he argued that the very factors which the Brazilian elite decried
as a source of the country’s supposed decadence—racial and cultural misce-
genation—actually made for an ideal tropical society. In a later work, O Mundo
que o Português criou (The World Made by the Portuguese) Freyre advanced an
innovative explanation for what the Portuguese had achieved in Brazil: they
were uniquely gifted as colonizers since they were themselves the product of
considerable racial mixing, much of it African in origin. The Portuguese, as a
result, did not consider white ‘superior’ and ‘black’ inferior. As they settled
abroad they desired neither subjection nor assimilation, but rather integration
of all and the creation of a new society, which Freyre described as ‘luso-
tropical’. Lusotropicalism was not particularly welcomed by Portuguese
colonial circles before and during World War II, since it clashed with the
notion of forceful empire which men like Armindo Monteiro had sought to
popularize, but it was recognized as a powerful answer to critics of Portuguese
colonialism once the war was over. Freyre began to be feted by the Portuguese
State, something he did not seem to mind, and his views came to underpin the
entire ideological edifice of Portuguese colonialism, even if those in charge of
the New State, beginning with Salazar himself, did not actually agree with his
views, and would have viewed the importance attached by Freyre to Portugal’s
own African inheritance with horror. Freyre’s movements and actions were
closely controlled by the Portuguese State; in one short letter to Salazar, the
Minister of the Colonies wrote that
I believe I have met your wishes in relation to Dr Gilberto Freyre’s trip to Timor.
I dissuaded him from going there, but now I see, from the projected program I
have just been sent, that he has eliminated Timor and Macao. There is no reason
for doing so in relation to Macao—what we wanted was not to show Timor.67
The importance of lusotropicalism, with its emphasis on a multi-racial

society, on Portuguese colonial thinking, is demonstrated by the subsequent
portrayal of African nationalism as racist, since its intention was to break-up a
bastion of harmonious multi-racialism in Africa. As tension mounted in Portu-
guese Africa, these arguments were popularized, and became the cornerstone
of Portuguese propaganda. One booklet, which went to print weeks before the
fighting in Angola began, was tellingly called, in its English translation, Portugal:
Many Races, One Nation.68 Such views were not unchallenged by the historical
profession. C. R. Boxer, holder of the most important Chair in Portuguese
studies in the United Kingdom, published his Race Relations in the Portuguese
Colonial Empire, 1415–1825, a collection of lectures delivered at the University
of Virginia,69 as a refutation of lusotropical views. Quoting from an interview
of Salazar’s published in Life magazine and the decree which abolished the
Estatuto do Indigenato, Boxer wrote,
As most of you know, it is an article of faith among many Portuguese that their
country has never tolerated a color-bar in its overseas possessions and that their
compatriots have always had a natural affinity for contacts with colored peoples
[…] These beliefs are very sincerely and very deeply held, but it does not follow
that they are always well grounded on historical fact.70
That difficulties in the colonial world were fast approaching was evident
from 1945 onwards. Churchill’s electoral defeat that had removed an important
source of support: a British Prime Minister committed to empire along lines
67. AOS CP 242, letter, Lisbon, 4 September 1951, Manuel Sarmento Rodrigues to António de Oliveira
Salazar.
68. António Alberto de Andrade, Portugal: Many Races, One Nation (Lisbon: AG, 1961). The booklet, after a
short introduction, reprinted a number of documents which allegedly demonstrated that, through the
centuries, the Portuguese had been adverse to racial sentiments. There was also a section with photographs,
showing an integrated society—on the parade ground, in schools, hospitals, and buses, preceded by a
message aimed directly at an American readership: ‘In all Portuguese territories, contrary to what has
happened in most of those countries who regard themselves as paladins of the independence of peoples,
racial or religious differences have never given rise to any discriminatory incident or measure.’
69. C. R. Boxer, Race Relations in the Portuguese Colonial Empire, 1415–1825 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963).
70. Ibid., pp. 1–2.
similar to those of Salazar (seeing it as a badge of pride and not of shame), and
who mistrusted American anti-colonial sentiments. Armindo Monteiro, in
November 1942, had transcribed for Salazar’s benefit (and no doubt delight)
Churchill’s words at a lunch in the Spanish embassy in London:
Take the British out of India and the following day you will have the hands of half
the Indians around the necks of the other half. The backwards movement, the fall
into disorder, will be immediate. When the Americans talk of India they should
remember that, during the period of British domination, the population increased
by a few hundred million. That number is a badge of honor. One is entitled to ask:
what was happening, in the meantime, in America, to the redskins?71
A Labor government was now in place, which meant, as far as Salazar was
concerned, that the Congress party’s pretensions in India would not be
resisted. Writing to Caetano in October 1946, Salazar pointed out that
‘England admits not having the strength to control the situation.’72 The
following month, the agenda for a Council of Ministers read, “Colonies:
Problems of the Orient—Timor-Macao-India; gravity of the situation in the
last two”; the agenda for another Council, on 16 December 1946, contained
one item: ‘India: worrying prospects’.73 Indian independence, granted in 1947,
led to an immediate claim being made on the Portuguese State of India,
centered on the territory of Goa. Salazar immediately refused to countenance
any negotiation, despite the opening of an Indian legation in Lisbon. Salazar
explained that he simply did not have the power to negotiate Portuguese terri-
tory, which belonged to the nation in its widest sense—Portuguese past,
present, and future. No one generation could take it upon itself to willingly part
with territory that might come to benefit future generations. This stance would
be preserved by Portugal for decades to come.
Goa and the other enclaves which made up the Portuguese State of India
were a good place to fight the colonial argument, since Portuguese India was
not only old—much older even than the British Raj, with which it should not
be confused—but also because it had provided, over the centuries, men who
had shot to prominence in Portugal and the rest of the empire.74 Moreover,
India’s claims to be defending the Goan right of self-determination were hard
to square with a hypothetical invasion of the territory and its integration into
the rest of India. The extent to which the intransigent defense of Goa was a
71. Rosas et al., Armindo Monteiro doc. 65, letter, London, 26 November 1942, Armindo Monteiro to António
72. Freire Antunes (ed.), Salazar e Caetano, doc. S 67, letter, 30 October 1946, António de Oliveira Salazar to
73. Ibid., doc. C 99, ‘Conselho de Ministros de 16 de Dezembro de 1946’, p. 205.
74. José Martinho Gaspar, Os discursos e o discurso de Salazar (Lisbon: Prefácio, 2001), p. 191.
winning cause domestically is not, however, immediately obvious. On 14
February 1950, for example, Colonial Minister Teófilo Duarte wrote Salazar,
pointing out that only fourteen telegrams of complaint had been received
following the latest declaration by Nehru on the subject of Goa. Knowing that
Salazar was disappointed by this inconsequential number, Duarte now
suggested mobilizing other entities—grémios, national syndicates, casas do povo,
and other associations, and maybe even the army and the navy—in order to
manufacture a ‘national’ wave of revulsion. He added, ‘it might be convenient
to see what has been done in similar occasions, in order to take advantage of
what is useful.’75
Under pressure from the Indian Union’s diplomatic offensive, Portugal
belatedly turned to the economic development of Goa. Serious investments
were finally permitted in the region’s iron mines, whose presence had long
been known. In 1950, 72,000 tons of iron ore were exported; by 1961, this had
reached 6.5 million tons.76 Concessions to mine for iron were given to a hand-
ful of wealthy Goans, who exported the ore, unprocessed, to Japan. To facili-
tate this process, moreover, the harbor facilities at Mormugão were con-
siderably developed:
Portugal in the 1950s […] made belated efforts to develop Goa, with a view to
making its people clearly better off than those in neighboring India. In 1952 a
Development Plan was decreed. This boosted Goa’s fledgling iron ore exports.
Revenue from this, and from migrant remittances, meant that per capita income in
Goa was some one-third higher than in India. Education was expanded, sanitation
was improved. Old Goa was cleaned up for the massive celebrations of the four
hundredth anniversary of the death of St Francis Xavier in 1952. These had a clear
political purpose.77
One visitor that year was Evelyn Waugh, who wrote, ‘Goans […] are, in
fact, Portuguese. They are not even a subject or “protected” people.’78 How
did the Goans feel? This was not immediately obvious. In Portugal, a com-
pletely erroneous picture of the territory was painted by the authorities. Few
would have been aware, in Lisbon, that sixty percent of the population was
Hindu, not Roman Catholic, or that Konkani, not Portuguese, was the domi-
nant language. Only 7.8% of the population spoke Portuguese, which was the
75. AOS CP 99, letter, Lisbon, 14 February 1950, Teófilo Duarte to António de Oliveira Salazar. Salazar
wrote, on the document, ‘Received 14/2/50. Matter dealt with in council on the same date’.
76. M.N. Pearson, The New Cambridge History of India, vol. I.1, The Portuguese in India (Cambridge: CUP, 1987),
p. 155.
77. Ibid., p. 159.
78. Evelyn Waugh, ‘Goa: The Home of a Saint’ in Month, n.s. X (1953), p. 326, cited in Pearson, The New
Cambridge History of India, Vol. I.1, p. 158.
mother tongue of a mere 1.1%.79 In other words, Luso-Indian society and
culture, all that the metropolitan Portuguese knew of Goa, was a delicate
flower. The late burst in economic activity of the 1950s could not disguise the
underdevelopment that was the hallmark of Portuguese India. This was shown
above all by the emigration levels of the local population: in the 1950s, of a
total population of 547,000, some 180,000 lived abroad, 80,000 in Bombay
alone.80 Emigration acted as an escape mechanism, reducing social tensions in
the territory. Emigrants provided remittances that allowed the rest of the popu-
lation to survive, given Goa’s few exports. Indian independence had changed
the nature of this emigration and its consequences. Whereas previous emi-
grants had left for the British Empire, they, and newer emigrants, now lived in
independent India, and were therefore subject to totally different political
pressures. Monitoring their state of mind was the main task of the Portuguese
consul in Bombay.
The conflict between Delhi and Lisbon developed slowly but inexorably.
In 1953 India closed its legation in Lisbon, arguing that there simply was no
point to its existence, given Salazar’s stance on Goa. For domestic and foreign
consumption, Portuguese India’s right to exist was defended at a variety of
levels. Since it had not been a part of the British Raj, there was no historical or
political justification for its inclusion in the new India; there were linguistic and
religious differences which should be respected; finally, it could serve as a
model for the rest of the world, since centuries of racial harmony under
Portuguese supervision had created a unique environment. Salazar brought the
various strands of argument together in a major broadcast address, made on 12
April 1954. If, as he put it, Nehru could ‘set aside a few minutes each day from
his vast preoccupations to speak of Goa which is not his’, then it would not be
surprising that ‘if at least once every year I turn my attention in public to this
little State which is ours and forms part of the Portuguese Nation by injunction
of History and force of Law.’81 Salazar explained that the Portuguese State of
India accounted for 0.18% of Portuguese territory as a whole; its population
for three percent. Its economy was not particularly developed, and much of the
population had to emigrate. Trade between the metropolis and Portuguese
India accounted for 0.75% of the former’s trade. Its budget was slightly over
one percent of the total spent by the Portuguese state. ‘Goa therefore
represents a liability of some importance for the budget of the Motherland’,82
and there was nothing new in this. Whereas there were only a dozen or so
79. Maria Manuel Stocker, ‘Estado da Índia’ in Barreto & Mónica (eds), Dicionário de História de Portugal vol. 8,
pp. 255–58.
80. Pearson, The New Cambridge History of India, p. 156.
81. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘Goa and the Indian Union’ (Lisbon: Agência Geral do Ultramar, 1954), p. 7.
82. Ibid., p. 13.
Portuguese-born civil servants in India, Goa had provided Portugal with count-
less figures of note: ‘it is common knowledge that there is a substantial number
of magistrates, professors, doctors and notaries, to whom must be added those
who are active in all the Overseas Provinces, from Cape Verde to Timor’; that,
in other words, ‘the whole of Portugal is open to the sons of Goa.’83
One could not, therefore, accuse the Portuguese of self-interest in Goa.
What, then, motivated their presence, and their refusal to move aside in the
face of the Indian Union’s youthful aggression? The reason was simple, Salazar
argued. Centuries of coexistence and racial mixing had led to the construction
of a unique society in Portuguese India, which could not be confused with the
rest of the sub-continent:
Try as you may, a Portuguese from India, a Luso-Indian, cannot be confused with
a native of the Indian Union. All who visit Goa coming from the Union cross not
only a political frontier but also a human frontier, [entering] an original creation of
a Western civilization orientalized by contact with the millenary culture of India.84
Goa was Portugal; many of the most sonorous names in Portuguese history
had been involved in the creation of Goa, and its transformation into its
present condition. In the past, countries had sold part of their territories: even
Portugal had given some of its lands away. Present law, however, did not
encompass a conception of sovereignty that would allow such a step to be
undertaken. Salazar then upbraided the West, now recoiling from its past
achievements. Although there had been interaction between East and West,
and mutual gains, the truth, as Salazar saw it, was that ‘everywhere progress is
still measured by the degree of westernization attained and regressions take
place in the opposite direction.’ Portugal had given much to India in the past,
and through a Portuguese Goa it would continue to do so. Having examined
the Portuguese argument, Salazar looked at the Indian case, and found it
wanting. Geographic position was not of itself a source of political rights; the
difficulties experienced by India’s administration due to the existence of
foreign enclaves could not be very large, given the geographic setting of the
Portuguese territories—and in any case, ‘we have always been ready to con-
ciliate interests and not hinder the Indian administration.’85 The importance of
the port at Mormugão to India’s economy, likewise, could not justify the
seizure of Goa: by means of this argument Holland would be sacrificed to
Germany.86 Finally, Portugal and India found themselves in different camps in
83. Ibid., p. 14.

84. Ibid., p. 17.
85. Ibid., p. 24.
86. Ibid., p. 25.
world politics. India feared Portugal’s presence not because of the Portuguese
garrison stationed there, but because Goa might be used as a gateway for
foreign forces. This fear could be addressed; a solution could be found, should
India sincerely desire it. In a final chapter of the speech, Salazar reiterated the
passages of the British alliance and of the North Atlantic Treaty that, he
believed, guaranteed international support for Portugal sovereignty in India, so
that Indian opinion might be in no doubt as to the consequences of an attack.
Praise for the speech was immediately forthcoming; Júlio Dantas, President of
the Lisbon Academy of Sciences, wrote, ‘happy the people who have, at such a
crucial time, someone who can proclaim, with such nobility and splendor, their
reasons and their rights!’87
Nehru ignored the speech and its arguments. In July 1954, Indian
authorities occupied the small Portuguese enclaves of Dadra and Nagar Aveli,
which the Portuguese saw as the start of a full-scale invasion, which they tried
to preclude by frantic diplomatic activity. According to Franco Nogueira,
Salazar was sure that the military invasion would come that summer, especially
once a ‘peaceful invasion’ of Goa by unarmed demonstrators had been
scheduled by Nehru for 15 August, the anniversary of Indian independence.88
As a result, Salazar sought to include as many people as possible in the
decisions that had to be taken. He had frequent conversations with the
Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Overseas, and National Defense, and with the
President of the Republic, General Craveiro Lopes; Salazar even asked
Craveiro Lopes to convene the Council of State. Portuguese embassies and
legations abroad were instructed to raise the issue with their host governments;
appeals for help were made to Portugal’s allies in NATO and to traditional
friends such as Spain and Brazil. Most of Salazar’s collaborators urged him to
stand tall and not give an inch.89 On 8 August, Portugal proposed the
87. AOS CP 93 letter, Lisbon, 13 April 1954, Júlio Dantas to António de Oliveira Salazar. The Duke of
Palmela told Salazar that he had not preached to a desert: ‘You spoke and made many millions of Portuguese
tremble.’ AOS CP 100, letter, 13 April 1954, Duke of Palmela to António de Oliveira Salazar.
88. Franco Nogueira, O ataque, p. 350.
89. See, for example, AOS CP 236, letter, Lisbon, 24 July 1954, Albino dos Reis to António de Oliveira
Salazar. Salazar replied that ‘it seems to me that with an impressive unanimity the Portuguese are aware that
their territorial integrity is in danger and that, having done nothing to warrant aggression aside from being in
India, Portugal is now the victim of a brutal aggression. But being aware of injustice is not, unfortunately, the
same as undoing it.’ Arquivo Albino dos Reis, letter, 26 July 1954, António de Oliveira Salazar to Albino dos
Reis. Dom Duarte offered his services and those of his followers ‘to defend by all means the integrity of the
territory and the honor of the nation.’ AOS CP 38, telegram, Berne, 28 July 1954, Dom Duarte de Bragança
to António de Oliveira Salazar. Salazar thanked him the following day: ‘The government received with the
greatest pleasure the attitude defined by Your Highness at the moment when the Nation suffers an
unprecedented attack against its territorial integrity and its inalienable rights, and trusts that all Portuguese
will do their duty.’ Cardinal Patriarch Cerejeira wrote, ‘you do not need me to tell you that we are all with
you. I trust in God (who has so often been by your side in the difficult moments for our Pátria); I trust that
He will save Portuguese India. I do not doubt that you are the “chosen one” of his Providence, which has
been for Portugal truly miraculous. Do you remember how your mission was decided on?’ AOS CP 47,
deployment of international observers on the borders of Portuguese India and
the Indian Union; on 10 August Salazar took to the air, through the Emissora
Nacional, to denounce Nehru’s intentions and tactics. However, the action
against Goa attempted by the so-called satyagrahis amounted to little, as did
similar actions attempted in 1955, which resulted in some bloodshed.90 One
historian writes, ‘they were rather feeble efforts, and received little or no local
support.’91 Peaceful protesters were faced with the determined opposition of
the Portuguese authorities—hardly what had been faced when marching
against the British—and eventually called off their campaign. They also found
little enthusiasm in Goa for the change they sought.
At the close of November 1954, Salazar returned to the topic of Goa in a
major speech to the National Assembly, which had been closed during the
summer months. This was a powerful piece of oratory, which mixed legal argu-
ments,92 taunting of Nehru,93 and outright appeals to nationalism94 to make
letter, Lisbon, 31 August 1954, Dom Manuel Cerejeira to António de Oliveira Salazar. Carolina Correia de Sá
wrote a rare letter: ‘I imagine how worried—tired—anguished you must be, with all that is happening. How I
wish I could console you, give you heart, give you peace.’ AOS CP 48, Carolina Correia de Sá to António de
Oliveira Salazar.
90. In advance of 15 August 1955, the date in which this second ‘invasion’ was to take place, John Foster
Dulles issued a statement on the issue which disappointed Salazar. Salazar wrote to the American
ambassador in Lisbon, James Bonbright, stating that ‘the way in which the matter was put might give rise to
the idea that the Indian Union’s behavior has been “peaceful”, that Mr Nehru promises to continue to be
“equally peaceful”, and that the United States recommends to Portugal that it be as peaceful as the Indian
Union. However, since Indian pacifism is one thing and our pacifism quite another, the result has been an
almost inversion of positions which we can only lament. As a result, in certain diplomatic circles the
Secretary of State’s declaration can actually be considered as an expression of support for Mr Nehru’s current
policy.’ Later that year, Dulles recognized that his words had been ‘twisted’ by the Indian press ‘to favor the
Indian cause.’ Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1955–57 vol. 27, doc. 148, Memorandum of a
Conversation, Department of State, Washington, November 30, 1955, 3 p.m., pp. 445–51.
91. Pearson, The New Cambridge History of India, p. 160.
92. ‘Geography has never legitimated sovereign rights, not even, as is clearly visible, in the Hindustani
peninsula. Despite the influence that geographical factors exercise in the history of humanity through two
fundamental elements—the possibilities of life and the ease of defense of the social unit—it is always
historical facts, and not geographic configuration, which define borders, establish rights, and impose
sovereignties. For the Indian Union to force history back to the Sixteenth Century, to present itself as having
existed at that time, or to assume the mantle of legitimate heir of the lords we first encountered there, is the
dream of static dreamers, not of dynamic builders of history, as those who received from the United
Kingdom an empire pretend to be. If we had to consider the legitimacy of today’s sovereignties on the basis
of the situation five centuries ago, what nation, what sovereignty, what borders, in Europe, in America, in
Asia, or in Australia would have the right to exist?’ Diário das Sessões, n. 54, 30 November 1954.
93. ‘We are perhaps in a position to reach a verdict about the situation, my doubt resulting merely from the
difficulty in squaring the thought, the statements, and the actions of the Prime Minister of the Indian Union
and the rest of its government with Western logic.’ Diário das Sessões, n. 54, 30 November 1954.
94. ‘If, in spite of everything, the Indian Union should bring war to the small territory, what can the forces
present there, or those that might be assembled, do? They can fight, struggle, not just within the bounds of
possibility, but stepping into the bounds of the impossible […] We owe this to ourselves, to Goa, to Western
civilization, even if this should smile condescendingly at us. After stroking the stones of the fortresses of Diu
and Damão, after praying in the Church of Bom Jesus, after embracing the feet of the Apostle of the Indies,
every Portuguese will be able to fight until the end, against ten or against a thousand, with the conscience of
carrying out what is, after all, just a duty. It would be nothing new in the annals of India.’ Diário das Sessões, n.
54, 30 November 1954.
clear to the world that there could be no turning back on Goa. Either Nehru
decided to respect Portuguese sovereignty and act as a good neighbor, as he
expected of countries like China, or else he continued his aggressive stance.
Should he pursue a cold war against Portugal, through blockades, denuncia-
tions of conditions, satyagraha demonstrations, etc., Portugal would make the
financial sacrifices necessary to keep Goa intact and viable. Should he invade,
he would win, but at the terrible cost of destroying his country’s raison d’être, the
application of Gandhi’s non-violent principles to international affairs. After a
trip to India in which he had successfully passed himself off as a critic of
Salazar’s, intent on changing Portugal’s policy, Jorge Jardim, a former Under-
secretary of State for Commerce and Industry, informed Salazar that Nehru did
not plan to attack, his presence in government being, in fact, a guarantee that
no such attack would take place. Jardim also assured Salazar that the economy
of Portuguese India was recovering from the shock of a blockade imposed on
it by the Indian Union: ‘ever since July the difference to be seen in Goa, for the
better, is extraordinary. The Indian blockade has led to the production, in our
territory, of all that used to be imported from the neighboring country out of
laziness, routine, and advantages in price […] the local farmers cannot hide
their satisfaction.’95
While Salazar and Nehru sparred over Goa, the Portuguese attempted to
improve their position by altering the legal status of the territory. A constitu-
tional revision took place in 1951 which some saw as a major change, even an
evolution, in Salazar’s way of thinking.96 The Colonial Act was revoked, and
the subject matter it covered was incorporated into directly into the Constitu-
tion. Portugal no longer described itself as an empire, in the old sense of the
word, in which the metropolis ruled, imposing its will on colonies. Through its
revised Constitution, Portugal proclaimed itself to be a ‘pluricontinental’ state,
unique in the world, where a collection of territories across the globe, con-
taining a variety of peoples, worked together for a common goal. One of these
peoples, by virtue of its history and its material and spiritual development,
possessed a technical competence unmatched by the others. This status con-
ferred on it special responsibilities towards the rest. This political dominance
was not open-ended, and would come to an eventual end as the European
Portuguese mission to educate the rest was gradually fulfilled. Not everyone
agreed with what was clearly an attempt to respond to changing world condi-
tions. In the Corporative Chamber, Armindo Monteiro objected to the changes
in terminology and spirit. Marcelo Caetano, in 1950, had already stated his
95. AOS CP 14, letter, Swiss Alps, 5 March 1955, Jorge Jardim to António de Oliveira Salazar.
96. Barreto, ‘Salazar’, p. 285.
opposition to the project’s assimilationist nature.97 In 1953 Law 2,006—also
known as the Law of Overseas Portugal—effectuated a change in terminology,
by which colonies reverted to their former status of overseas provinces, a name
more in keeping with the spirit of the revised Constitution. In 1955, in direct
response to the challenge emanating from New Delhi, a new Statute was
granted to the State of India, which was given special status within Overseas
Portugal. The existing Legislative Council was increased to twenty-three
members, of whom eleven were directly elected (the electorate numbered some
20,000 people) and another was elected by voters who paid over 5,000 escudos
in taxes. Although limited, the reform was sufficient to buy Portugal some time
in the international arena. The Times, for example, wrote of it that the new
‘constitution’ would give Goa ‘real legislative powers’; it continued, ‘“this
should put to the test Mr Nehru’s charge that the Portuguese authorities are
“terrorizing the local population.”’98
India aside, the postwar years, into the 1950s, were a period of continued
stagnation, or underperformance, of the colonial economies. When it came to
the provision of the Colonies portfolio, direct experience of colonial life was
not necessary. In the summer of 1950 Salazar invited Pedro Teotónio Pereira
to serve as Minister of the Colonies, an offer he declined, writing that although
‘like any responsible Portuguese’ he felt ‘the attraction of being able to work on
behalf of our overseas lands’, he simply could not overcome the fact that ‘the
life I have led in these past twenty years (serving the country in other ways) has
deprived me of an experience I would see as fundamental: to have at least gone
to the colonies.’99 The man who did, in the end, replace Teófilo Duarte,
Manuel Sarmento Rodrigues, would soon confess to being deluged by work;
centralization in his person was a hindrance, so that there was no time to think
or plan.100 At times other colonial powers had to encourage Portugal to
develop the kind of infrastructure from which all could benefit.101 Under-
development was turned on its head and presented to the outside world as
proof of Portugal’s unique, spiritual approach to colonization, which was
97. Freire Antunes (ed.), Salazar e Caetano, doc. C 137, letter, Lisbon, 1 May 1950, Marcelo Caetano to
98. ‘Asking for trouble’, in The Times (London), 18 July 1955.
99. AOS CO PC 3K, letter, aboard the Sud Express, 24 July 1950, Pedro Teotónio Pereira to António de
Oliveira Salazar.
100. AOS CP 242, letter, Lisbon, 9 February 1951, Manuel Sarmento Rodrigues to António de Oliveira
Salazar.
101. See, for example, Ronald Hyam (ed.), British Documents on the End of Empire Series A vol. 2, The Labour
Government and the End of Empire 1945-1951, II, Economics and International Relations (London: HMSO, 1992),
doc. 128, FO 800/435, ff116–117, 23 October 1948, ‘African development: Beira port and railway’: dispatch
from Mr Bevin to Sir N. Ronald (Lisbon) on the conversation between the Secretary of State and the
Portuguese ambassador. In this document Bevin describes the kind of pressure being put on Portugal to
increase dramatically the capacity of the strategic facilities at Beira, gateway to the mineral treasures of the
region, now needed by the West in the context of Cold-War rearmament.
guided by deeper considerations than the pursuit of profit. In truth, even in
this religious dimension Portugal was deficient, since it did not generate
enough missionaries for its needs. As for its young men, the empire’s
administration did not lure may of them away from Europe. To a large extent it
was staffed by non-European Portuguese, especially Cape Verdeans. These
elements were viewed with distrust by their hierarchical superiors and by the
security services, and were frequently accused, in police reports, of secret
sympathies with the increasingly assertive nationalist movements.
Nevertheless, some historians see the 1950s as the high point of the
African empire’s usefulness to the Portuguese economy. It had become the
second most important destination for Portuguese emigrants, after Brazil; the
1950s also mark the high point of the colonies as a destination for Portuguese
exports, and a source of raw materials for re-export. Colonies thus helped the
government to right the balance of payments, allowing for the import of capital
goods with which to modernize the metropolitan economy. It must be remem-
bered, however, that what was good for the colonial power’s economy, was not
necessarily good for the colonial subjects. Henrique Galvão’s downfall (see
Chapter 8) came about as a result of his attempted denunciation of labor con-
ditions in Angola, but others were well aware of the situation there.102 If labor
abuses called into question the lusotropical idea, and engendered anger towards
the Portuguese in Angola, then another sign of trouble was revealed by the
increasingly independent attitude shown by university students from the
colonies; one report into the Casa dos Estudantes do Império (Imperial Students’
Residence) in Coimbra indicated that separatist propaganda was now being
distributed, its board having been taken over by anti-colonial elements. This
should come as no surprise to any observer of colonial empires and the contra-
diction common to all of them: the first generation of an African elite trained
by the colonizer began to view itself as entitled to turn its homeland into a
separate country. To the Portuguese, however, the realization of this fact came
as a shock, explicable only by recourse to foreign influence. Abolishing the
Casa dos Estudantes do Império was one solution proposed.103
102. See AOS CP 91, notes on a conversation between the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the British
Ambassador, Sir Nigel Ronald, 23 July 1952: ‘Speaking in that manner peculiar to him, hesitating frequently,
and stuttering, Sir Nigel told me that he was sure that since our authorities in Angola were badly paid, they
could not resist the offers made by powerful Portuguese magnates in Angola (he smiled when citing the
name of a person present at the meeting [a dinner at the Egyptian legation in Lisbon]) in order to obtain
conditions that would otherwise not be possible.’ British worries about labor practices in Angola and the
overall backwardness of the Portuguese colonies in the postwar years are explored in Chapter 3 of Pedro
Aires Oliveira’s Os despojos da aliança: A Grã-Bretanha e a política colonial portuguesa, 1945–1975 (Lisbon: Tinta da
China, 2007).
103. AOS CO PC 51 A, undated report, ‘A acção da “Casa dos Estudantes do Império” em Coimbra’.
Holidaying with Salazar
As World War II came to an end, António Ferro’s SNP became the SNI,
and, with the subsequent departure of Ferro, the regime’s propaganda efforts
became more institutionalized and repressive, and less creative.104 A new
departure was needed, a new way of marketing Salazar in an increasingly hostile
domestic and international climate. As a result, the early 1950s would witness
perhaps the most famous of all publicity stunts that its founder engaged in, one
all the more significant since it had an important impact on his secretive, but
active, personal life. Christine Garnier, a French writer of some note, in her
mid-thirties, was contacted by her publisher, Bernard Grasset (who had been,
after the war, accused of collaborationism), and charged with writing a portrait
of the Portuguese dictator. The choice was an odd one, given Garnier’s hectic
lifestyle, but the results were extraordinary. After a long delay in meeting with
Garnier, in the summer of 1951, Salazar eventually relented, inviting her to visit
him at the Fort of St. Anthony, in Estoril;105 that initial visit was followed by a
tour of the São Bento residence, and then, after Garnier’s brief return to Paris,
a prolonged stay in Santa Comba Dão—her ‘holiday with Salazar’—the two
meeting every day. To all who observed, romance seemed to be in the air and
an affair ensued. Felícia Cabrita is in no doubt that this was the case: neither is
Joaquim Vieira.106 Even Micas, ever cautious, gives the benefit of the doubt to
those who claim that this was a full-blown affair: ‘I do not doubt that, in this
passion, there may have been a physical relation, but the truth is that I cannot
swear that it was there.’107 Garnier herself denied that this was the case in her
memoirs, Jusqu’ou voyent mes yeux, published in 1975. Here she admitted to a
104. See AOS CD 2 for the copy of a letter, dated 25 March 1951 by António Ferro to his successor as head
of the SNI, José Manuel da Costa. Ferro urged his successor to be himself, to add to the SNI rather than to
destroy what had already been achieved, to continue to fuse the essence of Portugal with modernity, and to
try to enthuse youth: if all this was done, the Secretariat would ‘continue to be the organization which best
represents Portugal’s spiritual life.’ Salazar had a copy of this letter because Ferro himself sent it to him, with
a note stating that he had written it ‘to thank him for the generous words he said about me bit also to
respond to some of the criticism which he made about the orientation given to the Secretariat […] I felt the
need, which Your Excellency will certainly understand, to defend a work that belongs, in the first instance, to
Your Excellency […]’ AOS CD 2, letter, Berne, 14 April 1951, António Ferro to António de Oliveira Salazar.
105. The fort of St Anthony (Santo António da Barra), in the coastal resort of Estoril, began to be used by
Salazar in the postwar period as a summer residence. Although the fort was still classified as a military
installation, and was of limited comfort, Salazar insisted on paying rent to the Ministry of Defense for its use,
and was deeply involved in the administration of the fort, as well as the care of the garden that surrounded it.
See Melo Rita & Vieira, Os meus 35 anos, pp. 84–88, for a brief sketch of life in the fort.
106. Joaquim Vieira claims that behind Garnier’s divorce lay the discovery by her husband of Salazar’s
passionate letters. Joaquim Vieira (ed.), Fotobiografias do Século XX: António de Oliveira Salazar (Lisbon: Temas e
Debates, 2004), p. 145.
107. Rita & Vieira, Os meus 35 anos, p. 138.
great intimacy with Salazar, but one restricted to a spiritual plane:108 what else
might be possible with a man who, on a starry night, alone with an un-
doubtedly beautiful woman, who whispered to him ‘c’est merveilleux, la
passion’, chose to reply, ‘passion is something to run away from […] it is a
flame that destroys, not enlightens’?109
After her stay in Santa Comba, Garnier conducted a series of interviews
with lifelong collaborators of Salazar, hoping to find the ‘real’ self behind the
mask of the statesman. Mário de Figueiredo, for example, was pleased with
how the conversation had gone—it had taken place ‘in an pleasant atmosphere
full of good will, even camaraderie.’110 Salazar, as ever, was exceedingly atten-
tive and polite, his letters, flowers, and gifts following Garnier around the
world. After her stay in Portugal, the business of writing began; Garnier liaised
regularly with the Portuguese ambassador in Paris, Marcelo Matias, and sent
drafts to Lisbon, which Salazar read and corrected, along with hints of sadness:
Paris’ ancient quays are touched by autumn’s sweetness. I sometimes imagine what
an honor it would be for me to show you the true face of my city, the melancholic
face behind the smile.111
Willingly or not, Garnier had become a part of the propaganda machinery of

the New State. António Ferro read a draft of her work, and noted a number of
corrections that should be made. In January 1952 the ex-propaganda boss
wrote Salazar,
What seems to me necessary […] is for you to convince her to allow me to read
the whole of the proofs when she returns from Portugal, in those three or four
days when I plan to speak to her in Paris. There are certain small things that you
will be too scrupulous to point out, but which I can more easily note, as a person
who knows the métier, and the tricks of the trade.112
On Garnier’s subsequent trips to Lisbon, which were many and paid for by
Salazar, the machinery of the Portuguese diplomatic corps was deployed to
108. Garnier wrote, of her first meeting with Salazar, which had run for hours instead of the allotted fifteen
minutes, that ‘I had found, as if by miracle, the oasis, I had reached a safe port. No, it was not love, as some
may think—it was something “higher”’. Garnier, Jusqu’ou voyent mes yeux (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1975), p. 138.
109. Garnier, Jusqu’ou, p. 149.
110. Correspondência entre Mário de Figueiredo e Oliveira Salazar (Lisbon: Comissão do Livro Negro Sobre o
Regime Fascista, 1986), doc. 42, letter, 22 September 1951, Mário de Figueiredo to António de Oliveira
Salazar, p. 166.
111. AOS CP 124, letter, Paris, 18 August 1951, Christine Garnier to António de Oliveira Salazar.
112. AOS CD 2, letter, 7 January 1952, António Ferro to António de Oliveira Salazar.
ease her travel.113 She spent time at the Estoril fort when Salazar was there,
staying in different rooms, with, it appears, Dona Maria in between. Sometimes
her son came as well, but never her (third) husband. This circumstance would
change in 1968, when she brought her fourth husband, with whom Salazar got
on well.114 Other times Garnier stayed in São Bento, whose garden Salazar
described as a haven. Salazar had become for her someone who valued her no
matter what she did in her life, who assured her that one day she would have
peace and happiness. He sent her gifts: Azorean pineapples, whenever they
came into season; Dão wines; and, on one occasion, the most conspicuous
present of all: a ring, purchased by Marcelo Matias, at Salazar’s request, for 450
dollars. The two corresponded regularly over the years, writing once or twice a
week, wherever her travels took her.115 Some of Garnier’s observations on
Salazar are very telling:
One morning, Salazar arrived suddenly. With binoculars, he watched the people
on the beaches, muttering, shocked, disgusted: “Oh, that flesh…that sinful flesh!”
Then he looked at me. I was wearing a bikini. He did not say a word, but I
understood his intentions. Never again did I wear a bathing suit on the terrace of
the St Anthony fort.116
Vacances avec Salazar was, in Portugal at least, an enormous success. Maria
Filomena Mónica writes that
the book represented a risk for someone like Salazar, who had always surrounded
himself with an aura of mystery. But the risk paid off. The Portuguese translation
went through seven editions in one year.117
As José Nosolini wrote Garnier, ‘Lisbon’s carnations have not brought you
bad luck…’118 What, then, is so special about the book? If we consider the
investment made in time and resources, and even leaving aside the nature of
the relationship that evolved between Salazar and its author, we can state with
certainty that no word was published in Vacances avec Salazar against its subject’s
wishes. This was precisely how Salazar wanted to be portrayed at a moment
when there was relative peace and stability in Portugal, and the means to move
113. AOS CP 124, letter, Bayonne, 28 January 1952, Ruy Vieira Lisboa (Portuguese consul in Bayonne) to
the Presidency of the Council of Ministers.
114. Garnier, Jusqu’ou, p. 346.
115. Ibid., p. 255.
116. Ibid., p. 163.
117. Maria Filomena Mónica, ‘Christine Garnier’ in Barreto & Mónica (eds), Diccionário de História de Portugal
vol. 8, pp. 88–89.
118. AOS CD 9, Letter, Rome, no date (received 19 April 1952), José Nosolini to António de Oliveira
Salazar. Nosolini was, in this letter, detailing the contents of an earlier letter to Garnier, in which he thanked
her for a copy of Vacances avec Salazar. He wrote, ‘I tell her that it is a human book, destined for great success,
with the special merit of revealing the soul of a statesman that bears power like a burden but who, as a result
of his Christian spirit and a perfect sense of duty, bears it with love.’
the country forward—but no longer any serious way of mobilizing the
population, given the ideological bankruptcy of the União Nacional, the Mocidade
Portuguesa, and the Legião Portuguesa. Garnier’s descriptions of her conversations
with Salazar made him a human figure, but one condemned, by a sense of duty,
to a life in politics that he, ultimately, did not want; a man of great intelligence,
wisdom, charm, and wit, who could do anything he set his mind and heart to,
but who was condemned to row against the tide of time and the ambitions of
others, who conspired constantly to undo his labors:
How can I stop the wave of feminine independence crashing upon our world?
Women display such a desire for freedom, such a burning to enjoy life’s pleasures!
They do not understand that happiness is reached by renouncing,119 rather than
having…The great nations should give the example, keeping women in their
home. But those nations seem to ignore that the solid constitution of the family
cannot exist if the wife lives outside the home […] What can I do, in Portugal? I
admit that all my efforts to return the women to the old ways of living have been
almost in vain!120
As depicted by Garnier, Salazar’s life—a ‘straight line’, in the words of Mário

de Figueiredo121—was built around the notion of renouncing: his career, family
life (despite a love of children), travel, visiting friends,122 the simple pleasure of
reading a book or watching a film. There was no time, there was no space in
which to enjoy life: his existence determined by Providence, for Salazar there
was only work. The Portuguese did not help: ‘In order to explain the most in-
significant project, the Portuguese have the habit of losing themselves in point-
less considerations. But knowing that they have only fifteen minutes [with
Salazar], they hurry, and do not lose themselves.’123 The outside world intruded
119. Later in the book Salazar returned to this theme. He described happiness as ‘a state of satisfaction for
the soul, an expression of total harmony between our aspirations and life’s realities’. He added, ‘that is why I
find it simpler to reach happiness by renouncing than by seeking and satisfying ever more numerous and
intense needs’. Christine Garnier, Férias com Salazar (Lisbon: Fernando Pereira—Editor, n.d.), p. 73.
120. Garnier, Férias, pp. 11–12.
121. Ibid., p. 28.
122. There survive, from the 1950s, a number of small diaries in which Salazar noted down phone numbers
and addresses, renewing these from year to year. There are few additions with every year, and the number of
telephone numbers is low: slightly less than thirty, all told. They include a number of women correspondents
(Such as Christine Garnier and Dona Filipa de Bragança), a small handful of personal friends of long standing
(J. A. Marques, José Nosolini, Ricardo Espírito Santo, Mário de Figueiredo), and some collaborators (Santos
Costa, Paulo Cunha). There is a longer number of addresses, between seventy and eighty, which extends to
other figures: some Austrian children who spent the war in Portugal, significant figures in the world diamond
trade (Ernest Oppenheimer and Harry Winston), and names from Salazar’s distant past—Fr Mateo and
Felismina de Oliveira.
123. Garnier, Férias, p. 13. In another passage, Salazar would be quoted as saying ‘“We have, more than any
other people I am aware of, a History in which normality, the average, the median, is not the rule: heroic
periods are followed with incredible speed by catastrophic depression, collective disappointment, national
sadness.’ (p. 63.)
little into his life, and the gardens of São Bento insulated him,124 as did a num-
ber of gate-keepers, the most important of which was Dona Maria. Such insula-
tion was welcomed by the President of the Council, because he disliked
crowds, and had always done so. His supporters were hurt by his reserve and
aloofness at public occasions, but this was the way he had always been. The
annual holiday in Vimiero, which Garnier witnessed, was necessary to renew
his strength for the coming year; contact with his home soil has a rein-
vigorating effect which for which even the gardens at São Bento were only a
poor substitute; his dealings with the local people were totally devoid of cere-
mony (‘Thus with Caesar would the people of the Roman campagna speak’,125
wrote Garnier) but Salazar expected his sophisticated Parisian interlocutor to
respect his fellow villagers: ‘“It would not be a bad thing, Madam, if you were
to greet these people!”’126 Salazar hoped to be able to spend some years of
peace in Vimieiro before dying. He devoted his time there to a number of
crops, and favorite plants; the fate of a young oak, recently afflicted by an
illness, worried him. Conversations with Salazar, his sisters, and friends and
collaborators (Mário de Figueiredo about Viseu, Bissaia Barreto and Cerejeira
about Coimbra, banker Ricardo Espírito Santo on Salazar’s abnegation,
Augusto de Castro on his devotion to truth and his role during World War II),
were seamlessly interspersed with passages from speeches, in order to set
policy in a human context. And certain fictions of the regime were preserved.
Having observed the swearing in of the new President of the Republic,
Craveiro Lopes, Garnier would write that ‘in Portugal, the importance of the
Head of State is great. It is he who controls the nation’s political life, chooses
the President of the Council and keeps him in power for as long as he deems it
convenient to do so.’127
Unabashed in her praise for Salazar’s work (‘Portugal is, in truth, the last
refuge of sentiment, in this time of materialism which stigmatizes’,128 Garnier
wrote, adding, elsewhere, ‘in Portugal the people still have time to be moved
and preserve the pleasure of dreaming’129), Garnier was keen to ascertain
Salazar’s links with French political thinkers, notably, of course, Charles
124. ‘This isolation has helped greatly, it is true, in carrying out my task, and in both the past and the present
it has allowed me to concentrate, to be master of my time and my feelings, and prevent me from being
influenced or hurt.’ (p. 75.)
125. Ibid., p. 70. In reality, Vimieiro could be a source of headaches for Salazar. In October 1951, an accident
involving a farm laborer in Salazar’s estate had to be handed over to the Corporations Minister, José Soares
da Fonseca, to sort out. Soares da Fonseca brought in a Portuguese insurance company, who handled the
matter discretely. In the aftermath of the affair, Salazar ensured himself against any such accidents on his
property. Papers relating to this incident can be found in AOS PP 6, file 6, ‘Insurance’.
126. Ibid., p. 94.
127. Ibid., p. 48.
128. Ibid., p. 70.
129. Ibid., p. 133.
Maurras. Salazar recognized that la politique d’abord was a principle of his, but
not an absolute dictate—and generally kept away from Maurras and others:
Will Salazar speak to me today of his ‘Maurrasian’ education and the influence that
the slogan la politique d’abord had on his public life? Will he tell me that he recently
received a warm letter from Maurras, written in jail? No.130
Salazar also agreed with Garnier that France had still an important role to play
in a world ‘which had lost the habit of thinking, perhaps because of an excess
of suffering.’131 It was certainly in France, more so than in any other country in
the world, that Salazar continued to have an audience. In 1956, for example, a
collection of excerpts from speeches, arranged thematically, was published
under the title Principes d’action.132 A former disciple of Charles Maurras who
had been, after the war, elected to the Académie Française, Pierre Gaxotte,
prefaced the book, pointing out the continuity of Salazar’s action, built upon a
doctrine which was sound and national:
Without continuity, there can be no serious labor. Without continuity, there can be
no constructive work and no order. Without continuity, there can be no plan and
no progress. It is, in truth, extraordinary that for so long, and in good faith, the
idea of progress and the revolutionary spirit were associated with each other.133
Philosopher Gustave Thibon rounded off the volume with a portrait of Salazar
that added little that was new: Salazar was a prudent ruler, who only built on
sure foundations, who understood Man and men; he was a realist who under-
stood the limits of his power, but at the same time what preoccupied him most
were affairs of the spirit. The State was strong and at times directed closely the
lives of its citizens—but that was not how Salazar wanted his country to be;
that was how experienced showed it had to be for the moment:
If the modern State must be strong in order to sustain the positive aspirations of
Man, it must be equally strong in order to neutralize or correct his negative
tendencies. The uprooted beings that we have become are easier prey of our
internal demons, and of the thousand harmful influences that manifest themselves
around us, than used to be the case.134
130. Ibid., p. 102.

131. Ibid., p. 101.
132. António de Oliveira Salazar, Principes d’action (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1956). With a preface by
Pierre Gaxotte and a Portrait of Salazar by Gustave Thibon.
133. Pierre Gaxotte, ‘Réflexions en marge de la révolution nationale portugaise’, preface to Salazar, Principes,
p. 10.
134. Gustave Thibon, ‘Le Président Salazar’, in Salazar, Principes, pp. 246–47.
Chapter VII
Salazar and the Politics of the New State

1945–1958
A s the war in Europe ended, the Western Allies were quick to praise
Portugal’s role in the conflict, highlighting how important her neutrality
and the provision of the Azores bases in 1943 had been. The departing British
ambassador, Sir Ronald Campbell, was especially kind with his words, spelling
out, at a banquet in the embassy the fact that Portugal’s neutrality had been a
‘positive advantage’ for the British war effort. These words, agreed to in
advance, were profusely thanked by Carmona, in an intervention prepared for
him by Salazar. Some days later Campbell, in conversation with the increasingly
influential diplomat Marcelo Matias,1 assured his interlocutor that it had been a
great pleasure to make such a statement at such an ‘opportune’ moment.2 The
preservation of neutrality, combined with the fulsome praise for his help
delivered by Allied leaders, and their representatives in Portugal, should have
1. Marcelo Matias (1903–1999) graduated with a degree in Law from the University of Lisbon, and entered
the diplomatic corps in 1930. His rise in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was meteoric as World War II came
to an end, to a great extent replacing Luís Teixeira de Sampaio as Salazar’s chief advisor within the MNE.
From 1948 to 1958 he served as ambassador in Paris. Matias entered the cabinet as Foreign Minister in 1958,
but would return to Paris as ambassador in 1961, after the outbreak of violence in Angola. In this second
spell in Paris Matias served as the link between Salazar and President de Gaulle and his ministers. His
correspondence with Salazar was voluminous and much of it has been published: see Maria José Vaz Pinto
(ed.), Correspondência Marcelo Matias-Salazar, 1947-68 (Lisbon: Difel, 1984).
2. AOS CO NE 7A notes on a conversation between Marcelo Matias and the British ambassador, 25 June
1945.
added in a lasting manner to the Salazar myth. Luís Teixeira, the author of a
quick biographical sketch of Salazar distributed by the SPN, now penned a
long article for the Diário de Notícias, published on 3 June, entitled ‘Neutralidade
Colaborante’ (Collaborating Neutrality), which became the new orthodoxy in
relation to Portugal’s wartime diplomacy. Soon it was republished in booklet
form and distributed to influential foreigners.3 The way that this expression—
‘collaborating neutrality’—was woven into the fabric of political propaganda
suggests that the government wanted it to be understood, across the country,
as an axiomatic truth: not only had Salazar, through his dedication and
intelligence, staved off the war, he had actually helped the Allies to win it. If
Portugal’s cities were intact, if her people had not known the horrors of civil
war, blitzkrieg, occupation, or of carpet bombing, it was thanks to him. Events
would quickly show, however, that even if people believed this to be the case,
they deemed it insufficient. In the wake of the Allied victory, much of the
politicized population of Portugal looked forward to a change. As the Labor
victory in Great Britain would show, recognition of the wartime leader’s efforts
did not guarantee re-election. When spontaneous celebrations broke out on
VE day, they had an undeniable political flavor, and the regime had to move
quickly to set up its own celebration—an orderly demonstration of thanks-
giving to Salazar. To these were added a short address to the National
Assembly, in which Salazar asked the country to give thanks for peace, for the
fact that Portugal had been spared the horrors of war, and, finally, for the fact
that Great Britain was counted among the victors:
Many will boast of having foretold this victory with complete clarity: I humbly
confess that my hope only turned into certainty when I was able to contemplate a
war effort which, although within the extraordinary capabilities of the British
people, will doubtfully have been matched at any other time in the history of
humanity.4
No tweaking of the existing system would be enough, in 1945, to make the

New State popular. That was certainly the opinion of long-time collaborator
Ângelo César, who wrote on 30 June that in order to save himself, thereby pre-
venting an outbreak of anarchy, Salazar had to appease public opinion, which
continued to be ‘republican, anti-grémios, anglophile and hispanophobic’: this,
and a concerted personal campaign, might allow Salazar to ‘prepare the electo-
rate for the free and…inevitable elections’ which loomed.5 In addition, while
3. AOS CP 49, letter, Lisbon, 4 August 1945, Esmeraldo Carvalhais to António de Oliveira Salazar.
4. ‘Bendigamos a paz! Bendigamos a vitória!’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 9 May 1945. On 13 May Salazar
was present at a thanksgiving ceremony held in St George’s Church, Lisbon’s Anglican temple.
5. AOS CP 62, letter, Oporto, 30 July 1945, Ângelo César to António de Oliveira Salazar.
Salazar and the Politics of the New State: 1945–1958 377
Salazar had no reason to suspect that the Allies might move directly against
him, he did fear that they might act to unseat Franco—an event which would
have immediate, and possibly catastrophic, consequences for the New State,
which had done so much to ensure the Nationalist victory in Spain. On 6
August 1945 Salazar met with Nicolás Franco to discuss the Potsdam declara-
tion, which had delivered a sharp criticism of Francisco Franco’s regime in
Spain. From his conversation with the caudillo’s brother Salazar understood that
Madrid believed that a generalized assault on Franco’s power was just
beginning, and therefore, as ever, Salazar urged his Iberian neighbor to be
cautious:
In my opinion, the Potsdam declaration was a way of appeasing Russia, which is

clearly anti-Nationalist Spain; the victorious English Labor party which, by virtue
of many statements, old and new, is in solidarity with the Spanish reds; and an
important part of American opinion. I was, however, convinced that the evolution
of events determined by European interests would take place along the path of an
understanding rather than that of a worsening of the situation.6
The 1945 Election
Salazar had attempted to retake the political initiative in the second half of
1944. A Second Congress of the União Nacional occurred; in September, Salazar
carried out a major cabinet reshuffle, bringing in many new faces and talents.
In 1945, as the war came to an end, Minister of the Interior Júlio Botelho
Moniz undertook a tour of the country, appointing new civil governors and
6. AOS CO NE 7, notes on conversation between the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Spanish
ambassador, 6 August 1945. Salazar went on to say, according to this account, that ‘in the present state in
which Western Europe finds itself, and which will persist for some time to come, the Peninsula was the sole
secure point of support which embodied the ideals of order, work, hierarchy, and authority’. On 29 March
1946 Salazar met the British ambassador, Sir Owen O’Malley, and Lord Cranbourne, a former Secretary of
State for Dominion Affairs. The subject of the conversation was Spain, and Salazar urged his interlocutors
not to be paralyzed by Franco’s past, or the continued violent repression exercised in Spain: ‘The President
of the Council remarked that politicians should look to the future and not waste their time contemplating the
past, which is dead.’ Salazar went on to add that ‘any change of regime in Spain would imply a new civil war,
so long as such a change is not carried out by Franco, and with his good will’, lamenting the fact that a
change-over to a monarchy had proved impossible to carry out. The meeting was not without humor. When
Lord Cranbourne remarked that all problems would be resolved by a monarchist restoration, the formula
which, after all, Franco himself professed to favor, Salazar replied ‘with a smile, that maybe the
Generalissimo’s attitude could be compared with that of many good Catholics who are in no hurry to go to
heaven’. His guests laughed heartily at this comment, O’Malley saying of Franco ‘I think he’s dotty.’ Salazar
remarked only that ‘the Generalissimo belongs to that group of people who believes himself to be
illuminated, like Hitler and Mussolini.’ AOS CO NE 7A, notes on a meeting between the Minister of Foreign
Affairs, the British ambassador, and Lord Cranbourne, 29 March 1946. It is worth noting, in respect of
Salazar’s impression of Franco, that he warned António Carneiro Pacheco, recently appointed ambassador to
Madrid, to be aware of the Generalissimo’s narcissistic need for adulation—advice that Carneiro Pacheco
thanked him for. AOS CD 10, letter, Madrid, 1 May 1946, António Carneiro Pacheco to António de Oliveira
Salazar.
testing the União Nacional machinery. His reports gave it a clean bill of health,
while the PIDE, in a major mistake, assured Salazar that the republican opposi-
tion was more concerned with preventing a social revolution than with
mounting an assault on power.7 Perhaps because he believed his prestige to be
higher than it really was, Salazar spoke, in August, of elections ‘as free as those
of free England’, and then announced, in a speech on 7 October, that elections
would go ahead the following month, and that these would be open to those
who wanted to challenge the list assembled by the União Nacional. The
announcement was included in a long note of caution about political trends in
Western Europe, and was accompanied by Salazar’s regular assertion of a lack
of desire for political power; but its importance was real, and the result was
immediate. The democratic opposition, stealing a march on the PCP (to which
it was linked in the MUNAF) organized itself to contest the elections. An initial
meeting went ahead in Lisbon on 8 October 1945, from which emerged the
Movimento de Unidade Democrática (MUD—Movement for Democratic Unity). Its
first central commission was composed of attorney José Magalhães Godinho
and artist Manuel Mendes (both of whom had important roles in MUNAF),
along with a collection of republicans and socialists; most of these men were
drawn from the legal profession.8 Behind them stood an older generation of
politicians, the survivors of the First Republic. The MUD called for an updated
and inclusive register of electors, and for guarantees that a free and fair poll
would be held. In practice, this meant giving the opposition an official role in
the electoral process. Moreover, to make all this possible, the MUD argued that
a postponement of the elections was necessary. While these calls were being
made, an attempt was also made to vertebrate the MUD, giving it a presence
across the country. The effect was electric and was matched only by the
defeatism that gripped the regime’s supporters. As Santos Costa put it,
I note a certain amount of alarm in our camp as a result of the present political
situation. Our enemies multiply constantly, and even if they do not present
themselves to the electorate they will have gained considerable prestige. Will those
on our side take advantage of this opportunity to unite? I hope so. But who shall
make the rallying cry?
Who can be heard?
7. See AOS CO IN 8C, PIDE report on political activity in opposition circles, Lisbon, 6 August 1945. Of
special importance in this report was the cited opinion of former Democratic party leader António Maria da
Silva, who had told his followers that this was not the time to act: ‘it was better to wait and leave the initiative
to Salazar, since politics, like fashion, were cyclical, and democracy had once again become fashionable. It
was thus natural that President Salazar would take some steps in that direction, since Portugal was
unfortunately too dependent on the great powers to be indifferent to what happened abroad’.
I firmly and sincerely believe that from the União Nacional nothing useful will come
[…]9
The movement’s pretensions, for all (or because of) the attention they
generated, were turned down, notably by President Carmona, who, despite
meeting a MUD delegation on 17 October, rejected all of its suggestions.
Despite these setbacks, a growth in the MUD’s popularity was evident, and its
message was getting through in the press, with some newspapers—República,
Primeiro de Janeiro, Diário de Lisboa—taking advantage of a relaxation of censor-
ship to proclaim their support for the idea of change. Moreover, the MUD
began collecting signatures in support of its pretensions. At one point, a claim
of 50,000 signatures was advanced. Many of the signatories were employees of
the State, including civil servants, magistrates, and policemen. Communists and
PCP sympathizers joined the movement, whose sudden expansion seemed to
promise that anything was possible; after its initial surprise, the PCP was keen
to ensure that a relationship might be established between the MUD and the
older MUNAF, which it controlled. On 26 October the MUD had recourse to
the courts, trying to obtain from the judiciary the desired postponement of the
electoral act. The following day, however, the government suspended all public
meetings of the MUD, alleging that the opposition was in fact preparing a
coup. The government then demanded to see the lists of signatures, in order, it
claimed, to check their veracity; most were naïvely handed over, but not those
collected in Oporto, which were successfully hidden. The lists of signatures
were a tangible demonstration of the anti-government sentiment, as a result of
which they could not be allowed to circulate. They were also of great use to the
secret police. Soon after their collection, members of the security services that
had signed them began to be questioned by the PIDE.10 On 9 November the
Supreme Court ruled that it did not have the power to alter polling day, and the
following day MUD withdrew from the elections, resolving, however, to stay in
place as a permanent feature of the political landscape once these had finished.
In April 1946 the opposition’s movement sprouted a youth wing. MUD Juvenil
was created, and it contained a heavy communist representation. By then, the
communist takeover of the MUD itself was well underway. In October of that
year a military coup—known as the ‘Golpe da Mealhada’ (the Mealhada
Coup)—was attempted, with no success. The MUD criticized the government
when and how it could, making much, for example, of the Soviet veto on
Portuguese membership of the United Nations. It was not surprising that a
9. Correspondência de Santos Costa, doc. 43, letter, Monte Real, 15 October 1945, Santos Costa to António de
wave of arrests occurred in the spring of 1947, and that in January 1948 the
MUD was deemed to be illegal.
In his memoirs, Marcelo Caetano described Salazar’s sour mood after the
1945 legislative elections, which had shown that, for all its divisions, the
opposition—democratic and communist—remained a force to be reckoned
with:
[Salazar was] disappointed with the country, and I have already explained how he
was seized by a sort of depressive neurasthenia, marked by lack of self-confidence
and regular avowals, to those closest to him, of a desire to leave the government.
But it is most curious how in that strong temperament other sentiments mani-
fested themselves: the preoccupation with not gifting his enemies a victory, the
drive to preserve what had so far been accomplished and the regime which he
continued to consider the sole suited to the nature of the Portuguese, the fighting
spirit and—the one that affected me most—jealousy of all those who might come
to enjoy the public’s favor and in whom he divined real or potential competitors.11
Salazar’s depression was not a day-long crisis. It persisted for months, and was
well-known in official circles; he was afflicted by physical symptoms, such as
headaches and a worsening of his chronic insomnia. There are many glimpses
of this depression in his correspondence; in letter to Marcelo Caetano, in
March 1946, Salazar wrote that
I thought it prudent not to venture yesterday to the Geography Society, because I

am unwell and feared the effects of terrible dizzy spells.12
Some months later Salazar wrote, ‘I am anxious to feel up to presiding over a

Council of Ministers […]’13 Energy came and went. Many remedies were tried
to snap him out of his paralysis, and friends and collaborators abroad wrote
back, recommending new medicines that might do the trick.14 This period of

12. Freire Antunes (ed.), Salazar e Caetano, doc. S 50, letter, 18 March 1946, António de Oliveira Salazar to
13. Ibid., doc. S 56, letter, 3 July 1946, António de Oliveira Salazar to Marcelo Caetano, p. 186.
14. Esmeraldo Carvalhais mentioned a rumor doing the rounds to the effect of Salazar being ill. AOS CP 50,
letter, Lisbon, 2 May 1946, Esmeraldo Carvalhais to António de Oliveira Salazar. Some weeks later Júlio
Dantas wrote, ‘it may be the case that you, like me, are suffering the effects of the atmospheric disturbances
and thunderstorms: fatigue, listlessness, lack of enthusiasm, some dizzy spells. All those whose work is of an
intellectual nature are, as a rule, barometric.’ AOS CP 92, letter, Lisbon, 15 May 1945, Júlio Dantas to
António de Oliveira Salazar. João Bianchi, ambassador to the United States, sent not only Yardley smelling
salts, but also another cure for fainting and dizzy spells—small vials containing aromatic ammonia, to be
broken and used when needed. AOS CP 33, letter, Washington D.C., 24 May 1946, João Bianchi to António
de Oliveira Salazar. António Carneiro Pacheco urged Salazar to enjoy a real holiday, not just ten days away
from his office: ‘In your case, being healthy is obligatory.’ AOS CD 10, letter, Madrid, 6 June 1946, António
Carneiro Pacheco to António de Oliveira Salazar. In September, Bianchi sent another medicine, Hasamal,
vulnerability coincided with, and must have been related to, Salazar’s most
important, because public, sentimental relationship. One positive consequence
of this health scare was that it allowed Salazar to become, once again, master of
his social life. As he wrote to the French ambassador, declining an invitation to
dine at his residence, ‘my health has for years prevented me from going to
dinners and official receptions and there are the greatest of risks in opening
precedents, even if these are perfectly justified.’15 Another was that it raised
once again a matter that had sometimes in the past been discussed: lightening
Salazar’s workload by relieving him of some of the administrative work of the
Presidency of the Council of Ministers. On 17 June 1946, João da Costa Leite
spoke to Santos Costa. Both men expressed their concern over Salazar’s state
of health, agreeing, however, that it was not as serious as some rumors made
out. Santos Costa avowed that ‘what worried him was seeing Dr Salazar dis-
believe the possibility of a recovery and a return to his normal activity.’16
Salazar needed help to overcome this situation, Santos Costa continued, in the
shape of a Vice-President of the Council, or a minister without portfolio ‘who
might represent him in dealings with other ministers, thus releasing him from
much avoidable effort and strain.’ Costa Leite replied that such a solution
would inevitably worsen the speculation about Salazar’s state of health, as well
as burdening the new minister with the label of ‘successor’. It might be better
for Salazar to relinquish the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Santos Costa dis-
agreed, arguing that Salazar enjoyed being Minister of Foreign Affairs, and
suggesting that Costa Leite would be ideally placed to be Salazar’s number two:
Costa Leite was horrified by the suggestion, and other names were discussed.
This solution would eventually be adopted, however: Costa Leite would serve
as ‘Minister of the Presidency’ from August 1950 to July 1955, being then
replaced by Marcelo Caetano, who would remain in that vital position until
August 1958.
Clearly, however, Salazar’s spirits did not improve, and Santos Costa, ever
faithful, did not let the matter drop. In January 1947 he returned to the fray,
confessing to Salazar that
which had helped him in the past to deal with headaches, vertigo, and dizzy spells. AOS CP 33, letter,
Washington D.C., 11 September 1946, João Bianchi to António de Oliveira Salazar. The following month
Cardinal-Patriarch Cerejeira, leading a Marian Congress in the city of Évora, informed Salazar that prayers
had been addressed by the meeting to the Virgin for his recovery. AOS CP 47, telegram, Évora, no date,
Cardinal-Patriarch Cerejeira to António de Oliveira Salazar.
15. AOS CP 103, letter, Lisbon, 9 February 1952, António de Oliveira Salazar to Jacques Dumaine.
16. AOS CP 152, João Pinto da Costa Leite (Lumbralles), notes on a conversation with the Minister of War,
Leut. Colonel Santos Costa, on Monday, 17 June 1946. The notes were typed and sent by Costa Leite to
Salazar.
I was very alarmed by what you told me in relation to the sequence of crises that
concern you directly: should God help us by conceding you some health, we will
still have two years of action, two years of labor before us to carry out a task that
should honor and benefit the country. Should that not be the case, then everything
will end earlier, and you should be under no illusion—your departure will spell the
irremediable death of the situação.17
These two years referred to the period before the next presidential election,
scheduled for 1949; one can infer from the passage that the possibility of
defeat at those elections was being envisaged. Salazar’s physical condition, and
his state of mind, was seen as the main impediment in any such victory. There
was more than a hint of the prima donna in Salazar’s behavior through this
period.
After the elections, a Council of Ministers was held on the evenings of 5, 6,
and 7 December to analyze what had just happened, and what might be learned
from it all. Salazar had to justify, before his government, why he had settled on
elections in the first place. He then went on to discuss the opposition’s surge in
support. According to Marcelo Caetano’s notes, Salazar mentioned as diffi-
culties the international climate—the ‘wave of democracy’ sweeping through
Europe and the world—as well as the domestic climate, especially the popular
frustration with the grémios. Also mentioned by Salazar was the general weak-
ness and inefficiency of the União Nacional and its failure to cope with the
appearance of a rival, the MUD. As trump cards, though, the regime had its
recent diplomatic action and the material improvements around the country.
Salazar also went on to explain the continued need for the União Nacional in its
present guise: the army should not be allowed to develop into a political force.
However, it was still the case that the União Nacional could not become a
political party, because that might mean having to take a stand on the regime
(that is, monarchy vs. republic) issue. According to Salazar, the following were
the principal failings of the movement:
1. It is a form of political voluntariat, which can only encompass

an elite;
2. lesser force for expansion and proselytizing
3. lesser cohesion;
4. certain ideological differences.18
To these theoretical points were added practical difficulties:
17. AOS CO PC 3K, letter, Lisbon, 21 January 1947, Santos Costa to António de Oliveira Salazar.
18. Freire Antunes (ed.), Salazar e Caetano, doc. C 65, ‘Conselho de Ministros de 5, 6 e 7 de Dezembro de
1945’, p. 167.
1. The leadership has not been effective.
2. The government has ignored the União Nacional, and does not
give it strength.
3. Lack of systematic indoctrination.
4. Acts above all in crisis moments.19
What, then, should be the future role of the União Nacional? The regime,
Salazar pointed out, had been designed to shed the National Assembly at some
unspecified time in the future, but international circumstances did not allow
this to occur at the moment; there was also a looming presidential election, the
‘moment of high crisis’ in the regime’s existence. In other words, the União
Nacional was still needed. In any case, there was no need to panic. The opposi-
tion was, in the final instance, made up of the old republican parties, with some
intellectuals thrown in; they need not be feared, and the fight could be taken to
them. Only communism, Salazar argued, had a more radical social policy than
the New State.
Marcelo Caetano spoke on 6 December, his theoretical approach
suggesting some detachment from the recent struggle. Personal matters aside,
the opposition had two contradictory aspirations: liberalization and socializa-
tion. Corporatism was the best way of resolving this contradiction, which
meant that the government was on the right course; however, corporatism had
been badly implemented since its inception, in part because of the economic
agents themselves. This had to be addressed, while the government must be
humanized, and moved closer to the people; it must reach out, listen, and meet
requests; it must be on the side of the small against the ‘plutocracy’ that ran
Portugal. Caetano reserved his harshest criticism for the União Nacional. People
across Portugal supported Salazar, not the movement. A new formula was
therefore needed. Propaganda agencies had also shown themselves to be
useless—the SNI and the Emissora Nacional had added little to the campaign.20
Franco Nogueira, in his biography of Salazar, wrote,
In consecutive sessions, Salazar recounts events, and asks ministers for their views.
Some, like Américo Tomás, Minister of the Navy, and Caeiro da Mata, Minister of
National Education, do not speak. But others do not hold back on their criticism.
Among these, Santos Costa, Minister of the Army, Botelho Moniz, Minister of the
Interior, and Cavaleiro de Ferreira,21 Minister of Justice, stand out: all question the
19. Ibid., p. 167.

20. Interestingly, Caetano did not mention this Council of Ministers in his memoirs.
21. Manuel Gonçalves Cavaleiro Ferreira (1912–1992) graduated with a degree in Law and earned a doctorate
from the University of Lisbon, where he would later lecture, after his studies had taken him to Italy and
Germany. A specialist in penal law, he would serve as Minister of Justice from 1944 to 1954. His break with
Salazar would occur in part because of his opposition to an extension of the powers of the PIDE. See, in this
government’s actions, the policy followed. But it is Marcelo Caetano, just returned
from a tour of the African provinces, who unleashes the heaviest criticism: little
was done right in the past, very little in the present; he doubts the competency of
some ministers; he judges harshly the solutions given to some problems; and
considers the União Nacional’s actions in the last elections to have been disastrous.
Finance and Economy Ministers—João da Costa Leite and Supico Pinto,
respectively—defend themselves as best they can […]
The next day, Salazar meets Costa Leite. He unburdens himself. He confesses that
he had been exasperated, and wounded. He had not been able to sleep, victim of a
bout of insomnia that lasted until dawn. He went over the criticism, which he had
taken as directed against him personally, and considered it his duty to present
himself in Belém to tender his resignation. But at five in the morning he turned
over on his bed, and said to himself, “they’re just kids”. And he went to sleep.22
Salazar also convened meetings of the highest bodies of the União Nacional at
this time. On 3 December, for example, it was the turn of the movement’s
Executive Commission to meet. Salazar was deeply shocked by the outcome:
politics still seemed to depend on personal likes and dislikes, and local rivalries.
‘“It’s as if we have learned nothing”, Salazar comments.’23 Caetano, in his
memoirs, adds,
I was present […] at a meeting of the Central Commission of the União Nacional
and another, of its Consultative Junta, destined to take stock of what had
happened. I felt sorry for Salazar. As those who had toured the country on
electoral propaganda spoke, his visage betrayed ever greater sadness and dis-
appointment. The sparkle in his piercing eyes dimmed and almost went out. One
explained how in a certain region, the voters were reluctant to cast their ballot for
the government because they deemed taxes to be too high, or because a certain
road had not been built; another described annoyance with wartime rationing;
another spoke of the revolt against the grémios; yet another explained how a local
grandee had defected, since his request that his son be exempted from military
service had not been attended to […]
Salazar only murmured: “May God take pity on us! May God take pity on us!
What about the country’s interests? Nothing has changed in the people’s men-
tality, nothing! It was in vain that we worked all of these years to educate them
politically, to take them away from cesspit of partisan politics and give them the
notion of the great national interest!”24
regard, Luís Bigotte Chorão, ‘Manuel Gonçalves Cavaleiro Ferreira’ in Barreto & Mónica (eds), Dicionário de
História de Portugal vol. 8, pp. 30–31. Salazar received news of Cavaleiro Ferreira’s refusal to sign a decree
convcerning the on Saturday, 7 August 1954. The following day, after consulting President Craveiro Lopes,
he identified a successor—João de Matos Antunes Varela.
22. Franco Nogueira, O Ataque, pp. 36–37.
23. Ibid., p. 36.
There followed a period of great agitation, as Salazar planned a government

reshuffle designed to regain political initiative and to demonstrate that the diffi-
cult transition to peacetime was now over. Botelho Moniz, unwilling to accept
the Colonies portfolio, left the cabinet, as did Marcelo Caetano, who, after his
sharp criticism of União Nacional, was appointed President of its Executive
Commission and charged with the movement’s day-to-day management. Into
the Colonies portfolio stepped Teófilo Duarte, a surprising choice, being a man
whose political beliefs placed him on the extreme Right, and who was best
remembered for his slavish devotion to President Sidónio Pais in 1918.25
Daniel Barbosa was made Minister of the Economy; August Cancela de Abreu
replaced Botelho Moniz at Interior;26 José Ulrich was brought in to Public
Works,27 while Manuel Gomes de Araújo took over Communications; finally,
Fernando Pires de Lima became Minister of National Education, replacing José
Caeiro da Mata, who took over as Minister of Foreign Affairs, a position which
Salazar relinquished, thus divesting himself of his last named portfolio. His
close collaborator at Foreign Affairs, Marcelo Matias, lamented his passing:
I write this letter with a certain melancholy. You have just left the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs. I was in the room: wandering through the corridors, I stood by
the door, taking part in the ceremony—so simple it was—that marked it. In truth,
though, I was not really there […] I was remembering these two surprising years
of my life, spent with you, day after day […]
A cycle in my life was closed today, the great adventure has come to an end. The
rest will be as God wills it—but the heroic purpose has gone.28
The Presidential Election of 1949
An important consequence of the 1947 reshuffle was the, if anything,

increased role of Salazar, whose ascendancy over the rest of the government,
25. Teófilo Duarte (1892–1958) was a military officer who, as a lieutenant, served, was deeply impressed by,
and mourned theatrically, Sidónio Pais, whose memory he strove to preserve in the years that followed.
Driven out of the army in 1919 for political reasons, Teófilo Duarte was readmitted in the wake of 28 May
1926, although he was then named governor of Timor, as distant a location from Lisbon as the Portuguese
empire allowed. He was a surprising choice for Minister of the Colonies in 1947, and his failure to under-
stand where Salazar’s power ended and his began ensured that the experience was not repeated.
26. Fernando Pires de Lima (1906–1970) graduated with a degree in Law from the University of Coimbra,
joining its lecturing staff. He served as Minister of National Education until 1955, being remembered for
attempts to deal with illiteracy, and then in the Corporative Chamber. A member of the Council of State, he
would oppose Salazar’s substitution in 1968.
27. José Frederico do Casal Ribeiro Ulrich (1905–1982) graduated from the Instituto Superior Técnico with a
degree in Civil Engineering, and was brought into the cabinet in 1944 as Undersecretary of State for Public
Works, being promoted to minister in 1947. In 1954 he left the cabinet, heading the Junta de Energia Nuclear
(Nuclear Energy Junta) He also served as a procurador in the Corporative Chamber.
28. AOS CP 173, letter, Lisbon, 5 February 1947, Marcelo Matias to António de Oliveira Salazar.
indeed the whole New State machinery, was reaffirmed. This new hegemony
was especially evident after the demise of President Carmona, which left the
army leaderless but for the devoted Santos Costa, who controlled its destinies
from 1944 to 1958.29 More than ever, Salazar expected ministers to comply, to
follow orders, and not to have ideas or initiatives that might have the slightest
hint of the political about them. Of large-scale subsidies made to a newspaper,
the Diário Popular, by the governments of Angola and Mozambique in return
for publicity in a special edition, Salazar wrote,
It was a project of Captain Teófilo Duarte. The current minister knew that the
money had gone out but was not able to say anything more. The abundance of
money which ministers can dispose of has this sort of inconveniences. It is
lamentable and odious and I have less and less patience for all of this.30
Marcelo Caetano, during his term as Minister of the Colonies, had urged
Salazar to hold fortnightly meetings of the Council of Ministers, essential for
team-building and the breakdown of mistrust among Salazar’s closest collab-
orators. The fact that these regular meetings came to an end in 1947, when
Caetano stepped down from his ministerial office, shows what little store
Salazar set by these objectives. Marcelo Caetano would be unhappy as well in
his role as de facto leader of the União Nacional. He described what the regime
had become by 1948 in the following, despondent, terms:
Salazarism is, today, the negative frame of mind of the wealthy classes, embodying
the fear of everything unpleasant—war, revolution, communism, misgovernment.
How easy it would be, through that enormous capital of competence and prestige
that is Salazar, and with less nerves, less despotic actions, less visions of Our Lady
29. In a remarkable letter to Albino dos Reis, Salazar explained why the National Assembly should not hold a
special session in homage to the deceased President: Carmona’s death had been briefly mentioned in the
parliament on the day of his death, before it was closed as a sign of mourning; in the first session after the
funeral Albino dos Reis had said some words, as had another speaker; ‘how can one now organize a session,
without it seeming a scheme by which to allow the Chamber’s nightingales to shine? What motive or pretext
might be found?’ Arquivo Albino dos Reis (AAR), letter, Lisbon, 25 April 1951, António de Oliveira Salazar
to Albino dos Reis. Salazar continued down this road of depriving the President of the Republic of visible
importance, discussing with Albino dos Reis a simplification of the ceremonies by which the Head of State
greeted the National Assembly and the municipality of Lisbon in the New Year. Salazar wrote, ‘I never saw
the point of it, and restricted myself to allowing what had been inherited to go on, although I never found
out its origin.’ AAR, letter, Lisbon, 24 December 1951, António de Oliveira Salazar to Albino dos Reis.
Albino dos Reis advised against change—for twenty years Carmona had followed the same ritual; to change
it now would generate potentially damaging rumors and speculation. AOS CP 236, letter, Lisbon, 27
December 1951, Albino dos Reis to António de Oliveira Salazar.
30. Freire Antunes (ed.), Salazar e Caetano, doc. S 142, letter, 1 February 1951, António de Oliveira Salazar to
of Fátima, and with a more collected conscience of our own strength (generous
and just by being strong!), develop in the country a positive attitude!31
In the wake of the MUD’s disappearance, the various strands opposition

turned their attention to the next election, scheduled for 1949: the election of a
President of the Republic. Fighting a good campaign would allow them to
demonstrate that they had not disappeared, putting their views across to the
public. Discussions on the selection of the candidate began in 1947, and eighty-
year old General Norton de Matos quickly emerged victorious.32 Had the con-
test been an open one, Norton would in many ways have been a poor choice,
since he was too closely identified with the old Democratic party; Norton de
Matos was also a former Masonic Grand Master, had led Portugal’s ill-fated
military efforts in World War I, and, given his age, was hardly a force for
renewal. In the Portuguese circumstances, however, where the possibility of a
free election did not arise, there were some advantages to this candidate. He
was rock-solid on the colonial question; he could not be dismissed as inex-
perienced or accused of being unpatriotic; and he managed to establish quite a
consensus in opposition circles, with only former adversary Cunha Leal, who
wanted clear blue water between republicans and communists, and some up-
holders of the old Democratic party’s supposed purity, opposing him. Existing
MUD structures were easily activated and transformed so as to support a presi-
dential bid. Norton de Matos decided to act early, in order to obtain the maxi-
mum exposure for the opposition’s program, and so submitted the paperwork
related to his candidacy to the Supreme Court, whose approval was necessary,
on 9 July 1948. After this the still unofficial candidate held a press conference
in his home, with some thirty journalists, Portuguese and foreign, in atten-
dance. Norton de Matos also published a manifesto, To the Nation, personally
contributing to its strong colonialist tone. Other forces, notably the PCP, were
willing to indulge him on this point, which they thought of little importance.33
The Supreme Court, however, broke for the summer holiday, taking no
decision on the matter for three whole months. For this period, then, Norton
was not a candidate, and could not act as one.34
That the opposition was able to rally around a single candidate was due, in
part, to the assumption that he would withdraw from the contest before the
31. Ibid., doc. C 116, letter, 8 April 1948, Marcelo Caetano to António de Oliveira Salazar, p. 231. Salazar
continued to dislike the idea of ‘Salazarism’; he rebuked French nationalist writer and devoted follower
Jacques Ploncard d’Assac for its use as a title. AOS CP 17, letter, Lisbon, 27 June 1952, Jacques Ploncard
d’Assac to António de Oliveira Salazar. The title chosen for the volume was changed to O pensamento de
Salazar (The Thought of Salazar).
33. Ibid., p. 814.
ballots were cast. The PCP was especially insistent on this point, not wanting
to legitimize the regime by participating in its elections. As the polling date, 13
February, approached, the foreign press began to take an interest in Portuguese
politics. The Manchester Guardian, on 2 February 1949, explained that ‘Portugal
may be our oldest ally, but she is certainly among our most embarrassing […]
however sound the strategic arguments may be for her inclusion in Western
Union the moral and political case is more than doubtful.’ There was con-
siderable coverage abroad of the presidential elections: ‘for the first time in the
regime’s history an opposition candidate is to stand’. The article continued,
This election is taking place within the framework of Dr Salazar’s own dictated
Constitution; an opposition for once is working within its narrow legal rights, and
because of the age and distinguished record of its candidate there is little that the
Salazar regime can do to stop it.35
In truth, any election in which the opposition mounted a credible cam-

paign was a danger to Salazar, since the New State’s electoral machinery was so
rusty. The União Nacional, not being a party, found it hard to be dynamic,
enthusing its militants and the rest of the population, when it was only reacti-
vated from time to time. One report into its propaganda reached a depressing
conclusion:
It is easy to see that even today—some twenty-two years after the movement of
28 May 1926—the Situação has not organized and does not possess the means of
propaganda and distribution of its doctrines, in other words, of information,
which might allow it to act efficiently, directly or indirectly, upon public opinion.36
The report added that a whole generation no longer remembered what life
had been like before the 28 May 1926, and therefore could not understand the
‘greatness’ of the work carried out since then. It was prey to foreign informa-
tion and the opposition’s counter-propaganda. Practically no-one read the
Diário da Manhã, while the Emissora Nacional was a disaster when it came to
propaganda. Since it took much of its news from the newspapers, at times it
was working counter to the designs of the government. Even more serious
problems were highlighted by Ulisses Cortês, at the time a member of the
Executive Commission of the UN:
35. ‘Portuguese elections’ in Manchester Guardian, 2 February 1949.

36. AOS CO PC 4C, ‘Revisão dos meios de propaganda’, report by Quartim Graça, of the Lisbon District
Commission of the União Nacional.
We live in a country with no political culture and devoid, as a result, of civic
conscience. To ignore this fact is to ignore an unchanging factor in national
political life.
In such a country, one can only move the amorphous and inorganic mass of the
electorate by mobilizing the elites that lead it: landowners, liberal professions, the
State’s bureaucracy, the ministers of the Church and the local powerbrokers […]
In other words, whosoever has the support of these elites has the support of the
country’s majority […]37
By nature and self-interest, the elites should be siding with the New State.
The problem, of course, was that the União Nacional, because of its essential
powerlessness to affect government decisions, was of limited interest to the
country’s elites. And the government’s insistence on ruling for all, ignoring
local or sectional interests, was greatly upsetting the elites. A new way forward
was needed, one which reconciled the interests of the nation, as defined by the
government, with the interests of the elites which might support, politically,
those which carried reforms and improvements. Another point mentioned by
Ulisses Cortês was recruitment for the civil service, a process in which political
loyalty seemed to count for little. By focusing only on technical competence
and academic achievement, the government was letting into the ranks of its
collaborators those of doubtful views, and, conversely, excluding those who
had pledged it their support, but who, finding the door to power closed, would
doubtless turn against it. Cortês concluded,
The UN is the depository of the ideology of the Revolution and is responsible for
its future and its destiny.
It is, thus, indispensable to enable it to carry out its mission.
The actual state of affairs is incompatible with this objective.
The União Nacional’s postwar role was that of an electoral machine in

pointless elections. Every few years it attempted to get out the vote in the face
of a more committed opposition, in the knowledge that that same opposition
would not contest the elections. Given the political stasis of the regime, this
was a hard job: the focus of its efforts was Salazar, who, of course, was not
particularly loyal to the organization. Marcelo Caetano served as president of
its Executive Commission, the highest position outside that held by Salazar
himself. Appointed early in 1947, he was full of enthusiasm and eager to take
the fight to the opposition in advance of the 1949 presidential elections.
Caetano was soon disabused of any hopes he might have had of a leading role
37. AOS CP 72, letter, Lisbon, 22 June 1948, Ulisses Cortês to António de Oliveira Salazar.
in policy-making. By July he was writing Salazar to the effect that ‘the functions
[of the job] do not correspond to what I thought was the case when, having
been sounded out by Dr Albino dos Reis, I placed myself, last December, at
your orders.’38 Caetano was worn down by his job, not because of the amount
of work that it entailed, but rather because of its pointlessness, and his lack of
input into strategic decision-making:
Carefully pushed aside from any participation in the orientation of public affairs,
my political action is now restricted to the simple mission of organization and
propaganda—a bureaucratic sort of propaganda, about themes which only the
government invents, defines and develops, persisting in the system of reserving
for itself the monopoly of interest and wisdom in those matters which affect the
collective.39
Sometime later Marcelo Caetano wrote,
The presidency of the União Nacional’s Executive Commission is a difficult job to

carry out, even in quiet times. Politics is an activity which involves active participa-
tion in the affairs of State, above all through public opinion. But in the New State,
despite existing constitutional strictures, public opinion has no function or worth.
There is no need to interpret it, and no point in shaping it. To inform and exalt we
have the SNI and other appropriate entities. The União Nacional’s Executive
Commission is thus limited to the role of a bureau for the prosecution of
provincial interests in Lisbon and to attempting to maintain a skeleton crew of
organic cadres, mere local staff who have no expression.40
The União Nacional’s apathy was to contrast with the commitment

displayed by the opposition during the campaign. This was especially true of
the PCP. The communist party and its network of supporters were able to
bring the campaign to all parts of the country, despite the difficulties set by the
government. This was true to such an extent that the PCP became a victim of
its own success:
The PCP controlled the bid from the start and used it to keep the “unitary” move-
ment under its control, while the non-communist opposition began to believe that
38. Freire Antunes (ed.), Salazar e Caetano, doc. C 110, letter, Berne, 31 July 1947, Marcelo Caetano to
António de Oliveira Salazar, p. 220. Caetano continued, ‘The government has provided the orientation for
domestic politics by itself, and continues to be the sole active political reality, supported by the administrative
apparatus and the various police forces. Since my departure from the cabinet the influence I have exerted
over government resolutions of a general character (which everyone believes to have increased) has been
practically non-existent.’
39. Ibid., doc. C 116, letter, 8 April 1948, Marcelo Caetano to António de Oliveira Salazar, p. 230.
40. Ibid., doc. C 139, letter, 25 August 1950, Marcelo Caetano to António de Oliveira Salazar, p. 266.
Norton could win the elections or, at least, achieve a good result that might allow
it to negotiate a political deal with Salazar and achieve independence from the
communists.41
One of the problems that the PCP faced was the lack of secrecy and con-
fidentiality among non-communists with whom it now had to cooperate; a
meeting at Norton de Matos’ house, in August 1948, was generally known
about, and was duly raided by the police. Since the party had deemed the
meeting to be a security risk, none of its members had attended it. The fact that
they were not there led to the accusation that the PCP had reported the
meeting to the PIDE.42 This meeting, and the PIDE’s intervention, formed the
subject a letter from Norton de Matos to Salazar, on 8 September 1948.43 A
reply was signed by the Salazar’s chef de cabinet, José Manuel da Costa, but was
actually drafted by Salazar. This document excused its own tardiness by
pointing out that Salazar was on holiday, away from Lisbon. He ignored what
had happened, and had requested information on the subject. In any case, acts
that demeaned and hindered Norton de Matos ‘would be contrary to the
regime’s ethics and the spirit which he [Salazar] seeks to impart on the public
authorities everywhere.’ The letter continued by pointing out that there was
some confusion in Norton de Matos’ own account of the event: he was not yet
a candidate, and would not be one until he had been recognized by the
Supreme Court; even if he had been a candidate, the electoral period had not
yet begun. Since existing laws did not determine when a campaign should
begin, it would be up to the government to do so: ‘Such periods are, in all
countries, marked by agitation and political disturbance and are therefore to be
reduced to whatever may be necessary for propaganda and mobilization of the
electoral body.’ There would be more than enough time to debate the issues
should the campaign begin in the new year.44
In any case, an order from Salazar led to a change in police supervision. A
confidential report from the PIDE, on 27 September 1948, stated that a more
efficient and economical form of vigilance was now being carried out: the
PIDE was relying on informers within the candidate’s entourage. Documenta-
tion in the Salazar archive demonstrates how the opposition campaign was
riddled with informers. Most intriguing of all was a letter, from ‘M-3’ to a
PIDE officer, detailing a long conversation with Norton de Matos on 6

42. Ibid., p. 816.
43. AOS CO PC 28, letter, Lisbon, 8 September 1948, General Norton de Matos to António de Oliveira
Salazar.
44. Ibid., 23 September 1948, José Manuel da Costa to General Norton de Matos.
December 1948.45 Incredibly, the candidate himself was providing this in-
former with details of his organization and intentions with complete openness:
My only objective is to bring down this odious situação which turned the country
into a police-state, destroy once and for all that damned political police, and its
arbitrariness, threats, and humiliations.
Norton de Matos also predicted that his opponent in the coming contest
would be Salazar himself. For a time, this had seemed a likely possibility. The
President, Marshal Óscar Fragoso Carmona, was nearly eighty years old, and
greatly weakened, paying now scant attention to matters of State. The 1945
legislative elections had shown that there was need for a presidential candidate
capable of ensuring a decisive victory in a true (or something resembling it)
contest, in order to preserve the good will of foreign governments. This repre-
sented a headache for Salazar, since there were no clear guidelines on the selec-
tion procedure for presidential candidates. The Constitution had, after all, been
written for the express purpose of cementing the Salazar-Carmona relation-
ship. Now it had outlived its usefulness. This was one of the issues that Salazar
worried about during his long bout of depression in the aftermath of the war.
He was not, however, the only person thinking of a way out of the impasse.
Marcelo Caetano wrote, in his memoirs,
Salazar’s illness had by no means gone away. His neurasthenia remained, as did his
confidentially expressed desire to leave government. The result was that those
who, like me, were in a position of responsibility within the regime faced the
following grave problem: were we going to enter what would certainly be a
difficult period in Portugal’s public life with an octogenarian President of the
Republic, whose [mental] faculties were in complete decline, and a tired and ill
President of the Council?
This worry was not mine alone: It was shared by many government supporters.46
Caetano, at least, was envisaging the possibility of the regime’s survival

beyond that of Salazar himself. As soon as Caetano began to discuss the matter
within the higher spheres of União Nacional, suggesting that Salazar himself
might take over the less onerous position of Head of State, rumors began to
spread that Caetano was trying to steal Salazar’s place. But Caetano believed
that moving Salazar to the Presidency of the Republic was seen by the União
Nacional’s rank-and-file as desirable: he would certainly be easy to sell as a can-
45. Ibid., special report, Lisbon 9 December 1948, ‘M.3’ to Inspector Superior da Polícia Internacional e de
Defesa do Estado.
46. Caetano, Minhas memórias, pp. 473–74.
didate. When Caetano brought the proposal to Salazar himself, he was told that
such a scheme would not work. Not only was Salazar reluctant to retire
Carmona, out of personal loyalty and the agitated state of the military, but he
also believed that the Constitution was not workable with both a strong Presi-
dent of the Republic and a strong President of the Council of Ministers; one
person had to be clearly in charge. In August 1947, Salazar had heard, via
Santos Costa, that Carmona was willing to serve another term as President,
since he understood that his presence at that post was a guarantee of political
stability.47 This was more than a simple suggestion on the President’s part, and
Salazar took note. In December 1948, at a joint meeting of the two highest
bodies of the União Nacional, the Central and the Executive Commissions, the
suggestion that Salazar be adopted as the UN’s presidential candidate actually
triumphed, by nineteen votes to four: but Salazar put an end to the discussion,
stating,
Gentlemen, since the sole alternative solution is not viable, I conclude that the
Commission has approved, unanimously, the re-election of Marshal Carmona.
The statement, delivered with all of Salazar’s charm, was received with
relieved laughter by those present and the meeting broke up.48 Caetano, how-
ever, was not impressed.
Norton de Matos may have been wrong about his eventual opponent, but
his campaign was efficient and capable of springing surprises on the govern-
ment. His letter to Salazar, for example, turned out not to be a private docu-
ment. The opposition candidacy copied it and circulated it around the country
by post.49 Subsequent—almost daily—letters of protest between the candidate
and Salazar would be used in this manner.50 The opposition ran a well-funded
campaign, with money secured from below; rallies were used to raise funds for
further campaign actions. It also spent its money wisely on innovative propa-
ganda techniques, with its own posters, pamphlets, and slogans. Norton de
Matos released a book, in an attempt to overcome difficulties of access to the
press. Much of the energy and drive in the campaign was provided by
47. Correspondência de Santos Costa, doc. 63, letter, Lisbon, 16 August 1947, Santos Costa to António de
Oliveira Salazar, 16 August 1947, pp. 204–5.
48. Franco Nogueira, in his biography, states that Salazar was not as sure of the wisdom of such a course of
action, since that same evening he spoke to one of his collaborators, José Frederico Ulrich, manifesting his
apprehension: Salazar was worried both by Carmona’s health and age and his own health. Franco Nogueira,
O Ataque, p. 118.
49. AOS CO PC 28, report, Lisbon, 27 September 1948. Bears a note by AOS, 4 October 1948.
50. Ibid., letter, Oporto, 22 October 1948, Silva Petiz (Oporto bureau of A República) to Ruy Ribeiro de
Carvalho.
communists, old and young; one was future President Mário Soares.51
Paradoxically, it was strongest in the north of the country—the general’s native
Minho, and the city of Oporto—where the PCP’s structure was weaker. The
PCP was also behind a plethora of organizations, targeted at specific com-
ponents of Portuguese society, which supported the campaign. Overall, it was a
tour de force for a clandestine party.
The União Nacional’s campaign to re-elect Marshal Carmona began with a
Conference in Oporto, at which Salazar spoke, delivering what became,
arguably, his most famous speech, which begins with the words cited at the
start of Chapter 1. Salazar attempted an autobiographical sketch: he was an
independent man, a free man, a humanitarian, an educated man, a man who
served his country without any ambition for himself. He went on to reiterate
the essential points of the New State and his own actions, concluding,
There are no eternal regimes, there are no perfect regimes, there are no universal
regimes. There are no eternal regimes, but there are stable and unstable regimes;
there are no perfect regimes, but there are those that render their nations a service
and those that render a disservice; there are no universal regimes, but there are
those that take into consideration, and those that ignore, the particular circum-
stances and the universality of the human factor.52
Over the next two days, government ministers and other leading figures of
the regime attempted to reinvigorate the movement, pointing to improvements
made in the country’s life. The opposition did its best to keep up, with its most
sonorous names coming forth to proclaim their support for Norton de
Matos—even figures from the past, such as a re-branded Rolão Preto, made an
appearance. The culmination of its campaign was a rally in Oporto, on 23
January, in an open, privately owned, field, known as Fonte da Moura. A figure
of some 100,000 spectators is usually advanced in relation to this rally, and
surviving photographs seem to confirm it. There were overt demonstrations of
defiance in the northern city on the day. Courage was, for once, to be found in
numbers. There was a patriotic ambiance; the dominant colors were those of
the national flag, and the anthem was sung endlessly. Norton de Matos, in a
long, flowery speech, denounced Salazar, who had alleged that he was covering
up communist support: but Salazar knew fully well that he, Norton de Matos,
would not undertake any action capable of endangering Portuguese inde-
pendence. Salazar would have to apologize to him one day, and to all his
51. Pacheco Pereira, «Duarte», o dirigente clandestine, p. 817

52. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘O meu depoimento’ in Discursos, vol. 4, p. 378.
political enemies. Norton de Matos added that the best way to allow
communism to be defeated was to allow communists to air their views.
The size of the Fonte da Moura rally scared the regime into action. Santos
Costa leapt to Salazar’s defense at a meeting attended by some 400 officers,
demanding loyalty from the armed forces. The União Nacional finally woke up
to challenge it faced, and began to act on a national scale. Carmona visited
Oporto and everywhere meetings aimed at specific sectors of the electorate
were held. On 11 February Salazar spoke on the radio and went on the
offensive, stressing the clear blue water between the two camps:
Here, authority that creates order and order that conditions liberty; there, liberty,
taken vaguely, as an absolute, unfettered by any social considerations, liberty taken
to its paroxysm, anarchy. No doubt, some of the more educated [opposition
figures] feared the absurd and, after much philosophizing, admitted restrictions.
But the bulk of the orators and of the listeners was enraptured by the concept of
unlimited and irresponsible liberty: to say what one wants, to write what one
wants, to do what one wants, with no responsibility. The surprise and fuss created
by the fact that the courts prevented some abuses can only mean that, as a whole,
they thought it logically impossible to abuse a freedom.53
Not surprisingly, the association with the communists was also highlighted
by Salazar, at the time when the Cold War was reaching a peak: the opposition
campaign had entered into a Faustian pact, sacrificing its values for the enthu-
siasm and dynamism that the communists could bring to its effort. Salazar con-
cluded by expressing his hope that Norton de Matos would allow the electorate
a true choice, not withdrawing from the election. Stressing the link with the
PCP was one element of the government’s strategy; another was targeting
Norton de Matos’ Masonic past; a third, of course, was the experience of the
First Republic. All of these strands were brought together in O Sr. Norton de
Matos e a sua candidatura (Mr. Norton de Matos and His Bid), by journalist Costa
Brochado, a book which went through a number of editions early in 1949. Its
publication was a clear attempt to destroy the presidential bid by setting its
manifesto against Norton de Matos’ record as a politician, and that of the First
Republic in general. The Democratic party’s anticlericalism played a great part
in this work, Costa Brochado delighting in the recall of churches attacked and
looted while it was in power: ‘Nothing in his political life, confirms the state-
ment that he accepts communists votes because he is “absolutely against an ex-
communication for religious or political motives.”’54 He and his party had ‘ex-
53. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘No fim da campanha’ in Discursos, vol. 4, p. 392.
54. Costa Brochado, O Sr Norton de Matos e a sua candidatura, 8th edition (Lisbon: Portugália Editora, 1949), p.
185.
communicated’ all Catholics. The communist dimension was brought in as
well:
There is no easy solution. Either communism is, as Mr. Norton de Matos states,
the cause of world disorder—in which case he has the duty to repudiate both
communist voters and their ideology—or Mr. Norton de Matos’ statements are
unintelligible…
Given all of this, how can one describe the attitude of a candidate to the leader-
ship of the Portuguese State who tells us that, despite the fact that communism is
the cause of world disorder, he wishes to be elected with communist votes? And
how can communists vote in Mr. Norton de Matos, after he made such statements
about communism? What mystery lurks here? What is the secret of this illogical
statement?55
Maybe one day Radio Moscow, so interested of late in Portuguese affairs,

would solve the mystery.56 Costa Brochado concluded, apocalyptically,
[…] Mr. Norton de Matos’ attitude bears all the hallmarks, voluntarily or not,
consciously or not, of an incitement to civil war. He is no doubt unaware of this;
but what, apart from setting the scene for civil war, can one achieve by avowing
the desire to govern a country to the absolute exclusion of all citizens who
supported and legitimized, for twenty-two years, a regime approved by the nation
in a plebiscite and recognized by all the civilized peoples?57
Ironically, the Oporto rally, an undoubted triumph, was also the point in which
the Norton de Matos campaign went off the rails, since the ageing candidate
began to believe that he might win the elections, and that it would be worth-
while to allow the people to have their say. He wrote, on 2 February, in his
notes,
There must be a vote. If there isn’t, the people, whom I have just seen so full of
enthusiasm, will have the right to say that we fooled them and ask: Why so much
propaganda?
I must save myself from such ridicule and prevent such lamentable dishonor.
Time to go to work.58
Non-communist advisors urged him to force an election, in part because it

might improve the chances of a military coup against Salazar;59 the PCP, still
55. Ibid., pp. 171–72.

56. Ibid., pp. 185–86.
57. Ibid., p. 189.
58. José Norton, Norton de Matos: Biografia (Lisbon: Bertrand, 2001), p. 396.
opposed to a putsch, condemned this possible change of direction. A meeting
was held in Lisbon, on 7 February, in order to decide what to do. Some eighty
people were present, with communists in the majority, especially thanks to the
various ‘sectional’ groups—women, youth, workers—that were represented.
Norton de Matos, who thought he was in charge, displayed great annoyance as
delegation after delegation urged him to respect the original deal and withdraw
from the race. He felt totally betrayed by what emerged, and could not under-
stand why some now refused to follow him. Given the nature of elections in
Portugal, however, he could do nothing without the support of the existing
machinery, ultimately dependent on the PCP. It would be impossible to
distribute voting lists without communist volunteers, or to maintain some kind
of presence at the voting centers. The decision to withdraw was finally made
on 10 February. A predictable wave of arrests followed the elections, and
anyone with a public job involved in the opposition campaign felt the
consequences of such independent thinking.60 In March the PIDE scored a
notable success through the arrest and subsequent imprisonment of Álvaro
Cunhal, the leader of the PCP. Nevertheless, Norton de Matos did well in
some parts of the Empire, where news of his withdrawal had not arrived in
time, and he actually topped the poll in the Angolan town of Benguela.
Salazar and the Army (still…)
Given the control it exercised over the electoral process, the government
was never seriously concerned about the possibility of losing the 1949 election.
It wanted to project an image of confidence, and strength, and earn the
allegiance of the people; but in no sense was it competing truthfully for votes.
There was, however, disquiet, if not outright fear, about what might be
happening in the shadow of the Norton de Matos campaign. There were
warnings that the electoral campaign was a mere diversion designed to stretch
the security services, allowing disaffected army officers to carry out a coup.
Incredibly, in addition to political worries, economic difficulties, and his own
health, Salazar had still not definitively stamped his authority on the army. In
fact, civil-military relations were poorer than at any time since 1937.
As we have seen, in 1944, at the height of the tungsten crisis, Great Britain
threatened to exploit anti-Salazar discontent within part of the officer corps.
That sentiment reappeared at the start of 1945, when a ‘Military Organization
for National Liberation’ drafted a manifesto in which the regime’s fascistic

60. According to official results, 875,598 out of a possible of 1,128,198 electors had participated in the
election; the overwhelming majority of the population was not registered to vote. Ibid., p. 850.
tendencies were blamed on the country’s academics, as was the corruption
inherent in the corporative structures.61 The threat was serious, and Salazar
headed it off by correcting that year’s budget in order to secure pay increases
of fifteen percent for officers. A more serious event, which saw a coup actually
begin, occurred in October 1946. After much in the way of conspiracy, a
retired lieutenant, Fernando Queiroga, was able to convince part of the Cavalry
6 regiment, based in Oporto, to set off southwards, in the hope of inspiring
others to emerge from the shadows. This force was quickly contained in the
small town of Mealhada, not far from Santa Comba Dão, where Salazar was
resting. That day, the President of the Council, woken up at 7:30 a.m. by a tele-
phone call from Santos Costa, had to travel through back roads to the military
command center at Tancos in order to secure his personal safety and oversee
the response to the coup.
What was most troubling, for Salazar, was that both the Mealhada coup, as
it became known, and a subsequent conspiracy scheduled for 10 April of the
following year, focused on Carmona, whom the conspirators hoped to shift
from his support for Salazar. Admiral Mendes Cabeçadas was at the forefront
of these conspiratorial attempts; in them he was joined by Jorge Botelho
Moniz, General José Marques Godinho, and some of the officers hitherto loyal
to the regime. Among these, Brigadier António de Sousa Maia and Colonel
Carlos Tavares Afonso dos Santos (better known as military historian Carlos
Selvagem), stood out.62 Salazar, on 31 March 1947, addressed an audience of
senior officers in the Ministry of War, hoping to ensure their loyalty. His notes
for the meeting, drafted that afternoon, make clear his strategy for survival: to
highlight the dangers facing Portugal, dangers so grave that they dictated the
impossibility of changing course. The Cold War loomed large in this
explanation. Containing the Soviet Union was proving difficult, and given the
USSR’s global ambitions, Portugal was in the front line. In order to meet the
threat, it had to rearm and prepare for conflict, along with the rest of the West.
It also had to recognize that the United States was now the leader of the West,
and enter into an entente cordiale with Washington, while cooperating with
61. José Medeiros Ferreira, O comportamento político dos militares: Forças armadas e regimes políticos em Portugal no
Século XX (Lisbon: Editorial Estampa, 1992), pp. 225–26. Medeiros Ferreira names the leading officers most
closely associated with this movement as Admiral Botelho de Sousa and General Peixoto e Cunha, and
argues that they had close links with the democratic opposition, with a shadow cabinet, led by General
Norton de Matos, actually sketched out.
62. Correspondência de Santos Costa, doc. 53, letter, Lisbon, 10 March 1947, Santos Costa to António de Oliveira
Salazar, pp. 168–173. Jorge Botelho Moniz would apologize for his action in a letter, probably written in
January 1948: ‘I believe it to be my duty to ask for forgiveness for the mistake I made when I turned to the
President of the Republic and led an action which, although frank and open, and also counter-revolutionary
from the Situação’s point of view, was unjustly opposed to the government over which you preside.’ AOS CP
182, letter, Lisbon, ‘five in the morning’ (probably sometime in the first half of January 1948), Jorge Botelho
Moniz to António de Oliveira Salazar.
Great Britain, France, and Belgium on colonial matters. In relation to Macao
and Goa, Portuguese policy had to be ‘flexible and agile’. The Cold War had its
domestic side as well, Salazar continued: The MUD, whatever its origins, was
now a communist plaything, and intrigue in the armed forces continued,
sometimes led by those ‘who desire more, and better’—the ‘purists’ of the 28
May who had grown disenchanted with the New State. Salazar restated his
views on the ideal role of the army: it should ‘not involve itself in political
struggles [or] create its own political party.’63 Turning to the central problem
which haunted him, since the headship of state was at the centre of the regime,
Salazar mentioned the 1949 presidential election: all political strength had to be
mobilized to overcome that hurdle. Salazar clearly believed at this stage that
Carmona would not run again. Finding a successor, and making him acceptable
to both the army and the people was a great challenge. The failure to build a
secure relationship with the army was one of the reasons for Salazar’s accep-
tance of Carmona as presidential candidate in 1949, even though the state of
the latter’s health had become a source of preoccupation.
The failed plot of 1947 had one telling consequence. General José Marques
Godinho, while under arrest, fell ill with a heart complaint. It appears that
against medical advice, he was moved, on Santos Costa’s order, to a different
prison, where he again fell ill and died. The family, with the aid of a young
lawyer, Adriano Moreira, went on the attack, insofar as this was possible,
accusing the Minister of War of murder. The motive, they said, was that
Godinho’s wartime service, which included a stint as commanding officer in
the Azores, had made him intimately aware of Santos Costa’s hostility to the
Allies. He was therefore a dangerous opponent who had to be eliminated.64 As
proof they produced four letters written by Santos Costa to Godinho during
the war, letters in which Santos Costa urged Godinho to resist a putative
American attack.65 For their temerity both the family and their legal counsel
were detained by the PIDE. When the matter came to Salazar’s attention, he
63. AOS PC 3J, file 8, ‘Conferência dos altos comandos (1947)’ handwritten notes by António de Oliveira
Salazar, 31 March 1947.
64. Ibid., letter, Trafaria, 10 January 1948, Eduardo Alfredo Keil Carvalho da Silva to Albino dos Reis.
Carvalho da Silva complained that he was being treated in the same fashion: despite the appearance of
tumors which his doctors believed to be malignant, he was not being allowed by Santos Costa to be
examined in hospital—a situation that had dragged on for over half a year. He compared his situation to that
of General Godinho, whom he had met in jail, and whose case ‘was in the public domain’. As can be
expected, Albino dos Reis, President of the National Assembly, passed the letter on to Salazar. See as well
Jorge Ribeiro Costa, ‘José Garcia Marques Godinho’ in Rosas & Brandão de Brito (eds), Dicionário de História
do Estado Novo vol. 1, pp. 381–82.
65. ‘We are receiving very unfavorable reports regarding America’s immediate intentions. The troops must
absolutely oppose any attack until the last. There is no other alternative.’ AOS CO PC 3J, file 11, letter,
Lisbon, 10 July 1941, Santos Costa to José Garcia Marques Godinho. This letter was forwarded, along with
other documents pertaining to this case, to Salazar by the Director of the PIDE, in a secret letter, on 5
February 1948.
asked the Minister of Justice to send him copies of the letters, but took no
action against Santos Costa. Godinho aside, the trial of the conspirators went
ahead in June; the sentences imposed were very light, and, given the fact that
the defendants had been held in prison since the events in question, immediate
release was the result. Light sentences were a sign of strength; and, as The
Economist correctly put it at the time, Salazar’s main concern was to clear
President Carmona of any wrongdoing.66
Américo Tomás, who served Salazar first as Navy Minister and later as
President of the Republic, would write, in his memoirs, that more than once
Salazar, ‘with evident sadness’, had remarked on the impossibility of governing
Portugal for a long time without the support of the armed forces. According to
Tomás, Salazar complained that the continuation of his work of ‘resurgence’
did not depend on his own merit, but rather on the army’s mood swings:
‘Should the army, upon reflection or not, deny, or withdraw, [its] support,
everything would quickly come to a halt and probably, and hastily, return to the
political chaos which had characterized the first three decades of the century
[…]’67 Although it hard to imagine what Salazar would have done differently
had this military tutelage not been in place, the fact remains that it was—and
that dealing with it remained a worry for the whole of his career.
Political Stagnation
Salazar’s regime emerged from the 1949 presidential elections in a fragile

state. The central question of the relationship between Salazar and the army,
and the Presidency of the Republic, had not been resolved, merely prolonged
for as long as Carmona continued to hold office. The Estado Novo’s claim to
represent the nation had been shaken by the sight of the Fonte da Moura rally.
Even Salazar recognized this, and as a response he asked Marcelo Caetano, in
his capacity as President of the Executive Commission of the União Nacional, to
bring together an informal commission of ‘properly qualified people’ to analyze
the political situation, highlighting possible reforms for the future.68 Caetano
accepted the mission, but days later, after having complained privately to
Salazar about a recent decree which gave the Ministry of National Education a
66. ‘Political Trials in Portugal’ in The Economist (London), 10 July 1948. The article mentioned the rumor that
‘Senhor Santos Costa hoped by staging the trial to force President Carmona to resign and so secure Salazar’s
translation to the presidency and his own succession to the premiership […]’. The article was translated by
the SNI in one of its foreign-press reports. AOS CO PC 28, SNI, ‘Relatório de Imprensa Estrangeira’, 26
July 1948.
67. Américo Tomás, Últimas décadas de Portugal vol. 3 (Lisbon: Edições Fernando Pereira), p. 86.
68. Freire Antunes (ed.), Salazar e Caetano, doc. S 112, letter, Lisbon, 22 March 1949, António de Oliveira
Salazar to Marcelo Caetano, pp. 246–47.
say in the constitution of university appointment boards,69 Caetano went public
on the issue with an article in A Voz. Salazar acted quickly, writing, ‘I believe
that it was your intention to take up a stance which will make it impossible to
back down from your request to resign the presidency of the Executive
Commission of the União Nacional’. The time had come for Caetano to vacate
the movement’s leadership.70 This also meant that the workings of the informal
commission had to be redrawn—without Marcelo Caetano.71 Without him this
politburo, as Salazar jokingly called it, fell under the leadership of Mário de
Figueiredo, and a 48-page report was produced in July 1949.72 Figueiredo and
some other heavyweights, such as Ulisses Cortês, José Soares da Fonseca, and
Rafael Duque, called for a number of changes. Dismissing any possibility of an
evolution towards parliamentary democracy and a party system, they called,
instead, for a deepening of the regime’s ‘organic’ democracy and corporative
nature. This meant, however, a move away from State corporatism and towards
a purer form of associational corporatism, ‘a form of organization of the nation
which occurs independently of the State.’ By creating political institutions that
reflected closely the make-up of the nation, the regime’s legitimacy would be
enhanced. In order to bring this about the commission called for the creation
of the corporations and the dissolution of the organizations for economic
coordination, which attracted such negative press and which acted as a brake
on economic activity. It also called for a constitutional revision, to be carried
out by the National Assembly itself, and which would bring about the
following ends: the election of the President of the Republic by both houses of
parliament; the election of the National Assembly by municipal councilors, and
not by the electorate at large; the presence of ministers in the National
Assembly; an increase in the prestige of the Corporative Chamber, through
greater freedom in the selection of the procuradores, the ability to hold plenary
sessions, greater representation for cultural and moral interests (the universities
and the Catholic Church were mentioned), and a greater role in the legislative
process;73 and an overhaul of the mechanisms for censorship, making it less
69. Ibid., doc. C 127, letter, Lisbon, 26 March 1949, Marcelo Caetano to António de Oliveira Salazar, pp.
248–49. Caetano took advantage of this letter to include a complaint about the Ministry of War, where
punishments were imposed without a proper hearing. Detailing the case of a former student now under
arrest, Caetano wrote, ‘please do not show this letter to the Minister of War, for fear of the young man
ending up in Cape Verde, or something worse.’
70. Ibid., doc. S 113, letter, 31 March 1949, António de Oliveira Salazar to Marcelo Caetano, pp. 249–50.
71. Caetano fails to mention the affair in his memoirs, and actually doctors the transcription of the letter so
as to leave out any reference to the informal working group. Caetano, Minhas memórias, p. 490. Caetano did,
however, admit that by going public on the issue he had taken up an ‘unfortunate attitude’.
72. AOS CO PC 7B, proposal for the revision of the Constitution.
73. The report’s authors were exceedingly careful in this sensitive area, writing, ‘the Commission [of
Legislation and Drafting] would have as a specific task the formal perfecting, from the point of view of
legislative technique, of those diplomas.’ They were more daring when writing that ‘aside from representing
an opportunity for the government to communicate with the country, and being thus a source of political
discretionary and more firmly rooted in law. The report ended with a short
section, entitled ‘The rise of the masses’, which was concerned with combating
communism. This should be done through popular mobilization in turn of
Christian ideals—‘the cult of materialism will give away to that of the spirit,
which lies beyond matter’—and a renewed focus on the elimination of poverty:
[For the unemployed and the poor], it may be the case that the myth of economic
development, or of agrarian reform, might be of some use. They should not be
offered, as they are by the communists, a heaven on earth, but it might be possible
to create the conditions necessary for an improvement in the quality of life, a bul-
wark against communism; and one can multiply the number of property owners,
since property is another such bulwark.
Despite the importance of the men involved in drafting the report, it was
to have little impact. Salazar did take up some of its themes—such as the need
to move to an associational brand of corporatism, or a widening of the powers
of the Corporative Chamber, in a speech delivered, on 20 October, to civil
governors, district commissions of the União Nacional, and the movement’s
candidates to the forthcoming legislative elections;74 but little action that
changed the nature of politics was actually taken. On 25 October, Salazar sent
Albino dos Reis a copy of the politburo’s report, which he considered secret,
adding that he had referred in his speech to what he agreed with, having done
so in a ‘light and vague manner, as was appropriate’. The rest he had omitted,
or had cast doubt on.75
In May 1950 Daniel Barbosa, whose stay in power had been short, and
who was chafing under the strict control imposed on deputies to the National
Assembly, sent a devastating letter to Salazar, in which the regime’s ideological
bankruptcy was made abundantly clear. He wrote,
Without fear of exaggeration […] one can state that throughout the country can
be found an intense movement of destructive criticism against the administration
and to the government, leading to a special state of aloofness and fatigue; this
tenacious criticism grows every day […]
In just a few years the change has been enormous. In the past, reaction was
constructive, since we wanted even more; today, however, the agreement so often
life, it [the Commission] would constitute another way of limiting power, which has a capital importance.’
AOS CO PC 7B, proposal for the revision of the Constitution, p. 42.
74. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘Questões de política interna’ in Discursos, vol. 4, pp. 423–45.
75. AAR, letter, António de Oliveira Salazar to Albino dos Reis, 25 October 1949.
demonstrated is the result of fear of what is to come: one lives in worry, in a
defensive stance in which faith is lost.76
There had been no dramatic relaunch of political life since the last presi-
dential elections. Ministers feared the day when, without warning, they would
be dismissed. In such circumstances, nothing constructive and long-lasting
could be attempted. The regime lived day by day, in fear of what might come
next—and criticism had now begun to stick to Salazar, evidently the sole ele-
ment of continuity in government. It was said, more and more commonly, that
Salazar had lost faith in his collaborators, and did not know where the situação
was headed: after twenty years and much labor, it still required, in order to
survive, ‘military support and severe restrictions to the freedom of the press’. A
new departure was needed, with Salazar as the guarantee of commitment and
fair-play, and the nation becoming enthused by politics once again, so that a
lasting solution to Portuguese politics might be found—otherwise, at best,
there would, in the end, be another military dictatorship.77
Barbosa was correct, but ultimately what mattered to Salazar was to find
the right collaborators, harmonizing the choice of ministers with the balance of
power of friendly forces; Portuguese politics in the 1950s were essentially
restricted to the perpetual game of musical chairs at the cabinet table. Ministers
and other high officials were vulnerable to intrigue if they did not belong to a
strong faction, or did not have means of striking back.78 Their private lives
76. AOS CP 23, letter, Oporto, 3 May 1950, Daniel Barbosa to António de Oliveira Salazar. Over a year
earlier, in the wake of the presidential election, Barbosa had written Salazar urging him to seize the initiative
against the regime’s opponents and to create a sense of excitement: ‘we must purge mercilessly the State
apparatus and its organizations, we must put an end to the errors which compromise us, we must be imbued
with a spirit of neo-nationalism that might allow us to create the ‘Future State’: we must live as if in a true
crusade, not shying away from the struggle to save this God-given earth.’
77. Two days later, in a much smaller missive, Augusto Cancela de Abreu, the Interior Minister, demon-
strated how correct Barbosa was in his criticism of the role of cabinet ministers. Cancela de Abreu wrote that
‘I have been hoping, at meetings of the Council of Ministers—especially in yesterday’s—that you might give
me the chance to say something of what I know, or think I know, about the internal political situation. This
has not proved possible for three months now, and it has been even longer since you received me in private
audience for the same purpose. This might be my fault, since I do not like, knowing your cares, to insist on
being received.’ AOS CP 2, letter, Lisbon, 5 May 1950, Augusto Cancela de Abreu to António de Oliveira
Salazar. An undated letter by José Nosolini, received by Salazar on 19 June 1950, makes it clear that Daniel
Barbosa’s letter was distributed—a number of people he had spoken to had mentioned it to him with amaze-
ment, believing that Salazar’s lack of action over the letter was proof of his growing weakness. Nosolini,
reflecting on Barbosa’s action, wrote, ‘I no longer have any doubt about the danger that this friend
represents and about his nefarious actions.’ Nosolini’s advice was to bury him with work, or send him abroad
on official business. AOS CO PC 3K. Salazar did nothing, but later appointed Barbosa to a position in the
board of the Portuguese railway company—another ‘proof of the unforgettable trust’, Barbosa wrote, that
Salazar placed in him and which, he claimed, was deeply touching. AOS CP 23, letter, Estoril, 3 June 1953,
Daniel Barbosa to António de Oliveira Salazar.
78. See, for example, AOS CP 242, letter, Lisbon 14 March 1951, Manuel Sarmento Rodrigues to António de
Oliveira Salazar, in which the Minister of the Colonies complained of a recent press attack by Marcelo
Caetano, the latest in a long line of attacks. ‘Many and powerful are those ranged against me. Your
Excellency will have to deal with them more than with me. They have merit and influence, things I never
were often the target of denunciations to Salazar.79 Increasingly isolated,
however, Salazar now relied on a handful of friends to suggest names for the
various portfolios every time that his own instinct told him that a reshuffle was
needed;80 contrary to popular perception, these reshuffles could be long,
drawn-out affairs.81 The correspondence they engendered makes for painful
reading today, given the gulf in power between Salazar and his ministers. One
of them wrote,
It is true that I have been passionate about Public Works, but I state with my word
of honor that this is the result, first and foremost, of the desire to be worthy of
your trust. I have derived pleasure from this task only insofar as I am filled with
pride at having been able to provide Your Excellency with my modest collabora-
tion, since I have for you the most complete and unconditional devotion and a
veneration that knows no limits. Those sentiments made me read and re-read the
last words of your letter, in which Your Excellency asks me whether I can
continue to help you bear your cross […]82
Teófilo Duarte was released from the Colonies portfolio by a letter in

which Salazar had written of his conviction that Duarte was not attached to the
portfolio, and was in fact carrying out a sacrifice by remaining at his post.
had. I think that what suits you most is to have them by your side; you will never have me against you.’
Salazar tried to calm his minister’s fears, saying that were such a campaign against a minister afoot he would
by now have heard of it. AOS CP 242, draft letter, Lisbon, 15 March 1951, António de Oliveira Salazar to
Manuel Rodrigues Sarmento.
79. See, for example, the extraordinary letter by Henrique Viana, of the MNE, to Salazar, denouncing the
private life of the Count of Tovar, wartime minister in Berlin and then ambassador to the Holy See, which
included an accusation of a romantic entanglement with the wife of the head of German espionage. AOS CP
278, letter, Lisbon, undated, received 24 January 1950, Henrique Viana to António de Oliveira Salazar. See
also a letter by Rafael Duque alleging that the non-Portuguese wife of another high-profile diplomat ‘does
not behave in an irreprehensible way, which is public knowledge.’ AOS CP 100, letter, Lisbon, undated,
received 30 November 1951, Rafael Duque to António de Oliveira Salazar.
80. See, for example, AOS CO PC 3K, letter, Lisbon, 29 May 1950, Marcelo Caetano to António de Oliveira
Salazar, in which Paulo Cunha is mentioned as a possible minister, being personally interested in the Educa-
tion portfolio (he would be Minister of Foreign Affairs). See also AOS CO PC 3K, undated letter (received 3
June 1950), Lisbon, José Nosolini to António de Oliveira Salazar, in which two or three candidates for every
post are suggested; when Nosolini could not think of a candidate, he would write of ‘consulting the phone-
book’ for ideas.
81. See AOS CP PC 3K, letter, Lisbon, 27 June 1950, Marcelo Caetano to António de Oliveira Salazar, in
which the problems associated with the delay in naming all ministers were addressed—the longer the process
took, the easier it was for resistance to some names to be organized.
82. AOS CP 271, letter, Lisbon, 21 July 1950, José Frederico Ulrich to António de Oliveira Salazar. Ulrich
continued in his position for some years to come. In January 1953 he asked to be relieved of his post,
claiming to be exhausted and to have lost interest in the job, pointing out that he had asked to leave in 1950
but that after Carmona’s death Salazar had asked for all ministers to place their personal interests aside. AOS
CP 271, letter, Lisbon, 31 January 1953, José Frederico Ulrich to António de Oliveira Salazar. For a classic
resignation letter, see Correspondência de Santos Costa, doc. 66, letter, Lisbon, 25 October 1947, Santos Costa to
António de Oliveira Salazar, 25 October 1947. Salazar had not appeared at a military parade which Santos
Costa had organized for that day. Salazar excused himself that very day on health grounds, writing, ‘we must
bear this cross for some time yet.’ doc. 67, letter, Lisbon, 25 October 1947, António de Oliveira Salazar to
Santos Costa.
Happy to comply with Salazar’s wishes, Duarte nevertheless replied, to no
avail, that ‘I was very much attached to the Colonies portfolio and served it
without any sacrifice.’83 In one extraordinary occasion, the wife of a minister
whose career in the cabinet had come to an unexpected end wrote Salazar,
whom she addressed bluntly by his surname:
Gratitude is a duty, but if, Salazar, you were ever to experience what it is like for a
person to be set aside you would see how painful it is. In a country like England,
mentalities are sufficiently elevated for what happened not to be a humiliation, but
here…We are left as enemies, without great financial means, as you know, with
three children and five nephews to take care of, and without knowing (me at least)
what led you to do this […] it is better to let people continue on their modest
course than to raise them up, only to let them fall.84
In July 1950, Marcelo Caetano rebuked Salazar for hesitating for too long
over a reshuffle that ‘everyone’ agreed should have taken place after the presi-
dential election of 1949, a year and a half earlier. Three or four times before,
Caetano pointed out, the country had been awash with rumors of impending
change, to such an extent that ministers had essentially downed tools awaiting
their fate. This did not mean that ministers were endowed with great political
power. Paulo Cunha, having discussed his possible entry into the cabinet with
Salazar, came away disenchanted by Salazar’s declaration that ‘should the
Council of Ministers have to apply those political sanctions which fall under its
remit’, he, Salazar, would decide alone.85 A brief exchange of letters with
Albino dos Reis in January 1954 revealed that Salazar’s penny-pinching
instincts were very much alive, as he called the President of the National
Assembly to account over a request to the Minister of Finance for a new car.
An excerpt from Salazar’s last letter on the issue is more than revealing:
There is in effect a law which defines the category of cars attributed to ministers
and undersecretaries of State, to the Presidents of the National Assembly and the
Corporative Chamber, and to the various services. Cars are determined by weight
(not by make) […] To the President of the National Assembly falls a car with
83. AOS CP 99 letter, Lisbon, no date, received 14 August 1950, Teófilo Duarte to António de Oliveira
Salazar.
84. AOS CO PC 76B, letter, 2 July 1955, Maria Tereza (Soares da Fonseca) to António de Oliveira Salazar.
Salazar received this letter, and replied to it, on the same day it was written. On 4 July he received a second
letter. Salazar had evidently explained his action by reference to the political need to renew the cabinet, since
the aggrieved spouse now asked ‘why do so many stay on, year after year, sometimes despite a clear rejection
by public opinion?’
85. AOS CO PC 3K, letter, Lisbon, undated, received 8 July 1950, Marcelo Caetano to António de Oliveira
Salazar. The ever-critical Caetano added ‘I think it a mistake not to submit to the Council that which legally
belongs to it. If there is reason to act, all should share in the responsibility of doing so, making the decision
more prestigious and the participants morally obliged to defend it’.
seven seats (around 2,000 Kilograms in weight), there being freedom of choice in
the brand, provided it falls into this category. It is my opinion that all cars for
these entities should be, insofar as possible, of the same color and the same brand.
This is what was done in the good old days. I see, however, that Finance has now
stopped interfering in the process, foregoing the advantage to be had on price
from the choice of a single make. Ministers are now benefiting from a freedom
they should not enjoy, and some are better served than others, because even here
vanity plays its part.86
Deputies to the National Assembly had even less autonomy. A well-oiled

machine now ensured that members of parliament could not spring surprises
on the government by their choice of topics, and the content of their state-
ments. The search for collaborators did not end at the cabinet table; the cen-
tralization of the regime, coupled with Salazar’s increasing age and distance
from non-political life, meant that he relied on his closest advisors to suggest
names for the two houses of the parliament as well.87
Deliberate stagnation on the political front was matched with a loss of
interest in the emblematic organizations of the New State, the Legião, and the
Mocidade Portuguesa. On 19 November 1952, monarchist deputy António Jacinto
Ferreira launched a robust attack on the latter, denouncing the deleterious
effects of its compulsive nature and its clumsy insistence on an all-embracing
nationalism, which had led its creators to strangle, for the Mocidade’s benefit,
the scouting movements:
The nationalist critics of scouting’s anglophilia fell, when all is said and done, in
the opposing sin, that is, Hitlerian superstition, which was translated into facts,
from as the parade-ground step [...] to the diabolical zeal with which the attempt
86. AAR, letter, Lisbon, 20 January 1954, António de Oliveira Salazar to Albino dos Reis. Salazar was clearly
in a bad mood that day, finding another motive to vent his spleen in the words of an extremely loyal deputy,
Alberto Henriques de Araújo, who, had decided to congratulate France on the occasion of the swearing in of
René Coty as President. Araújo waxed lyrical: ‘We are linked to France by the same culture and by the fact
that so often, in the course of History, we have found ourselves, in the battlefields or the highways of the
world, fighting for the same ideals, widening the bounds of our civilization, serving and living the same faith.’
Salazar was caustic: ‘What possessed Araújo to salute France on account of the election and swearing in of
the new Head of State? Did he receive, or is he hoping to receive soon, a medal from the French
government? Does he not see that the fact was not commented in any other parliament? And that as a result
of the way it occurred, the less one talked about it, the better for France? You will have to advise the
deputies whenever they decide to make interventions such as this one.’
87. AAR, letter, Lisbon, 3 November 1950, António de Oliveira Salazar to Albino dos Reis. After
mentioning names that had been suggested for some of the working sections of the Corporative Chamber,
Salazar wrote, ‘we also have a vacancy in the legal section, created by Dr Paulo Cunha […] Marcelo Caetano
suggested as his replacement Professor Galvão Teles, of the Coimbra Law Faculty, whose political views I
ignore completely. I need to hear from you or from others some indication of the people that might be
chosen for the various sections.’ These other people were Cancela de Abreu and Mário de Figueiredo. For
Albino dos Reis’ reply, see AOS CP 235, letter, Lisbon, 4 November 1950, Albino dos Reis to António de
Oliveira Salazar.
was made to occupy, with activities and drill, Sunday mornings, not allowing the
boys to comply with their religious duties, or making it difficult and uncom-
fortable to do so. And who was called on to make sure that all was well? Von
Schirack, the head of the Hitlerjugend […]88
The result was that it could not be said that, for all the money spent on the
Mocidade, it had brought about a considerable change in the country’s youth.
Marcelo Caetano was indignant with both the accusations, which gave credence
to all the accusations leveled against the youth organization by Portugal’s ‘anti-
fascists’, including the communists, and the silent acquiescence, or, in some
cases, support, that greeted the speaker’s words:
Not even the ex-Minister of National Education, Mário de Figueiredo, who

accompanied, for four years, the life of the organization and therefore knows that
much of what the deputy said is a lie [registered a protest]. Nothing! As a way of
commemorating Salazar’s twenty-fifth year it is not, in truth, a consoling
spectacle!89
Salazar replied saying that he had had a word with the National Assembly’s
President Albino dos Reis, ‘who alleged some unconvincing reasons for the
support and the lack of opposition.’ Salazar added, ‘Alas, not everything goes
smoothly and there is a lot that goes badly. But let us not give up.’90
Complaints about the political stagnation of the regime were so constant
throughout the late 1940s and the 1950s that only two conclusions can be
drawn from the situation: either it suited Salazar, or he was powerless, in the
face of the deep divisions within the governing elite, to reverse it. Perhaps the
two were not mutually exclusive. In any case, this was a source of frustration
for all his followers. A report on the domestic political situation drafted by
Santos Costa and sent, surprisingly, to Marcelo Caetano, focused not on the
opposition, but on the lack of belief within the ranks of the situação. Santos
Costa listed the complaints that had reached him: the post-1926 generation had
not been ideologically trained (for which the government, the União Nacional,
and the SNI were collectively to blame); all organizations that might have per-
formed this role—the AEV, the Mocidade, the Legião, and the national-syndi-
calists, had either been crushed or starved of funds; there was no filtration
system to prevent political enemies from entering key professions (they were
present among magistrates, lecturers, officers, civil servants, and could even be
88. Diário das Sessões n.167, 20 November 1952.

89. Freire Antunes (ed.), Salazar e Caetano, doc. C 179, letter, 25 November 1952, Marcelo Caetano to
90. Ibid., doc. S 182, letter, 27 November 1952, António de Oliveira Salazar to Marcelo Caetano, p. 333.
found within the corporative apparatus); and the SNI’s ‘policy of the spirit’ was
bankrupt, as a result of which ‘the enemies of the New State pontificate in the
arts, in literature, in theatre, and in the cinema’. Public morality was not upheld;
the middle-class was hard-pressed to make ends meet.91 In March 1955 José
Nosolini, now ambassador in Madrid, wrote a long letter, detailing the echoes
of Portuguese politics that reached him in the Spanish capital. One of his in-
formants stated that
“I consider the internal political situation to be poor. A tired and slow government
that is a poor administrator. A policy with no direction. A latent division in the
ranks of the União Nacional because of an imprudent revival of the regime
question. An army which, in the main, detests the Minister of Defense. A skeptical
youth stuck on the difference between the doctrine and the accomplishments.”92
Other informants were equally gloomy. Youth seemed to have been

definitively lost, and financial restraints affected the quality of education at all
levels. The working class, too, was hostile to government and Church. Nosolini
wrote, ‘the country of 1955 is not the country of 1928. People today consider
today’s quality of life as normal, no merit going to those who made it possible;
as a result, they see only the necessities which are not being addressed.’ In
other words, the rhetoric of a generation’s sacrifice for the good of the nation,
past, present, and future, had finally worn too thin. And from two politicians,
Daniel Barbosa and Duarte Freitas do Amaral, Nosolini concluded that the
young had no interest in politics, that Santos Costa’s prestige in the army was
waning, in part because of the bad blood between himself and Craveiro Lopes,
and that the President of the Republic, whose military discipline and sense of
decorum made him hard to deal with, was deeply unpopular. Above all else,
Nosolini recommended new blood to relaunch the ‘Revolution’:
From all this I conclude […] that a new “revolutionary” stage must be prepared by
us before it is prepared against us. New ministers? Of course. But beware of your
advisors… If you listen only to the usual ones you might not be lucky. The malice
of some should be feared at this moment; others, like our Mário [de Figueiredo]—
intelligent, and one hundred percent loyal—are fated to make political mistakes.
91. AOS PC 3J, memorandum from the Minister of War on the internal political situation, delivered to the
President of the Executive Commission of the União Nacional, November 1947. Copy of this memorandum
was delivered by Santos Costa to Salazar.
92. AOS CD 9, letter, Madrid, undated, received 17 March 1955, José Nosolini to António de Oliveira
Salazar.
In 1956, finally, the first corporations emerged. But this belated develop-
ment provoked little enthusiasm. In truth, nothing seems to have provoked it.
All agreed that the politically conscious youth was definitely being lost. The
rest was apathetic at best. The generation for whom the extreme Right had
appealed as a vanguard was now dispersed in the wake of the war. Excitement,
and the ‘new’, were to be found on the Left. Not even the possibilities opened
up by Empire generated enthusiasm. More than ever, the New State was a
bureaucratic regime, serving its present master as it might serve a totally
different one.
The Monarchist Threat
That the parliamentary attack on the Mocidade Portuguesa should have come
from a monarchist deputy was no surprise. As the emblematic policies and
organizations of the 1930s and early 1940s lost their sense of purpose and
direction, the idea of a monarchist restoration as the means by which to
preserve the essential aspects of the New State (in the same way that the New
State had once been described as the means by which to perpetuate certain
elements of monarchism) was revived. One of the reasons why Salazar could
not accept the Presidency of the Republic was that monarchists would not be
pleased, since Caetano had left his youthful royalist dabbling far behind and
was now committed to the Republic. Should he become President of the
Council, the monarchists might walk away from the regime. One should not
underestimate the continuing importance of the old monarchist/republican
split in Portugal. The PIDE kept a vigilant eye on monarchist activities, while
many of the regime’s leading figures were monarchists (and Salazar himself, as
we have seen, was generally thought to prefer the monarchist solution).
Alfredo Pimenta, one of the most important monarchist ideologues of the
period, had, during World War II, taken it upon himself to convince Salazar of
the need to restore the monarchy, writing letter after letter on the subject.
Although Pimenta soon fell out of favor, possibly because of the sheer insis-
tence with which he made his point, there was no shortage of others to con-
tinue this work, since Salazar remained open to monarchist appeals, refusing to
rule out any long-term change to the nature of the regime—which a successor,
monarchists feared, might not do. Among these monarchist hopefuls, the most
significant might well have been the sister of the Pretender to the throne, the
Infanta Filipa de Bragança, who kept up her personal correspondence with
Salazar, and who, doubtless excited by the example of neighboring Spain,
strove to keep Salazar aware of the education and human development of her
nephew, Dom Duarte Pio.
Unlike Franco, however, Salazar never took a decisive step in the direction
of a restoration of the monarchy, to occur during or after his lifetime. He
understood, and expected his closest followers to understand, the importance
of ambiguity in this regard. For every Alfredo Pimenta egging him on, there
was an Albino dos Reis urging caution. In January 1950 this trusted friend
warned Salazar that monarchists were growing bolder, meeting to celebrate the
coming restoration; one lunch had brought together some 400 people, in-
cluding deputies and civil governors.93 Nevertheless, that same year the legal
prohibition on the Pretender’s right to live in Portuguese territory was lifted,94
and in 1952 Dom Duarte Nuno settled in Vila Nova de Gaia, south of Oporto.
Soon he began to press for the right to administer the property of the House
of Bragança, and encouraged the drafting of a bill to that effect, to be pre-
sented to the National Assembly by monarchist deputies. This would allow the
Duke and his family to ‘secure a social situation at the proper level.’95 The
presence of the royal family in Portugal was not seen with pleasure by all,
especially the President of the Republic, Craveiro Lopes, jealous of his preroga-
tives. In June of 1957 Dona Filipa de Bragança suggested that Salazar see her
nephew Duarte Pio; they might meet for some twenty minutes, she suggested,
and chat as they strolled in the gardens of Salazar’s residence. She added, how-
ever,
I do not know if this suits you, if you have time, and if it might be the cause of
some misunderstanding—perhaps with the President…There have been such
strange misunderstandings, and now, after his great personal success, with so
many streets and plaques bearing the name of Higino Craveiro Lopes, it is difficult
to judge whether his sensitivity has increased or if—generously, in a superior
fashion—it has diminished.96
93. AOS CP 235, letter, Lisbon, 16 January 1950, Albino dos Reis to António de Oliveira Salazar.
94. Salazar had referred to this measure in his speech of 20 October 1949, already cited. While calling for the
ban on the Braganças’ residence in Portugal to be lifted, Salazar, with characteristic caution, expressed the
hope that the current Pretender would not take advantage of it. Nevertheless, in that speech Salazar showed
how well he understood the strong emotional appeal that animated many monarchists: ‘Portuguese princes
should only grow and be educated in Portugal, lulled by our sea, warmed by our sun, speaking from their
earliest days our language, experiencing the character of the land and of the people, living its drama,
accompanying its labor, interpreting its feelings. Princes educated in this fashion, in touch with the living and
the dead of their Pátria—with those who made it with heroism and who prolong it through hard effort—are,
whatever their fate, part of the moral patrimony of the Nation, a patrimony which only the very rich or very
careless peoples are wont to waste.’
95. AOS CO PC 76, letter, Gaia, 25 November 1954, Dom Duarte Nuno de Bragança to António de Oliveira
Salazar.
96. AOS CP 38, letter, Lisbon, 28 June 1957, Dona Filipa de Bragança to António de Oliveira Salazar. The
letter was received the following day, whereas the letter suggested that the meeting take place that very day.
In any case the meeting did not go ahead.
In July 1957, and clarifying earlier United Press releases about Salazar moving
towards the restoration of the monarchy (including the idea that the matter had
been discussed with Franco at a summit in Ciudad Rodrigo), Caetano stated, to
the United Press, that ‘in Portugal there is no regime problem’, which meant, in
the Portuguese political discourse of the day, that the idea of restoring the
monarchy had been once and for all shelved. Salazar, alarmed by the implica-
tion of these words, ordered the censorship authorities to stop further articles
on the issue, and rebuked Caetano privately:
Evidently we are all agreed […] that ‘the regime problem is not posed’, as you say
in your letter, but the UP’s sentence is ‘in Portugal there is no regime problem’
and this statement has, or can have, a very different sense to the first and be
understood to mean that the government has definitively and forever resolved the
question of the Republic and of the Monarchy. We have survived because the
question has not been posed and it does not suit us that it should be posed, which
implies that the monarchist solution continues to exist, suspended, as a future,
distant, and indefinite possibility. This has satisfied and continues to satisfy the
monarchists […] To keep them alongside us it seems to me necessary that the
government should not profess its republican faith or proclaim that the republican
regime is implanted in aeternum, which is in any case dispensable and really rather
silly.97
But it was not just the conflict between republicans and monarchists that
might get out of hand should Salazar have vacated the Presidency of the
Council of Ministers. The evolution of the regime along corporative lines was
another issue that could not be moved beyond the realms of ambiguity.
Writing to Caetano, who in a speech had suggested that the National Assembly
would eventually be dissolved, leaving the Corporative Chamber to stand
alone, Salazar pointed out that ‘it is too early to state this with such clarity and
this assertion might cause us some difficulties […] In this realm it is advisable
to bee even vaguer or doubtful.’98 It is remarkable, then, that on the great
challenges facing the regime, Salazar preferred to obfuscate unless directly
97. Freire Antunes (ed.), Salazar e Caetano, doc. S 245, letter, 28 July 1957, António de Oliveira Salazar to
Marcelo Caetano, pp. 386–87.
98. Ibid., doc. S 233, letter, 23 April 1956, António de Oliveira Salazar to Marcelo Caetano, p. 376. A
changing of the guard also might spell a different approach to the colonies and their preservation, or a less
prudent approach to the nation’s financial and economic position. It was certainly the case that the most
often discussed successor to Salazar, Marcelo Caetano, and his supporters, notably Daniel Barbosa, were
connotated with a brand of politics that subordinated Finance to Economics and not, as had been the case
since 1928, the reverse. By sacrificing, even if in part, the colonial empire, and by calling into question the
carefully managed financial stability, cornerstone of Salazar’s policy since 1928, a putative successor might
drive a wedge between the various economic forces that underpinned the regime—agriculture, industry,
banking and finance, and commerce.
challenged. This was either a position of weakness, or a demonstration of ideo-
logical emptiness.
Salazar Versus the New State
As we have seen, the 1933 Constitution enshrined a Head of State who

was directly elected by popular vote every seven years, and had full power to
appoint, and dismiss, the President of the Council of Ministers. Such a
solution, which Salazar had to accept as part of an implicit bargain with the
armed forces, was designed to cater for the Salazar-Carmona partnership. This
was, from Salazar’s point of view, an excellent arrangement, since Carmona
kept the army in line and did not involve himself in day-to-day politics. But in
the wake of World War II presidential elections loomed in 1949, by which time
Carmona would be seventy-nine. Despite his misgivings, Salazar, given his
fraught relationship with the army, was forced to accept Carmona as the
regime’s presidential candidate, having brushed aside Marcelo Caetano’s
suggestion that he, Salazar, should stand for President. As had been predicted
by many, Carmona died early in his last presidential term, in April 1951, so that
the problem of succession resurfaced, now more acute than ever. Most of the
New State’s grandees were now convinced of the need for Salazar to step
forward, since the regime needed to win decisively at the elections, and it had
produced no other figure capable of enthusing the electorate. Caetano again
spearheaded the drive to make Salazar the UN’s candidate for the elections:
The current of opinion favorable to a presidential bid by Salazar, already very

strong two years before, now swelled up enormously. There was no other name
with the popularity and the prestige needed to bring with it the electorate in an
election determined by universal suffrage. [...]
I was once again the mouthpiece of this current next to Salazar. In the many
conversations we had at the time, alone or in the presence of Albino dos Reis
(who shared this view), I put forward all the arguments doing the rounds in favor
of his bid and was able to refute all the arguments which he advanced. In order to
be more at ease, and to destroy the impression that personal ambition was driving
me, I declared, and repeated more than once, that were he to be elected President
of the Republic I would not accept any role in government.
His stance, however, was categorical: he would not announce such a bid, desiring
only to be freed, as soon as possible, from the Presidency of the Council [...]99

The crisis, for it became a crisis, dragged on for nearly two months, being
complicated by Mário de Figueiredo’s suggestion that the time had come to
restore the monarchy and that, in anticipation of this, Salazar should accumu-
late both presidencies (as he had been doing since Carmona’s death) until
Carmona’s term expired, in 1956. To further his end, Figueiredo piloted a bill
through the National Assembly designed to give Salazar full powers to decide
on the manner of Carmona’s succession. On 25 April 1951 Caetano wrote to
Salazar,
Your obstinate refusal to agree to the presentation of your bid will lead those
people to commit all sorts of mistakes in order to keep you in the Presidency as a
simple case of accumulation of functions. […]
It is with the greatest of apprehension that I (and with me some of the people with
the greatest sense and the heaviest responsibilities within the New State) see the
development of the crisis that, apparently, is being resolved through parliamentary
coups d’état.
Is this really the best way forward?100
José Nosolini, having heard the rumor, in Rome, that Salazar would com-
bine both presidencies until the end of the ongoing term, took this to mean
that the country was indeed being prepared for the restoration of the mon-
archy, the solution which offered the greatest degree of continuity: ‘These
periodical disturbances and worries are, in truth, frightfully bad for the people’,
Nosolini wrote of presidential elections.101 The idea of a restoration was
regularly on Salazar’s mind; he discussed it, for example, with his Swiss confi-
dant, Gonzague de Reynold.102 Successive meetings of the Council of
Ministers, and of Salazar with his most trusted advisors, led nowhere. Appre-
hension in the country began to mount, and when the Diário de Notícias
attempted to mount a public campaign in favor of Salazar’s presidential can-
didature, it was stopped in its tracks by the censorship authorities, Salazar ex-
plaining to his close collaborator at the newspaper, Augusto de Castro, that any
such campaign, because pointless, would serve only to weaken fatally whoever
100. Freire Antunes (ed.), Salazar e Caetano, doc. C 152, letter, 25 April 1951, Marcelo Caetano to António de
101. AOS CD 9, undated letter received on 5 May 1951, José Nosolini to António de Oliveira Salazar. The
same file contains another missive, received on 28 May 1951, in which Nosolini returned to this point.
102. The two men met in the morning of 17 October 1951. According to Salazar’s diary, they had a ‘long
conversation about politics and the international situation—Switzerland, Italy, France, England, Spain,
Portugal—dangers—possible evolution of events—[…] Portuguese matters—our policy—the monarchy as
provider of stability—possibilities’. It is worth noting that in 1950 Salazar had returned Rui Ennes Ulrich to
the embassy in London, a post Ulrich had been forced to abandon in 1935, after having entertained, in his
official residence, the Duke of Bragança, an act which had stirred republican feeling in Portugal. His
reappointment was a belated consolation to a loyal servant, but was taken by monarchists as an encourage-
ment to their cause.
the União Nacional chose as its candidate. It was only at the close of the month
of May that a consensus emerged, after a long series of meetings, first around
the notion of another military figure, and then around General Craveiro Lopes,
who would go on, predictably, to win the election.103 Probably coincidentally, it
was at this time that Charles Maurras, from his prison cell in Clairvaux, wrote
his famous letter to Salazar:
Stay! Hold on! You have just lost the strong soldier who, without striking a blow,
without shedding a drop of blood, brought order to the affairs of Portugal and
delivered them into your strong hands! You must continue to uphold the banner
of order, of authority, and of freedom! That they should flourish among you, and
bear fruit among your sister nation, will be proof that they have not died forever
[…]
Charles Maurras 8.321104
Facing, if not an open revolt, then at least considerable effervescence from

his civilian supporters, Salazar was forced to rely more than ever on his
Defense Minister, Santos Costa, who, as ever, remained loyal. There are fre-
quent references to the existence of two parties surrounding Salazar—civilians
and officers—which were becoming increasingly hostile to each other. The
civilians, intent on reform and movement, were unsurprisingly led by Marcelo
Caetano, who would go on to develop links with President Craveiro Lopes;
Santos Costa led, naturally, the military faction, committed to a New State led
by Salazar. There was no love lost between the two men. Early in 1946 Cae-
tano, at the time Minister of the Colonies, complained about the unhelpful
attitude of the officer commanding the Portuguese troops in Timor who,
having little to do, were nevertheless prevented from helping in the reconstruc-
tion of the territory’s infrastructure. Caetano wrote, ‘behind this lies the
reluctance of the military authorities, especially of higher ranks, to recognize
the supremacy of the representatives of civilian authority’—a reluctance which
was easier to find in Portugal than in any other country in Europe and,
possibly, in the world.105 Santos Costa reciprocated in kind, writing that he
found it hard to deal unreservedly with the mysterious Caetano, so secretive in
his ambitions: ‘I was greatly shocked by the telegrams he sent you from the
[Ministry of the ] Colonies regarding the matter of Timor, at the close of the
last war.’106 In May 1950, Marcelo Caetano criticized the expense involved in a
103. Salazar’s diary reveals the intensity of the contacts of what he termed the ‘presidential succession’. Some
figures of a now distant path made a reappearance at this stage, including the previous Prime Minister,
General Domingos de Oliveira, still a member of the Council of State: he met Salazar on 1 June.
104. AOS CP 174, letter, 31 May 1951, Charles Maurras to António de Oliveira Salazar.
105. AOS CO UL 10A, letter, Lisbon, 5 January 1946, Marcelo Caetano to António de Oliveira Salazar.
106. AOS CO PC 3K, letter, Lisbon, 21 January 1947, Santos Costa to António de Oliveira Salazar.
reception held in the São Julião da Barra fort, on the Lisbon coast, by Santos
Costa:
Professor in a university where almost all conditions of pedagogical labor are

lacking and which, while not having a hall for solemn occasions, has three faculties
miserably housed (Arts, Pharmacy and Law), allow me to let off steam respectfully
when I see that in this time of severe budget restrictions—even buying a book for
the library is a problem!—millions of escudos can be spent on luxuries for the per-
sonal enjoyment of ministers and their guests.107
This gulf would widen. Paulo Cunha, Minister for Foreign Affairs, and an
ally of Marcelo Caetano, had frequent run-ins with Santos Costa.108 It was
probably a good thing for Salazar and the New State that of the three presi-
dential elections that occurred in the postwar period, the contest that resulted
from Carmona’s death, held on 22 July 1951, was the least eventful. The
opposition, unable to field a common candidate, presented two figures. One,
representing the republicans, was Admiral Manuel Carlos Quintão Meireles,
briefly a Minister of Foreign Affairs from December 1928 to July 1929, coin-
ciding with Salazar in José Vicente de Freitas’ government.109 The PCP and its
fellow travelers settled on a former mathematics lecturer in the University of
Oporto who had been the victim of a political purge, Rui Luís Gomes.110
Gomes was described as the ‘candidate of Peace’, a reference to Soviet-inspired
pacifism in the face of NATO. The ill-will generated by the bitter end of the
Norton de Matos campaign ensured that the two opposition bids cancelled
each other out, Quintão Meireles using much of his time to stress that he repu-
diated communist doctrines. The admiral described himself as a believer in the
true spirit of the 28 May rising, which had been betrayed, and stated his inten-
tion of working with the existing constitution, making it come to life instead of
remaining an empty formula. Franco Nogueira writes,
[…] there is an abyss between the program of Meireles and the ones presented by
the opposition in 1945, or by Norton’s bid; Meireles seems to be defending ideas
similar to those of Salazar. There is the same condemnation of political parties and
107. Freire Antunes (ed.), Salazar e Caetano, doc. C 138, letter, Lisbon, 22 May 1950, Marcelo Caetano to
108. AOS CP 91, letter, Lisbon, 22 July 1954, Paulo Cunha to António de Oliveira Salazar.
109. Manuel Carlos Quintão Meireles (1880–1962) entered the naval academy in 1898 and retired from active
service in the Portuguese navy in 1945, having served in Angola and France in World War I, as well as
commanding a number of warships and serving in staff positions.
110. According to José Pacheco Pereira, Rui Luís Gomes was not consulted by the PCP, which moved
extremely quickly to choose a candidate after Carmona’s death, in order to present the rest of the opposition
with a fait accompli. José Pacheco Pereira, Álvaro Cunhal: Uma biografia política vol. 3 O Prisioneiro (1949–1960)
(Lisbon: Temas e Debates, 2005), pp. 135–36.
the defense of public order; the same mise en valeur of Overseas Portugal within a
single sovereignty, repudiating any internationalism; an identical foreign policy;
and respect for the existing constitution.111
This is an exaggeration by Franco Nogueira; Quintão Meireles was paying lip

service to the New State in order to be allowed to campaign. As a foreign dip-
lomat wrote, reflecting on the campaign,
His supporters clamored for a “modification”—as distinct from the destruction—

of the existing regime on the basis of a “general reconciliation of the whole Portu-
guese family” which, they said, was the object the military leaders had in view 25
years ago when they established it.
The Meirellists have vigorously denounced the political monopoly exercised by the
“União Nacional”—Dr Salazar’s single party—the many cases of traffic of influ-
ence and of corruption in the handling of State funds, the political persecutions
and the press censorship.112
Some episodes reveal that Quintão Meireles was willing to go on the attack
during the campaign. When, on 18 July, Armindo Monteiro wrote an article,
‘On a Point of Honor’, in the Diário de Notícias, criticizing the admiral’s mani-
festo, Quintão Meireles replied, in a letter published in the same newspaper,
that he would not discuss ‘points of honor’ with Monteiro until the latter had
clarified the reasons for his departure from the London embassy: ‘I need to
know if you can, on the basis of documentation, give me an explanation,
without blushing […]’ Monteiro, in order to clear his name, requested from the
MNE the publication of all such documentation. Salazar’s diary shows him dis-
cussing the issue with a number of cabinet colleagues that very evening. Evi-
dently the conclusion was reached that the country was not yet ready to read
about the Salazar/Monteiro split, and another solution was adopted: the publi-
cation of an official note by the MNE: ‘It is important to state, with the
greatest clarity, that Dr Armindo Monteiro’s exoneration resulted from dis-
agreements which in no way affected his dignity as a man and as a diplomat.’113
Quintão Meireles, like Norton de Matos before him, wrote Salazar asking for
freedom to put his views and propaganda across, and appealed as well to
111. Franco Nogueira, O ataque, p. 229. A similar point was made by Sam Pope Brewer, the New York Times
correspondent covering the election: ‘Admiral Meireles demands a relaxation of the restraints on personal
liberties and a clean-up of graft and corruption, but calls for no basic change’. ‘Regime in Lisbon seen easy
victor’ in New York Times, 19 July 1951. Marcelo Caetano, while calling Quintão Meireles a ‘good man, of
average intelligence’, wrote that he was used by the other opposition forces merely to attack the regime; once
they had done this, they forced him to quit. Caetano, Minhas memórias, p. 545.
112. Ribeiro de Meneses, Correspondência diplomática irlandesa, doc. 128, report, Lisbon, 3 August 1951, O’Kelly
de Gallagh to Secretary, Department of External Affairs, Dublin, p. 167.
113. Aires Oliveira, Armindo Monteiro, p. 249.
Craveiro Lopes’ honor to only recognize the outcome of the election if it was
held in a free and fair manner:
I trust […] your undeniable moral rectitude, and rely on you, an honorable and
prestigious officer, to force the powers that be to adopt an impartial attitude so
that we both can have equal access, for propaganda purposes, to the national
broadcaster and to the meeting halls in certain public buildings, while delegates
from the two campaigns can supervise the workings of the voting halls and the
count centers—a supervision not imposed by the law, but which is not forbidden
by it either.
And, in case of a government refusal, of or a violation of the elementary principles
of electoral decency, I invoke in advance your solidarity so that we may adopt a
common posture.114
Craveiro Lopes ignored this missive, and the appeal to his honor as an
officer and gentleman. Whatever difficulties befell Quintão Meireles paled into
insignificance with those faced by Rui Luís Gomes, whose campaign ‘posed as
never before (in terms of public, legal activity) the question of opposition as
resistance.’115 A rally in Oporto at which the candidate had spoken was broken
up by the police, with the various speakers violently attacked as they left the
premises, requiring hospital treatment as a result. Rui Luís Gomes wrote a long
letter to Salazar complaining about the assault, which revealed, he claimed, the
extent to which the freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution were worthless.
Sixteen people, including himself, had been treated in hospital.116 Salazar
drafted a brief reply signed by his secretary, by which he reminded Luís Gomes
that his safety and that of his collaborators could not be guaranteed so long as
it was ‘impossible for the agents of authority to distinguish the orators in
propaganda sessions from those elements who, incited by them, perturb order
in a way which cannot be tolerated.’117
Quintão Meireles’ background meant that his most visible supporters were
drawn from a variety of circles; they included admiral Mendes Cabeçadas,
officers involved in the defense of the 28 May such as retired major David
Neto, Salazar’s perpetual nemesis Cunha Leal, the intellectuals of the Seara
Nova group, disenchanted Salazarists like Henrique Galvão, and even Rolão
Preto. Another figure whose support for Quintão Meireles caused much soul-
114. Eleições presidenciais de 1951 e correspondência entre Oliveira Salazar e Craveiro Lopes (Lisbon: Comissão do
Livro Negro Sobre o Regime Fascista, 1983), doc. 31, letter, Lisbon, n.d., Manuel Carlos Quintão Meireles to
General Craveiro Lopes.
116. Eleições presidenciais de 1951, doc. 33, letter, Oporto, 5 July 1951, Rui Luís Gomes, Virgínia Moura & José
Morgado to António de Oliveira Salazar.
117. Ibid., doc. 35, letter, Lisbon, 7 July 1951, Secretary of the President of the Council of Ministers to Dr
Luís Gomes.
searching in opposition circles was Manuel Martins dos Reis, former
commander of the Tarrafal camp. Rui Luís Gomes, meanwhile, was deemed in-
admissible as a candidate by the Supreme Court days before the poll.
According to Nogueira, there was no real tension, or excitement, in the air, and
no surprise when, on 19 July, Quintão Meireles withdrew his candidacy, since
the guarantees of a free and fair contest did not exist.118 That same day, the
New York Times predicted that the government candidate would receive, should
a vote be held, between eighty and eighty-five percent of the vote:
Even if the Opposition were given far more facilities than now, it is estimated that
it would get less than half the vote because of the conservatism of the country
districts, but it would indicate growing strength in the Opposition that might bear
fruit later.119
That same day as well Salazar spoke at a closing rally of the Craveiro
Lopes candidacy, at the Pavilhão dos Desportos, at which, amid damaging attacks
on the two men who had challenged Craveiro Lopes, he made an appeal for
stability and continuity.
The predictable victory in 1951 did not ease the rumblings of discontent
within the New State. Tensions remained high, especially when it became clear
that Craveiro Lopes, unlike Carmona, hoped to influence the course of political
events, striking a good working relationship with the leader of the modernizers,
Marcelo Caetano. A coming together of two such powerful figures seemed to
catch Salazar in a pincer movement, from above and below. The moment of
greatest danger was the cabinet reshuffle of 1955, when Costa Leite was
allowed to retire from the cabinet in order, as the private political language of
the day put it, ‘to rebuild his finances’ after over two decades in government.
Someone had to fill his job as Minister of the Presidency, the cabinet position
created to relieve Salazar of much of the administrative side of his job. Franco
Nogueira set the scene in the following manner:
118. The New York Times correspondent, writing on 18 July, could not yet predict Quintão Meireles’ decision
on this point, since ‘Admiral Meireles is reliably reported to have told friends last night that he would
continue to fight in response to the appeals of his backers, so as to demonstrate how many votes they could
poll no matter how the election was managed.’ ‘Regime in Lisbon Seen Easy Victor’ in New York Times, 19
July 1951. The following day, however, Sam Pope Brewer attempted to explain the admiral’s decision:
‘According to the information available, it was the Right Wing Army section that at today’s meeting
counseled the admiral’s withdrawal, on the plea that the voting machinery was strongly controlled by the
government’s supporters and did not provide a fair chance for the country’s opinion to be registered. It is
equally plausible that they realized the admiral did not have a chance.’ ‘Salazar Opponent Quits Lisbon Race’
in New York Times, 20 July 1951.
119. ‘Regime in Lisbon’.
As President of the Corporative Chamber, and as a long-standing intellectual and
academic, [Caetano] enjoys a high political position, and has built up an excellent
economic situation; he represents an important sector of the regime. Will he
accept? On the other hand, Marcelo Caetano is indubitably the most eminent
figure in the group which orbits the President of the Republic, seeing in him the
arbiter of the post-Salazar world. […] Will it be dangerous to bring him into the
government?120
In other words, should Salazar continue to keep Caetano at arm’s length, he

would be disappointing the ‘phalanx of still young and politically ambitious
men’ who looked to Caetano as leader, and who were, in many ways, the future
of the regime. Should he invite Caetano to become his right-hand man, and be
turned down, Salazar would emerge weakened and unable to attract the
country’s best minds to work with him. Should he invite Caetano, and should
Caetano accept, then Salazar might be signing his own political death warrant,
given the good relations between the young challenger and the President.
Salazar took the last course, in order to keep Caetano close to him. Caetano
recounts, in his memoirs, a conversation between Salazar and Craveiro Lopes
in this regard, which is highly revealing. Salazar took Craveiro Lopes a short-list
of three possible candidates for Minister of the Presidency. Caetano was one of
those candidates.
Craveiro Lopes pointed to [Caetano’s name] right away, saying, “He is the best of
all! He’s the one who should be next to you, learning from you!” Salazar answered,
“This is true but I am sure he will not accept. Given his [financial] situation,
entering government will represent an enormous loss.” Craveiro Lopes replied
that “I have reason to believe that if you invite him, he will not say no…” Salazar
raised his eyes and, paper in hand, asked him, “he would thus become the
dauphin?” “And why not?”, answered Craveiro Lopes.121
One can practically hear the alarm bells ringing in Salazar’s mind. He was not,
however, without resources, and was able to overcome this circumstance. First
of all, he invited Caetano to join the cabinet, as Minister of the Presidency,
which Caetano accepted—only to turn the position into that, as Caetano put it,
of ‘auxiliary bishop’.122 Deprived of real political power and initiative, Caetano
served as a buffer between Salazar and the rest of the world, from other
cabinet ministers to OEEC and NATO, at whose summits he represented
Salazar. His functions were never clearly defined by Salazar, who quite clearly
120. Franco Nogueira, O ataque, p. 383.

122. Ibid., p. 641.
neutralized Caetano and suffocated him in paperwork, all while preserving,
outwardly, the best of relations, and praising him fulsomely in public. There
was an inevitable reaction from jealous rivals to this deference and attention, as
Salazar knew there would be. The already referred clash with the monarchists
was one of many by which Caetano developed a hardly deserved reputation as
a ‘leftist’. Above all, though, Salazar’s strategy rested on the evident unpopu-
larity of Craveiro Lopes, seen by the public at large as unnecessarily formal and
rigid, by monarchists as an enemy, and by political insiders as a source of in-
stability. In this respect Marcelo Caetano’s retelling of a conversation between
President Craveiro Lopes and the then leader of the União Nacional in the
National Assembly, and lifelong friend of Salazar, Mário de Figueiredo, is sig-
nificant. According to Caetano, Craveiro Lopes, worried by Salazar’s constant
complaints about his own health, spoke to Figueiredo about the need to plan a
transition to another President of the Council even during Salazar’s lifetime:
“Here Mário de Figueiredo interrupted me [Craveiro Lopes] in a state of great

exaltation, saying that Salazar’s removal from the Presidency of the Council would
spell the end of his influence and, not long after that, the end of all that he had
built and of the revolution which he had projected. No-one would pay him any
attention!”
Craveiro Lopes objected, arguing that no matter what happened, Salazar would
always be consulted and respected, but to no avail:
“Mário de Figueiredo, still excited, then came out with the following sentence: ‘On
the day that, for whatever reason, Salazar should leave the government, there will
be only one solution: return power to the Army.’”123
Such a statement is ambiguous, since it can be read either as the desire for
military rule in order to stave off anarchy, or as a call for Defence Minister
Santos Costa (like Figueiredo a man with monarchist sympathies) to be given
power as a worthy successor. Incidents like this, however, reinforced the
growing hostility towards Craveiro Lopes from circles personally loyal to
Salazar. In addition, Santos Costa and Craveiro Lopes detested each other, and
in their never-ending conflict split the army, neutralizing it as a political force;
Craveiro Lopes (an air force officer) never spoke for the armed forces, as
Carmona had done before him. The way was thus open for Salazar to play his
trump card—not renewing Craveiro Lopes’ mandate as President.
123. Ibid., p. 737.

It did not prove difficult for Salazar to impose Navy Minister Américo
Tomás, whom he had long identified as a potential Head of State, on the União
Nacional as his desired President.124 Caetano attempted to resurrect the idea of
Salazar as candidate, but he was too weakened within the regime, thanks to his
association with Craveiro Lopes. Salazar’s most loyal followers had come to
understand that their political future was tied to Salazar’s, and abandoned all
thoughts of ‘promoting’ him to the Presidency of the Republic. On 26 April
1958—the eve of the regime’s anniversaries, with their inevitable wave of
praise for Salazar—Craveiro Lopes was informed that, bar a last-minute sur-
prise by the União Nacional’s Central Commission, his time as President had
come to an end.
124. A letter from António de Oliveira Salazar to Américo Tomás is missing from AOS 269. A short entry
describes its contents in the following manner: ‘Oliveira Salazar informs Américo Tomás, the Minister of the
Navy, that he has great plans for him, and that his first step should be to serve as a deputy. He praises his
work as Minister of the Navy, and asks him to think about the matter, giving him afterwards an answer’. This
ties in with Tomás’s memoirs, in which he writes of his name being discussed as a candidate in 1949 and
then, with greater consistency, in 1951. According to Tomás, he was Salazar’s first choice as a candidate, but
excused himself by professing his preference for a civilian President. As a result of his refusal, Salazar
informed Tomás, jokingly, that he would have to advertise the position of President in the Diário de Notícias.
Américo Tomás, Últimas décadas de Portugal vol 1 (Lisbon: Cognitio, 1980), pp. 142–44.
Chapter VIII
A New Opposition:
Humberto Delgado and the
Bishop of Oporto
28 April 1957 was a significant date in Salazar’s life. He turned sixty-eight,

retiring as a Coimbra Professor, after forty-one years’ ‘service’.1 One
possible alternative to political activity was now cut off. As the 1950s neared
their end, it still appeared, to the outside world, that the tranquility evident in
Portuguese life was the result of a widespread acceptance of the regime, and of
the man who headed it. Indeed, in an editorial, the New York Times, remarking
on the ‘placid, benevolent and apparently quite acceptable totalitarianism of the
onetime schoolteacher Dr António de Oliveira Salazar’, concluded that ‘the
Portuguese, on the whole, seem satisfied or at least resigned. It is their
country.’2 1958, however, was to see the most important electoral challenge to
the New State, an event which seriously shocked the system and led almost
immediately to an alteration of the rules for the election of the President of the
Republic, bringing the whole process under Salazar’s direct control. The whole
of Portugal was, for the first time in its history, gripped by election fever, and
the challenger, General Humberto Delgado, did not follow his predecessors
1. Having remained officially on the staff of Coimbra University, Salazar was entitled to a pension of 125,400
escudos per year. He could only earn a third of this while working as President of the Council of Ministers.
2. ‘Portugal’s “Election”’ in New York Times, 11 April 1957.
A New Opposition: Humberto Delgado and the Bishop of Oporto 423
down the route of withdrawing on the eve of elections, instead giving followers
the possibility of expressing their views at the ballot-box. In the past, Salazar
had expressed disappointment that no electoral contest had been held;3 he
would soon be disabused of this overconfidence. The result was that the gov-
ernment was forced to act, under the pretense of ensuring public order, to curb
the Delgado campaign, and then to resort to election-day chicanery in order to
secure a positive result for its candidate, Admiral Américo Tomás. The head-
aches for Salazar would not end there.
Humberto Delgado and the 1958 Election
Remarkably, Humberto Delgado, the champion of all who opposed the

New State, had for a long time been one of the regime’s most vocal cham-
pions. From a humble background, he had entered, and shone in, the military
academy, graduating top of his class in 1925. He was deeply involved in the
military revolt of the following year, believing passionately in the Army’s duty
to ‘save’ Portugal. In this early stage of his career Delgado, who had joined the
air corps, becoming a pilot in 1928, was on the radical fringe of the regime.
More than anything else, Delgado wanted to serve; the routine duties of mili-
tary life were not sufficient to contain his restless energy. He wrote a number
of political and military works, and regularly lectured on military subjects.4 The
outbreak of the Spanish Civil War saw Delgado speaking on the national radio
broadcaster, the Emissora Nacional, in the uncompromising, revolutionary terms
of a fascism that was, to many in Portugal, including Salazar, unwelcome.
Referring the meeting at the Campo Pequeno bull-ring which preceded the
creation of the Legião Portuguesa, Delgado noted the absence of those ‘who
would have much to lose, if Portugal was to witness the struggle of the red
jackals’:
That was why I shouted frantically, until my voice was spent, when one of the
orators, loudly and clearly, attacked, violently, bourgeois selfishness.5
3. In July 1951, for example, Salazar wrote that ‘it was a great pity that the opposition candidate [Quintão
Meireles] did not present himself before the ballot-boxes: the comparison of the votes would very useful’.
Freire Antunes (ed.), Salazar e Caetano, doc. S 158, letter, 21 July 1951, António de Oliveira Salazar to Marcelo
Caetano, p. 299.
4. See, for example, ‘“Aspectos militares da civilização contemporânea”: Conferência pelo tenente-aviador
Humberto Delgado’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 15 November 1932. This lecture, delivered in the Geo-
graphical Society, consisted of an examination of the changing nature of warfare, the principal characteristics
of the Great War, and the role of the army in the shaping of the future—it should be ‘school for the cultural
improvement and the education of the masses’.
5. ‘Palestra feita na Emissora Nacional pelo capitão-aviador Humberto Delgado’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon),
4 September 1936.
These ‘selfish bourgeois’, as well as the remaining republicans, were the butt of
Delgado’s violent rhetoric, and he warned them that it was not the defense of
private property that drove the army to be anti-communist:
The army is anti-communist, above all, because its duty is to preserve the honor of
eight-centuries’ worth of History; and it abhors seeing men reduced to the level of
beasts or, better still, below them.
The war in Spain was a struggle against communism, and this was described in
the most simplistic of terms:
To conquer a woman, to woo her, to feel the love poem of Western civilization?
Why bother, if it is easier to grab her on a street corner, wring her neck and rape
her? […]
Children? Ignoble bourgeois invention. Women give birth. Who is the father?
What father? The State is the father. Let it suckle and nourish the child, while the
mother has others—the stronger ones, those that resist the abortions…
Part of the lecture was directed at the army, whose poor pay was felt most
keenly by the lower ranks, who might be tempted to emulate the revolutionary
outbreak in the neighboring country. The nature of pay in the Portuguese army
made it, according to Delgado, part of ‘the proletarian classes who want to see
an improvement in their economic conditions.’ But the army was not—and
could not be—materialist: man’s spiritual condition was the main consideration
in the life of an army:
There is no army without spirit: there are only hordes, like the hordes of the red
dogs, brave against the damsels they rape, but easily brushed aside by the army of
the true Spain.
Behind the scenes, Delgado was one of a number of men who were in regular
touch with Salazar, hoping to have his services noticed in order to secure a
more lucrative and prestigious role. At times, in this correspondence, he
attempted to establish a personal connection with Salazar:
Perhaps because I am of humble birth (my father was a non-commissioned

officer) my soul is endowed with a special sensibility and receptivity for these
social affairs, maybe because in my own small way, I am a small example of how
even in this society, despite everything, work and honesty can still open up
possibilities.6
6. AOS CP 94, letter, Tomar, 2 June 1937, Humberto Delgado to António de Oliveira Salazar.
More often than not, however, he was frank, brutal, and cynical. In September
1940, for example, Delgado wrote that life in the New State had changed him.
Gone was the enthusiasm of youth, open participation in political events, the
defense of principles and of Salazar (evidenced, for example, by a radio broad-
cast in January 1938, part of a series organized by Henrique Galvão to smooth
the passage of that month’s crucial military reforms, and by his work with the
Legião Portuguesa and the Mocidade). The new Delgado, tired of dealing with
petty intermediaries, just wanted a lucrative job. He engaged in a vicious
denunciation of all those who, despite suspect political pasts, and never having
committed themselves to the regime, enjoyed a plethora of profitable assign-
ments. It is in many ways remarkable that Delgado should be trusted by
Salazar, in the wake of this document:
But I do not govern. I merely watch, and until recently I engaged in propaganda
on behalf of those who governed. Now, having been “insulted” by those who, as a
result of their job, or their age, are superior to me (in all other ways they are
inferior)—I, as a military man, resolve my differences with a pistol—I will no
longer engage in propaganda, as I used to, spontaneously. All of those people who
“stuff themselves”, excuse the term, are not to be seen, do not appear in public.
They just want to be forgotten about. This is what I now want, suddenly, after my
fourteen “Socratic” years: to be looked after, and then forgotten. I deserve more
than those who did not step into the breach for fourteen, or seven, or even a
single year, is that not so?7
Such insubordination, remarkable in a middle-ranking officer writing his

Minister of War, was ratcheted up the following year. Delgado sent Salazar a
copy of his latest work8 and from São Bento came the reply that Salazar would
like to thank him personally. Delgado wrote, on 12 April 1941,
As regards the message that Dr Salazar intends to thank me personally, I am much

indebted, although I know that there are a number of intentions that a President
of the Council rarely or never carries out, particularly when, as is now the case,
there are important issues which take priority: the grave world situation, which
must by now have robbed him of a few hours of sleep, and the fact that the
situação can only sustain itself with politics, which means that the soldiers of old no
7. AOS CP 94 letter, Lisbon, 19 September 1940, Humberto Delgado to António de Oliveira Salazar. This
letter followed an earlier request to be given some kind of government-appointed job which had been turned
down, since Delgado had not identified a specific job he had in mind. Nevertheless, according to the reply,
signed by Leal Marques, Salazar had taken good note of the request.
8. Which book was sent is not clear from the letter consulted. His latest work had been, at this stage, the play
A marcha para a Índia (1940), which had been broadcast on the anniversary of Vasco da Gama’s departure
from Lisbon.
longer deserve to have time wasted on them, even when they have spent the past
fifteen years waiting for a good job […]9
Incredibly, these letters did not prevent Salazar from having recourse to
Delgado. He was appointed to the negotiating team which dealt with the
British over the Azores air base,10 and performed well; by the end of the war,
he was working closely with Salazar. As head of the recently created Civil Aero-
nautics Secretariat, an entity charged with fomenting the growth of civil avia-
tion in Portugal,11 Delgado reported directly to the President of the Council.
This was, in many ways, the position he had for so long sought, combining a
higher salary with direct access to power and a limitless field for expansion in a
dramatic new activity. That Salazar was willing to trust him, and believed in his
abilities, gives credence to Marcelo Caetano’s assessment of Delgado:
Intelligent, which no-one could deny. He spoke too quickly, like a machine-gun.
He was restless, impulsive, and ambitious. He had a high opinion of himself,
matched by the feeling that he was not sufficiently well thought of and employed,
and by a certain jealousy of those who rose faster than himself in life.
However, he was at heart honest, and aspired, even if gracelessly, to “clear the
air”.12
Relations with Salazar improved, as Delgado’s correspondence testifies,

although difficulties remained: Delgado’s dynamism did not sit well with
Salazar’s centralizing and cautious nature, and his free, relaxed, prose is highly
unusual for someone corresponding with Salazar. The directorship of the
Secretariat naturally allowed Delgado to travel, and it is tempting to see in this
belated experience of the outside world a revelation to the hardened
nationalist:
9. AOS CP 94, letter, Lisbon, 12 April 1941, Humberto Delgado to A. Ribeiro da Cunha.
10. As we have seen, negotiations began in 1942, when it was deemed important to have a fall-back plan in
case of a German invasion of Portugal, part of a wider operation in the Iberian Peninsula that would see the
fall of Gibraltar. Delgado thanked Santos Costa, in a letter dated 12 January 1942, for ‘lending me a hand and
lifting me out of the ostracism in which I found myself, no longer just political but also military.’ Manuel
Braga da Cruz (ed.), Correspondência de Santos Costa, 1936–1982 (Lisbon: Verbo, 2004), doc. 191, letter, 12
January 1942, Humberto Delgado to Santos Costa, p. 163.
11. As World War II neared its end, there was an understanding that aviation now held the key to global
travel, and all countries were trying to take advantage of the new situation. Speaking to the press, in October
1944, Delgado described his priorities: the creation of an entity capable of providing air services to the
colonies and to other parts of the world; the recruitment of pilots from the armed forces, and provision of
the necessary training, to a new airline; the development of a domestic air service, linking Oporto, Lisbon,
and Faro; and the development of a practical interest, among the Portuguese, in aviation matters in order,
among other things, to increase the pool of available pilots. See ‘A acção do Secretariado da Aeronáutica
Civil […]’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon) 5 October 1944.
12. Caetano, Minhas Memórias, p. 399.
[…] Having visited two airports—Dublin and Shannon, I feel crushed.
A small country of no more than four million inhabitants, with no global projec-
tion, with no claim to fame other than its courage, so often badly employed,
[Ireland] began building its airport for short-haul flights before the war. In its
sleek, spacious buildings, you could fit ours three or four times over! In Shannon,
the transatlantic airport, there are still no definitive buildings, but worthy and com-
fortable lodgings have been erected in wood, with some internal luxury, and as
soon as they have the necessary materials they will begin the definitive construc-
tion, according to the minister.
Its delegation is numerous and well prepared, capable of entering into in-depth
technical discussions which bring it prestige and which forces us to consider it a
worthy adversary.13
Delgado remained hyper-sensitive, capable of penning furious tirades against

Salazar. In one instance he was informed by his subordinate, Major Humberto
Pais, that Salazar was displeased with the Secretariat, which Delgado took to
mean with him personally. His response was vintage Delgado:
Mr. President, I am forty years of age and twenty of hard, political struggle; I am
sick of having to put up with, since childhood, those who could not tolerate that
back in the Academy, at the age of seventeen, I should be first in a class of thirty-
seven pupils, and that when I was nineteen, for two days straight the newspapers
should call me a hero (which since then, for some, has been synonymous with
lunatic) having been shot at from a distance of four meters […]
I serve you unquestionably with respect, high admiration for the man of accom-
plishments that you are, and even with personal dedication in spite of your almost
permanent iciness; but I do not know how to serve out of fear or subservience
[…]14
In the wake of the passing of the Directorate, Delgado was moved out of
the country, becoming Portuguese representative to the International Civil
Aviation Organization, based in Montreal, where he was unhappy about pay
and conditions, being advised by Salazar to tone down his complaints to the
Foreign Minister.15 After Montreal Delgado returned to Portugal, as
commander of a coastal artillery regiment, which seems to have been mani-
festly insufficient for a man of his energy; clearly desperate not to be forgotten,
he sent Salazar the official praise for his conduct issued by his superiors.
During this time he was a procurador in the National Defense section of the
13. AOS CP 94, letter, Dublin, 17 March 1946, Humberto Delgado to António de Oliveira Salazar. Delgado
had been in Dublin for the North Atlantic Route Service Conference.
14. Ibid., Lisbon, 13 November 1946, Humberto Delgado to António de Oliveira Salazar.
15. Ibid., Geneva, 21 June 1948, Humberto Delgado to António de Oliveira Salazar.
Corporative Chamber,16 and in 1952 he returned to foreign duties, first as
military attaché in Washington and then as head of the Portuguese Permanent
Military Mission to NATO, also in Washington.
If Marcelo Caetano is to be believed, it was the experience of life in the
United States that fixed in Delgado’s mind the need to shake up the New State,
which Delgado had already referred to in the early 1950s, wanting only to wait
until promoted to the rank of general (which occurred in 1953) to begin.17
Delgado was thinking in terms of changing the regime from within, rather than
opposing it completely. He was more guarded in relation to Salazar, although
Marcelo Caetano does quote him as saying ‘Salazar is old, spent, out of fashion!
He must give way to new people!’ Like others before him, then, Delgado made
the mistake of conceiving of the New State as something that could exist with-
out Salazar, and revived his old friendship with the disgraced and imprisoned
Henrique Galvão.18 Galvão, who had tried in vain to secure a ministerial, or
gubernatorial, position in the 1930s and 1940s, had finally broken with the
regime,19 ostensibly over its failure to correct labor abuses in Angola, and to
invest seriously in the colonies. His interventions on these issues in the
National Assembly, where he represented Angola, and his subsequent defense
of some of the 1947 military conspirators, made him a marked man.20 Galvão’s
‘crime’ was not to denounce abuses, which he had been doing for years,21 but,
instead, to do so publicly. His descent into opposition was not linear, however.
In October 1949, Galvão was informed that the União Nacional had
decided to include his name in the list of candidates for the forthcoming elec-
tion, representing the electoral district of Setúbal. On 7 October Galvão
16. See, in this respect, Marcelo Caetano’s entertaining description of Delgado’s part in the drafting of the
Chamber’s Opinion regarding the creation of an Air Force out of the air services of the Army and the Navy,
in Caetano, Minhas memórias, pp. 509–11.
17. Ibid., p. 511.
18. Galvão had been in prison since 1951, but in March 1958 he was sentenced to another sixteen years’
detention for smuggling anti-Salazar pamphlets out of jail. News of this second sentence was given some
attention by the international press (see, for example, ‘A Shocking Sentence’ in Observer (London), 23 March
1958).
19. See AOS CO PC 3D, anonymous letter to Salazar, 16 April 1936: ‘This man could be a Minister for the
Colonies such as Your Excellency has never had, a magnificent governor, a formidable general agent for the
colonies. And he is made an inspector!”
20. On Galvão, see José Barreto, ‘Henrique Galvão’ in Barreto & Mónica (eds), Dicionário de História de
Portugal vol. 8, pp. 81–88. An autobiographical sketch can be found in Henrique Galvão, Santa Maria: My
Crusade for Portugal (Cleveland & N.Y.: The World Publishing Company, 1961). This includes part of a report
presented to a parliamentary commission in 1947 detailing labor practices in Angola.
21. See, for example, AOS CP 123, letter, Lisbon, 18 December 1948, Henrique Galvão to António de
Oliveira Salazar: ‘I returned some weeks ago from Angola, having once again crossed the entire colony [...] I
returned so deeply alarmed by what is happening in the colony, with its political, economic, and social drama,
with its administrative chaos—that I believe it my duty to explain to you personally what is happening and
which seems to me to be so grave that, I am sure, the colony will not last for more than four or five years
[…]’.
thanked Salazar for this gesture.22 A difficulty arose when the Minister of the
Colonies, Teófilo Duarte, did not give his approval to Galvão’s candidacy,
something which the latter required, given his status as a civil servant within
the Ministry. Called to account by Salazar, Duarte reeled off the people he
knew to have objected to Galvão’s presence on the ticket: Mário de Figueiredo,
with whom Galvão had sparred in parliament, and three of Duarte’s prede-
cessors at the Colonies Ministry: Armindo Monteiro, Francisco Machado, and
Marcelo Caetano. For good measure Duarte added that the inclusion of Galvão
on the ticket would lead to the governor-general of Angola’s resignation, and
cause upset in much of the army.23 Duarte argued in vain. Salazar’s reply can be
placed alongside his savage attack on Monteiro: everyone, Salazar pointed out,
had to know his place:
The law demands ministerial approval for candidacies by civil servants. It does so
in order to underline their hierarchical subordination, and to establish whether the
ministries have needs which might advise against the candidacies […] Any other
reasons for a decision, especially those of a political nature, are outside the terms
of the law. The minister can, in that domain, give his opinion, which is always wel-
come, since he is well informed, but he cannot make a decision […] It seems the
me that the minister, when withholding his approval, did so on political grounds,
or on the personal conflicts outlined in the letter. I am sorry, but those grounds
had already been covered by me as President of the União Nacional and as Presi-
dent of the Council. For better or worse, I had come to a solution.24
Duarte’s actions, nevertheless, had their effect; the candidacy had been halted.
His pride again hurt, Galvão fired off a harsh letter to Cortês, of which he sent
a copy to Salazar,25 and published a thinly veiled attack on Mário de Figueiredo
in the press. Not even Salazar could now help him. As he himself put it in a
letter to Salazar, ‘I realize that my political life is finished and that my career in
the civil service must also end.’26 Galvão’s arrest in 1952 and searches carried
out in his home revealed that his resentment dated back to at least 1940, year in
which he began a violent diary, which Salazar examined. The main targets of
his anger were Salazar, Duarte Pacheco, and António Ferro.27
22. AOS CP 123, letter, Lisbon, 7 October 1949, Henrique Galvão to António de Oliveira Salazar.
23. AOS CP 99, letter, Lisbon, 12 October 1949, Teófilo Duarte to António de Oliveira Salazar.
24. Ibid., draft of letter, 12 October 1949, António de Oliveira Salazar to Teófilo Duarte.
25. AOS CP 123, letter, Lisbon, 20 October 1949, Henrique Galvão to Ulisses Cortês, appended to a letter of
the same date to António de Oliveira Salazar.
26. Ibid., letter, Lisbon, 15 November 1949, Henrique Galvão to António de Oliveira Salazar.
27. Ibid. The copies of the document are preceded by a note in Salazar’s handwriting explaining that the
material was secured by the police in Galvão’s home. Salazar decided that it should not be added to the
evidence against Galvão and that it should be returned to him—after copies were made. The language and
the imagery was violent and crude: ‘The moral effects of this situação on the Portuguese: men have been
When in Lisbon, Delgado visited the imprisoned Galvão, and the two dis-
cussed the possibility of a presidential bid.28 Galvão would later claim complete
credit for this decision.29 His spell in Washington completed, Delgado returned
to Lisbon in 1957, again to take charge of the country’s Civil Aviation, now a
directory-general within the Ministry of Communications. From this position
he began to put flesh on his aspirations, still claiming that he would not run
against Craveiro Lopes, another Air Force officer. When it became clear that
Craveiro Lopes would not be sponsored officially by the União Nacional as its
candidate for the presidency, the way was open for Delgado.
As we have seen, the Constitution of 1933 stated that the President of the
Republic, the lynchpin of the entire political apparatus, was to be elected
directly by the people—but said nothing about the selection of the candidates.
This was a potential source of weakness. At first Salazar was not unduly
worried by the prospect of an independent Delgado candidacy, not believing
that someone who had worked with him for so long, and had been (in Salazar’s
view) well rewarded for his efforts, could turn against the regime.30 This soon
changed, however. Galvão, despite his imprisonment, suggested Delgado as a
possible candidate to António Sérgio, the doyen of republicanism in Portugal.
Sérgio, after contacting the general in November 1957, began to organize
opposition figures around Delgado, who, in response to their choreographed
‘invitation’, announced his candidacy as an independent.31 The PCP was wary
of such a move, its newspaper, on hearing the first whispers of the strategy,
denouncing Delgado as a fascist.32 He was also accused of being a creature of
the British and American secret services which, in conjunction with the Salazar
regime, were supposedly attempting to split the opposition.33 The PCP’s
leadership would work hard, over the next few months, to find a suitable can-
didate to back, trying hard to woo a veteran opposition figure, the ironically
anti-communist Cunha Leal, to enter the fray. Tempted for a time to accept a
nomination, Cunha Leal changed his mind when it became clear that Delgado
was indeed running, and that, as a result, only the communists would back his
bid. The party then turned, perhaps too hastily, to Arlindo Vicente, a well-dis-
posed lawyer with an artistic background known for his defense of political
prisoners. To the democratic opposition, Delgado, with his loyal past, his direct
contact with Salazar, and his current doubts, was a god-send; his military
reduced to a single type, who act as a herd, their useless head hanging from the right hand and their dried-up
testicles, forgotten, from the left hand’.
29. Galvão, Santa Maria, p. 86.
32. Avante!, Series 6, 245, 1st fortnight, November 1957. Cited in Pacheco Pereira, O prisioneiro, p. 583.
33. Pacheco Pereira, O prisioneiro, pp. 608–9.
connections would, it was hoped, divide the regime’s supporters, especially in
the armed forces, and lead to a coup attempt (although next to nothing was
done to bring this about).34 What Delgado really made of it all, at this crucial
juncture, is not really evident; neither is what a kind word from Salazar,
including a promise of future cooperation in reforming the regime, might have
achieved at this stage. In this respect, it is worth noting a letter from the long-
time collaborator of Salazar, José Nosolini, at the time ambassador in Madrid.
On 5 May 1958, Nosolini wrote,
The information that is reaching me from Oporto from some of our most
devoted friends is that the Humberto Delgado candidacy is causing some turbu-
lence. It is said that he is a good element of the situação, although in disagreement
with some points of current political action, but this can be advantageous since it
can signify a reinvigorating force and open the way for a healthy continuation.
This news from Oporto was substantiated by a conversation which, according

to Nosolini, Delgado had had, while in Madrid, with the Portuguese military
attaché, Lieutenant Colonel José de Oliveira Vitoriano:
The attaché explained that the candidate was very intelligent, knowledgeable, and
tough; that it was his desire to work with Dr Salazar, although there was a need, it
seems, to clarify quickly certain national problems. He would be willing and able,
for example, to bring together the most important and decisive personalities of the
situação […] to reach a consensus in how to ensure the continuity of policy should
the President of the Council disappear or be incapacitated.35
However, by the time the campaign was unveiled the gloves were off. One
historian writes, ‘he refused to compromise or “hedge his bets”, and this was
undoubtedly a major reason for his dramatic popular impact.’36 As early as 10
April the New York Times correspondent, Benjamin Welles, was able to predict
that Delgado, an ‘outspoken friend of the United States’, would be a source of
criticism that ‘would be likely to attract world attention.’37 We know, however,
that the campaign structures were riddled with informants, giving the govern-
ment a tremendous advantage. Still, despite the electoral inexperience of the
men who surrounded Delgado, the campaign got off to a tremendous start,
and a real surprise.
34. Ibid., p. 584. Pacheco Pereira relies on testimony from Mário Soares.
35. AOS CD 10, letter, Madrid, 5 May 1958, José Nosolini to António de Oliveira Salazar.
37. ‘Ex-Aide Reported Opposing Salazar’ in New York Times, 10 April 1958.
The first action of the Delgado campaign was a press conference in a
Lisbon café, the Chave de Ouro, on Saturday, 10 May. According to a foreign
diplomat, there were some 300 people present, in addition to the journalists
themselves.38 Asked by a reporter what he would do to Salazar, if elected,
Delgado burnt his bridges with a reply that electrified the country: ‘Obviously,
I’ll get rid of him.’ Few could believe that one could speak of Salazar in such an
off-hand manner, after thirty years of his rule. The Diário da Manhã was
apoplectic:
In his first press conference it proved impossible to suppress the explosion of

animosity and hatred […] Hatred for the regime, and for all those responsible for
it, from the first to the last; an affront to Power and its legitimate representatives;
an insult to the pride and reputation of his comrades, when he refers to the fear of
speaking one’s mind that he claims exists in the Institute for High Military Studies
[…]39
Telegrams and letters of complaint over Delgado’s words poured into the
newspaper’s offices, and into São Bento. One was from the Pretender, Dom
Duarte, who professed himself to be ‘indignant over the baseness of character’
revealed by ‘a candidate for the Headship of State.’40 Five days later the Diário
da Manhã was already stating ‘it is no longer a question of choosing the best. It
is a question of saving Portugal.’41 By then, Delgado’s campaign had reached its
quite incredible peak: the candidate’s visit to Oporto, which turned out en masse
to greet him. The photographs of that visit show a mass of people as large as
any that ever turned out for the New State’s own rallies. The numbers
astounded Delgado, who increased the pressure on Salazar, with a discourse
based on the end of fear and the casting off of shackles: he would win,
because, as his reception showed, the Portuguese were no longer afraid. As had
happened to Norton de Matos before him, the sight of the people of Oporto
on the streets fueled belief Delgado’s self-belief. On the regime’s side, there
was consternation, although some figures attempted to put a brave face on it.
One Oporto deputy, João de Brito e Cunha, wrote a parliamentary colleague,
Duarte Freitas do Amaral, essentially calling for calm:
These are the same people whom I saw at the end of the war, who dominated the
city during the Norton de Matos campaign, who welcomed vociferously President
38. AOS COE 1, report, Lisbon, 10 May 1958, Le Baron Ruzette (Belgian ambassador in Lisbon), to Victor
Larock (Belgian Foreign Minister).
39. ‘Lamentável espectáculo’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 11 May 1958.
40. AOS CP 38, letter, Vila Nova de Gaia, 14 May 1958, Dom Duarte Nuno de Bragança to António de
Oliveira Salazar.
41. Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 16 May 1958.
Café Filho and Queen Elizabeth II, after having carried out, in honor of Our Lady
of Fatima, the greatest act of piety I have ever witnessed.
Logic? None. That is how they are. But the danger is great should they be swept
along by those who have a perfect organization, as is happening this time around;
they should not be allowed out on the street while we, with our easy-going
attitude, angelically, wait for everything to turn out well.42
The solution was to prevent the gathering of crowds that could only be
dispersed with great violence.
It is always hard to judge an event’s importance by the references to it in
Salazar’s laconic diary; nevertheless, while the entry for 14 May sees only the
reference ‘22.1/4—Minister of the Interior and Dr Costa Leite—about
elections and propaganda’, the entry for 16 May, the date of Delgado’s return
to Lisbon, is rather different:
12½ - Dr Costa Leite and Minister of the Interior—electoral campaign—steps for

the arrival of General H.D.
[…]
22/24—Various on the telephone. Minister of the Interior; Defense; Presidency;
Costa Leite about the afternoon’s events.43
The following day, Salazar’s staff provided him with a description of

Delgado’s return to the capital, marked by scenes not witnessed in Portugal
since 1926. Open and brutal repression of an assembled crowd in the country’s
capital had been required to prevent Delgado from making contact with his
followers. The crowd which had assembled at Lisbon’s main rail station, Santa
Apolónia, was physically prevented from seeing the general, whom the police
escorted hurriedly to his home (allowing them to do so was a serious mistake
on his part). When Delgado’ supporters attempted to march peacefully towards
his campaign office, taking a route through the Terreiro do Paço and the city
centre, they were dispersed by the police and the GNR, which opened fire. D.
L. Raby claims that some were killed, although the assertion that ‘it is unlikely
that the true figure’ of those who were killed ‘will ever be known’ is not very
42. AOS CO PC 77B, letter, 20 May 1958, João de Brito e Cunha to Duarte Pinto de Carvalho Freitas do
Amaral. Freitas do Amaral passed a copy of the letter on to Salazar the following day. Brazilian President
Café Filho visited Portugal in May 1955; he stressed his commitment to a sketched-out ‘Luso-Brazilian
Community’ and pledged his country’s support for Portugal on the Goa question. Queen Elizabeth II visited
Portugal in February 1957, and was given a magnificent welcome. As The Times put it, ‘the sights and sounds
on the water which Lisbon watched this morning as the Queen arrived to begin her state visit almost outdid
the brave spectacle that followed her landing. Certainly no stage producer could have built up so effective a
first act before Her Majesty set foot in the Portuguese capital. The scene was dignified, gay, thrilling, and
colorful in turn; the Lisbon crowd has unquestionably enjoyed its morning hugely.’ ‘Lisbon greets the Queen
on land and water: Arrival in gilded barge manned by 80 oarsmen’ in The Times (London) 19 February 1957.
43. For a description of this meeting, see Caetano, Minhas memórias, p. 764.
satisfying.44 Marcelo Caetano wrote of shootings throughout the day and night,
although he insinuated that these came from both sides, and did not suggest
casualty figures.45 José Pacheco Pereira, in a more recent work, notes that for
the first time the police, having engaged in violence, was met with violence, but
can only conclude ‘there was an indeterminate number of wounded and there
was talk of deaths.’46 The London Times talked of fifteen wounded, two of
whom had been shot.47 The Portuguese press, on 17 May, carried an official
note from Salazar’s office, stating that the disturbances were part and parcel of
the way that the opposition campaigns were being conducted, since they did
not aim at ‘informing the electorate, but rather at creating ‘a climate of social
agitation, disorder and public restlessness.’ There was also a warning: further
subversive attempts to destabilize order would be met with the ‘greatest
severity.’48 Most newspaper editors were present at a meeting at the SNI
headquarters, in which the Minister of the Presidency gave them the line they
should follow about the day’s events: ‘I concluded that this had been a
rehearsal for the launch of a revolutionary movement, something with which
all seemed to be in agreement.’49
Similar scenes were repeated in Lisbon two days later, Sunday 18 May, date
of a pro-Delgado rally in the gymnasium of a secondary school, the Liceu
Camões, often used for political meetings. Although the rally went ahead,
Delgado was again escorted home after its conclusion, while outside scenes of
considerable violence developed. According to the opposition and most
historians, much of the violence was provoked by the authorities, eager for a
showdown. Middle-class residential areas of Lisbon were among the hardest-hit
by the crackdown which involved regular police, GNR on horseback, and
PIDE inspectors who ‘intervened using automatic weapons against unarmed
civilians.’50 According to The Times, thirty-three people had been taken to hos-
pital, five with bullet wounds.51 This total was later increased by a Reuters
report to eighty injured.52 Santos Costa was now in charge of the regime’s

46. Pacheco Pereira, O prisioneiro, p. 633.
47. ‘24 injured in Oporto’ in The Times (London), 19 May 1958.
48. ‘O Governo afirma a sua intransigente disposição de evitar toda e qualquer perturbação da ordem
pública’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 17 May 1958.
51. ‘Machine gun fire in Lisbon’ in The Times (London), 20 May 1958.
52. ‘Action to check Lisbon riots’ in The Times (London), 21 May 1958. In an editorial on 21 May, entitled
‘Restive critics’, The Times reflected that ‘it is quite true that the incidents in Oporto and Lisbon have been
serious. There may be controversy over who fired first—police or rioters—but there is no doubt at all that
several people have been hurt.’ At the end of the campaign, the New York Times correspondent would state
that ‘firearms have been used, though without lethal effect […]’. He estimated that ‘several dozen persons
have been hurt in riots.’ ‘Presidency race ends in Portugal’ in New York Times, 5 June 1958.
defense, and seemed to be relishing the task. Marcelo Caetano, who lived near
the Liceu Camões, found his building full of protesters trying to take cover from
the intense shooting which had broken out in the street; although he claims no-
one was killed, he did express to Salazar, the following day, that police forces in
urban areas should not resort to firearms in order to preserve order.53
According to a note from the Ministry of the Interior, published on 19 May,
the acts of ‘disobedience to authority and of marked rebelliousness’ had been
met with force: ‘The Police had recourse to firearms, but aimed high, which
explains why only four troublemakers were wounded.’54 The events of the day
were summarized for Salazar on the phone by Santos Costa, Caetano, the
Minister of the Interior, and the Undersecretary of the Army.55 Delgado then
left Lisbon behind, crisscrossing the country in the days that remained in an
attempt to replicate, as was said, an ‘American’ election campaign, with direct
contact with the people, who had never witnessed such a thing. But this was no
ordinary candidate; in his uniform, and armed, Delgado refused to obey the
police and other security services, which were obliged, hierarchically, to obey
him. His rank made him, for the moment, untouchable, although Santos Costa
eventually forced him to campaign in civilian clothes. One by one remaining
opposition figures threw in their lot with him, notably, on 30 May, Arlindo
Vicente, who, despite constant interference by the PIDE, had achieved some
success in mobilizing working-class electors. Faced with the amazing success of
the Delgado campaign, many communists began to call for a single opposition
candidacy, and eventually the party leadership caved in. The two men agreed a
five-point plan, built around the restoration of political rights, the release of
prisoners, and the holding of free elections. The Diário da Manhã rejoiced at
this development, which put clear blue water between Tomás and Delgado. At
all times Delgado was obstructed by the authorities, notably the PIDE, which
hindered his movements and restricted his access to the population; many
supporters were arrested. Delgado retaliated by sowing confusion within mili-
tary ranks. One pamphlet, supposedly written by ‘a group of army, navy, and
air force officers’, called for the armed forces to be left out of policing duties,
for restrictions to be imposed on the use of firearms against Portuguese
citizens, and for an impartial inquiry into the violent events that occurred
during the campaign.56
Salazar may have been directly attacked by Humberto Delgado, but it
remains difficult to gauge the extent to which he immersed himself in the
53. Caetano, Minhas memórias, p. 767–68.

54. ‘Nota Oficiosa do Ministério do Interior’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 19 May 1958.
55. António de Oliveira Salazar, Diary, 18 May 1958.
56. Raby has translated the document in Fascism and Resistance, p. 191. An original can be found in AOS CO
PC 77A, file 2, ‘Actividade política nas Forças Armadas (1958–1961)’.
campaign. There were frequent meetings and conversations about the march of
events, but their content, and Salazar’s input, is lost to us. Attention was
focused on the funding for the Delgado campaign, which the regime’s electoral
propaganda ascribed to foreign donors. Known contributors were scru-
tinized.57 It was clear, from available reports, that things were not going well.
Delgado may have been ridiculed by the PIDE officers who shadowed him
and reported on his every move, but these same men also reported little
enthusiasm for the government candidate, and that pro-Tomás propaganda
was scarce.58 As the opposition had hoped for, the machinery of the state
seemed divided, and unable to act decisively. According to one report, the civil
governor of Vila Real and many of his followers had announced their decision
to vote for Delgado; it had taken the personal intervention of Salazar’s long-
time friend, Dr Bissaia Barreto, to make them come to their senses.59 More-
over, as had been the case in previous elections, Salazar made few public inter-
ventions. The first, on 31 May, was to an audience of ‘representatives’ of the
country’s municipalities. The second, on 4 June, was at a night-time rally for
Américo Tomás, in Lisbon’s Pavilhão dos Desportos. Salazar called his first
audience ‘the good men of the municipalities’, claimed that they were true
representatives of their places of birth, and identified with them:
I neither am, nor do, more than the others. I am merely the one whom unfore-
seeable circumstances appointed as bearer of the flag of a movement for unity and
national resurgence. Neither hero, nor sage, no saint: “just another” who works as
much as he can for his country, in the post to which he was assigned, who is
always at the disposal of those who entrusted it to him.60
Salazar then went on to examine the opposition claims; given the twinning of
the two opposition candidacies, his job was now a lot easier, because he could
taint Delgado—whom he did not mention by name—with communist inten-
tions and practices. This was a standard device, already employed in 1949
against Norton de Matos. In foreign affairs, he noted, there was no complaint;
in colonial affairs, Salazar said that for the most part there was little difference
between the contenders, although Delgado’s call for a plebiscite in Goa over its
57. See, for example, AOS CP 21, letter, Lisbon, 19 May 1958, António M. Pinto Barbosa (Minister of
Finance) to António de Oliveira Salazar: ‘[…] in relation to your note, of 17 May, regarding the intervention
of Pinto de Magalhães Ltd in the delivery of 500,000 pesetas to the candidacy of Gen. Delgado, I ordered the
immediate carrying out of an examination of that banking house’s accounts, with a view to clarifying the
sense and purpose of the said intervention.’
58. AOS CO PC 77B, report, ‘Vila Real: Information about the visit of General Humberto Delgado to this
district’, 23 May 1958.
59. Untitled and anonymous report found in AOS CO PC 77B, file 6, ‘Realização da campanha eleitoral nos
Distritos de Aveiro, Braga, Lisboa e Vila Real’ [1958].
60. ‘Portugal ouviu Salazar’ in Diário da Manhã (Lisbon), 1 June 1958.
future was clearly part of a communist agenda, and would eventually be ex-
tended to the other ‘overseas provinces’; on economic matters Salazar,
lamenting that the opposition had completely ignored the content of the new
Investment Plan, commented that its candidates had no understanding of the
realities of the country, its finances, its resources, and its possibilities. Finally,
following his traditional formula of stressing the continuity between financial
stability, economic development, and social improvements, Salazar now
pointed out that the opposition’s demands for the betterment of the lot of the
country’s workers in no way differed from his own intentions: they were, in
fact, ‘the essence of the regime which we serve’. However, improvements in
working conditions, salaries, hours, and access to culture could only take place
at a pace which did not jeopardize economic growth. The success of each
policy made the other possible:
The worst is to think that one can carry out a given social policy with any
economic policy; that one can establish a given economic policy with any financial
policy; and that any economic or financial policy can serve as the basis for the
international, or overseas, policy that one wants to carry out.
Salazar renewed his usual criticism of the party system, and especially its
inadequacy for a country like Portugal, and finished with fulsome praise for the
departing Craveiro Lopes, who had carried out his role with ‘exemplary
dedication’.
At 11:00 p.m. on 4 June, Salazar set off for the Pavilhão dos Desportos, to
address, briefly, the closing rally of the Américo Tomás campaign. His words
were harsh, and hinted at future repression and change in the country’s con-
stitutional arrangements. With every presidential election the regime submitted
itself to ‘a sort of plebiscite on the structure of the State and all the problems
of the nation.’ This was no way for a country to live. After victory the priority
would be to restore, whatever the cost, the calm that the country needed.
Turning a blind eye to the widespread detentions of Delgado supporters then
taking place across the country, and the constant interference in the opposition
campaign, Salazar claimed that the very fact that the opposition was going to
contest the election belied all its talk of fear. But victory would mean little if
some basic attitudes did not change. The regime had essentially been coasting,
with a handful of people standing up to be counted and the rest living off their
efforts. This could no longer be the case. With more that a hint of mystery,
Salazar stated that
I see the coming of times in which greater sacrifices than the vote will be
demanded of all for the defense of the common good and of everyone’s legitimate
self-interest. There may come a time when one must be willing to fight, and hard;
and happy will be those who have someone to rally them, to lead them, to show
them the way and to ensure, with his contribution, that victory is theirs […]
nothing is certain unless we ourselves defend the principles from which everything
emanates, on which everything rests, and are willing to fight for them.61
It was becoming relatively easy to predict that these would be the last
presidential elections to be held in accordance with the model of the 1933
Constitution. Benjamin Welles wrote that ‘Premier Salazar is believed to be
deeply affected by the violence of General Delgado’s attacks on his rule’, as a
result of which changes to the electoral law would be carried out, alongside a
major cabinet reshuffle and some populist measures involving salaries and
taxation.62 The elections went ahead as planned on 8 June. The mechanics of
the Portuguese electoral system, unchanged for decades, could not have been
better suited to fraud. Each candidate produced his own ballots, which were
distributed outside the polls to voters as they arrived at the voting centers.
Intimidation of campaign workers, and individual voters, as well as the stuffing
of ballot boxes, was thus extremely easy. Of the million votes officially
recorded, over three quarters went to Tomás. By 9 June the Diário da Manhã
was running as a headline ‘Crushing defeat for General Delgado whose pur-
poses the nation repudiated in the clearest of fashions’. Delgado immediately
cried foul, alleging, on that same day, that some 150,000 of his ballots had been
stolen on the eve of the elections.63 Raby, who produces documentation
showing how fraud was carried out, calls the results absurd, arguing that the
number of votes counted in the large cities was far too low to reflect
adequately the intense movement that had been witnessed in the voting
centers.64 It is impossible to reach any conclusion on the final vote; it is a
matter of faith. One thing might be kept in mind: many in the regime were
predicting a bad result, but for them this still meant a considerable victory for
Tomás. Thus, for example, the civil governor of Aveiro reported, on 28 May,
that things were not going well: neutral opinion was swinging towards the
opposition, at least half of civil servants and other employees were backing
Delgado while others were planning to abstain, a greater percentage of
registered workers were going to vote for Delgado, and some Catholics were
61. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘Não tenhamos receio’ in Discursos e notas políticas vol. 5 1951–1958 (Coimbra:
Coimbra Editora, 1959), pp. 477–81.
62. ‘Lisbon Angered by Unrest Signs’ in New York Times, 7 June 1958.
63. Raby, Fascism and Resistance, p. 189. An earlier version of this claim had been made by Delgado on 5 June,
being reported in the New York Times the following day.
64. Ibid., p. 190.
abstaining: but despite all of this, the civil governor still predicted that some
65% of electors would vote, 51–53% doing so for Tomás, and only 12–14%
casting their ballots for the opposition candidate.65 Benjamin Welles narrowed
support for Delgado to ‘young voters, the intellectuals, and the industrial
workers in the big cities’, while suggesting that Tomás was backed by ‘most of
the country’s voters’.66 In any case, the result was not believed by anyone out-
side the situação. Abroad, the feeling that fraud had been widespread was
generalized. Teotónio Pereira, from the embassy in London, wrote Marcelo
Caetano:
The battle has been won, but all of this was a serious warning.
May God help us to regroup and to do what is necessary in the future.
[…] It is impossible to estimate how much Delgado has damaged us here. The last
week was tragic. As soon as the foreign correspondents began to poison this
atmosphere with their false news, our friends took fright and confined themselves
to silence and our enemies took the bit between the teeth with the worst insults
and insinuations.67
One of the problems now faced by Salazar, after this electoral and public-
relations mauling, was what to do with Humberto Delgado, and how to pre-
vent him from continuing to act as a magnet for foreign attention. Delgado
had stated, as the campaign drew to a close, that ‘I am not going. I am staying
here in Portugal. In jail or out of jail—I am a kind of myth. I want to remain a
myth—an anti-Salazar myth.’ He launched a Movimento Nacional Independente
(Independent National Movement) to preserve the momentum gathered during
the campaign. The regime’s first step after the election was to punish Delgado
by curtailing his influence. He was stripped of his official functions in civil
aviation. Caetano wrote to Salazar, on 11 June, warning him to take great care
in handling Delgado:
I must let you know today of the reactions which have reached me to the way
general Delgado was removed from the Directory-General of Civil Aviation,
which should have been done by a decision of the respective ministry, and of the
apprehension that it might signal the start of retaliations which will aggravate
internally and externally the effects produced by certain violent attitudes taken
during the electoral period. Obeying the dictates of my conscience by informing
65. AOS CO PC 51A, report, ‘Situação eleitoral no Distrito de Aveiro: Previsão do Governador Civil’,
Aveiro, 28 May 1958. Salazar, whom the report reached on 5 June, placed a cross next to the line mentioning
Catholic abstentionists.
66. ‘Presidency Race’
67. Arquivo Marcelo Caetano, 44, letter, London, 12 June 1958, Pedro Teotónio Pereira to Marcelo Caetano,
London. Quoted in Santos Martins, Pedro Teothónio Pereira, p. 873.
you of these reactions on our side, I cannot but add that I am as apprehensive as
many others about the sequence of events. Would it not be convenient to call a
Council of Ministers?68
Further acts of persecution and intimidation would follow,69 the situation cul-
minating with Delgado seeking asylum in the Brazilian embassy, a development
which set in train a major and protracted diplomatic crisis between the two
countries.70 As we have been seeing, though, the opposition was merely a part
of Salazar’s political worries. He used the electoral victory to secure his
position within the New State once and for all. In August 1959, the Con-
stitution was revised so as to restrict the electoral college which elected the
President of the Republic to procuradores, deputies, representatives of municipal
chambers drawn from every district, and representatives of the overseas
provinces not divided into districts. In other words, the political elite—the
União Nacional—elected the President. The situation was, on paper, comparable
to that unveiled by Charles de Gaulle for his Fifth Republic, with one im-
portant difference: the electors in Portugal were themselves the product of
rigged elections or direct appointments. Having rid himself of Craveiro Lopes,
and seen off Delgado’s challenge, the road was open to show Marcelo Caetano
the door. This was done in a major government reshuffle which took place in
August 1958. Into his position as Minister of the Presidency stepped the loyal
Pedro Teotónio Pereira, whose dreams of a more prominent political role had
come to an end in the 1930s. In order to make this change palatable to the
modernizing forces within the New State, Salazar simultaneously sacrificed the
68. Freire Antunes (ed.), Salazar e Caetano, doc. C 219, letter, 11 June 1958, Marcelo Caetano to António de
69. See Chapter 13 of Humberto Delgado, Memórias (Lisbon: Edições Delfos, 1974).
70. Delgado asked for asylum on 12 January 1959. He would remain in the Brazilian embassy until 20 April,
when he was finally allowed to depart for Brazil itself. The Portuguese government refused to accept that
Delgado was deserving of political exile status, since there was no case pending against him: he was a free
man. Months of protracted negotiations between the Brazilian ambassador (Álvaro Lins) and Foreign
Minister Marcelo Matias led nowhere. Salazar attempted to use connections in Brazil to bring pressure to
bear on Lins, whose phone was bugged by the PIDE. On 7 March he wrote to President Juscelino
Kubitschek of Brazil, urging him to make Lins see sense and agree to the current Portuguese offer to end the
impasse: Delgado would be free to board any flight to Brazil of his choosing, doing so as the free man that
he was. Salazar also made it clear that it was time for Lins himself to leave Portugal: ‘in the Brazilian
ambassador’s reflections there might be found inappropriate considerations regarding Portuguese internal
politics, which are foreign to his mission, and might even be detrimental to it.’ AOS CO PC 77B, letter,
Lisbon, 7 March 1979, António de Oliveira Salazar to Juscelino Kubitschek. Kubitschek replied on 22
March, ducking the issue: what mattered most was the preservation of good relations between the two
countries and their peoples, which meant that in an issue as emotional as this, great care was needed. In
purely formal terms, Salazar emerged triumphant from this affair, since when Delgado left he did so in
accordance with terms agreeable to the Portuguese government, and since Álvaro Lins resigned his position;
in political terms, however, the damage sustained had been considerable, since no-one really believed that
Delgado was a completely free man in Portugal. See Álvaro Lins, Missão em Portugal (Lisbon: Centro do Livro
Brasileiro, 1974), and Williams da Silva Gonçalves, O realismo da fraternidade: Brasil-Portugal. Do Tratado de
Amizade ao caso Delgado (Lisbon: ICS, 2003).
loyal Santos Costa, his departure being explained as necessary in order to allow
him to complete the course for promotion to general. Santos Costa was re-
placed by Júlio Botelho Moniz, who had already served, as we have seen, as
Interior Minister from 1944 to 1947. Foreign Affairs was handed over to
Ambassador Marcelo Matias, recalled from the Paris embassy for that purpose.
The Bishop of Oporto’s Letter
Relations between Church and State in the postwar years were, for the
most part, good. After the 1951 revision of the Constitution, its article 45
described the Catholic faith as ‘the religion of the Portuguese Nation’. José
Nosolini, appointed ambassador to the Holy See, described Salazar to Pope
Pius XII, after the presentation of credentials, as ‘a Christian soul who, as a
result of his structure, education and intelligence, believes in, and is a son of,
the Church.’71 Some thought these relations to be too good, with the State
willingly subordinating its dignity to that of the Church. Caetano, writing to
Salazar in January 1955, complained of a religious ceremony held in the Church
of St Vincent, in Lisbon, at which the Cardinal-Patriarch of Lisbon and the
ecclesiastical authorities processed first, ahead of the President of the Republic
and his household. ‘When those at the head of the cortège stopped, the Head
of State stopped as well, waiting: not even at Canossa did the civil power drag
itself so low.’ Caetano added, ‘all of the diplomats present […] will inform their
governments that Portugal is the most clerical country in the world. In truth, in
Spain, where the Church has such a great deal of power, the head of State is
received in churches under the palio and the prelate, even if a cardinal,
accompanies him respectfully, so that the former is the centre of the
procession.’72 In Cardinal-Patriarch Cerejeira’s mind, however, there was still
much that could be done by the State to facilitate the Church’s mission; one
was the observance of religious holidays, so that spiritual obligations might be
kept. Late in 1949 Cerejeira suggested to Salazar that these might be turned
into national holidays, with some of the existing national holidays being
dropped altogether (such as 31 January, which celebrated a failed republican
rising in 1891) and others turned into festive days, which would be officially
marked but not occasion a cessation of labor.73
71. AOS CD 9, letter, Rome, no date, received 30 November 1950, José Nosolini to António de Oliveira
Salazar.
72. Freire Antunes (ed.), Salazar e Caetano, doc. C 202, letter, 23 January 1955, Marcelo Caetano to António
73. AOS CP 47, letter, Lisbon, 9 November 1949, Cardinal-Patriarch Manuel Cerejeira to António de
Oliveira Salazar.
Despite this continued good working relationship with the Catholic
Hierarchy, the truth was that the continued economic difficulties faced by
much of the population took its toll on much of the Church, especially the
clergy and laity which staffed organizations such as Catholic Action, and who
struggled to address the complaints of youth, and of the working class. The
detachment had begun during the war, and continued in the years that
followed. In 1948 Fr Abel Varzim was gradually removed, at the government’s
insistence, from the posts he held within Catholic Action, and his newspaper,
O Trabalhador (The Worker), was closed down. Throughout the 1950s the
number of conflicts between this sector and the regime grew; Catholic Action’s
leadership, in close contact with its counterparts around Europe, was well
aware of the growing gulf between Portugal and the wider world. The growing
distrust was evidenced by the care exercised by the Censorship authority’s in
relation to the 1955 Congress of the JOC. The organization’s newspaper,
Juventude Operária, was closely monitored by the police.74 Growing agitation was
to be found as well in the JUC. It was no surprise when these circles broke
with the Hierarchy during the 1958 election, denouncing Novidades’ support for
Américo Tomás.
The independence of India and the Catholic Church’s attempt to establish
a modus vivendi with the Delhi government led naturally to added tensions with
between Church and State in Lisbon, where the government still thought that
Portugal should continue to have a say in the life of the sub-continent’s
Catholics. Early in 1952 Pope Pius XII called Valerian Gracias, Archbishop of
Bombay, to the College of Cardinals, ahead of the Goa-based Patriarch of the
Indies, José da Costa Nunes. Nosolini protested, to no avail. Reflecting on the
situation, he wrote that ‘there is no doubt that the Holy See, in its India policy,
and envisaging a new Christian world, has not considered, and does not want
to consider, the Portuguese case.’75 The protests remained private, however,
and a reward of sorts was obtained in 1953 when Costa Nunes was given the
double honor of becoming Vice-Chamberlain of the Apostolic Chamber and
President of the International Eucharistic Congresses.76 In his November 1954
speech to the National Assembly, Salazar attributed the difference of opinion
between his government and the Holy See on the subject of India to a long-
running dispute—ongoing for 300 years—between Portugal and Propaganda
Fide, the branch of the Church charged with expanding Catholicism’s sphere of
influence.77 For Salazar, this revealed, in the final instance, ignorance of the
74. Almeida, A oposição católica, p. 42.

75. AOS CD 9, report, Rome, 5 January 1952, José Nosolini to Paulo Cunha.
76. Ibid., 23 May 1953, José Nosolini to Paulo Cunha.
77. Salazar did not invent this conflict. For an earlier mention of it see AOS CD 10, letter, Rome, 1
December 1945, António Carneiro Pacheco (ambassador to the Holy See) to António de Oliveira Salazar.
work done by the Portuguese. Propaganda Fide, in the face of the nationalist
wave in Asia and Africa, sought to disentangle itself from the old colonial
powers, backing independent states and locally-recruited clergy. In Goa, Salazar
pointed out, there were only some ten priests from the metropolis, against
seven hundred born in the province—while another two hundred Goa-born
priests served outside Portuguese territory: ‘For some reason Goa has been
called the Rome of the Orient. And it is in fact just that: by virtue of the
splendor of the Catholic faith, by virtue of the abundance of vocations, by
virtue of the proselytizing spirit that animates the Church in those blessed
lands. Because they are Indian? Good God, no. Because they are Portuguese.’78
In the same speech, moreover, Salazar set his sights on what he considered
to be a new movement within the Church: ‘progressive’ Catholics (the term in
fact dated back to 1930s France, but Salazar, and indeed, the New State, used it
to designate all Catholics in opposition to the regime).79 On these he poured
his scorn, although their numbers in Portugal would soon grow to an extent
that seriously hindered the New State’s Catholic credentials. Salazar, to the
delight of his audience, categorized these progressives as ‘Catholics who have
given themselves the task of baptizing communism’. He added,
Just as Rome once converted the barbarians and molded spiritually the new
Christian societies, so too the Church will now open its arms and reconcile itself
with communism, bringing it into its bosom, or placing itself in the bosom of
communism, in order to create the society of the future. Political and social truths
will come from communism; religious truths would be set by the Church, within
the bounds set by communism.
It was no surprise, then, that the Delgado elections should have set the
scene for one of the most remarkable personal confrontations between Salazar
and a leading national figure, one which Salazar may have won, but only at
great political cost. On 13 July 1958 the Bishop of Oporto, Dom António
Ferreira Gomes, whose pastoral pronouncements were increasingly showing an
estrangement from the regime, addressed Salazar an extremely long missive. Its
immediate purpose was to suggest an agenda for a meeting to be held between
the two men. Such a meeting had been promised by Salazar as part of a deal
for the Bishop’s return from Barcelona, where he was on a private trip, in time
for the 1958 presidential elections, so that his absence should not be taken as a
politically motivated and exploited by the opposition. The four points of this
agenda, outlined at the end of the missive, were the following:
78. Diário das Sessões (Lisbon), n. 54, 30 November 1954.

79. Almeida, A oposição católica, pp. 15–16.
1) Does the State have any objection to the Church teaching freely its social
doctrine through all means at its disposal, notably through the organizations
and services that make up Catholic Action?
2) Does the State have any objection to the Church authorizing, advising and
encouraging Catholics to carry out their civic-political preparation, in order
both to be fully aware of the problems facing the Portuguese community, in
the present, concrete, reality and to be apt to take on the responsibilities that
might and should fall to them, as Catholic citizens?
3) Does the State have any objection to Catholics defining, publishing, and
spreading their program or programs, politically situated, hic et nunc, which
manifestly implies the awakening of hopes for daring and substantial changes
and an emotional climate?
4) Does the State have any objection to Catholics, if they feel it necessary and
when they so wish, embarking on a minimum of political organization and
action, in order to be apt, in the next legislative elections, or whenever they
deem it necessary, to present themselves to the electorate, with a defined
program and with their preferred candidates?80
These questions, each more daring than the other, culminating in the
suggestion that Catholics be allowed to become a separate faction within the
regime, with their own political organization, were posed at the conclusion of a
long and undoubtedly arrogant missive, in which the Bishop took on the
mantle of the whole Church and lectured Salazar on having betrayed not only
the early promise that he had shown, but also the doctrine on which he had
been raised. Dom António was, in a way, upbraiding Salazar, rebuking him as a
stern parent—or better still, given the letter’s density and attempted intellectual
sophistication, a disappointed academic supervisor—might do. There were
some pointed comments, however, which must have stung. Dom António
began by pointing out his disagreement with most of the statements made by
Salazar in the speech of 31 May. The reason for this disappointment was
simple—the very nature of the New State was in opposition to the Church’s
teaching. Its corporatism amounted to the exploitation of the workers with the
State’s blessing. The New State was not a corporative reordering of society, as
the Church desired, but simply a State apparatus which took on more and
more roles that should not belong to it, and which prevented groups from
organizing themselves and defending their interests. The result was the search,
among the working class, poorer than anywhere else in Europe, for answers in
more radical ideologies:
80. Full text of the letter is available in Teixeira Fernandes, Relações entre a Igreja, pp. 76–86.
We must be frank, perhaps even brutal: Portuguese corporatism, like other before
it, was ultimately the means by which workers were robbed of their natural right of
association, of which they had already been robbed in [18]91 by liberalism, but
which they had recovered at great cost and much bloodshed.
This is what passes for corporatism, and it is in this that an attempt was made to
implicate the Holy Church, and it was implicated, uselessly but terribly.
Criticism was also delivered against the continuing obsession with the
country’s financial balance, an approach which had been rejected, Dom António
pointed out, by President Kubitschek of Brazil on a recent visit to Portugal.
The Bishop concluded by saying that he was writing on his own initiative, not
having spoken to his colleagues or to the Cardinal-Patriarch of Lisbon. He also
included with the letter what he described as ‘copies of some documents
related to the Parish Centres for Welfare and Social Education, which demon-
strate that the errors here denounced and not confined to the realm of the
Abstract.’ Salazar received the letter, and answered briefly, stating merely that
the desired meeting must await the swearing in of the new President of the
Republic and the ensuing cabinet reshuffle. Of this reply one historian writes,
We have the draft of this short text, not a page long. The number of corrections—
an infrequent practice in Salazar’s case—in such a brief text attests to an unusual
uncertainty of expression […] Salazar, despite having received some intelligence
which led him to suspect the Bishop’s sympathy for the regime, will have been
perturbed by such a strong attack to his leadership. It was not really something to
which he was accustomed.81
There the matter might well have ended, had there not been an unusual
development. The Bishop of Oporto, inspired by political zeal, and after
suggesting a new date for his meeting with Salazar, on 17 August, began to
circulate copies of his first letter to Salazar, notably among the priests of his
diocese, some of whom he believed to have an erroneous, and almost blind,
faith in Salazar. This was, as far as Salazar was concerned, totally inadmissible
in theory and in practice. To have a bishop criticizing his judgment, months
after a serving general had done so, was more than he could bear. Soon
everyone knew of the letter. Copies were not hard to come by. It became
possible to purchase illegal copies of the document. According to the New York
Times, ‘opposition figures […] extracted critical passages and circulated them to
about 200,000 persons throughout Portugal.’82 The whole of the opposition
was jubilant, none more so than the PCP, whose newspaper, Avante!, reported,
81. Bruno Cardoso Reis, Salazar e o Vaticano (Lisbon: ICS, 2006), p. 258.
82. ‘Church and Regime at Odds in Portugal’ in New York Times, 23 February 1959.
It is evident today to many who previously supported him, that Salazar is a
fossilized politician, devoid of realism, a bad helmsman who will not guide the
regime’s hole-ridden vessel to a safe haven […]
For us there exist today two really relevant confrontations: The confrontation that
divides the Portuguese into exploited and exploiters, and the one that opposes
Salazar and his regime of financiers and monopolists against the whole nation—
and which is, today, the principal confrontation. Neither is capable of turning
catholics and communists, as Portuguese and as workers, against each other. Quite
the opposite: there is brotherhood of interests among catholic and communist
workers […]83
The bishop would later blame Salazar for the distribution, as part of an
elaborate ploy to entrap him, but the subject matter was too explosive for
Salazar to allow that to happen.84 There was only one course to take: to keep
Dom António quiet. In order to do that, Salazar, who could not afford to
openly repress a bishop, required the aid of the Portuguese episcopate, and, in
addition, direct intervention by the Holy See. Both had to distance themselves
publicly from the words of the Bishop’s letter in order for the matter to be
resolved to the government’s satisfaction. However, the timing of the crisis did
not allow for a swift resolution, since Pius XII died on 9 October 1958. It
would be March 1959 before John XXIII, his successor, was confronted with
the issue by the Portuguese ambassador to the Holy See.85 The Apostolic
Nuncio, Fernando Cento, meanwhile, was back in Rome, and it was there that
a letter from Salazar, dated 18 September, found him. Salazar, who accom-
panied his own letter with a purchased copy of the Bishop of Oporto’s letter,
as well as an anti-Bishop tract that had in the meantime appeared, urged the
nuncio not to focus exclusively on restoring good relations with the govern-
ment:
What is essential is to know the thoughts of the Holy See or the Church in
Portugal regarding the problem at the basis of this conflict. It would be most
83. Avante!, Series 6, 264, 1st fortnight of October 1958, a copy of which is to be found in AOS CO PC 51.
Salazar noted the later passage by running a line alongside it.
84. The suggestion that the was behind the distribution of the letter is referred to again by José Barreto in
‘Caso do Bispo do Porto’ in Barreto & Mónica (eds), Dicionário de História de Portugal vol. 7, p. 185 and, more
recently, by Almeida, A oposição católica, pp. 63–64. The Nunciature believed the Bishop to have acted first in
this regard. The Irish minister in Lisbon, Thomas Commins, wrote, in April 1959, ‘[…] it may be taken that
the general body of the Hierarchy, whatever their private views, did not openly support the Bishop of
Oporto and he is generally regarded by them—I learn from the Nunciature—to have erred on the side of
great imprudence in releasing his letter for limited public consumption. In the event, of course, his letter got
a publicity far and away greater than he ever desired.’ Ribeiro de Meneses (ed.), Correspondencia diplomática
irlandesa, doc. 229, report, Lisbon, 15 April 1959, Thomas Commins to Secretary, Department of External
Affairs, Dublin, pp. 319–26.
85. Cardoso Reis, Salazar, p. 261.
advantageous not to lose this opportunity, Your Excellency being in Rome, to
hear that same-said Rome.86
The biggest problem, of course, was the suggestion that Catholic Action
might be used as an embryonic Catholic political party. Salazar reminded the
Nuncio that Catholic Action was not protected by the Concordat; it existed
and operated thanks only to the goodwill of the Portuguese government. A
move into an openly political context might see such goodwill revoked. The
objective here was clear: before the Bishop was punished, his ideas had to be
disavowed. Although there was no coordinated reaction by the Portuguese
Episcopate, there were certain actions which demonstrated the displeasure of
some of its figures with Dom António. In a November speech marking Catholic
Action’s twenty-fifth anniversary, Cardinal-Patriarch Cerejeira reminded the
audience that the movement was apolitical, its action being carried out ‘in the
same sphere as that of the Church, from which it informs, in a Christian
manner, human life and thought.’87 There probably were, as well, private
pressures brought to bear on the prelate, including contacts with in Rome with
Monsignor José da Costa Nunes, the former Archbishop of Goa and Patriarch
of the Indies; these led the Bishop of Oporto to write a second letter to
Salazar, on 2 December—or, as he later suggested, to sign a letter drafted by
Costa Nunes. Dom António thanked the President of the Council for having
agreed to meet him, and expressed his regret that his notes should have
reached an unintended audience. He added that it was his firm intention not to
stray from ‘what I believe to be an essential doctrine of the Church’: ‘Neither
the Episcopate, nor the clergy, nor Acção Católica should promote or
collaborate in political organizations or party activities.’ The Bishop concluded,
‘I have no difficulty with you making whatever use of this letter you find most
convenient.’88 Salazar was not appeased by this apparent change of heart,
which he did not believe went far enough: he was now determined to press his
advantage and to be rid of the Bishop. There is some debate regarding a third
letter, which does not figure in the Salazar archive, where the apology and the
retraction were more explicit still, but which was also, it is alleged, rejected by
Salazar.
Why was this hard line taken? Because Salazar believed that the time had
come to settle accounts with the Church, forcing it to recognize its debt to the
regime and to purge itself of those progressive elements who had manifested
86. AOS CO PC 51, letter, Lisbon, 18 September 1958, António de Oliveira Salazar to Monsignor Fernando
Cento (Apostolic Nuncio).
87. Teixeira Fernandes, Relações, p. 95.
88. Ibid., p. 97.
their indifference, or their outright hostility to the regime, during the recent
presidential elections. It seemed as if not only had the Church given up on the
spiritual, transforming, role allotted to it by Salazar, it had even begun to
undermine the regime actively. In a speech to the União Nacional, on 6
December, Salazar denounced those Catholics who abandoned the ‘National
Front’ and joined forces with liberals and communists, thus perturbing spirits
hitherto tranquil. A quick reference to the Concordat hinted at its unilateral
rejection by the government, should Catholic opposition grow.89 In Salazar’s
opinion, elements engaged in this process had to be rooted out; the Bishop of
Oporto, apparently a ringleader, had emerged from the shadows too soon, and
put himself in the wrong by the tenor of the letter and its distribution: now was
the time to act. As for his old friend Cerejeira, Salazar regularly lamented his in-
ability to discipline subordinates on such a vital matter, symptomatic of a more
systemic weakness to arrest the changes sweeping the Church in Portugal.
The muzzling of the Bishop of Oporto did not bring the episode to an
end. A number of publications refuting his ideas, and, at times, delivering sharp
attacks against someone who could no longer defend himself, suddenly
appeared on the market. The most famous of these was a tract by Manuel
Anselmo, seventy-eight pages of bile masquerading as intellectual discussion:
I think that through this lamentable document the Bishop of Oporto rendered a
poor service to both the Pátria and the Church […] the applause that the Bishop
of Oporto’s letter earned from the so-called Portuguese Communist Party (which
carried out the anonymous and costly distribution of photocopies and, now,
printed versions) as well as the support evoked, in relation to his final, partisan
suggestion, from the other factions of the anti-nation, more or less liberal, make
clear that the letter was no more than a collaboration, by the illustrious priest, with
all those who at this moment desire to bring about the disunity of the
nation’s constructive forces, in order to halt, once and for all, the rescue of the
Pátria, begun with the 28 May.90
The Catholic newspaper A Voz collected its own articles on the letter and
published them in another pamphlet, entitled Direcção perigosa! (Dangerous
Direction!).91
This episode, taken alongside the ‘punishment’ of Humberto Delgado,
reminds us of the vindictiveness which often characterized the New State—
89. António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘Na posse da Comissão Executiva da União Nacional’ in Discursos, vol. 5, pp.
516–17.
90. Manuel Anselmo, Sobre a declaração de voto de Sua Exa Reverendíssima o Senhor Bispo do Porto (Lisbon: Os
Cadernos de Manuel Ansemo, 1958), pp. 8–9.
91. Direcção perigosa! (Reflexos da carta do Senhor Bispo do Porto) (Lisbon, 1959).
with Salazar at its pinnacle—when dealing with the opposition. By the late
1950s, time had begun to run out for Salazar, while the Catholic Church could
afford to take a longer view of events. The Holy See did not accept that
Catholic Action’s existence was a favor from the State, viewing it instead as
part and parcel of the Church’s ability to intervene in society. It therefore
rejected Salazar’s premise that he knew what was best for Portuguese Catholi-
cism, as well as his interpretation of the Concordat—a set of concessions
which could be revoked.92 Finally, the Church refused to deliver an exemplary
punishment to the Bishop of Oporto, something for which Salazar began to
ask late in 1958. In a new letter to the Apostolic Nuncio Salazar inquired
If the doctrine and the practice of the Bishop of Oporto are disapproved of by the
Holy See or by the Episcopate (which, it seems, will only meet in January), how
can that Prelate be left to execute a doctrine which is neither his nor of those who
follow him?
He added,
The problem is made more serious by the fact that it is a point of doctrine that
leads to collective action, and such action cannot be permitted when it allows for
deviations such as the one now noted.93
The Portuguese Episcopate published a joint pastoral letter on 18 January

1959—which, because it was signed by Dom António, was a rather tame com-
promise. If on the one hand it saluted the new President of the Republic, on
the other, while affirming that the temporal and spiritual powers existed on
different planes, it deemed it fair to say that the latter judged the former: no
part of human existence was beyond the reach of Catholic faith. While the
Portuguese press chose to emphasize the Church’s falling in line behind the
government, the international press took a different view. According to the
New York Times, ‘to opponents of Dr Salazar, the emphasis throughout the
letter on the needs of the “humble and poor” indicates that the Church is far
from satisfied with conditions in Portugal.’94 For Salazar, the document’s con-
tents did not really matter, because for him the affair would be over only once
the bishop was safely out of the way. He therefore charged his diplomats in
Rome with bringing about the definitive removal of Dom António from
Portugal’s second city and his replacement by a more amenable prelate. He
92. Cardoso Reis, Salazar, p. 265.

93. AOS CO PC 51, letter, Lisbon, 6 December 1958, António de Oliveira Salazar to Monsignor Fernando
Cento.
94. ‘Church and Regime at Odds in Portugal’ in New York Times, 23 February 1959.
succeeded in the first of his aims, not the second; the Catholic Church refused
to remove a bishop from his diocese under duress, however much that bishop
might get in the way of a good working relationship with the government of a
Catholic country. Dom António was convinced by José da Costa Nunes, a man
on whom Salazar could rely, and with whom he concerted his action, to leave
Portugal for a period of rest outside its borders. Without a doubt a trap had
been set; once outside Portugal, the Bishop of Oporto was not allowed to
return until after Salazar had abandoned the Presidency of the Council of
Ministers. Once the bishop was gone, the Portuguese government began
urging the Holy See to appoint a new bishop, not for, it claimed, political
reasons, but because of what the ‘growing disorder’ in the diocese of Oporto.
Salazar would also offer the possibility of a private visit to Portugal should Dom
António accept a new position within the Church’s hierarchy, outside, of
course, the Portuguese-speaking world. But the Church did not give in, and the
bishop accepted no new job. And this halfway house, with a ‘martyred’ bishop
prevented from returning to Portugal, was ultimately of little use to Salazar.
This was a conflict which no-one won.
The defense of the Bishop of Oporto fell to that part of the laity which
had grown estranged from the New State. Open letters to Salazar, signed by
the new Catholic opposition elite, were circulated across the country,
questioning the basis and methods of the regime. Catholics would also find
their way into the failed plot of 1959 which came to be known as the
‘Cathedral revolt’, since part of its planning took place in the medieval cloister
of Lisbon cathedral. Manuel Serra, once of the JOC, was one of the many
arrested as a result of the police’s prompt action: he gained notoriety by
evading his captors while in hospital, in February 1960, and finding asylum in
the Brazilian embassy.
Chapter IX
The Colonial Reckoning I
Angola, 1961
B y 1960, Salazar, now in his seventies, could hardly be thought of as the

future of Portugal. He had managed to ride out Humberto Delgado’s
electoral challenge, but only at great cost to his reputation. The constitutional
alteration to the election of the Head of State was generally regarded as an act
born of weakness, not of strength. As a Vatican diplomat, Monsignor Luigi
Gentile, stationed in Lisbon, pointed out in 1958 to a União Nacional interlocu-
tor, ‘Salazarism is a daily action and not a body of doctrine projecting itself into
the future.’ Once the dictator was gone, Gentile predicted, political parties, a
central feature of modern life, would reassert themselves.1 Western Europe was
in the grip of an economic miracle, its population beginning to share in a new-
found wealth that previous generations had never been able to distribute as
fairly; meanwhile, NATO and the new European organizations provided a
degree of stability and peace that rendered old nationalist certainties more and
more redundant. In other words, as Europe progressed, Portugal was left
further and further behind, an anachronism in a rapidly changing world. How
domestic change was going to come about was not yet clear, but it was in the
air.
1. AOS CO PC 51 1, ‘Confidential’ memorandum by Ramiro Valedão (Member of the Executive

Commisssion of the União Nacional), 28 February 1958. Passed on to António de Oliveira Salazar by João
Pinto da Costa Leite on 3 March 1958.
Portugal was unique as well in that its politicized minority was still, at this
late stage, in agreement over one matter: Portugal’s colonial dimension. There
was a generalized consensus that Portugal’s colonial mission should not be
derailed by the wave of decolonization that had begun in India, spreading into
the rest of Asia and into Africa, and that on this mission rested Portugal’s
ability to exist among the nations. To defend the colonies any and all means
were legitimate. Evidence of Salazar’s feelings on the matter is not hard to
come by. In May 1958 Salazar met the British ambassador to discuss Spanish
and African matters. Salazar criticized the British position, which he described
as the granting of independence to black colonies while trying to hang on to
those with a substantial white population, such as Kenya and the Rhodesian
Federation. He then used this opportunity to substantiate Portugal’s claims,
which he described as ‘as nossas teses de sempre’ (‘the ideas we have always had’):
Without Africa, Europe cannot preserve itself; without Europe, the United States
cannot exercise its world power, having thus to confine itself and establish its
defense within the borders of its territory.2
Asked by the British diplomat how long he expected Portugal to hold out
in Africa, Salazar replied that he could not answer such a question, since it
depended ultimately on factors outside his control: while the Portuguese were
determined to stay, and there were no racial tensions in their colonies, it
remained the case that it was difficult to halt the spread of the ‘elements of
dissolution and of class struggle, imported from abroad.’ Africans headed to
India, Russia, Czechoslovakia, and Egypt in search of a technical education,
and returned communist leaders, whipping up populations against colonial rule.
Having conquered power, they allowed their newly independent countries to
become safe havens for other nationalist movements—and all, seemingly, with
the West’s blessing:
Since all of this is done and will continue to be done without protest or even a
harsher line of conduct on the part of the great nations, one cannot really
determine the evolution of events, nor indeed how problems will present
themselves. As far as we are concerned, the only thing that is certain is that we will
fight—we will fight.
2. AOS CO NE 7A, notes on a conversation between António de Oliveira Salazar and the British
ambassador, 17 May 1958.
The Colonial Reckoning I: Angola, 1961 453
The Coming of War in Africa: The Congo
Seen through the prism of the regime’s rhetoric, Salazar’s greatest failure
over the course of his forty years in power was the inability to defend the
Angolan settlers and their workforce in northern Angola in 1961. It was there,
in Angola’s coffee plantations, that the colonial wars began, and there can be
no doubt but that the Portuguese security forces controlling this vast area were
completely unprepared for the task at hand, leaving the civilian population at
the mercy of the guerrilla fighters attached to thee União dos Povos de Angola
(UPA—Union of Angolan Peoples). That war was coming, however, should
have been no surprise. Agitation in the neighboring Congo (ex-Belgian) had
become a way of life, and Salazar had made much of the comparison between
the two territories: one, given independence prematurely, had collapsed into
civil war; the other, still attached to Portugal, remained an island of tranquility
and mounting prosperity. But beneath the politically advantageous surface
provided by this comparison, there lurked great dangers, which had been sign-
posted well in advance.
We have already seen that by the late 1950s Salazar was convinced that
trouble would come, and that he had stated Portugal’s willingness to fight in
order to preserve its empire. Records show that no-one doubted that violence
was on its way. As far back as 1956, the governor-general of Angola had
banned photographs of Nasser in Angolan newspapers, since they were being
put up in homes as gestures of anti-Portuguese defiance. In November 1958
the secret police reported that the ‘separationist movement’ was redoubling its
efforts to spread its message in Angola, its members being found in the
colony’s administration, from which they selected, and suited to their political
purpose, a number of facts; the same report called for measures to be taken
against the Pinto de Andrade brothers (Mário Coelho and Joaquim) who, out-
side and inside Angola, were leading activists in this current.3
If trouble was clearly brewing inside Angola, with the handful of uni-
versity-educated Angolans providing an ideological leadership, then the factor
which Salazar feared most—international changes beyond his control—was
clearly evident in the nearby Belgian colony of the Congo. On 22 January 1959
Salazar received a long missive from Jorge Jardim, his eyes and ears in Africa,4
3. AOS CO UL 32 E, PIDE report, 11 November 1958.

4. Jorge Pereira Jardim (1919–1982) graduated with a degree in Agronomy and soon involved himself in a
Catholic lay organization (the Juventude Agrária Católica), the Mocidade Portuguesa, the corporative organization
and, eventually, politics. He was named Undersecretary of State for Commerce and Industry in December
1948, a position he held until February 1952, after which he departed for Mozambique. There, alongside his
private work, Jardim would perform a number of special missions for Salazar, acting at times as a special
agent and others as a roving ambassador. He also recruited a unit of volunteers to fight in Angola in 1961.
detailing events in Léopoldville, which he had rushed to witness, having already
experienced similar ‘effervescence’ in Kenya, Uganda and Nyassaland. ‘It is so
easy to understand Africa’, wrote Jardim, the seasoned revolution-watcher, ‘and
so difficult to govern it when one does not understand it!’5 The Belgians, it
seemed to Jardim, had stopped understanding Africa. The resulting violence
was described, with almost pornographic detail, by Jardim: but what angered
him most—more than the rapes, or the systematic destruction of hospitals—
was the Belgian response:
My past experience (Nairobi, Nyassaland, and Salisbury) had led me to believe that
no-one could exceed the British when it comes to hesitancy, delayed action and
pernicious moderation in the repression of these uprisings.
I was manifestly unfair. And, convinced that this time I will not commit a similar
error of judgment, I believe that it will be difficult for anyone to break the sad
‘record’ established by the Belgians.
For over twelve hours the mutiny was allowed to rage before any attempt
to curtail it was made; the result was a much greater number of casualties than
an immediate and firm response would have allowed for. What is most
impressive about Jardim’s analysis of the situation was that it recommended
nothing but brute force in the dealing with the colonial peoples, since any
attempt to develop an African educated class would result merely in the
products of such an experiment biting the hand that fed them, and turning
against the colonial power. But Jardim was proud of one thing: the Portuguese
of Léopoldville had defended themselves and their property with courage and
the few firearms they possessed:
It is curious to note, and I am assured that this is true, that the Belgian govern-
ment was parsimonious in distributing munitions to the Portuguese for fear that
they might take it upon themselves to carry out punitive expeditions in the native
quarters. And it seems that those fears were well grounded […]
It was not just the ex-Belgian Congo that was proving problematic for
Portugal. Similar concerns were being expressed in relation to newly inde-
pendent Guinea, led by Sekou Touré, whom the PIDE believed would soon be
forced to turn to the communist bloc in order to secure the technical assistance
once provided by France but now sorely lacking.6 Also present from 1959 on-
Jorge Jardim was especially important when it came to preserving a good working relationship with Dr
Hastings Kamuzu Banda of Malawi.
5. AOS CP 144, letter, Léopoldville, 17 January 1959, Jorge Jardim to António de Oliveira Salazar.
6. AOS CO 32 E, PIDE report 33/59-GU, 17 June 1959.
wards, and matching what was happening in continental Portugal with the
Bishop of Oporto affair, was the growing estrangement with the Catholic
Church in Africa, notably in Mozambique, where the Bishop of Beira, Dom
Sebastião Soares de Resende, began to adopt an idiosyncratic attitude that did
not endear him to the State.
In other words, there could be no doubt that the clouds were gathering in
Africa, and that the consensus in the Portuguese colonies was breaking down.
In June 1959 the Defense Minister, Júlio Botelho Moniz, proposed a meeting,
to be chaired by Salazar, which would include Botelho Moniz, the Overseas
and Army Ministers and Undersecretaries of State, and the Armed Forces’
Chief of Staff. The aim of the meeting, to be held on the eve of a number of
military and government visits to the colonies, was to ‘define with greater
precision and brevity the measures which, from a defense point of view, must
be taken in relation to the above-mentioned overseas provinces.’7 Álvaro da
Silva Tavares, Undersecretary of State for Overseas Administration, attended
this meeting, which took place on 12 June. According to him, Botelho Moniz
defended husbanding Portugal’s military strength for a European conflict
between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, but Salazar rejected this. Arguing along
the lines of all who had opposed Portugal’s participation in the First World
War, Salazar pointed out that should the fighting in Europe occur in a sector
manned by the Portuguese, the country’s army—its youth—might be con-
sumed in a matter of days. Portugal could do more for the West by protecting
its colonies, and preparing their defense.8 By January 1960, this process had
been significantly advanced, Botelho Moniz writing that the plans for the
colonies’ revamped defense had been finalized, and asking Salazar for a
meeting during which he might be briefed on the subject.9 1960 was the 400th
anniversary of the death of Prince Henry the Navigator, which Salazar’s
Portugal celebrated will all pomp and circumstance: this was one last hurrah for
an empire still at peace. Jorge Jardim wrote, in March 1960, that thankfully, due
to divine favor, Africa possessed once again a statesman of a stature similar to
Henry, because Portugal possessed him: a man who would not turn his back
on Africa, as others had done.10 The actual events of 1961 would show, how-
ever, that little had been done on the ground to implement earlier decisions,
for which most military commentators blame Salazar, whose government
delayed the implementation of the agreed-to steps.
7. AOS CP 183, ‘Confidential’ letter, 8 June 1959, Júlio Botelho Moniz to António de Oliveira Salazar.
8. Álvaro Rodrigues da Silva Tavares, ‘Depoimento’, in António Lopes Pires Nunes, Angola 1961: Da Baixa
do Cassange a Nambuangongo (Lisbon: Prefácio, 2005), pp. 45–46.
9. AOS CP 183, ‘Confidential’ letter, 26 January 1960, Júlio Botelho Moniz to António de Oliveira Salazar.
10. AOS CP 144, letter, Lourenço Marques, 11 March 1960, Jorge Jardim to António de Oliveira Salazar.
The revolt in the Congo, and the Belgian response, exemplified by King
Leopold II’s tour of the colony and subsequent political reforms, set minds
racing in Portuguese circles. A military attaché in Washington, Joaquim
Trindade dos Santos (like Delgado part of the team who had set up TAP, the
national airline), suggested, after talks with his Belgian counterparts, that the
time had come to carry out wholesale reforms in the overseas provinces:
I cannot resist […] giving you my opinion in relation to our overseas territories,
above all as a son of Angola who has deep family roots in that overseas province.
Is it not time to begin to develop the idea of a future “Commonwealth” of
Portuguese nations, giving the legislative councils of the overseas provinces a
greater role in the internal affairs of the overseas provinces and appointing
governors who are more aware of those same provinces?
It is up to the government, I believe, to start thinking in the long term about our
overseas policy, making it more realistic by taking into account the thoughts of the
white settlers who have for a long time resided there.11
These words were not heeded. In April, the PIDE reported meetings
between some fifty Angolan exiles, including Eduardo Pinnock and Manuel da
Costa Nkodo, and Joseph Kasavubu, leader of the Congolese party ABAKO,
whose Bakongo ethnic group they belonged to. There were varying accounts of
what had transpired at the meeting, but one view was that an agreement had
been reached for the supply of weapons to the Angolans, who would launch an
insurrection in July of the same year.12 The following month, the PIDE
reported on the propaganda being distributed in border areas among the
Bakongo in relation to this uprising, still described as planned for July, and
warned that the indigenous population was becoming most impressed by it,
refusing thus to work for whites and to collaborate with the authorities.13
Moreover, at the end of May, the PIDE warned that tension in Léopoldville
was mounting so rapidly that a huge influx of refugees into Angola might be
expected soon, and that preparations should be made to receive them.14 The
rising did not come, as some reports predicted, in July, but there were still
instances of trouble along the border areas, with ringleaders entering Angola
11. AOS CO UL 32 E, letter, Washington, 27 January 1960, Joaquim Trindade dos Santos to Júlio Botelho
Moniz; forwarded to Salazar on 30 January 1960. Salazar underlined and made other marks alongside these
paragraphs.
12. Ibid., PIDE report, 18 April 1960.
13. Ibid., 13 May 1960.
14. Ibid. PIDE report 192/60-GU, 31 May 1960. This particular report, with its pessimistic prognosis, was
heavily underlined and marked by Salazar.
from the newly independent Congo to spread propaganda and incite acts of
disobedience.15 In mid-July UPA cabled Salazar directly:
Tired of suffering Angola asks for immediate and unconditional independence.

Instructs governor-general of Angola to free her nationalist sons detained in
Angola. Angola and Portugal are two peoples, two distinct countries. Copy to
United Nations. UPA.16
At the close of July, Salazar received, and read attentively, Jorge Jardim’s
promised, and extremely long, report on the first days of Congolese inde-
pendence. This was an action-packed document in which Jardim described the
slide into chaos after a few peaceful days in which all but himself had been full
of enthusiastic optimism. His prescience and undoubted resolve had come in
handy once the violence had started, with whites from all over the Congo
flocking to Léopoldville, and from there to the neighboring capital of Brazza-
ville, in (still) French Congo, looking for a way out. The plight of the refugees
was shocking:
Those poor people, almost devoid of belongings, inspired pity. The women in
their nightshirts with coats over them, dressed in a hurry; the children in pajamas
or nearly naked, crying and half-asleep; and the men with the vacant gaze of those
who cannot understand what has happened.
One family (father, mother, eighteen-year old daughter) is one of the concrete
examples which I can cite. When the Congolese came in the father hid the
daughter under a sofa which they did not search; they hit him and took his wife.
They returned her at dawn after all those who wanted to do so had made use of
her. It is impossible to describe the state those poor people were in.17
With Jardim in charge, a Portuguese air bridge to Luanda began to operate;

one Super Constellation capable of transporting eighty passengers carried 150
at a time, many of them non-Portuguese. From 9 July, when the airport at
Léopoldville opened again, the air bridge was moved there, in a climate of
hostility and fear, with every soldier feeling as empowered to interfere in events
as a cabinet minister. A DC-3, with seats for twenty-eight passengers, carried
fifty-five women and children.18 While Sabena, the Belgian airline, continued to
charge passengers, the Portuguese airlines ferried them out for free. At the
same time, the Portuguese embassy, full of Portuguese refugees, was sur-
15. Ibid. PIDE report 228/60-GU, 5 July 1960.

16. AOS CO UL 32 E, telegram, UPA to President of the Council of Ministers, Lisbon, received by Salazar
on 17 July 1960.
17. AOS CP 144, letter, Lourenço Marques, 25 July 1960, Jorge Jardim to António de Oliveira Salazar.
18. Ibid., Beira, 28 July 1960, Jorge Jardim to António de Oliveira Salazar.
rounded and its staff attacked, and relations worsened between authorities at
the border. With time, other reports of atrocities and of the desperate plight of
refugees reached Salazar’s desk. As he had long predicted, the Congo failed
from the start, and the old order in Africa, to which he was accustomed, was
collapsing: but, surprisingly, he took little action to deal with the fallout.
According to Álvaro da Silva Tavares, governor-general of Angola (unusually
for someone in that position a civilian), his military commanders had been in
favor of crossing the border to impose order in the neighboring Congolese
provinces. Silva Tavares had objected, and Salazar had ultimately ruled in his
favor, which added to the tension which existed between Silva Tavares and the
army. This was, without a doubt, a prudent policy—as would have been a
strengthening of border defenses with the Congo, which did not, however, take
place. Events in the Congo made a deep impression on Salazar. In September
he welcomed Irish Taioseach Séan Lemass to Portugal. Lemass was on his way
to Nigeria, to attend the ceremonies marking the independence of that country,
and informed Salazar that the Irish had ‘a great trust in the United Nations and
were glad to see it affront the task represented by events in the Congo.’ Salazar
was dismissive of such enthusiasm:
Dr Salazar seemed rather skeptical about the prospects of securing any lasting
outcome of value in the Congo. Generally speaking, he argued, and returned to
this point frequently […] the situation in Africa is not being approached properly
by the European States. He maintained that the African countries are neither
nations nor states, but rest on a tribal social system. It is therefore a mistake, in his
view, to apply western conceptions and ideas to the African scene.19
More worrying, perhaps, was the fact that the trouble being tracked by the
PIDE was not limited to the Congolese border, where ethnic loyalties naturally
played a part. In Luanda the MPLA, a movement which sought to transcend
ethnic barriers, was increasingly active among the black population, which was
being invited to participate in a rising scheduled for mid-August. In order to
raise funds, and to bolster courage, the organizers began selling, according to
the PIDE, a ‘magic stick’ which warded off bullets. The price paid for these
items was rising rapidly.20 In Luanda one could hear at night the broadcasts of
the clandestine ‘Voice of Free Portugal’, which urged the population to rise up
against the current Portuguese government.21 The Cabinda enclave, to the
north of the mouth of the Congo river, was also subject to the growing
19. Ribeiro de Meneses (ed.), Correspondência diplomática, doc. 251, notes on a conversation between the
Taoiseach, Séan Lemass, and António de Oliveira Salazar on 23 September 1960.
20. AOS CO UL 32 E, PIDE report 218/60-GU, 24 June 1960.
21. AOS CO PC 77, PIDE report 242/60-GU, 12 July 1960.
tension,22 as were the islands of São Tomé and Príncipe, where the PIDE
reported an unusual increase in the sale of hand-held radios, through which the
population sought to remain informed of events on the African mainland.23
UPA began broadcasting in Portuguese, Kikongo and Kimbundo in August on
the Congolese national broadcaster, vowing to fight with all possible means
and across Africa against Portuguese colonialism.24 African radio stations were
supplemented by Radio Moscow and Radio Prague in their denunciations of
Portuguese colonialism,25 and to these was added, in October, Radio Peking.26
All the time UPA continued its fund-raising activities.
It is also worth noting that by the second half of 1960 the PIDE was
reporting the arrival of Soviet ships to Matadi, the main Congolese port on the
Congo river, and trying to ascertain their cargo, as well as reporting suspicious
arms deals that it had caught wind of. In August, for example, the reported a
major order for machineguns and ammunition placed by a Swiss firm with
Dashwood & Partners, of London, for delivery to the Portuguese provinces of
Angola, Mozambique, and India.27 Nationalist leader Eduardo Pinnock boasted
openly, according to the Portuguese army, that arms were on their way, their
arrival being expected in January 1961; the same report noted the landing of
5,000 guns near Boma, as well as the arrival of another arms shipment from the
Warsaw Pact countries aboard an Italian freighter.28 The threat contained in
these reports could not be ignored. One, dated 18 November, specified five
Polish merchant ships suspected of carrying arms and munitions to Conakry
and Matadi.29 More worryingly still, there were reports of desertions by black
soldiers in the Portuguese army, who sought to reach Congolese territory in
order to escape their officers. One report stated that five privates and a
corporal stationed in Nóqui had fled over the border to Matadi, and that Euro-
peans living on the border argued that only white troops should be stationed
there, given the scale of UPA propaganda now being delivered across the bor-
22. AOS CO UL 32 E, PIDE report 235/60-GU, 7 July 1960. See also the letters addressed to the President
of the Republic, Admiral Américo Tomás, by the Association des Ressortissants de l’Enclave de Cabinda,
dated 12 August and 23 September 1960, in which the leaders of the movement asked for the territory to be
allowed to decide its own future and, in the latter document, in the wake of a ‘massacre carried out by the
Portuguese soldiers station in Cabinda on 3 of the current month’, asked for outright independence. AOS
CO UL 32 A.
23. Ibid., A1, PIDE report 332/60-GU, 12 August 1960.
24. Ibid., A, PIDE report 365/60-GU, 17 August 1960.
25. Ibid., A1, PIDE report 353/60-GU, 13 August 1960. According to an Army report, these broadcasts
came to an end when UN troops occupied the broadcaster. AOS CO UL 32 B, Army General Staff, report
6/NI, 10 October 1960, ‘Summary of the Events in Africa (from 12 September 1960 to 10 October 1960)’.
26. Ibid., A1, PIDE report 561/60-GU, 25 October 1960.
27. Ibid., E, ‘Secret’ report delivered to the Minister of the Interior, 25 August 1960. Contact was established
with the firm in question, which agreed to cooperate with the Portuguese authorities on the matter.
28. Ibid., B, Army General Staff, report 6/NI, 10 October 1960, ‘Summary of the Events in Africa (from 12
September 1960 to 10 October 1960)’.
29. Ibid., C, PIDE report 664/60-GU, 18 November 1960.
der.30 A later report recounted that white officers suspected their troops of
wanting to either desert en masse or kill all whites, including them.31 On 14
December, it was revealed that eleven soldiers stationed in Nóqui had crossed
the border into the Congo.32 A week later, it became known that another five
from the same unit had vanished.33
In November, still another motive for concern was found. The rumor
began to circulate in parts of Angola that peanut oil, a food staple, had been
poisoned by the Portuguese in order to kill as many blacks as possible. The
PIDE warned that such falsehoods could not be dismissed lightly, since the
population readily believed in them, and could be, on their basis, mobilized to
commit acts of great violence: ‘one must not forget that the first disturbances
which occurred in the Congo Republic (ex-Belgian) had, at their root, the
rumor that the [white] population was armed and ready to massacre the
blacks.’34 This was not the only rumor that reported as the year came to an end:
it was increasingly believed that independence would be granted before the end
of the year, and that acts of terrorism would soon begin. According to the
PIDE, these false news spread from village to village and fostered an atmo-
sphere of contempt for orders from the Portuguese.35 In the Cabinda enclave,
the rumor as the year ended was that beans, dry fish and wine had all been
poisoned by the Portuguese; consumption of the latter product was brought to
a complete halt.36 In Guinea, it was said that the Portuguese had distributed
arms among the European population, so that it might defend itself with great
violence should an uprising break out.37 In São Tomé, repeated rumors of
imminent poisonings had led to a boycott of Portuguese goods, vaccination
services, and even the refusal to draw water from certain rivers and wells.38
When the local authorities in Golungo Alto attempted to stage an anti-United
Nations rally, they were met with outright hostility by much of the local
population:
Thus, and after the first orator had begun his speech, various cries were heard,
from which “ANGOLA IS OURS” stood out.
Such cries, which on first reading might be taken for demonstrations of
patriotism, were properly identified moments later since, when the orator cried
30. Ibid., A, PIDE report 412/60-GU, 2 September 1960.

31. Ibid., A2, PIDE report 591/60-GU, 3 November 1960.
32. Ibid., A2, PIDE report 768/60-GU, 14 December 1960.
34. Ibid., A1, PIDE report 668/60-GU, 18 November 1960.
36. Ibid., A2, PIDE report 39/61-GU, 9 January 1961.
“LONG LIVE PORTUGAL”, there could be heard replies of “NO! NO! NO!
LONG LIVE ANGOLA”, while arms and hands made negative gestures. (The
children of the Golungo Catholic Mission also gestured in this fashion.)39
Attitudes of this nature had spread across Angola; according to an army

report, anti-Portuguese propaganda was provoking a hostile atmosphere, and
‘demonstrations of a racist nature’, in organizations and estates in Carmona,
Luanda and Quibala.40
Matters were complicated, of course, by the tortuous path of Congolese
politics, notably the Katangese secession, which followed soon after indepen-
dence. Katanga bordered Angola, and support for this putative country would
soon emerge as a Portuguese policy. In 1960, however, it was merely another
variable to be added to a confusing picture, and it was not at all clear that the
Katangese experiment would last.41 What then, were the Portuguese forces
stationed in northern Angola? One anonymous PIDE informer suggested that
the Portuguese were wholly unprepared for what was heading their way: there
was pressing need for more police and border guards, distributed in stronger
and more numerous groups.42 The question of Portuguese strength was one
that exercised all foreign observers. The Belgian consul in Luanda estimated
the Portuguese army in Angola to number 12,000 men, adding that an attempt
was being made to alter the proportion of ten blacks for every white to a ‘safer’
proportion of four to one, a ratio which, it was hoped, would be established
over the course of a few months. There was also an attempt to replace soldiers
from the north of the colony, with ethnic ties to the Congolese, with those
from the south. Of this force, some four to five thousand were to be found
along the northern border. The governor-general, Silva Tavares, was in Lisbon
in 1960 to request more white troops for his northern border, since they
totaled only 2,000.43 Along the coast, and part of the Congo river, were also to
be found a number of warships, the most important being a frigate, the Pacheco
Pereira. At the border, the army could be backed up by the border guard, the
PIDE, whose numbers had been reinforced and whose elements were
‘extremely well organized’, and white civilians, most of them traders, who also
acted as informants.44

40. Ibid., B, Army General Staff, Intelligence Section, ‘Summary of events in Africa (from 10/10/60 to
23/1/61)’.
41. Ibid., A, PIDE report 378/60-GU, 20 August 1960.
42. Ibid., PIDE report 496/60-GU, 7 October 1960.
43. Silva Tavares, ‘Depoimento’, p. 47. The Defense Minister, Botelho Moniz, seems to have been unsympa-
thetic to his plight.
44. Ibid., E, PIDE report 735/60-GU, 6 December 1960. This document contained a report from Miss E.
Dever, the Belgian consul general in Luanda, to P. Wigny, Belgian Foreign Minister, dated 21 September
Did Salazar, then, do nothing as evidence of coming trouble mounted all
around him? Some steps were being taken to try to address the situation on the
border. It seemed that Congolese politics, thanks to the Katangese secession
and President’s Kasavubu’s more cordial attitude, might evolve in such a way
as to alleviate the pressure on the Portuguese. The PIDE also tried hard to
spread the word, in post-Lumumba Congo, that the UPA was a communist
organization.45 Finally, in June 1960 a great blow was dealt to the MPLA,
whose leadership was decimated by a series of arrests, forcing those who
escaped to flee abroad. It is possible that these developments may have given
the local security services a great deal of confidence. Overall, though, these
steps were insufficient. The border still leaked like a sieve, and everyone in an
official position knew it. Many within the army seemed to think, even in ad-
vance of the war, that more than brute force was required. One officer wrote,
The province’s military command considers as opportune as ever the considera-

tions presented at the start of 1960, in which it asked for the revision of the
processes of European colonization in Angola, in order to prevent higher unem-
ployment, with all its disastrous consequences—poor examples set for the natives
by unemployed whites, abuses committed against the former by the latter, etc. It
called also for a moralization campaign in order to prevent illegalities and abuses
of the natives by Europeans without scruples (traders, builders, estate owners, etc)
who care not about the means by which they make their fortune, sowing intensely
grievances and hatred among populations who are still, fortunately, on the whole
friendly and Portuguese at heart.46
In December the PIDE reported that, according to the army, great

quantities of weapons had been smuggled into Angola and distributed around
the colony, as far south as Nova Lisboa (today’s Huambo). Military instructors
had also entered Angola, pretending to be refugees displaced by the Congo
violence, and would soon begin training recruits in the use of the weapons.47
1960. Given these numbers and the recent administrative reforms, which had created a series of new posts
(fifty-six in the Congo district alone) which brought the administration closer to the people, the Belgian
diplomat concluded that ‘apart from a violent and massive internal intervention, it seems possible to consider
the current security arrangements as sufficient to cow internally any attempt to perturb, and that the fears of
certain Europeans in the border regions (see my report 240 of 5/9/1960) are, at the very least, premature.
The Portuguese are building up a machine which they will not hesitate to use in case of necessity.’ Salazar
wrote, next to the word ‘internal’, ‘external?’.
45. Ibid., A, PIDE report 717/60-GU, 30 November 1960.
46. Ibid., B, Army General Staff, Intelligence Section, report 1/61/NI, ‘Summary of events in Africa (from
10/10/60 to 23/1/61)’, 23 January 1961, signed by Major Francisco Maria Rocha Simões.
47. Ibid., C, PIDE report 794/61-GU, 19 December 1960.
Warnings of disturbances in Angola were also received from American
sources.48
When violence finally did hit Angola, the government became the target of
much criticism in the province, since it had done little to defend the ‘unfor-
tunate Portuguese spread out over the interior, unarmed and totally unable to
defend their wives and children.’49 The New York Times would write, on 14
April 1961, ‘the man in the street is inclined to consider the recent decrees rein-
forcing the territory’s defense, tightening civil and military liaison and sending
out military and police reinforcements as locking the barn door after the horse
has been stolen. Many persons feel that these measures should have been taken
long ago.’50 Many in the armed forces clearly thought so as well. In May 1961
the Brazilian ambassador to Lisbon, Negrão de Lima, toured Angola, meeting
with political and military leaders. While one army leader, General Monteiro
Libório, bemoaned the immensity of the task before him, Brigadier Resende,
the Air Force commander in the province, stressed not only a vision of the
Overseas Provinces wholly at odds with that of the Portuguese government,
but also read out to the ambassador some notes he had, in 1958, sent Salazar.
According to the agent who witnessed the scene, ‘from his words was evident
the conviction that, in 1958, had his conception been accepted, the present
events would not be occurring.’51
Violence in Angola in 1961 and Reaction in Portugal.
As 1960 came to an end, there could no longer be any doubt that violence
was on its way to Angola. The question now was where it would break out, and
whether or not it would be contained. Trouble did not break out, as predicted,
in the border areas, but rather in the district of Malange, when cotton workers
in an area known as Baixa do Cassange downed tools as a protest against
terrible working conditions, which were well known to the authorities. The
document in which this information was transmitted to cabinet ministers is
fascinating: the original report from the PIDE in Angola was sympathetic to
the workers in question, and stressed that since the cotton industry, notably the
private firm COTONANG, was ‘prone to abuses’, and was present throughout
Angola, great attention would have to be paid to the course of events. How-
48. Ibid., A1, PIDE report 810/60-GU, 21 December 1960. This report stated that a senior American naval
figure, Admiral Burke, had warned the Portuguese Navy Minister, in Brasilia, about the situation in Angola,
on the basis of information received from Ghana, Nigeria, and Angola itself.
49. AOS CO PC 76B, PIDE report, 20 March 1961, by ‘Legionnaire recently arrived from Angola, 100%
salazarista, virtuous man’.
50. ‘Salazar Assumes Top Defense Post’ in New York Times, 14 April 1961.
51. Ibid. 81, ‘Secret’ PIDE report 1171/61-GU, 15 July 1961.
ever, this original text was accompanied by a note, added in Lisbon, which took
a very different view:
It is supposed, in opposition to what is inferred in the present report, that the

cotton industry was merely a pretext. The cause, with its absolutely subversive
origins, must be found in an international movement, rooted in the “independence
movements.”52
The army’s investigations into the outbreak of violence indicated the scale
of abuses carried out by the COTONANG agents, working in collusion with
local authorities and merchants.53 The very fact that governor-general Álvaro
da Silva Tavares saw his primary mission as cracking down on labor abuses
shows that Salazar had been aware of the situation (which had, of course, been
denounced by Henrique Galvão) in Angola, and understood that the time had
come, even if belatedly, to rectify it. The government’s attention was distracted,
later in January, by the Santa Maria affair (see Chapter 11). In February it was
quickly forced back to Angola. The governor-general pointed out that the
agitation in Malange was spreading rapidly, and that urgent measures were
required, since panic among the whites was growing. Silva Tavares, in a report
to the Overseas Minister, was pessimistic, and asked for the financial means to
meet the coming crisis:
Available military means are insufficient but the Military Command will detail
problems to Defense. I must stress that the situation is extremely grave and
demands most urgent action and as I have already warned you, everything points
towards incidents which will occur in this and other regions. The requested loans
are indispensable for the carrying out of the action demanded more pressingly
with every day that passes.54
Subsequent, and very detailed, PIDE reports fleshed out the link between
the events in Malange and the Congo, in the shape of the Partido de Solidariedade
Africana (PSA—African Solidarity Party) which, led by Antoine Gizenga, was
spreading propaganda in the area, having won the support of a number of in-
digenous religious figures.55 Portuguese reaction was, as per usual in Africa,
52. AOS CO UL 32 A2, PIDE report 68/61-GU, 19 January 1961.

53. Pires Nunes, Angola 1961, pp. 59–61. The author adds that so great were the impositions made by
COTONANG that the indigenous population had little time to look after its own crops, as a result of which
poverty and hunger were endemic in this part of Angola.
54. AOS CO UL 8I, ‘Secret’ telegram, 2 February 1961, governor-general of Angola to the Overseas
Minister, 2 February 1961. The following day, the governor-general wrote that events were developing with
extreme speed, the situation having become so serious that ‘one can no longer delay energetic military
action.’
55. Ibid., 32A, PIDE report 216/61-GU, 27 February 1961.
violent. The army and air force intervened brutally and indiscriminately in the
area, yet repeated searches failed to turn up any significant arms or evidence of
a widespread insurrectionary movement.56 Widely identified by Angolans as the
beginning of the liberation struggle, it is frequent to see the figure of ten
thousand killed in the repression which followed. This figure seems extremely
high; in a recent study into events in Angola in 1961, a Portuguese author
suggests the figure of somewhere between 200 and 300 killed by the army and
air force combined. It is important to note that there was no whisper of the
repression in the Malange area in the Portuguese press. The army’s intelligence
bulletins, marked Secret, did not determine how many had died:
In light of the never-ending abandonment of the estates by the natives and their
concentration in places like Marimba, Canjaze, Milando and Bange-Angola, inci-
dents occurred which resulted in many deaths among the natives and a very small
number among our troops. The main incidents of this nature occurred in Cunda,
Canjaze, to the north of Cahombe, in Marimba, in Milando, further to the south in
Xamuteba, and also in Cuango and Muanha.
Gradually, however, the chiefs in revolt presented themselves to the authorities,
with whatever firearms they possessed. Moreover, many swords and spears were
seized. The number of indigenous rifles was considerable.57
Occasionally, one is struck by the blindness to even the most recent events
demonstrated by Portuguese officials in Angola. A PIDE report of 13 April,
whose information had been gleaned from an administrator in the north of the
colony, opened with an amazing statement:
Analyzed realistically, the events which occurred in the Congo district, in Angola,
on the fifteenth of the past month, lead to the conclusion that there predominated
among the colored population a racial hatred for which one cannot find, at first
glance, a satisfactory explanation.
The terrorists, arriving from abroad, did not meet with great difficulty in enlisting
to their horde great masses of blacks who willingly participated in such bloody
attacks.58
After the Malange events, violence next appeared, again unexpectedly, in
the Angolan capital, Luanda. The events of Malange, as well as the seizure of
the Santa Maria, had led to a state of high alert among the Portuguese forces.
The possible arrival in Luanda of the hijacked liner had also led to the arrival,
in the Angolan capital, of a large number of foreign journalists. There, on the
56. Ibid., A2, PIDE report 213/61-GU, 27 February 1961.

57. Ibid., 32B, Army General Staff, Intelligence Section, report n. 2/61/NI, ‘Summary of the events in Africa
and the East (from 21/1/61 to 8/3/61)’, 8 March 1961.
58. Ibid., 32C, PIDE report 502/61-GU, 13 April 1961.
night of 3–4 February, previously selected official buildings—a prison, a
number of police barracks, the state broadcaster—and some police detach-
ments were simultaneously assaulted by ill-armed crowds. A first PIDE report,
sent on 4 February, mentioned five white prison guards killed, and three
gravely wounded, and ten blacks (their role unspecified) also killed.59 Later
figures would point to seven policemen and forty attackers killed. Who was
responsible for the violence was not immediately clear. One well-informed
military figure, Major Hélio Esteves Felgas, remarked that none of the parties
based in the Congo could have been responsible, and that, indeed, they were
surprised that there existed in the capital an organization capable of carrying
out such attacks.60 To this day, both MPLA and Frente Nacional de Libertação de
Angola (FNLA, the successor to UPA) assert their participation in the events.
But it seems that, much like the revolt in the Baixa do Cassange, other forces
were behind the rising in Luanda. One central figure was an Angolan priest,
Manuel Mendes das Neves, whom the Portuguese arrested in late March, to the
consternation of other African religious figures. Another wave of attacks
occurred a week later, on the night of 10–11 February.
These events led, as had happened in other colonial situations, notably in
Algeria, to a backlash, as the white population of Luanda took matters into its
own hands. The army lamented what occurred, but again was not particularly
interested in providing precise numbers: civilians attending the funeral of the
dead policemen, after being allegedly provoked by locals, had ‘opened fire in-
discriminately’ as a result of which ‘excesses must naturally have been
committed.’61 A recent estimate suggests nineteen killed and ‘numerous’
wounded in this initial clash,62 with the situation worsening dramatically after
mid-March. The uneasy calm which followed in Luanda was, for a time, repli-
cated across the territory. Nevertheless UPA’s Eduardo Pinnock was reported
to be on the Congolese border, organizing future actions. Intercepted pam-
phlets exploited the events in the capital in timeless nationalist fashion. The sad
events of Luanda had seen many Angolans ‘watering with their precious blood’
the ‘national soil’. The time for action had come, since international opinion
was now focused squarely on Angola because of Portuguese crimes.63 The
town of Maquela do Zombo, right on the border, was identified as an obvious
target of UPA action, but it was believed that actions were planned as far south
59. Ibid., A1, PIDE report 141/61-GU, 4 February 1961.

60. Ibid., 32A, PIDE report on anti-Portuguese activities in the ex-Belgian Congo (N.13) by Major Hélio
Esteves Felgas, 23 February 1961.
61. Ibid., 32B, Army General Staff, Intelligence Section, report 2/61/NI, ‘Summary of the events in Africa
and the East (From 21/1/61 to 8/3/61)’, 8 March 1961.
62. Pires Nunes, Angola 1961, p. 83.
63. UPA pamphlet included in AOS CO UL 32 A, PIDE report 246/61-GU, 3 March 1961.
as Luanda.64 By 9 March, the PIDE was reporting that the UPA’s preparations
for the assault on Maquela do Zombo were complete, its fighters needing only
the final order to advance.65
In mid March the Portuguese Congo erupted. The long-predicted, UPA-
inspired uprising finally began. Estate after estate was consumed in a wave of
violence that left, according to most estimates, 800 whites—men, women, and
children—dead. Thousands more of their workers, drawn from other
provinces of Angola, were also murdered in this attempt to extirpate the Portu-
guese presence in northern Angola and, through the destruction of the coffee
plantations, to destroy the colonial economy. As predicted, the violence was
not limited to the immediate border area; also affected were the districts of
Quanza Norte and Luanda. One of its main staging points was the Dembos
area, around the town of Nambuangongo. Unlike the earlier Malange events,
however, this wave of violence received ample coverage in the Portuguese
press, and was used to fuel a patriotic appeal for support in the face of foreign
aggression which was, initially, successful.
Public opinion in Portugal was moved by the plight of settlers, cut off and
surrounded by the local population, and subjected to terrible violence. Many
personal accounts, horrifying in nature, reached Salazar’s desk; there was no
hiding from the suffering.66 Relief columns setting off from Luanda roughly a
week later found it impossible to make progress: roads and bridges were cut,
boats and rafts destroyed, ambushes were common, and confusion and fear
reigned. The terrain, with its dense forests, and tall grass, favored the UPA
fighters, who, in the words of one report, ‘simply melt into the jungle, where
pursuit is impossible.’67 Given the state of the roads, continuously cut by
UPA’s supporters, Portuguese troops, in small units, had to move on foot; the
most many could do was round up surviving civilians and bring them to a safe
spot. The coffee harvest was at risk, with hundreds of estates abandoned to
their fate. Remarkably, though, many of the settlers remained, holed up in what
Jorge Jardim called ‘islets of stubbornness’, even when evacuation had become
a possibility.68 But alongside these islets existed the much larger areas now
64. AOS CO UL 32A, PIDE report 247/61-GU, 3 March 1961.

65. Ibid., 276/61-GU, 9 March 1961.
66. See, for example, AOS CO UL 32 C, PIDE report 442/61-GU, 5 April 1961. This document contains an
account of the assault on an estate in São Salvador do Congo by a survivor.
67. Ibid., ‘Confidential and private’ report on events in the North of Angola (N.2) by Major Hélio Esteves
Felgas, 4 April 1961.
68. AOS, CP 144, letter, Jorge Jardim to António de Oliveira Salazar, Luanda, 10 May 1961. Jardim urged
Salazar to come to the rescue of the settlers, whose steadfastness had to be rewarded: ‘A lot less resulted in
the ex-Belgian Congo becoming white-free in less than two weeks, and a lot less also resulted in the ‘negotia-
tion’ of independence and concessions throughout Africa.’
beyond Portuguese control, the most notable of which was composed of the
Ganda mountains, now nicknamed ‘Independent Republic of Ganda’.69
Economic associations in Angola called for drastic and sometimes contra-
dictory measures: the transfer of the Overseas Ministry to Luanda (and even
the study of the transfer of the whole government), the declaration of a state of
emergency, the creation of a military command with the material and financial
means to deal with the situation, a boost to the Angola economy, and the crea-
tion of a governing council made up of those who knew the province’s situa-
tion well. Blame was heaped on the government for the lack of preparation, in
spite of the Congolese events. Communications and roads had not been im-
proved, the security forces remained static, and arms and ammunition had not
been distributed to the settlers. One report spoke of a declaration of indepen-
dence, or some kind of union with South Africa, being sought.70 A later report
mentioned an unease among whites which could not be undone, and which
was being seized on by the ‘separatist faction’ present in cities such as Luanda,
Lobito, Benguela and Moçâmedes. Pamphlets denouncing government in-
action and false claims of peace began to circulate.71 It is important to note, at
this point, Lisbon’s—and Salazar’s—traditional distrust of the white settlers.
All of the official rhetoric of creating new Brazils in Africa was set in the far
future. For the moment, settlers were seen as a troublesome group with its own
identity and priorities which did not necessarily match those of the capital.
With Africa up in arms, Lisbon needed peace and tranquility in Angola, and
concrete proof that the indigenous population was happy and well cared for.
Such a need clashed directly with settler ambitions and way of life. When, after
15 March, violence broke out, and the Angolan economic associations began to
press for immediate reform, the government took it as a given that the specter
of Angolan independence was being raised as a bargaining chip.
The press was allowed to report on the massacres, and Salazar received, via
the PIDE, photographs of their aftermath. One report, dated 21 March 1961,
included sixteen hastily taken photographs of the mangled remains of
murdered victims, and noted that
This is the state, without exception, in which all are left in, after the most repulsive
barbarities committed by the attackers who, caring not for age or sex, and while
their victims are still alive, rape them.
69. AOS CO UL 32 B, Army General Staff, report 3/61/NI, ‘Summary of events in Africa and the East
(from 8/3/61 to 27/6/61)’, 27 June 1961. This report was written by Colonel Arnaldo Schultz, previously
Minister of the Interior.
70. AOS CO PC 76B, PIDE report, 20 March 1961, by ‘Legionnaire recently arrived from Angola, 100%
salazarista, virtuous man’.
71. AOS CO UL 32C, PIDE report 457/61-GU, 7 April 1961.
It is said that there are hundreds of cases identical to these.72
One of the first steps taken by Salazar was to send the Overseas Minister,
Admiral Vasco Lopes Alves,73 to Luanda, to take charge of the situation. Few
believed that he could achieve much, given the poor state of his health.74 His
most insistent request was for the PIDE in Angola to be reinforced: good
intelligence was required, as well as the ability to act decisively against the
enemy.75 He also noted that the white population was proving difficult to
control, and that the army’s most senior officers—Generals Beleza Ferraz
(Head of the Combined Chiefs of Staff) and Luís Pina (Army Chief of Staff)—
blamed the violence on the labor abuses prevalent in the colony, notably in the
cotton industry.76 While this was, to a great extent true, it did not provide the
government with many options to resolve the political and military crises at
hand. The generals’ insistence that the military situation could be quickly
resolved was also totally at odds with the truth. Américo Tomás would be very
critical of them in his memoirs: ‘they were either fooled, or did not understand
what had occurred, or, lastly, they did not try to make themselves fully aware of
the real situation.’77
One notable feature of the situation was the State’s reluctance to arm
settlers, which was probably well-founded, for armed reprisals, where they
occurred, were fearful; there were also, no doubt, political calculations deter-
mining this decision. Some observers criticized the administrative authorities
for not restraining white settlers sufficiently.78 Where possible, usually in small
towns and outposts, settlers and local security forces created militias and
defended themselves. There they awaited the arrival of regular police and
military forces. They had to wait longer than initially predicted, and many
despaired of the army’s promised arrival, as well as of the possibility of con-
tinuing to live in a Congo province now racked by racial violence. Weeks went
by with no real change on the ground, and with the authorities fearing
outbreaks of violence elsewhere in Angola—be it in Cabinda, be it in the
72. Ibid., 30D, PIDE report 353/61-GU, 20 January 1961.

73. Vasco Lopes Alves (1898–1976), a naval officer and trained aviator, had a long relationship with Angola,
having served there with the navy and then in a number of administrative roles which culminated with the
role of governor-general, from 1943 to 1947. He was appointed Overseas Minister in the August 1958
reshuffle, holding the position until April 1961.
74. J. W. Lennon, Irish minister in Lisbon, would write that ‘Admiral Alves, the outgoing minister, was very
ill just a year ago and has not since been quite well. On his recent trip to Angola he had two doctors in his
entourage.’ Ribeiro de Meneses (ed.), Correspondência diplomática, doc. 265, report, Lisbon 14 April 1965, J. W.
Lennon to the Secretary, Department of External Affairs, Dublin, p. 384.
75. AOS CO UL 30D, record of telephone conversation with the Overseas Minister on 24 March 1961 at
8.30 p.m.
76. Ibid., at 10.45 p.m. Salazar made a vertical pen mark alongside this particular passage.
77. Tomás, Últimas décadas vol. 3, p. 83.
78. AOS CO UL 32 C, ‘Confidential and private report’ on the events in the North of Angola (N.2) by Major
Hélio Esteves Felgas, 4 April 1961.
south.79 The army tried to provide direction for the militias being assembled,
although this was not always possible. A senior police officer wrote to his
father that in Luanda civilian militias ‘hunt blacks as one might hunt rabbits.’80
That they should want revenge might be understandable, argued one officer;
but that they should have been allowed to carry it out was not. The result was
that ‘a racial divide that will be difficult to fill has been opened up.’81 Other
victims of settler fury and police action were the Protestant missions, many of
them American-run. On 22 March an anti-American march in Luanda culmi-
nated in the crowd dumping the U.S. consul’s car into the ocean. In the
affected areas, ‘passive resistance’ on the part of the local populations made
economic activity almost impossible.82 As refugees fled by land and air to
Luanda, and from Angola back to Portugal, their plight spread panic across the
empire. Portuguese Guinea, through which many of them passed, was
especially vulnerable; many whites there believed the time had come to send
their families back to Portugal, and business confidence was badly affected.83
In São Tomé and Príncipe, the fear was not of a revolt, but of a landing of
foreign troops (which was, of course, highly improbable). Sightings of mys-
terious ships were frequent. The lack of any serious naval presence to protect
the islands added to the fear which had gripped the white population who, as
had already happened during World War II, felt powerless to defend itself.84
Why did it take so long to send reinforcements? In a letter to the now
retired Santos Costa, who had urged him to send immediately 10,000 ‘properly
organized, armed and commanded soldiers’, and to have another 10,000 ready
to send to Mozambique in case of emergency, Salazar replied, ‘I have made
every effort to intensify the deployment of troops, but I have achieved little,
because it is thought that what we have there is sufficient—although clearly it
is not.’85 Civilians and much of the police force screamed for reinforcements;
only the military commanders did not seem to think them necessary, and
focused on the blame game, accusing the political and administrative officials
of neglecting their duties. Santos Costa wrote back, hoping to shake Salazar out
of his torpor:
79. Ibid., 30D, record of telephone conversation with the governor-general of Angola on 3 April 1961 at 4:00
p.m.
80. AOS CP 273, letter, 6 April 1961, Antunes Varela to António de Oliveira Salazar. This document con-
tains a letter from a senior police officer, identified only as Dionísio, to his father, Luanda, 4 April 1961.
81. AOS CO UL 32 C, ‘Confidential and private’ report on events in the North of Angola (N.2) by Major
Hélio Esteves Felgas, 4 April 1961.
82. Ibid., C, PIDE report 754/61-GU, 17 May 1961.
83. Ibid., A1, PIDE report 498/61-GU, 13 April 1961.
84. Ibid., A1, PIDE report 544/61-GU, 18 April 1961.
85. Both letters can be found in Braga da Cruz (ed.), Correspondência de Santos Costa, pp. 81–82.
It does not become you to suggest the intensification of the flow of troops,
achieving little or nothing. Since your lucidity—may God preserve it for many
years—allows you to see and understand that Angola’s military capacity is in-
sufficient, if not actually ridiculous, you cannot accept Pilate’s vestments and reach
an agreement with the pessimists, with the incompetent, with the cowardly, with
the money-lenders at the Temple.
You must assume full responsibility, you must determine, you must demand, you
must force the immediate departure for Angola of 10 to 12,000 men who con-
stitute a well organized corps with all hierarchical levels and are endowed with the
necessary combat equipment, in which we are not lacking […]86
What this exchange suggests is that faced with an openly rebellious general
staff, Salazar did not feel strong enough to override the advice of his leading
officers, whatever he thought about the situation in Angola. Priority had to be
given to the evolving political battle for survival against Botelho Moniz (see
below). To provoke a crisis over reinforcements over Angola might well have
meant forcing the suspect Botelho Moniz to act before Salazar had taken the
necessary steps to secure his own position, with unpredictable results.
Such a stance condemned the besieged settlers to a long and demoralizing
wait. With the limited forces available in Angola, and given the need to secure
Luanda and other larger cities against any eventuality, settlers and other whites
in the Congo district were restricted to an ever smaller number of centers,
from which they dared not move. The PIDE reported that the situation in
northern Angola kept on worsening, with more and more territory, wealth, and
even weapons abandoned to the indigenous population, and the settlers taking
refuge in larger, easier to defend, settlements. The rumor was rife that a UPA-
led government would soon announce its existence in the European-free areas;
massive numbers of troops were immediately needed to avert a chaotic situa-
tion.87 It was not just whites who attempted to leave the Congo district: many
more indigenous refugees streamed northwards, hoping to find the safety of
the border to escape the fighting. Thousands of mostly women and children
arrived at the border with the Congo, in a terrible state, and only UPA was in
place to welcome them, and to turn them into propaganda weapons against
Portugal. As troops arrived in Luanda, plans began to be sketched for a large-
scale, methodical advance into occupied territory, to the despair of those who,
like Jardim, understood that the coming war would not be fought along con-
ventional lines. The border had to be secured, the harvest brought in, the ‘non-
86. Braga da Cruz (ed.), Correspondência de Santos Costa, p. 83

87. AOS CO UL 32C, PIDE report 564/61-GU, 21 April 1961. The same warning was repeated a week later,
stressing the importance—but also the strategic limitations—of the work being undertaken by the Air Force
to cancel the insurgents’ drive for control of the Congo district. See PIDE report 638/61-GU, 29 April 1961.
contaminated’ zones isolated from the rest: but above all, heavy blows had to
be delivered against the enemy; the Portuguese must regain the initiative, and
this could only be done by highly mobile troops capable of intercepting and
ambushing the enemy.88
As the crisis hit, Salazar had been planning a cabinet reshuffle. This move
now had to be rethought with care. Albino dos Reis suggested a new departure
of sorts, with a cabinet which followed certain principles: the concentration of
power in a few key departments; the widening of the composition of the gov-
ernment, in order to reflect the views of more Portuguese; the independence of
the political from the economic; and the creation of solidarity between govern-
ment and nation, ‘through an authentic, if controlled, [flow of] information
regarding the facts that matter to the formation of a collective conscience and
to the country’s vital interests.’89 Albino dos Reis was thus advancing the
opinion that the population might rally around the New State should a better
communications strategy be implemented. He later met with Salazar in order to
explain these statements in greater detail. Cabinet changes were indeed made,
but the notion of a ‘Sacred Union’ within the context of the New State was
simply far-fetched. Having spent years divesting himself of potential rivals,
Salazar was hardly going to invite them back into positions of power.
As we will see, Botelho Moniz’s attitude would make possible a wholesale
change in the Defense portfolios. But others were now pushed aside. Arnaldo
Schultz,90 Minister of the Interior, wrote Salazar on 14 April asking to be
removed, worn out, he said, by the constant infighting within the União
Nacional and an atmosphere in which the New State was supported only by
those on the make, who wanted to use political power for their own ends.
Salazar did not accept the resignation immediately, and thanked Schultz for his
support in the recent crisis, but axed him all the same a few days later. Lopes
Alves was also relieved of his duties, to be replaced by the reform-minded
Adriano Moreira.91 Franco Nogueira,92 an experienced career diplomat who
had served in the United Nations, became Foreign Minister.
88. AOS CP 144, letter, Luanda, 1 May 1961, Jorge Jardim to António de Oliveira Salazar.
89. AOS CP 236, letter, 20 March 1961, Albino dos Reis to António de Oliveira Salazar.
90. Arnaldo Schultz (1910–1993) was a high-flying army officer who, still young, participated in the military
mission to Spain during the Civil War. He would later teach at the Institute of High Military Studies. He was
named Minister of the Interior in 1958, a position he kept until 1961. He would later be given command of a
unit in Angola, and in 1963 he was appointed governor and military commander of Portuguese Guinea,
where he was singularly unsuccessful.
91. Adriano José Alves Moreira (b. 1922) graduated with a degree in Law from the University of Lisbon, and
practiced as a lawyer for a time, representing, most famously, the family of General José Marques Godinho,
who died in police custody. This activity led to his arrest by the PIDE. He continued to study, however,
eventually earning a doctorate in the Instituto Superior de Ciências Sociais e Política Ultramarina, part of the
Technical University of Lisbon. He represented Portugal at the United Nations, and was appointed Overseas
Minister in 1961, a position he kept until December 1962.
The Botelho Moniz Coup
Until the Kennedy administration, whose advent coincided with the out-
break of violence in Angola, Portugal’s position in Africa had not been a focus
of tension in Washington-Lisbon relations. As late as May 1960 Salazar and
President Eisenhower had met in Queluz, near Lisbon, and, among other
subjects, had discussed Africa. While Eisenhower had suggested the creation of
a new organization which, free of the constraints of the United Nations, might
oversee the rational development of Africa, thus attracting it to the West,
Salazar once again revealed, in confidence, his views on the continent:
In the near totality of cases, the peoples of Africa do not have the same notion of
the nation that we have here in Europe. Black societies have a very low degree of
civilization, at times extremely rudimentary, and do not yet reveal a collective
conscience which might permit them to create political institutions, and to accept
the responsibilities and the duties of an independent country, as we understand it.
Their particular political structures are limited to the tribal regime.93
African elites had, in general, learnt only the worse of European political
thought, and had convinced themselves that their peoples formed a nation, and
were therefore entitled to independence. This could only result in tragedy. That
Salazar clearly foresaw trouble brewing in the Portuguese colonies can be seen
by the exchange on Algeria. When Eisenhower suggested that it was impossible
to keep 600,000 soldiers in Algeria in order to hold down some 20–30,000
guerrilla fighters, Salazar replied that what had to happen was the holding of
Algeria’s neighbors—Morocco, Tunisia and Libya—to account, punishing
them if they interfered in France’s business. Without foreign interference, the
Algerian situation would not have spiraled out of control.
With the arrival of the Kennedy administration, this situation changed
dramatically. America’s attitude during the Santa Maria crisis (see Chapter 11)
had fallen well short of what Lisbon desired, and in the United Nations the
new tone of the transatlantic relationship was evident for all to see. Portugal
refused to release information on its overseas provinces to the UN in accor-
dance with Article 73 of the UN Charter, arguing that these were not colonies,
92. Alberto Marciano Gorjão Franco Nogueira (1918–1993) graduated from the University of Lisbon with a
degree in Law in 1940. The following year he was admitted into the diplomatic corps, serving in the MNE
until placed in Tokyo, in October 1945. A noted literary critic, it is generally believed that Salazar, as Foreign
Minister, objected to his marriage to the daughter of a Chinese diplomat and his Portuguese wife. He was
later consul-general in London and a regular presence at the United Nations whenever the General Assembly
and its Fourth Commission were in session.
93. AOS COE 2, minutes of the meeting between President Eisenhower and the President of the Council at
the Palace of Queluz on 19 May 1960.
or associated territories; what went on in Angola was an internal matter for a
sovereign people to decide on. In fact, if the UN was to live up to its mission,
it would help Portugal secure the end of outside interference in its domestic
affairs. The Kennedy administration did not accept this argument, supporting
the inscription of a motion on Angola in the Security Council.94 The U.S.
ambassador in Lisbon, Charles Burke Elbrick, was instructed to warn Salazar
not to expect America’s support in the forthcoming debate.95 This was not
news to Salazar, who was kept informed by Jorge Jardim, in New York, of how
the vote was shaping up.96 On 7 March 1961 Salazar received Elbrick. In a
follow-up note to Salazar, Elbrick wrote,
The United States would be failing in its duty to a fellow-member of NATO if it

did not express its conviction that step-by-step actions are imperative for the
political, economic and social advancement of all the inhabitants of Portuguese
Africa toward self-determination within a realistic timetable. Conversely, attempts
to maintain the status quo may be extremely disadvantageous in the long run. The
United States government feels that it should express candidly its conviction,
based on a most sympathetic examination of Portuguese African policies, that
these policies are out of step with the political and economic advancement
elsewhere in Black Africa. It is felt that, unless Portugal adjusts to realities in the
area, increasingly serious outbreaks may be expected in the future.97
Despite Salazar’s indignation, and last-minute appeals by Portuguese diplo-

mats, the United States, for the first time, approved a motion calling for reform
and steps towards independence in Angola, as well as for a UN-led investiga-
tion of what had occurred there. The United States and the USSR were as one
on the issue, to the consternation of many within American foreign-policy
circles, as well, of course, as the Portuguese government. There seemed to be
no coincidence between the vote and the outbreak of violence in the north of
Angola, courtesy of Holden Roberto’s UPA.
Nineteen sixty-one had begun with a series of reversals for Salazar, and
would keep on getting worse. It was, without a doubt, his annus horribilis, and, it
could be argued, he was very lucky to survive it. Américo Tomás called it ‘the
94. Richard D. Mahoney, JFK: Ordeal in Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 188.
95. FRUS 1961–1963, vol. 13, doc. 324, 4 March 1961, from the Department of State to the embassy in
Portugal, p. 895. Elbrick was given a number of lines he should use in the discussion with Salazar, which
included ‘we find it increasingly difficult and disadvantageous to Western interests publicly to support or
remain silent on Portuguese African policies and have come to the conclusion that more public clarity on US
position on these particular issues of overseas provinces is required.’
96. AOS CP 144, letter, New York, 5 March 1961, Jorge Jardim to António de Oliveira Salazar. Salazar
received the letter on 8 March. Jardim wrote, ‘we will have to fight alone, and I think we should do it with
energy, or even with violence.’
97. AOS COE 2, note included in letter, Lisbon, 14 March 1961, Charles Elbrick to António de Oliveira
Salazar.
most difficult of the thirty-six in which Salazar headed the nation’s govern-
ment.’98 The Santa Maria affair was not, in itself, worth worrying too much
about, and the ‘piracy’ explanation placed on it was, from the regime’s point of
view, the obvious one to adopt. However, it was the world’s reaction to the
hijacking, notably the frosty attitude of the incoming American and Brazilian
administrations, which led to much soul-searching among senior military
figures. How could Portugal be expected to wage war in Africa if it had no
friends? Would soldiers and officers be paying a disproportionately high price
for the political failures of Salazar?
A first indication of trouble ahead was a long letter, dated 21 February
1961, written by General João Albuquerque de Freitas, the Air Force’s Chief of
Staff, and addressed to the Defense Minister. Albuquerque de Freitas pointed
out that it was generally felt, in Portugal in general and in the armed forces in
particular, that the New State existed only as a result of its military support. In
a daring move, Freitas pointed out that the 1958 election had made the govern-
ment well aware of its unpopularity.99 Albuquerque de Freitas did not call for
Salazar’s removal, but did urge planning for a post-Salazar scenario. In the
recent Santa Maria affair, he pointed out, speculation on what would happen if
Salazar was gone had broken out: and the conclusion he came too was that
there was, at the moment, no obvious successor, since all politicians were
‘spent’ through their association with politics as they had evolved in Portugal.
Should Salazar depart from the political scene, another period of military
dictatorship would necessarily follow—not a recipe for calm and long-term
planning. The criticism contained in the following words was immense:
We fear […] that—since no reform of certain wrongly tolerated political practices

has taken place, no campaign of hygiene and moralization, desired by so many—it
will not be possible to resolve the crisis of succession of the head of government.
We venture to predict that the military’s cohesion will be undone even before that
crisis, mainly because of already cited motives. This pessimistic forecast is based
on the fact—one among others—that there have already been casualties in Africa
among those who, with courage and conviction, fight for the sacred cause of the
Pátria. When they do so, however, they ask themselves if they are not risking their
lives solely as a result of immoral situations which are preserved and which, in
great measure, led to rebellion among the inhabitants and therefore to the struggle
in which they are participating.
98. Tomás, Últimas décadas, vol. 3, p. 75.

99. AOS CO PC 76 A, ‘Very Secret’ letter, Lisbon, 21 February 1961, General João de Freitas to the Minister
of National Defence. Another copy of the letter was sent to the Undersecretary of State for Aeronautics.
In other words, Salazar himself may have been exempted from carrying
out abuses and immoral actions, but he had failed to root them out, as a result
of which the crisis in Africa was entering its critical phase. By the time this
letter arrived on Salazar’s desk, Botelho Moniz had already informed Elbrick
that he and other leading figures of the regime were going to urge Salazar to
reform the New State and alter its hard-line colonial stance. Botelho Moniz had
a long precedent of informing the U.S. embassy of internal conflicts within the
New State elite. At an Inter-Agency Debriefing at the close of 1959, Elbrick
reviewed the Botelho Moniz-Santos Costa matter. He said that the embassy
continued to wonder why Botelho Moniz insisted on feeding information to the
embassy about his feud with Santos Costa; particularly since the vehemence with
which he denounced Santos Costa did not seem to have prevented the latter’s
promotion to Brigadier.100
Contacts between Botelho Moniz and Elbrick became regular, as the

Minister of Defense kept the ambassador abreast of the heave against Salazar.
Elbrick informed Botelho Moniz of his government’s forthcoming vote at the
UN before he told Salazar. On 27 March, the day of a large anti-U.S. demon-
stration in front of the Lisbon embassy, Botelho Moniz informed Salazar that
he was convening the Army’s Superior Council, under his presidency, and that
it would be attended by the Chiefs of Staff of the Navy and the Air Force, as
observers, ‘in order to analyze the military situation overseas.’ This meeting
would also be attended by those officers who, when in Angola, had delivered a
damning verdict on the crisis, blaming it on labor abuses: Generals Beleza
Ferraz and Câmara Pina.101 That same day, Botelho Moniz sent a long missive
to Salazar. It seems that the letter was distributed to those present at the
meeting, who then leaked it profusely. The verdict was damning. A massive
psychological shock was required in order to get the country moving again,
allowing it to recover confidence internally and to be respected internationally.
This might just be achieved by the creation of a completely new cabinet
(Botelho Moniz did not refer to whether or not it should be led by Salazar),
capable of reflecting all those who wanted to serve the country and able to
concentrate, domestically, on improving standards of living:
I know that powerful interests might halt or hinder the development of this policy,
which alone is capable of improving the social conditions of labor, raising Portugal
100. FRUS 1958-1960 vol. 7 (Washington: Department of State, 1993) doc. 286, memorandum for the
Portuguese Desk files, December 16, 1959, p. 635.
101. AOS CO PC 76A, letter, 27 March 1961, Júlio Botelho Moniz to António de Oliveira Salazar.
in international opinion, wherein the low level of the rural, working and middle
classes is a frequently noted matter for censure.102
The world’s opinion of Portugal would improve once it could no longer be

said that it was a country with a democratic deficit, something which, Botelho
Moniz argued, could be achieved with ‘small modifications, more apparent
than real.’ The government was more a federation of ministers than a united
cabinet; it was incapable of pursuing a coherent line, and seemed paralyzed
before the crisis. It fell to the armed forces to bear the brunt of this situation,
and they had been
left at the mercy of a frontal attack, with forces dispersed over four continents,
without the necessary means, and with a suicidal mission which we will not be able
to abandon, since the politicians cannot find a solution and do not even seem able
to look for one.
Botelho Moniz finished off with a warning: the top ranks of the armed forces
were united in this desire for change, including the Air Force’s Chief of Staff,
whose letter we have already considered. To back up his claim Botelho Moniz
sent Salazar part of the minutes of the meeting which left no doubt as to the
sentiment which predominated in the armed forces. After meeting Salazar,
Botelho Moniz reported the nature of the discussions—polite, but without any
decisions being reached—to Elbrick.
As tension within the armed forces mounted, the government’s irritation
with the American stance in Africa continued to grow as well. One individual
soon identified as an enemy was the U.S. consul in Luanda, whom the PIDE
suspected of supporting Portugal’s enemies in Angola. He was accused, among
other things, of trying to sow panic among the city’s whites by putting pressure
on the governor-general to take the necessary steps to oversee the mass evacu-
ation of foreign nationals—a démarche he wanted to undertake alongside other
consuls.103 The crowd turned on him, as part of a wider anti-American demon-
stration, and dumped his automobile in the sea. The Overseas Minister, in
Luanda, called the demonstration ‘idiotic’.104 Overall, suspicion of American
activities was at an all-time high. Reports from the border spoke of meetings in
the Congo between UPA, Americans, and Russians to plot new actions in
Portuguese territory.105
102. Ibid.,
103. AOS CO UL 50, PIDE report 363/61-GU, 23 March 1961.
104. Ibid., 30D, record of telephone conversation with the Overseas Minister, 22 March 1961 at 21:30.
105. Ibid., record of telephone conversation with the governor-general of Angola on 3 April 1961 at 16:00.
As was usually the case in Portugal, there was no attempt among the
army’s leadership, even as it discussed removing Salazar from power, to act in
secret. One cannot even say that its actions were leaked; confident in its
strength, it moved in the open. A meeting between Botelho Moniz and
Américo Tomás left the President of the Republic worried by the minister’s
state of mind;106 in his memoirs, Tomás wrote that a series of meetings in the
first ten days of April had shown that the political situation was growing
steadily worse. Botelho Moniz’s frequent contacts with the American embassy
were also generally known. The State Department urged Elbrick to be more
cautious in his dealings with Botelho Moniz, but damage had already been
done. As ever, two possible sources of opposition coming together led Salazar
to mount a counter-attack. Incredibly, at this stage, Botelho Moniz, instead of
pressing his advantage, took himself off to the Algarve for a quick holiday. His
predecessor, Santos Costa, urged Salazar to act quickly, suggesting names of
loyal officers who might be appointed to the key positions and urging as well
the replacement of the Minister of the Interior, whom he believed to be in
league with the army leadership.107 Santos Costa showed one last time, in this
affair, that for all the scorn poured on him by his military contemporaries, he
was a man of action and resolve. His drive to frustrate Botelho Moniz, a
former rival, was of great value to the embattled Salazar. In the end, Botelho
Moniz threw everything away by his insistence on following what he perceived
to be the legal path, hoping to prevail upon Américo Tomás to dismiss Salazar.
What followed, generally known as the Abrilada, was not only the most serious
threat to Salazar in the post-war period, but also one of the worst conducted
coup attempts in living memory. It must also be said that the actual sequence
of events is hard to reconstruct; the times given by Franco Nogueira for
example, cannot be squared with those found in Salazar’s diary.
On the afternoon of 11 April, Botelho Moniz succeeded in securing an
audience with the President of the Republic for 11:30 p.m. in the latter’s
private residence. Américo Tomás informed Salazar of this, and, summoning
him to that same residence, in the Restelo district of the city, assured him that
nothing would change in their relationship: he intended, in other words, to
resist Botelho Moniz’s demand for a change of prime minister. The con-
spirators’ meeting with the President turned into a farce. According to Franco
Nogueira, and in the presence of Tomás, Botelho Moniz and the Army
Minister, Almeida Fernandes, engaged in an argument over the way forward,
and Salazar’s future, instead of presenting a common front. Tomás own
account is more precise; he described in his memoirs how his assertion that

107. AOS CP 79, letter, Lisbon, 11 April 1961, Santos Costa to António de Oliveira Salazar.
Almeida Fernandes had recently informed him that the army was solidly
behind Salazar’s policies provoked a sudden fury in Botelho Moniz, who felt
undermined by his subordinate.108 Tomás, politely, informed his interlocutors
that he needed time to reflect on the issues. Salazar was informed the next day
of the conversation by Soares da Fonseca, a close friend of Tomás. Later that
day, the Defense Minister had a dramatic altercation with the Undersecretary
of State for Aeronautics, Kaúlza de Arriaga, loyal to Salazar, who had taken the
initiative of placing the Air Force on high alert. Botelho Moniz appealed to
Américo Tomás to remove Kaúlza de Arriaga from government, which the
President refused to do, pointing out that this was a matter for the President of
the Council.109 Tomás also let it be known that he would not replace Salazar.
Salazar, for his part, waited, discussing the situation with close advisors. That
same night, after a briefing with Salazar, the Navy Minister, Quintanilha Dias,
put his branch of the armed forces on alert; the ever faithful Costa Leite,
meanwhile, agreed to sound out replacements, within the army, for the top
military jobs. During the crisis Salazar decided to take over the Ministry of
Defense; he would thus need a new Chief of the General Staff, a Minister of
the Army, and an Undersecretary of the Army.
On the morning of 13 April, a day of high anxiety in Lisbon, Salazar
attempted to preserve his usual routine. He got up at 9 a.m.; at 10, as usual, he
studied the newspapers, and attended to the despacho, the general administrative
paperwork which was so much a part of his day. Only then did he write two
letters, one to Botelho Moniz and another to Almeida Fernandes, informing
them that Américo Tomás had charged him with reshuffling the cabinet while
remaining at its head. Given the tone of their conversation with Tomás, the
two men could not remain in office, and Salazar would take on the ‘sacrifice’ of
the Defense portfolio, in order to solve the Angola situation, expecting all who
could do so to help him.110 What, in the meantime, was Botelho Moniz doing?
Incredibly, nothing. Botelho Moniz scheduled a meeting for 5.00 p.m.—far too
late in the day—in the National Defense Ministry in order to decide once and
for all what to do with Salazar, and what military measures had to be
implemented. One of the men he informed of the meeting, in person, General
Albuquerque de Freitas, the Air Force Chief of Staff, immediately told Kaúlza
de Arriaga of what was happening. According to Franco Nogueira, the rumor
doing the rounds was that Marcelo Caetano had agreed to replace Salazar, once
the dust had settled. In possession of this information, the issue now became a

109. Ibid., p. 92.
110. Franco Nogueira, Salazar, vol. 5, A resistência (1958–1964) 4th edition (Oporto: Civilização, 2000), p.
242.
race against time, which Salazar won hands down, given Botelho Moniz’s lack
of urgency. As his opponents waited for their meeting, the government used
the radio to inform the country that the holders of the Defense, Army, and
Overseas portfolios had been exonerated, and to name their successors, which
included, of course, Salazar himself at Defense. Salazar’s appointment as Chief
of the General Staff, General Gomes de Araújo, was meanwhile working the
phones, explaining the new situation to key military commanders and urging
them not to attend Botelho Moniz’s meeting. Quintanilha Dias was doing the
same for the navy. The meeting itself, attended by a number of senior officers
and ex-President Craveiro Lopes, was a desultory affair. The conclusion was
quickly reached that the army would respect hierarchy of command, and that
this had slipped from the fingers of the slow-moving conspirators. Tellingly,
the Diário da Manhã on the 14 April published a cartoon urging its readers not
to believe rumors—of which, Lisbon being Lisbon, there would have been
plenty going round, some of them, on this occasion, even being true.111 In the
evening of 13 April, after another visit to the President of the Republic, Salazar
spoke to the country through television and radio, stressing the overriding need
for him to take over the Defense portfolio. By setting the agenda, Salazar
ensured that one item dominated the day’s news—in order to save Angola,
Salazar had taken over, for the second time in his career, the military destinies
of Portugal:
If a word of explanation is needed for the fact that I am taking over the National
Defense portfolio even before the general reshuffle, which will follow, that word
is Angola […] To move rapidly, and in strength, is the objective which will test our
decision-making capacity.112
Salazar thus presented himself as the savior of Angola, the man who would
channel the necessary aid to its embattled defenders; he kept absolutely silent
on the plot against him. Congratulations arrived quickly from old stalwarts, like
António Eça de Queiroz, the Duke of Bragança, and even, on 16 April,
111. One foreign diplomat noted some of the tales doing the rounds in Lisbon: ‘The more reasonable
rumors were that the Minister of Defense had had at least two stormy interviews with Dr Salazar in which he
had expressed the discontent of the Army and himself with matters generally and presented an ultimatum
demanding reforms. The more fantastic rumors included a claim that a Military Junta had taken over, and
that Dr Salazar had gone into exile in Switzerland. Another more malicious rumor was that a very wealthy
member of the government had transferred his entire fortune to Switzerland.’ Ribeiro de Meneses,
Correspondência diplomática, doc. 265, report, Lisbon, 14 April 1961, J. W. Lennon to Secretary, Department of
External Affairs. By 2 May, however, Lennon was able to report accurately on what had occurred.
112. Franco Nogueira, A resistência, pp. 244–45.
Francisco Franco.113 Nine days later Dona Filipa de Bragança added her melo-
dramatic voice to the chorus, going further than the rest:
Who would have thought Botelho Moniz would be capable of so much betrayal,
as one hears it said? Lately I had been suspicious of him, but not to such an
extent. Personal ambition, yes—but not common cause with Delgado and Galvão;
he seemed to me too intelligent not to understand that the two vain and rabid
monkeys in Brazil had long become the unwitting playthings of international
communism and that, by allying himself to them, the same fate would await him.
Does he really believe he can impose himself on the Russians? How far does his
ambition stretch?114
There must be, she added, a trial, and quickly, so that public opinion might
be informed of what had just happened. On 27 April, Cardinal-Patriarch
Cerejeira joined the ranks of well-wishers with his traditional birthday message.
Salazar was still ‘God’s chosen’, and his recent decisions had been the most im-
portant in his thirty-three years at the head of Portugal: ‘It is Portugal you have
gathered up in your hands, against the world.’115 According to Tomás, Salazar
finally recovered in this crisis the prestige he had lost during the 1958 events.116
Dona Filipa de Bragança’s advice to hold a trial was not followed. The
conspirators were not punished. In May, the Finance Minister wrote Salazar,
asking if General Beleza Ferraz, who had been exonerated from his post as
Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, should continue to receive his
monthly salary: there were no precedents to guide him.117 As the dust began to
settle, Salazar received a letter from an officer who, thirteen years later, would
play a major role in the Portuguese transition to democracy, Colonel António
de Spínola. Spínola warned Salazar that the mood in the army—its hopes and
complaints—was adequately described in the principal documents which had
been produced in the run-up to the recent coup attempt, which meant that
change had to come, and quickly. Where he, Spínola, had diverged from the
armed forces’ leadership was in believing that Salazar could not be done away
with: in the present circumstances, Salazar was an invaluable asset for the
defense of Portuguese interests:
113. AOS COE 2, letter, Madrid 16 April 1961, Francisco Franco Bahamonde to António de Oliveira
Salazar, Madrid, 16 April 1961.
114. AOS CP 38, letter, Lisbon, 25 April 1961, Dona Filipa de Bragança to António de Oliveira Salazar.
115. AOS CP 47, letter, Lousado, 27 April 1961, Cardinal-Patriarch Manuel Cerejeira to António de Oliveira
Salazar.
117. AOS CP 21, letter, 13 May 1961, António M. Pinto Barbosa to António de Oliveira Salazar.
I know, as I have just said, what the Army thinks. But I also know that the change
recently attempted was based on a fundamental error: on inopportunely removing
you at a time when, above all, you are the symbol of the policy of steadfastness,
the only one with some possibility of success in the current international setting.118
Having taken over the Defense portfolio, and having proclaimed the need
to defend Angola, whatever the cost, the way was now open for Salazar to send
troops in greater numbers to Angola. On 17 April, four companies of
specialized light infantry—the Caçadores Especiais—were sent by plane. More
would follow by ship, all welcomed as heroes on their arrival in the embattled
colony. From Luanda they began to fan out northwards and eastwards,
restoring Portuguese authority over areas which many had thought lost for
good, notably Nambuangongo, in August. The situation remained tense, how-
ever, because of the slow progress of the troops. On 2 May Adriano Moreira,
already in Luanda, sent a heartbreaking telegram, which included the text of a
telegram he had himself received, signed by 618 people:
The population of Carmona alarmed yesterday from 18:00 hours by dramatic radio
appeals of the defenders of the small town of Mucaba, 150 kms from here, who
suffered six killed and two wounded, demonstrated outside the offices of the
Municipal Administrator expressing their sentiments and offering in great
numbers able-bodied men to set off to the imperiled town. The population of the
Congo is demoralized by the indescribable situation of the abandonment of
Mucaba, which for days had been imploring military aid. The death of their
brothers denounces something very grave in the slow departure of troops and the
occupation of all towns […] We want to know these facts because we pay with our
lives for the consequences of this state of affairs […]’119
The Overseas Minister urged Salazar to force the military to take seriously
the plight of the besieged settlers, who deposited great hope in Salazar, but
whose energy was fading. The army had to move forward in numbers, and stop
worrying about Luanda. If it moved quickly, it might still prove possible to
save some of the coffee harvest, allowing the settlers to recoup part of their
material losses.120 All that the army had achieved by the cautious strategy so far
adopted was the loss of confidence of the province’s civilian population—and
all the time, the insurrection grew, with tension again mounting in and around
Malange. The PIDE’s commander in the area sent out a stream of appeals,
pointing out that a number of attacks were planned against white interests in
118. AOS CP 261, letter, Lisbon, 16 April 1961, Colonel António de Spínola to António de Oliveira Salazar.
119. AOS CO UL 8 I, telegram, 2 May 1961, Adriano Moreira to António de Oliveira Salazar.
120. Ibid., 8 I, telegram, 7 May 1961, Adriano Moreira to António de Oliveira Salazar.
the region, some of which the police had managed to break up; it seemed, from
the reports, that all educated blacks were now suspected by the Portuguese.
The Evangelical Missions were, as far as the was concerned, the focus of
separatist propaganda, their students referring to themselves as ‘Americans’.121
On 27 May the governor-general of Angola cabled,
Population’s morale deteriorating because it cannot see concrete results when it

comes to dominating the rebellion. Rumor now doing the rounds that army was
placed in an invidious situation by the sending of unprepared and unsupported
troops. The Opposition is sketching out a new agitation effort.122
According to a PIDE agent in Leopoldville, UPA knew of all decisions taken

by the Portuguese administration, and Portuguese troop movements were
closely watched and controlled. The movement’s commanders bragged
that the Portuguese troops are afraid of entering the forests where the terrorists
are hidden and that the troops cannot carry out large operations, by destroying the
forests, since they are prevented from doing so by the large Portuguese capitalists
who want to prevent the destruction of the coffee plantations […]123
While UPA was aware that in an outright military confrontation it stood no

chance against regular troops, its leaders—advised, according to this source, by
Indian UN officers, as well as Ghanese and Guinean elements (and even a
diplomat from the American embassy)—hoped to strike continuously in new
areas, keeping the Portuguese off balance and prolonging the insurgency until
the UN stepped in. But for UPA, frontal attacks against well guarded popula-
tion centers could prove costly. One attack, against the town of Songo, which
lasted for less than two hours in the afternoon of 3 May, led to the death of at
least 220 attackers (chillingly, there is no mention of wounded or prisoners)
against eight deaths and nine missing among the defenders—all of them
African—and two European wounded. According to the municipal administra-
tor, the attacker’s casualties would have been higher had not one of the de-
fenders’ machineguns jammed at a crucial moment.124
The end of the rainy season helped the Portuguese troops’ progress. In
October, the last administrative centre still in UPA hands, Caiongo, was recap-
tured by the Portuguese. Retaliatory violence was a part of this campaign,
121. Ibid., 32 A, PIDE report 696/61-GU, 9 May 1961.

122. Ibid., 8 I, ‘Secret’ telegram, 27 May 1961, governor-general of Angola to Ministry of Overseas.
123. Ibid., 32 D, PIDE report 767/61-GU, 18 May 1961.
124. Ibid., 32 C, PIDE report 1036/61-GU, 23 June 1961.
Portuguese troops being fired up by the earlier massacres of whites.125 Troops
on the ground were backed up by somewhat rudimentary air power (T-6
trainers) to deliver napalm strikes. A massive movement of refugees into the
Congo was the immediate result. In June, meanwhile, Silva Tavares was
replaced as governor-general by General Venâncio Deslandes, of the air force,
recalled from his role as ambassador to Madrid, while the principal military
commander in Angola was also replaced. That they should have been replaced
was no surprise; but while Silva Tavares was given a hero’s send-off, complete
with the Order of the Empire, General Monteiro Libório was replaced by
General Silva Freire without a single word of thanks from the government.
The message, although unspoken, could not be clearer: the army had let the
country down. And this message was subsequently reinforced by the concen-
tration of military and civilian powers in the hands of Deslandes, in September
of 1961. That territory was being taken back did not mean, however, that it was
secure, and that trouble would not flare up again. In October Franco Nogueira
forwarded Salazar a copy of a letter written by an acquaintance’s son, who had
volunteered for service in Angola, and who was active in the embattled north.
According to this document, in the Angolan Congo there was now a total
separation between blacks and whites; few—less than one percent of the
former—were engaged in security operations. Most of the white troops were
on static defensive duties, with fewer than ten percent actively pursuing the
enemy. Peace seemed a reality only because the local population did not have
access to firearms:
The uprising by UPA was clearly premature, since it did not dispose of the means
needed to keep the populations on a war footing. It may be the case that in six
months or a year, after a few more pan-African conferences and with the support
of the ex-Belgian Congo, the situation will worsen for us.126
The April 1961 heave, and the way it was dealt with, did not put an end to
plotting from within. Botelho Moniz was free; so too, of course, was ex-
President Craveiro Lopes, who had not forgiven Salazar for the nature of his
dismissal from office. The two men met, at a private dinner function, in the
presence of Daniel Barbosa and some other figures, and spoke of the need to
125. Already on 23 April Dean Rusk had written Elbrick stating that ‘there is great concern here that
Portuguese repression in Angola is even bloodier than has come to light.’ FRUS 1961–1963, vol. 21, doc.
348, telegram, Washington, 23 April 1961, from the Department of State to the embassy in Portugal, 542.
126. AOS CP 193, letter, Carmona (Angola), 27 September 1961, Carlos Eugénio Paço de Arcos to Joaquim
Paço de Arcos; copy of this letter was forwarded to António de Oliveira Salazar by Franco Nogueira on 18
October 1961.
prevent the rise of the extreme-Left, before it was too late.127 In truth, though,
Salazar would never again be troubled by the possibility of an internal rebellion
against his personal power.
The Duel with America
If by the end of 1961 the threat on the ground seemed contained, despite
the lack of an obvious military solution, the diplomatic threat emanating from
Washington remained impressive, and seemingly set in stone. What followed
was an astonishing display of independent thinking and concerted diplomatic
activity, as the embattled Portuguese regime, wounded by the Delgado affair,
attacked in Africa and Asia, and routinely vilified in the United Nations,
resolved to stand firm against the threats, and the bribes, of the Kennedy
administration, which, Salazar was convinced, had tried to oust him from
power using the gullible Botelho Moniz. In this struggle Salazar was torn
between an understanding that his life was reaching its natural end, a sentiment
accompanied by the fear of what might befall Portugal as a consequence, and
the impression that, despite what the rest of the world said, time was on his
side. Time would demonstrate that the new African regimes were condemned
to failure. The Congo’s experience would be repeated countless times all over
the continent, so that the pan-African threat would disappear. Time would also
reveal that behind the Afro-Asian agitation stood the Soviet Union, so that the
West would wake up to its responsibilities. The Kennedy administration would
yet be made to repent, Salazar believed.
In this confrontation of unequal allies, Portugal had one trump card—the
Azores bases—which it played with great tenacity and skill, capitalizing on
divisions within the American government and even within the State Depart-
ment. But more than the simple matter of defiance of American might, what
still astounds today is the violence of the language and of the gestures that the
Portuguese employed to get their way. Throughout 1961 and 1962 they
refrained from allowing a meaningful discussion on the Azores to begin. In
May 1961 Dean Rusk and Nogueira met in Oslo; the two men, while agreeing
on the importance of stopping Soviet expansion in Africa, could not agree on
the best way to do it. Nogueira stated that the outbreak of violence and the
international campaign against Portugal had halted the introduction of ‘far-
reaching reforms’, which included educational and infrastructural improve-
ments and the ‘granting of full political and social rights to all regardless of
color’—that is, the end of indigenato. As far as Portugal was concerned, the way
127. AOS CO PC 77, anonymous report (presumably from the PIDE), with a handwritten date: 21 May
1962.
forward consisted of military victory after the rainy season and then the publi-
cation of the reforms—which would not occur if Portugal felt in any way
pressured.128 In the meantime, there was no shortage of warnings about
American and Indian contacts with UPA in the Congo.
The most obvious leverage the Americans had over Salazar was the supply
of weapons. American-made materiel, destined originally for a putative Euro-
pean battlefield, was finding its way to Angola, to mounting embarrassment in
Washington. The attempt to have this materiel returned to Portugal was
doomed to failure, because it was essential for the prosecution of the war. In
the United Nations, meanwhile, the United States, on 10 June (Portugal’s
national holiday), alongside eight other Security Council members, called on
Portugal to ‘desist forthwith from repressive measures’ in Angola. Franco
Nogueira, days before the vote, warned Elbrick that the result of such a pro-
nouncement would be a bloodbath in Africa.129 Salazar was irate, as his speech
to the National Assembly on 30 June made clear. This was a historic pro-
nouncement through which Salazar attempted to shore up the country’s
resolve for the coming trials. Most Portuguese overseas provinces—and
Salazar went through the smaller territories one by one—could not exist as
independent states; they would either be gobbled up by neighbors or face
bankruptcy. Portugal had long been used to paying for them, sacrificing its own
welfare for theirs. The whole was kept together by a constitutional arrangement
that reflected both a wide consensus and a long-standing reality, of which the
Portuguese should be proud. There was much to do, no doubt, especially when
it came to providing education and, simultaneously, opportunity for all: but in
terms of health care, and infrastructure, there was nothing to be ashamed of—
and much more was scheduled for immediate delivery. Criticism in the UN
General Assembly should be ignored, since this body was a crowd, and acted
along the psychological lines of a crowd. Its bluster could be dismissed. Salazar
concluded,
Everything is turning upside down in the world; the aggressors have become the
well-deserving; those who defend themselves are the criminals; States which are
aware of their duties and trying to keep order in their territories are incriminated
by those who foment disorder.130
Part and parcel of the world turning upside down was the Kennedy administra-
tion’s policy towards its long-standing ally, Portugal. Its purpose, Salazar said,
128. FRUS 1961–1963 vol. 13 (Washington, Department of State, 1994), doc. 325, Oslo, 8 May 1961, from
Secretary of State Rusk to the Department of State, p. 899.
129. Ibid., doc. 326, Lisbon, 8 June 1961, from the embassy in Portugal to the Department of State, p. 900.
130. Diário das Sessões (Lisbon), n. 217, 1 July 1961.
was to win over votes in the UN so that America might muster against the
Soviet Union when it suited Washington to do so. The consequences were
tragic, and could be catastrophic: although it had not ordered it, or even
desired it, America had given umbrage, through its criticism of Portugal in
March, to UPA’s violence:
In Africa’s present condition, and given Angola’s political and geographic situa-
tion, taking action [against Portugal] would be made indubitably easier were a great
western and anti-communist power to say the word and strike a pose. One did so,
and this was unfortunate.
While remaining committed to the defense of Western Europe through

NATO, the United States was now undermining that very same Western
Europe—and so itself—in Africa. Troops necessary to keep the peace in
Algeria, in the Congo, in Angola, could not confront the Soviets in Europe.
Salazar lectured Kennedy, whom he never mentioned by name:
This essential contradiction in American policy has already been noted by some
commentators, even in the United States, and it is serious, since while contra-
dictions in thought are possible, contradictions in action are inadmissible.
Not surprisingly, Elbrick was told to protest the terms of, and the thinking
behind, the speech. He did so to little effect, being told that Portugal was
involved in a four-hundred-year-old process which nothing would turn it away
from. All that John F. Kennedy could do was to deride, not without humor,
‘Portugal’s second five-hundred-year plan for Africa.’131 One thing Salazar
most vehemently would not accept was financial compensation—the figure of
$500 million being mentioned in some sources—in return for agreeing a time-
frame for independence, something which ‘was popular among [Kennedy]
administration liberals.’132 Salazar met Elbrick on 15 July, delivering a memo-
randum which spoke of the ‘great care’ and ‘some concern’ with which the
American government had studied the 30 June speech, and urging the pace of
reforms to be increased. Salazar and Elbrick spoke for over an hour on the
subject of reforms in Africa: these moved slowly, Salazar explained, because
the indigenato system—the laws and regulations which governed the life of most
Africans in the overseas provinces—was in place to safeguard the interests of
the African population; alternative safeguards had to be put in place to replace
131. Mahoney, JFK, p. 199.

132. Ibid.
its positive effects.133 He made no mention of the labor abuses he knew fully
well had existed in Angola. It might thus seem that the two countries were
deadlocked, but this was not the case. Portugal now had a more disciplined and
dynamic government, with Franco Nogueira at the MNE and Adriano Moreira
touring, and reforming, the ‘overseas provinces’; Pedro Teotónio Pereira was
dispatched on a final diplomatic mission, returning to the Washington embassy
he had headed years before; and although no new Minister of the Presidency
was appointed, a similar position was created—Minister of State attached to
the President of the Council—and handed to Correia de Oliveira, who con-
tinued his climb up the ranks of government, now enjoying the benefits of
close proximity to Salazar. A public relations blitz was launched in the United
States, thanks to the professional help of a private firm, Manning, Selvage &
Lee, which reached out to the many who doubted Kennedy’s African policy;
and, of course, there were the Azores. As the Cold War flared up again, these
became more vital, and so too did the Portuguese hand strengthen.
The State Department was divided over what to do with Portugal. On one
side stood the European bureau, more sympathetic to traditional values and
old Allies and seeing in the preservation of NATO the cornerstone of
American policy. This faction had the added advantage of counting on the
military; it could also rely on the support of older heads in foreign policy circles
like Dean Acheson, whose advice John F. Kennedy valued. Secretary of State
Rusk was neutral at first, but his understanding of the Portuguese position
would grow with time. On the other side stood a loose and more innovative
coalition made up of figures like Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs
G. Mennen Williams,134 Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith, in Delhi, and
Ambassador Adlai Stevenson, at the UN. The latter group controlled a task
force charged by President Kennedy to find a solution to the Portuguese
colonial situation. Not surprisingly, a tough policy with Lisbon was
recommended.135 Kennedy, siding with the modernizers, gave the go-ahead to
133. AOS COE 2, notes on a conversation between the President of the Council of Ministers and the
ambassador of the United States, 15 July 1961.
134. Mennem Williams became a particular bugbear for the Portuguese. In July the PIDE reported that ‘the
American Consul in Lourenço Marques received indications from the American Secretary Mennem Williams
to prepare his visit to Mozambique in such a way as to allow him to ‘contact’ the ‘individuals’ who will be
running Mozambique in ten years.’ AOS CO PC 81, ‘Secret’ PIDE report 1204/61-GU, 21 July 1961. The
visit occurred in August 1961; Mennem Williams spent little time in Mozambique, where he was greeted with
courtesy by officials, but with hostility be the press. The PIDE concluded, ‘his plan to meet with the future
leaders of Mozambique seems not to have been successful. By way of compensation he spoke to the Ameri-
can protestant missions, which for some weeks have been the target of attacks by the Mozambican press,
which accuses them of propagating an anti-Portuguese nationalist ideal.’ AOS CO PC 81, ‘Secret’ PIDE
report 1361/61-GU, 30 August 1961.
135. Mahoney, JFK, p. 201. Instructions were contained in National Security Action Memorandum No. 60,
which can be found in FRUS 1961–1963, vol. 13, pp. 901–2, signed by McGeorge Bundy. Included in the
this policy. His brother Robert, meanwhile, had authorized in April—after the
outbreak of violence in the Portuguese Congo—the payment of a retainer to
Holden Roberto. The Portuguese soon heard of this, and capitalized on it as
often as possible. They were not, however, above dirty tricks. Break-ins at the
U.S. consulates in Luanda and Lourenço Marques, later in 1961, led to the
seizure of classified documentation and stationary which, according to Ameri-
can sources, would later be used to produce gross forgeries, allegedly showing
direct military aid to UPA.136 Such tactics were matched by catastrophist
rhetoric. In August, when told of United States’ restrictions on the sale of arms
to Portugal, Franco Nogueira exploded. Arms could be purchased anywhere,
including the communist bloc, he said, adding that ‘Portugal’s national interest
was paramount, and that the Portuguese would have no interest in a U.S.
victory over the USSR if this meant that Portugal itself would be lost.’137
How useful were the Azores bases? Were they, as Acheson called them,
‘perhaps the single most important [set of bases] we have anywhere’?138 That
was certainly the perception for much of the American military establishment
at the time, including John F. Kennedy’s principal military advisor, General
Maxwell Taylor. The Azores had played a key role in the movement of troops
to the Lebanon in 1958, Berlin in 1961, and the Congo from 1960 onwards.
Forty long-range aircraft a day departed the bases in 1961.139 Unfortunately for
the Americans, the lease on the bases, which Acheson had negotiated years
earlier, was due to end at the close of 1962. Failure to secure the continued use
Memorandum was the dispatch of a ‘special envoy’ to inform Salazar that change had to come about
immediately in the African territories; no such emissary was ever sent.
136. Ibid., p. 206. The issue of a ‘forged letter’ was discussed by Rusk and Franco Nogueira in Athens, in
May 1962. Rusk assured Franco Nogueira that the document in question was false; Nogueira ‘politely but
firmly insisted that his government knew that the letter was not a forgery.’ FRUS 1961–1963, vol. 13, doc.
338, memorandum of conversation, Athens, 5 May 1962, p. 923. Forged documents resurfaced in 1964: see
FRUS 1964–1968 vol. 12 (Washington, Department of State, 2001), doc. 155, Washington, 26 June 1964,
from the Department of State to the embassy in Portugal, in which Dean Rusk informed Ambassador
Anderson that ‘Salazar claimed have paper signed by AmEmbassy Leopoldville attaché proving US source’.
Rusk expressed his hope that Anderson might be able to see this document, to determine if it was the
document dismissed as a forgery in 1962 or if another one had been manufactured in the meantime.
137. FRUS 1961–1963, vol. 21, doc. 353, memorandum, Washington, 31 August 1961, from the President’s
Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy) to President Kennedy, p. 549.
139. Ibid. The most famous counter-argument was delivered by Galbraith, in New Delhi, who wrote, on 5
December 1961, that ‘no one in the Defense Department would argue for the world-wide weakening of the
political and military posture of the United States because of the inability of our services to circumvent the
need for a few acres of asphalt.’ FRUS 1961–1963, vol. 13, doc. 331, New Delhi, 5 December 1961, from the
embassy in India to the Department of State, p. 910. Elbrick countered with vehemence on 8 December:
‘This embassy does not agree with assumptions, analysis or recommendations of reference telegram as they
concern conduct of our relations with Portugal.’ He added, ‘What is dismissed as “few acres of asphalt” is
evaluated by recent Presidential Task Force on Portuguese territories as “single most valuable facility which
US Government is authorized by a foreign government to use.”’ FRUS 1961–1963, vol. 13, doc. 332, Lisbon,
8 December 1961, from the embassy in Lisbon to the Department of State, p. 911. Galbraith conceded the
point three days later—his reference, he admitted, ‘was much too colorful.’ FRUS 1961–1963, vol. 13, doc.
333, New Delhi, 11 December 1961, from the embassy in India to the Department of State, p. 913.
of the Azores would make it much harder to respond to a crisis in Europe or
the Middle East. A chain of bases in the extreme north, highly vulnerable to
weather conditions, was not a good alternative to the rainy but mild Azores;
replacing the current fleet of transport planes with transatlantic alternatives was
prohibitively expensive. Acheson and Stevenson, poles apart on the Azores
and Angola, were invited by John F. Kennedy to propose a way forward. It was
Stevenson’s view that the two issues be kept apart. The embassy in Lisbon did
not consider this to be a viable possibility,140 and neither did many in Congress.
The Goa crisis, considered below, did not help: summoned to Franco
Nogueira’s office on December 18, 1961, Elbrick was told that
if Goa issue is considered by SC [Security Council] and U.S. government should

adopt same position with respect to Portugal which it had adopted in previous
UN actions this year, Portugal would be obliged to reconsider its relations with
U.S. and this would necessarily involve a complete change in status in those
relations.
Elbrick went on:
He did not mention NATO relationship or Azores base, but there was no
misunderstanding as to exact meaning of his declaration.141
Relations continued poor as 1962 began, with Franco Nogueira expa-

tiating, whenever he had the chance, on the harmful effects of American policy
in Africa: to Elbrick in Lisbon, and to Rusk at NATO summits and in New
York.142 In this climate, negotiating the Azores base would be difficult. Salazar
used the shield of public opinion, telling one American interlocutor that ‘the
people of Portugal would not countenance his agreeing to an extension of our
140. Ibid., p. 211. On 27 November 1961 John Kennedy met Elbrick in the White House in order to discuss
how to improve relations with Portugal, given the looming end of the Azores lease. Elbrick urged caution,
and ‘quiet prodding’ at most; this would be preferable to action in the UN. The President evidently took
Elbrick’s advice, suggesting ‘that it might be wise for the US to abstain on some of the votes affecting
Portugal in the UN.’ FRUS 1961–1963, vol. 13, doc. 330, Washington, 18 December 1961, memorandum of
conversation, p. 907.
141. FRUS 1961–1963, vol. 13, doc. 335, Lisbon, 18 December 1961, from the embassy in Portugal to the
Department of State, p. 916.
142. In May 1962, the two men met in Athens. Rusk insisted on the importance of the term ‘internal self-
determination’, which Pedro Teotónio Pereira had used in a speech at the Washington Press Club;
eventually, Franco Nogueira had enough: ‘I resolved to discuss clearly and frankly our problems with the
United States […] we had reached saturation point and renewed American pressure was useless.’ Asked
point-blank by Rusk what he thought of the American government and its intentions towards Portugal,
Franco Nogueira replied, ‘I am sad to say that we have completely lost our trust in the American government
and its good faith, and we are convinced that, as part of its imperialist policy of the pursuit of markets and
raw materials, the American government wishes to drive us from Africa as soon as possible.’ AOS CO NE
30, notes on a conversation between the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the American Secretary of State, 4
May 1962, in the United States embassy in Athens.
Base rights agreement in the Azores under present conditions.’143 Vasco Garin,
Permanent Representative to the UN, was asked by an American television
reporter if Portugal would ‘ask the United States to remove its air bases from
the Azores.’ His response was in keeping with Salazar’s guidelines: ‘All I can
say is that since the United States began voting against Portugal in the United
Nations, there has been a strong popular feeling in some sectors of Portuguese
public opinion against renewal of the concessions made to the United States in
America.’144
In the American press, however, the campaign masterminded by Manning,
Selvage & Lee was having its effect. It has been suggested that John F.
Kennedy, although increasingly exasperated by the lack of a solution, might
well have ultimately opted for a confrontational policy, challenging Lisbon to
keep the Azores but lose membership of NATO, but that events in Cuba
altered the playing field very quickly, forcing the President to back down.145
However, Rusk’s memorandum to Kennedy, on 12 June, predates the start of
the missile crisis; in it he outlined Portuguese grievances against the United
States, Washington’s failure to deal with them, and what his negotiating tactics
would be. America’s posture ‘should be characterized by utmost patience’:
hardly the words of a man in a hurry.146 Rusk met Salazar on 28 June 1962,
having met Franco Nogueira the day before. It was not the objective ‘of the
policy of the United States to see Portugal removed from Africa or substitute
the United States in the Portuguese possessions’, Rusk told a skeptical Salazar.
He also praised the latest reforms introduced by the Portuguese in their
African possessions. In order to resolve differences, frankness and goodwill
were needed—and a concentration on matters where there was no dispute.
Rusk told Salazar that
the United States was prepared to go forward, with no idea of influencing or

bringing pressure upon Portugal, in the field of social and economic development
in metropolitan Portugal as well as in the overseas, adding that we were ready to
discuss these matters as they came to the mind of the Portuguese government.147
But still there was no resolution; the meeting was polite but led nowhere.
Elbrick, in conversation with John F. Kennedy, pointed out the obvious:
143. FRUS 1961–1963, vol. 13, doc. 339, letter, Lisbon, 14 May 1962, from the ambassador to Portugal to
the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs (Tyler), p. 927.
144. AOS CP 124, transcript of questions and answers to an interview by Channel 5, New York Television
Station, on 4 February 1962.
146. FRUS 1961–1963, vol. 13, doc. 342, Washington, 12 June 1962, memorandum from Secretary of State
Rusk to President Kennedy, Washington, p. 936.
147. Ibid., doc. 343, memorandum on conversation, Lisbon, June 28 1962, p. 940.
‘“They realize that once the card is played it cannot be used again and therefore
they probably intend to keep us dangling.”’148 Mahoney writes that, after the
Rusk-Salazar meeting, the American attitude changed dramatically:
Formal capitulation occurred in September, when Washington responded to

Lisbon’s list of grievances with an aide mémoire: “Our efforts […] are designed not
to force Portugal to leave Africa but to encourage measures which we are
convinced are necessary to enable her to stay and complete work which she has
begun.”149
Washington now began to display some good will towards Lisbon. Contact
with Holden Roberto was broken off,150 and, later, Admiral George W. Ander-
son, U.S. Chief of Naval Operations and a friend of Portugal, was appointed as
the new ambassador to Lisbon. It was all in vain. Nothing seemed to work;
Lisbon simply advanced grievance after grievance in order to delay serious
discussions on the Azores. Buying time seemed to be the only motive behind
the Portuguese moves. Invited to Washington by Rusk, Nogueira arrived in the
middle of the Cuban missile crisis. His defiance pushed Washington’s patience
to the brink, since he refused to express publicly Portugal’s support for the
United States at such a crucial moment. A personal meeting with John F.
Kennedy did not impress Franco Nogueira, and the American lease on the
Azores bases was allowed to lapse on 31 December. From that moment on,
although the bases continued to operate, they did so on a highly unsatisfactory
day-to-day basis. At any time Portugal could wind the operation down.
This was not the end of the story, however. 1963 was a year of mixed
signals from the United States. On the one hand there was a renewed
expression of frustration with Portugal, with figures such as W. Averell
Harriman, the new Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, and Robert F.
Kennedy, leading the charge. Attempts were made to woo the MPLA to the
American sphere, and to cultivate Mozambican nationalist leader Eduardo
Mondlane. On the other hand, in the United Nations the American line was
harder to read. In July, over thirty African countries called on the Security
Council to discuss the situation in the south of their continent; the American
delegation toned down the Africans’ draft resolution, which was strong and
called for a complete arms embargo against Portugal. However, John F.
148. Ibid., doc. 346, memorandum on conversation, Washington, 5 September 1962, p. 944.
150. Mennen Williams was deeply disappointed by this move: ‘Thus to deny our heritage in this last stage of
the dissolution of the Western colonial empires would, I believe, seriously damage our position in much of
the free world.’ FRUS 1961–1963, vol. 21, doc. 360, memorandum, Washington, 23 October 1962, from the
Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs (Williams) to Secretary of State, p. 561.
Kennedy thought the wording still went too far, with the incredible result was
that the United States’ delegation ended up abstaining on its own compromise
resolution. When the Portuguese complained about the American stance,
Teotónio Pereira was given a dressing down by Harriman: Kennedy, he ex-
plained to the Portuguese ambassador, was ‘outraged’ at the Portuguese belief
that America—himself—had been responsible for the resolution.151 If his
outrage was real, then Kennedy was overreacting; this much was clearly what
the Portuguese thought of the affair. As Franco Nogueira told Rusk,
The Portuguese may be suspicious, but the impression at the UN and in the press
was not precisely in keeping with what the Secretary had said. Serious newspapers
like Le Monde and Figaro had said that the US-UN delegation wanted to go much
further but that the Department and perhaps the White House had restrained the
US delegation. Frankly, Portugal had the same impression.152
More important than the seeming confusion within the Kennedy admini-
stration was Under Secretary of State George Ball’s trip to Lisbon, in late
August 1963, in order to assure the Portuguese of America’s desire for good
relations, and to explore any possibility of progress in Africa. Ball went very far
in expressing understanding of the Portuguese situation, as well as the desire
that ‘Portuguese interests and influence in Africa should be preserved.’153
Might the French example in relation to Africa not be followed? Salazar did
not bite. His answer was a replay of his June 1961 speech, listing the Portu-
guese territories and the differences between them. Independence, in most
cases, meant absorption by larger neighbors. In Mozambique and Angola, it
would mean chaos. As for some sort of innovative, post-independence link,
such as the British and French enjoyed, it could not occur in the Portuguese
case:
If the territories became independent and if the new leaders respected Portuguese
property this might be possible, but he pointed out that the French and the British
had the financial resources of the “city” and the “bourse” in Paris to fall back on.
Portugal, a poor country, could not compare with these two.154
Portugal could develop its overseas territories, but it needed time and a
sense of responsibility from the rest of Africa that was now sadly missing. One
151. FRUS 1961–1963, vol. 13, doc. 352, memorandum of conversation, Washington, 31 July 1963, pp. 960–
61.
152. Ibid., doc. 354, memorandum of conversation, Washington, 2 August 1963, p. 964.
153. Ibid., doc. 357, Paris, 31 August 1963, from the embassy in France to the Department of State, Paris, p.
972.
154. Ibid., p. 974.
expression of this irresponsibility was the pretense that there was nationalism
in areas where it simply could not come into being. At a later meeting with
Ball, Salazar added to the usual range of arguments by referring to the de-
colonization of the American continent:
Salazar acknowledged that he was a conservative—a reactionary—who believed

that all South America had become independent earlier than it should have and
that the US was now suffering the consequences of this premature independence.
He asked what we could expect in Africa which was two-to-three-hundred years
behind South America. He opined that, if present trends continued, Africa would
either return to the jungle or be re-colonized—he saw no escape from these con-
sequences.155
Talks in New York between Franco Nogueira and a delegation from nine
African countries, in October, made little headway. According to Mahoney, ‘in
the final weeks of his administration, [Kennedy] strengthened relations with the
Angolans and resolved that he would accept no more of Salazar’s blackmail
over the Azores.’156 That is probably wishful thinking. Speaking to Ambassador
Anderson, prior to the start of his mission in Lisbon, John F. Kennedy
‘reiterated the difficulties of the assignment particularly as it affected United
States ability to retain our base in the Azores’; consequently, Anderson should
submit his ‘best judgment as to the limits the United States could go in the
forthcoming discussions in the United Nations without losing the Azores.’157
And as 1963 came to a close, the Portuguese government was exuding con-
fidence, Nogueira telling Kennedy that even African representatives at the UN
now accepted that there was no war in Angola, where an ‘economic boom’ was
taking place.158
155. Ibid., doc. 358, Washington, from the Department of State to the embassy in Norway, 981. Ball re-
counted his meetings with Salazar in his memoirs, The Past Has Another Pattern: Memoirs (NY, Norton &
Company, 1982), but seems to have taken the rhetoric for the reality: ‘The mystique of “advancing the
boundaries of faith and empire” was central to Salazar’s convictions. It explained both his conservatism and
his profound confidence in the righteousness of his cause. I quoted Camoens at an early point in our conver-
sation, and Salazar responded with a grateful smile. During our talks, history constantly intruded, so that our
whole conversation seemed set against the backdrop of the grand but pathetic saga of Portugal. Salazar was
absorbed by a time dimension quite different from ours; it seemed as though he and his whole country were
living in more than one century, and the heroes of the past were still shaping Portuguese policy. That
impression was so acute that, after our second day of conversation, my reporting telegram to President
Kennedy observed, among other things, that we had been wrong to think of Portugal as under the control of
a dictator. It was, instead, “ruled by a triumvirate consisting of Vasco da Gama, Prince Henry the Navigator,
and Salazar.”‘ Ball, The Past, pp. 276–77.
157. Ibid., doc. 359, memorandum of conversation, Washington, 12 September 1963, p. 983.
158. Ibid., doc. 373, memorandum of conversation, Washington, 7 November 1963, p. 582.
Chapter X
The Colonial Reckoning II
Salazar’s Defiance
The Fall of Goa
T he outbreak of violence in Angola forced the pace of events in India,

where Goa and the other Portuguese territories remained, as Nehru once
described them, a ‘pimple on the face of India’: an irritant which, under in-
creasing political pressure, he could no longer tolerate.1 On 30 March 1961 the
PIDE reported an armed incursion on Goa’s northern border. A police post
was attacked with small-arms fire, without consequences.2 In October, a
seminar was hosted in New Delhi by the Indian Council for Africa, which
brought together members of pro-Indian Goan associations, Portuguese
opposition groups, African liberation movements, and Western politicians
known for their anti-colonial stance. The hawks triumphed over the doves.3 By
1. Pedro Aires de Oliveira, in his Os despojos da aliança, provides a useful summary of the reasons for Nehru’s
military intervention in Goa. Aires de Oliveira mentions the succession of diplomatic and political setbacks
endured by Salazar, the inability of the Portuguese to mount an effective, or even a symbolic, resistance,
domestic political pressure, border disputes with Pakistan and China and, finally, the desire to reclaim
leadership of the ‘Afro-Asian Block’, which, by the early 1960s, could only be done by an act of anti-colonial
violence. Aires de Oliveira, Os despojos, pp. 264–65.
2. AOS CO UL 32C, report 404/61-GU, 30 March 1961.
3. Aires de Oliveira, Os despojos, pp. 265–66. According to Stanley Wolpert, at this seminar Nehru demon-
strated that his mind was already made up on the subject of military action. Wolpert quotes Nehru as saying,
‘As you know, we have a little bit of the Portuguese colony in India. It is almost a dot in size. Yet it has
November, the situation was clearly getting worse. The PIDE, in a Very Secret
report, noted that ‘the Indian Union has communicated to the United States
[…] and to Great Britain its intention to execute various measures to “inte-
grate” Portuguese India in its territory, in the coming months.’4 Some days
later, the PIDE handed Salazar an unidentified intelligence report, written in
English, which hinted at divisions within the Indian establishment over the
proposed action, whose main instigator was the Bombay-based Defense
Minister Krishna Menon; as for Nehru, he was ‘believed to be sitting in the
fence. But combined pressure of radical African leaders and of Menon’s stance
might bring him down in favor of an attack on Goa.’ One possibility
mentioned in the report, the passage being underlined by Salazar, was of ‘the
Goan population’ siding ‘with the Portuguese in the fighting.’5
In December matters took a turn for the worse. The State Department
noted ‘mounting pressure on the government of India to take positive steps to
incorporate the remaining Portuguese Overseas Territories on the Indian sub-
continent […] into India’. Such pressures came from what was puzzlingly
described as ‘Goan “nationalists”’—exiles in Bombay, African nationalists, and
the opposition parties in India.6 Looking weak in relation to both Portugal and
China, with whom a border dispute in Ladakh had developed, would prove too
much for the Indian government: it had to act on one front, and Portugal was a
more manageable enemy than China. A build-up of troops close to the border
with Goa began, and the Portuguese government asked Washington to clarify
its position on the matter. Washington’s response was to advise Prime Minister
Nehru not to use force, and to stress the principle of self-determination, which,
in the case of Goa, was believed to cut both ways, since the Indian government
could not be sure that, if freely consulted, the people of the territory would
choose to be incorporated into the Indian Union. Ambassador Galbraith, no
friend of the Lisbon authorities, urged Nehru to be cautious when the two men
met on 11 December, but Nehru stressed Portuguese provocations (which
even Galbraith cast doubt on).7 The main American argument, Galbraith
created a strong feeling in India…it has occupied our mind a good deal… All these years we were thinking
not merely of solving a problem in the immediate present but solving it for good… At no time did we in our
minds…renounce or give up the possibility of military action. But we did not want to resort to it… We were
prepared to wait, as we have waited very long. If we have to take some other action, we shall take it.’ Stanley
Wolpert, Nehru: A Tryst With Destiny (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 481.
4. AOS CO UL 50, PIDE report 1594/61-GU, 3 November 1961.
5. AOS CO UL 50, unknown and unidentified report, dated 8 December 1961 and read by Salazar the
following day, delivered by Lieutenant Colonel Homero de Oliveira Matos, Director of the PIDE.
6. FRUS 1961–1963 vol. 19 (Washington: Department of State, 1996), doc. 65, memorandum from the
Director of the Office of South Asian Affairs (Weil) to the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and
South Asian Affairs (Talbot).
7. Ibid., doc. 68, New Delhi, 10 December 1961, from the embassy in India to the Department of State,
footnote 3.
The Colonial Reckoning II: Salazar’s Defiance 497
stressed to his superiors in Washington, should be the loss of face for India if it
resorted to force—not the expression of any support for Portugal. London was
following a similar route. Portugal also turned to Great Britain in this moment
of crisis: Franco Nogueira met the British ambassador, Sir Archibald Ross, on
5 December and, explaining that tensions were mounting, asked London to
have a soothing word in Nehru’s ear; the Portuguese Foreign Minister
suggested also that British observers might watch over the border between
Portuguese and Indian territory.8 This last suggestion was also presented to
Delhi by Lisbon, but to no effect. That India was determined to invade was
clear from the paucity of its government’s accusations of an arms build-up by
the Portuguese and of growing repression in the territory; as Galbraith put it to
India’s Foreign Minister, M. J. Desai, ‘the world would not believe that
Portugal was attacking India […] what India was calling a naval concentration
consisted of a couple of antique gunboats.’9
Faced by the Portuguese request for help with India, the British, whose
relationship with their former prize colony was not ideal, equivocated. On the
morning of 10 December Salazar met Américo Tomás, briefing him on the
situation, and in the evening he met Franco Nogueira and Adriano Moreira for
three hours. The three men decided to play Portugal’s supreme card, making
use of the British Alliance in order to extract a guarantee of support for Portu-
guese sovereignty in Goa. On the morning of 11 December, the Portuguese
ambassador delivered a Note to the Foreign Office which recalled the terms of
the 1899 Portuguese-British declaration and the subsequent use made by
London of this declaration, and asked Great Britain to specify by which means
it proposed to contribute to the defense of Goa.10 Later that day, however, the
British ambassador in Lisbon informed José Luís Archer, Secretary General of
the MNE, that the chances of his government helping Portugal defend Goa
against India, in accordance with the 1899 treaty, were ‘extremely limited’,
given India’s Commonwealth membership. The best thing to do, he suggested,
was for Portugal to bring the matter to the attention of the Security Council
8. Aires de Oliveira, Os despojos, pp. 267–68.

9. FRUS 1961–1963, vol. 19, doc. 70, New Delhi, 12 December 1961, from the embassy in India to the
Department of State.
10. Franco Nogueira wrote, later, that ‘in Lisbon, there are no illusions about the ultimate attitude of the
British government; it is evident that one cannot expect a British declaration of war against India. But it is
not impossible that, in order to avoid the embarrassment, and even the inconvenience, of ignoring a treaty
still in force and still of use to the United Kingdom, London will make an effort in Washington so that both
governments, through diplomatic means, might halt Prime Minister Nehru. A solemn announcement should
suffice: that if the Indian Union used force against Goa, it would seriously harm its relations with the United
Kingdom and the United States, and the two sizeable loans being negotiated in the City and on Wall Street
would no longer go ahead.’ Franco Nogueira, A resistência, p. 359. According to Pedro Aires Oliveira, the
Portuguese were not interested in securing actual British military help, merely the use of British air bases
allowing Portuguese airplanes to fly in reinforcements. Aires de Oliveira, Os despojos, p. 269.
immediately—even if he could understand why Portugal might refrain from
appealing to the UN for help given recent events in Angola. In any case, the
high commissioner in Delhi had been given instructions to make one last push
for peace.11 The British actually went further, with Prime Minister Harold
Macmillan addressing a personal letter to Nehru, in which the latter was asked
not to abandon India’s traditional foreign policy, built on moderation. Nehru
replied, stating essentially that the time for diplomacy was over, and that in
their dealings with Portugal the Indians had felt that they were dealing with
people who lived in a different century.
Later, informing Nehru that Washington would vote against him in a puta-
tive Security Council resolution, Galbraith pointed out that ‘most of the
shooting so far had been in newspapers […] my research indicated that only
one unfortunate seemed to have got in front of bullet.’12 In the last minutes of
15 December, a telegram signed by Salazar was sent to U Thant, informing the
Secretary General of the UN that he could rest assured that Portugal would not
undertake any action that might present a threat to peace and security. Salazar
reminded U Thant of Portugal’s proposal for international observers to be
placed on the border, and declared himself ready to negotiate with India where
and when its leaders wanted, but only on the subject of ‘problems emerging
from the shared border between the Portuguese State of India and the Indian
Union, including an international guarantee to the latter that Portuguese
territory will not be used against its security.’13 The point has been made that in
their dealings with Nehru, as the crisis came to a head, and despite their recent
difficult dealings with Portugal, American diplomats adopted a much harsher
tone than their British counterparts.14 On 16 December, the Indian
ambassador in Washington was told that were his government to announce a
six-month suspension of action, the United States ‘would be willing to under-
take a serious effort to help bring about a peaceful solution to the problem’;15
otherwise, it would be difficult to convince Congress to support further
economic aid to India. But it was too late: Goa’s fate was sealed. The invasion
began in the early hours of 18 December. In the middle of the night Franco
Nogueira summoned Elbrick to the MNE and informed him that the possi-
bility of taking the matter to the Security Council was being discussed, issuing
the already quoted threat to the Azores air base.
11. AOS CO NE 30A, ‘Confidential’ report by the Secretary General of the MNE (Ambassador Archer), 12
December 1961.
12. FRUS 1961–1963, vol. 19, doc. 74, New Delhi, 15 December 1961, from the embassy in India to the
13. AOS COE 3, telegram, Lisbon, 15 December 1961, António de Oliveira Salazar to U Thant.
14. Aires de Oliveira, Os despojos, p. 271.
15. FRUS 1961–1963, vol 19, doc. 75, New Delhi, 17 December 1961, from the embassy in India to the
Department of State, footnote 2.
This was not enough for Franco Nogueira, who went on:
[…] pursuance of our present policy re Portuguese overseas territories could have
dire consequences in Portugal itself and could well lead to “Castro-type” regime
here. Portugal, he said, did not want support of US if it were to lead to Portugal’s
destruction.16
That very day the Security Council met, but an American resolution con-
demning India’s action and calling for her troops’ withdrawal was, predictably,
blocked by the Soviet Union.
While diplomats jockeyed for position, and London and Washington
sought to avoid a conflict they deemed undesirable, but in which their sym-
pathies were ultimately with India, Salazar prepared for the worst. Women and
children were evacuated from Goa. On 14 December Salazar wrote to gover-
nor-general Vassalo e Silva, who served also as commander-in-chief of Portu-
guese India’s 3,500 soldiers and sailors, and who could count on no aerial
means of defense. This was a letter clearly written for posterity. It offered no
comfort and was not designed to do so. The government could not foresee
what would happen in the next few days, but an invasion could not be dis-
counted. Resistance was the first duty of the Portuguese armed forces, since it
would cast India as the aggressor, and bring upon it international condemna-
tion. But simple resistance was not enough: this resistance had to be worthy of
Portugal’s long presence in India, in order to uphold Portugal’s claim to the
territory—and, by extension, the rest of the empire. The prose is highly
unusual for Salazar, and the sentiment expressed, from one who had such
reservations about the armed forces, and about the Portuguese in general, was
a step into the unknown:
It is horrible to think that this might mean total sacrifice, but I recommend and
expect that sacrifice as the sole form of living up to our traditions and perform the
greatest service to the future of the nation. I cannot envisage either cease-fires or
Portuguese prisoners, and there will be no surrendered ships, for I feel there can
only be victorious or dead soldiers and sailors.17
In order to carry out their mission effectively, buying time for Portugal’s
diplomats to force the Indian government to back down, the troops had to
resist at least eight days. Salazar concluded, ‘God will not permit this officer
16. Ibid., vol. 13 doc. 335, Lisbon, 18 December 1961, from the embassy in Portugal to the Department of
State, Lisbon, p. 916.
17. Excerpts of the letter are to be found in Franco Nogueira, A resistência, pp. 364–65. It contained nothing
new, the doctrine behind it having been enunciated in the speech to the National Assembly on 30 November
1954.
[Vassalo e Silva] to be the last governor of the State of India’. Resisting for
eight days was a tall order. The troops were spread out over the three terri-
tories of Goa, Damão, and Diu; the sole ‘significant’ warship was the Afonso de
Albuquerque, the same warship that had mutinied during the Spanish Civil War.
On land the weapons were old and the ammunition unreliable. The same could
be said of the communications equipment. Training for an invasion scenario,
given the number of tasks attributed to the armed forces in the everyday
running of Goa, had been insufficient. The result was predictable, and Salazar’s
asked-for eight days of resistance never materialized. Operation Vijay was a
complete success for the Indians. At 2:00 p.m. on 19 December, local time,
Vassalo e Silva called on all forces to lay down their arms; the invasion was
over.
Salazar immediately received letters and telegrams expressing anger and
revulsion over events. Jacques Ploncard d’Assac, his most devoted French
admirer, wrote that ‘the name of Goa can only be honorable if inscribed on
your flags.’18 Dona Filipa de Bragança joined the chorus:
When, last night, the Radio announced an official note from the Presidency of the
Council my heart tightened. And what I feared came true: news of the attack by
the Indian Union’s troops against our beloved India. I cried, I prayed, I thought of
you, whose heart will have been crying as well; I believe I reacted in the same way
as thousands of Portuguese women were doing, and I stayed glued to the radio
until 3:30 in the morning, when the broadcast ended.19
Cerejeira, who had said a special Mass on 18 December in the presence of a

relic of St Francis Xavier, wrote, as the year ended, ‘you must feel in your heart
and your soul all the pain of Portugal.’20 Salazar disappeared from view: he was
not heard from. A foreign diplomat wrote,
A most noteworthy event—or rather a negative event—has been the silence of Dr

Salazar. The only statement by him appearing in the newspapers over the past
week is a reprint of an interview given to a FIGARO correspondent, but this
interview could have been given ten days ago. His silence has led to speculation of
all types—that he was seriously ill, and finally, on St. Stephen’s Day, that he had
died.21
18. AOS CP 17, letter, Lisbon, 18 December 1961, Jacques Ploncard d’Assac to António de Oliveira Salazar.
19. AOS CP 38, letter, Portimão, 18 December 1961, Dona Filipa de Bragança to António de Oliveira
Salazar.
20. AOS CP 47, letter, 31 December 1961, Cardinal-Patriarch Manuel Cerejeira to António de Oliveira
Salazar.
21. Ribeiro de Meneses (ed.) Correspondência diplomática, doc. 292, report, Lisbon, 27 December 1961, J. W.
Lennon to Secretary General, department of External Affairs, Dublin.
The Le Figaro interview was granted to journalist Serge Groussard in the
afternoon of 20 December; the two men spoke for two and a half hours.22
Groussard wrote that although Salazar seemed, at times, sad, he was serene,
and totally at peace with himself. Salazar fired in all directions. Nehru was
driven to madness by the sight of Goa, by the idea that Portuguese right might
triumph over Indian might. He tried to asphyxiate Goa, only to see it grow
more prosperous: ‘Whenever anyone mentioned Goa, he [Nehru] lost his
habitual calm.’ His last recourse was military action. Portugal had enough
soldiers in Goa to force India into an act of aggression, before the eyes of the
world, an act which required, Salazar said, thirty thousand soldiers, seven
squadrons of modern airplanes, and its fleet. All of these means were
necessary, Salazar added, because Nehru ‘knew the Portuguese patriotism of
the six hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants of our lands in the Hindustani
peninsula.’ Through his action, Nehru had revealed his ultimate ambition: to
rebuild the British Empire in India. No-one should feel safe: Pakistan, Ceylon,
Bhutan, and Nepal—all were now awake to the danger Nehru represented: ‘His
people starve, his country’s unity is precarious, but he, Nehru, is obsessed by
these still-free territories which he wants to absorb.’ Nehru also wanted to
settle tens of millions of Indians in Africa, and was using peace-keeping opera-
tions in that continent to advance his aims; he hoped that these might one day
replace the white man in Africa. It was not just Nehru who came under attack.
There was much spleen to vent. The United Nations were not only useless but
also, what was worse, harmful:
The United Nations are no more than a field for demagogy to flourish. There, a
band of newborn countries, which have no tradition, no real structure, and no
soul, incessantly desire to give lessons to, and even admonish, the most ancient
nations of the West, the legitimate guardians of civilization.
The United States footed the bill for the UN, not because it agreed with
what was said during its sessions, but merely because it felt it needed the
support of the countries represented there. If the UN could no longer protect
its members, then these had to rely on their allies: but here too Portugal had
been let down. NATO was marked by weakness and quarrels. Even Britain had
intervened in New Delhi on a number of occasions, since it disliked the idea
that a member of the Commonwealth should enrich itself at the expense of
one of Britain’s loyal allies, but to no avail: ‘tomorrow all will have been for-
22. The interview was published on 23 and 24 December in Le Figaro (Paris). A Portuguese translation was
published in António de Oliveira Salazar, Entrevistas 1960–1966, (Coimbra, Coimbra Editora, 1967) pp. 61–
76.
gotten.’ Salazar drove the point home with a vengeance, in the process re-
writing History:
In September 1939, in opposition to what certain English gazettes have written,

the British government did not ask in any shape or fashion for the implementation
of the support clauses contained in the alliance. Portugal, free of British pressure,
then proclaimed its neutrality […] But in 1943, Winston Churchill’s government
requested, under the terms of the alliance, that the Allies be allowed to establish
aerial, maritime and land bases in the Azores; this, at a time when Germany
seemed invulnerable on all fronts. Submarine warfare had reached an extra-
ordinary violence and the allied convoys were suffering ever-greater losses, in a
most alarming fashion. Had we refused, we would have gravely harmed the Allies.
Despite the risks, we accepted immediately […] I don’t know why the Germans
never bombed us.
African nationalists furnished Salazar with one last target; theirs was a form
of racism as deplorable as that of the Nazis, since their aim was to wipe every
last vestige of white presence from the African continent.
On Christmas Eve Salazar had lunch at the Palace of Belém with Américo
Tomás. The conversation, as one can glean from his diary, was not a pleasant
one for Salazar. Tomás had spoken to Santos Costa; the two military men had
discussed ‘above all the lack of defensive elements in Goa’. Such a lack
obviously had political responsibilities, from which Salazar, as President of the
Council and Minister of National Defense, could not hide. Not surprisingly,
Salazar and Tomás discussed the possibility of a government reshuffle, in order
to better meet the challenges of the situation. Salazar then focused his attention
over the next week on the speech he would deliver at a special session of the
National Assembly, in which many of the themes mentioned in the Le Figaro
interview were revisited, but in a more solemn manner.
Just as he had spoken to parliament after each of the occupations of
Timor, so too Salazar addressed it to account for the loss of Portuguese India,
which was a more serious affair, since its reversal did not seem possible. What
he did not do, however, was read his own speech. As he told the listening
deputies, ‘the emotions of the past few weeks provoked an accident which left
me with no voice or, rather, which left me without a sufficiently strong voice
for a long intervention.’ He therefore asked the President of the National
Assembly, Mário de Figueiredo, to read it for him. The occupation of Goa,
which for 450 years had been Portuguese, represented ‘one of the greatest
disasters in our history and is a very grave blow against the moral life of the
nation.’ Once again Salazar spoke of Portuguese right, recognized by all, and
Indian might; once again Salazar referred Nehru’s plans for expansion across
Asia and Africa; once again Salazar pointed to the British failure to recognize
the validity of the alliance, despite Portuguese collaboration in 1943. The attack
on London did not end there. Salazar now made public the fact that the British
had delayed for eight days a negative answer to the Portuguese request for
access to airbases that might allow Lisbon to reinforce the garrison in Goa. As
a result, the Portuguese government, dependent on London’s answer, had not
been able to make alternative arrangements. Britain’s diplomacy, which Salazar
described as ‘most prudent’, to laughter from his audience, was thus enlisted as
the scapegoat for Portugal’s defeat. However hard it may have been for
London to see one of its allies robbed of a precious territory by a member of
the Commonwealth, it was legitimate to ask whether there was any point in
preserving the alliance. Both Britain and the United States had been rebuffed
by India. Where was the world heading when the powerful no longer upheld
the rule of law? Portugal refused to recognize Goa as a part of India; it would
continue to be represented in the National Assembly.
There now began a perverse episode by which Salazar attempted to deflect
blame for the defeat. On Christmas Eve a telegram arrived from the Portu-
guese embassy in Pakistan, a country which, for obvious reasons, enjoyed a
close working relationship with Portugal. The Pakistanis had, on the basis of
radio intercepts, reconstructed the naval battle off Goa, and saw no shame in
the Afonso de Albuquerque having been disabled in combat, ‘given the crushing
imbalance of the forces present.’23 But this was not all. The same telegram
added, ominously, that there was
news, of Indian origin, that, if confirmed, will gravely affect the military honor of
the governor-general, as well as the military commander of that State, and which, I
greatly fear, will hurt the honor of the nation itself […]
Here, then, was confirmation of what Salazar, a civilian largely ignorant of

military realities, suspected: the army had not fought as the weight of History
demanded. The return of the prisoners—whose existence Salazar’s victory-or-
death vision of warfare had not allowed for—stopped being a priority for him.
The officers, soldiers, and sailors of the Portuguese armed forces remained in
India, at Indian expense, until May 1962, when repatriation began. Salazar had
shown little interest in repatriating them. An air bridge took the captives to
Karachi, where they boarded a number of Portuguese vessels which took them
23. AOS CP 193, telegram, Karachi, 23 December 1961, embassy of Portugal to President of the Council of
Ministers and Minister of Foreign Affairs. The Afonso de Albuquerque, badly damaged by fire from much more
modern warships, ran aground and was abandoned by its crew. The captain and two crew members of a
much smaller vessel, the patrol craft Vega, based in Diu, sacrificed their life in the fight against Indian sea and
air forces.
home; they reached Portugal at the end of the month. Their official reception
was frosty, indicating that their ordeal was not yet over. A pamphlet had been
distributed, prior to their arrival, which stated that the arriving soldiers would
be sent, by force, to Angola:
Let us all go to the quay to await the Vera Cruz, the Pátria and the
Moçambique to applaud the soldiers who disobeyed Salazar’s orders,
who refused to fight in an unjust war.
Let us together shout:
No more soldiers to the colonies!
Down with the colonial war!
Peace in Angola!
Salazar out!24
An inquiry into the events in Goa was launched, presided over by General
David dos Santos, in an atmosphere of distrust and intimidation. Investigations
lasted for over half a year. In March 1963, the press announced the results of
the intense inquiry (which meant, of course, that there had been no courts-
martial). Some officers were made to retire; others were discharged from the
army; others were suspended for six months, being forced to spend this time in
a fortified camp. More still were given medals and commendations—too many
medals, it was generally estimated, for the little fighting that had occurred.
Looking back on events, Américo Tomás wrote that ‘resistance could and
should have been much greater than it was. Portugal’s past, the exceptional
heroism which the Portuguese had always demonstrated in India, demanded,
clearly, much more.’25 No-one accepted political responsibilities for what had
occurred, however; the way in which a handful of officers were scapegoated
left a poor impression in the country in general and the army in particular.
Beyond Repression: Colonial Reform
As we have seen, José Gonçalo Correia de Oliveira was elevated to

ministerial rank in May 1961, occupying a position similar to that left vacant by
the Washington-bound Pedro Teotónio Pereira. Correia de Oliveira was
needed as a guarantee, to present and future partners, that the regime, although
fighting to protect Portuguese Africa, was not abandoning its growing Euro-
pean commitments. However, he had also been the author of a study commis-
sioned by Salazar, in the summer of 1960, into the transformation of the Portu-
24. AOS CO PC 77, pamphlet, “Ao Povo de Lisboa!”

guese empire into a single economic area, united by common tariffs and a
common currency. According to Manuel Lucena, the reason behind this report,
and the reforms that followed, lay in the consequences of Portugal’s signing up
to GATT: they were a signal to nationalist opinion that overseas Portugal still
mattered.26
One key to the strategy, which in many ways implied a dramatic reversal of
established policy, was to secure and develop the economy of the overseas
territories, throwing open the doors to outside investment: making, in other
words, international capitalism an accomplice of the Portuguese presence in
Africa. Restoring confidence in the economic prospects of Angola was a
prerequisite of this strategy, and this was partly achieved by the government
and the Minister of Finance, António Pinto Barbosa, who coordinated, with
the major Portuguese banks, the purchase of colonial-dependent stocks, in
order to preserve their value.27 For the new strategy to be successful, a number
of other pieces had to fall into place. On the one hand, the overseas provinces
had to be opened up to foreign investment; this made reform—sufficient to
provide a fig-leaf of decency for outside investors—necessary. On the other
hand, white settlers had to be placated. This last task would not be easy. On 15
April, fourteen economic associations signed a fifteen-page-long list of
requests; this included measures of a security nature, first of all, but it sought as
well to develop the local economy, secure the exchange situation, restore the
province’s finances, and reform its administration. As a PIDE report citing a
foreign observer pointed out, not only was the military situation far from
resolved, and the Portuguese authorities deeply divided over which course to
take—systematic repression or a moderate approach, protecting what remained
of race relations—but political opinion among Angola’s whites was splitting,
with the notion of an independent Angola gaining ground—even if a deal had
to be made with UPA to secure it.28
As more and more information became available, in the wake of the 1961
revolts, about the conditions endured by the indigenous population, the
possibility of large-scale reforms in the way Angola was administered began to
gain credence. Could the reality of life in the overseas provinces be made to
match, through the curbing of abuses of all kinds, the rhetoric of Portuguese
colonialism? This was the task which faced the incoming Overseas Minister,
Adriano Moreira. Having toured Angola as soon as he took office, Moreira
settled on a policy of firm resistance to the nationalist groups, a policy per-
sonified by General Venâncio Deslandes, named on 6 June as both governor-
26. Lucena, ‘José Gonçalo Correia de Oliveira’, pp. 631–39.

27. AOS CP 21, letter, Lisbon, 15 April 1961, António M. Pinto Barbosa to António de Oliveira Salazar.
28. AOS CO UL 32D, PIDE report 640/61-GU, 29 April 1961.
general and military commander. But alongside the stick, there came the carrot.
The first reform was decree 43,730, of 12 June, regarding the administration of
the ‘overseas territories’.29 A new impetus was given to the division of overseas
territory into municipalities, equipped with their own chamber, or câmara, in
replication of existing arrangements in metropolitan Portugal. Some power was
thus being devolved to local authorities, although the ‘organic’ approach to the
elections limited the ability of electors, white or black, to control these
bodies.30 More significant were the decrees that emerged late in the summer:
one to stimulate Portuguese settlement in Angola, and another repealing the
long-standing Statute of the Indigenous Population. These two pieces of
legislation were prepared by Adriano Moreira and reflected his desire for a
new, assimilationist departure, one in which an effort was made to show that
Portuguese of all colors and creeds were united by a sense of belonging to a
common national project. This was lusotropicalism codified into actual legis-
lation. These ambitions were reflected not only in the content of the decrees,
but also in their prologues, and in a major speech delivered by Adriano Moreira
in Oporto, on 28 August, preparing the way for the decrees that followed on 6
September. Decrees, prologues, and speech were all cleared by Salazar at a
number of meetings, in the Estoril fort, with Moreira.31
Decree 43,895, of 6 September 1961,32 set up Provincial Settlement Boards
(Juntas Provinciais de Povoamento) in those provinces capable of sustaining an
increase in European population. This settlement was needed for a variety of
reasons: to confer speed and technical expertise to a movement which was
already taking place, thanks to the ‘predisposition of the Portuguese people for
the task’, but only in a somewhat haphazard way; to ensure that the develop-
ment of Portuguese Africa was carried out by people who felt at home there,
and were not driven by mercenary gain;33 and to improve the conditions of the
existing population:
29. An English translation of the decree can be found in Adriano Moreira, Portugal’s Stand in Africa (New
York: University Publishers, 1962), pp. 256–61.
30. One foreign observer, commenting on an early airing of this decree, wrote that ‘it is, to say the least,
extremely unlikely that reforms of this type would satisfy Angolan Nationalists, but it is, of course,
impossible for the régime to establish overseas a more liberal rule than exists in the metropole.’ Ribeiro de
Meneses (ed.), Correspondência diplomática, doc. 271, report, Lisbon, 14 June 1961, J. W. Lennon to Secretary,
Department of External Affairs, Dublin.
31. The Irish minister in Lisbon summarized the speech for his superiors in Dublin, because ‘so much
prominence is being given to the speech delivered in Porto on 28th ultimo by the Minister for Overseas
Territories.’ Ribeiro de Meneses (ed.), Correspondência diplomática, doc. 278, report, Lisbon, 6 September 1961,
J. W. Lennon to Secretary, Department of External Affairs, Dublin.
32. An English translation of the decree can be found in Moreira, Portugal’s Stand, pp. 232–56.
33. In the speech he gave in Oporto on 28 August 1961, Moreira explained that ‘we […] continue to believe
that a man serves best when he serves his own country, and for that reason we have no doubt as to the
advantage of our manner of looking at the needs of the African territories. In these needs we saw a sound
reason for promoting the permanent settlement of European Portuguese in lands overseas, where man does
not go to sell his services but, on the contrary, to lead a normal life, serving together with the aborigines one
We believe […] that, simultaneously with the fixation of native agricultural popula-
tions, only advantages can accrue from establishing more advanced rural popula-
tions, because their degree of evolution makes them more capable of assimilating
adequate techniques, because their habits constitute a healthy incentive for the
social rise of aborigines living side by side on a land that belongs equally to all of
them or, chiefly, because nothing contributes more to association and fusion of
the different races in a common homeland.
Moreira genuinely believed that ‘the universal vocation of the Portuguese

people will always require the creation of pluri-racial communities, fully inte-
grated and stable, harmonizing cultural values from various sources’, and that
Brazil was one such entity. What the older Salazar, whose views had been
shaped in an era when European control of Africa was unquestioned, made of
such views is less clear—but he would play, mostly, by the new rules, and tailor
his comments accordingly.34 Above all, the decree stated, the tropical civiliza-
tions established by the Portuguese were ‘a factor of peace’ which had to be
strengthened in the face of an assault by the enemies of the West. The tasks of
the new boards were immense: to review labor needs in each province, and
how these might be met by the local population, or be resolved through immi-
gration; to review proposed industrial or commercial undertakings ‘as a settle-
ment factor’, which entailed considering ‘their psycho-ethnological, and social-
political aspects’; to support rural settlement groups, capable of developing
hitherto neglected parts of their respective province; and to support the natural
tendencies of the Portuguese as assimilators, by promoting or encouraging
initiatives tending to consolidate the bonds of solidarity and association of the

different classes, or social or ethnic aggregates, particularly through sports, folk-
lore, cultural manifestations, youth labor camps, auto-construction of houses, etc.
On the same day as the Provincial Settlement Boards were unveiled, the
Estatuto dos Indígenas was repealed by decree 43,893.35 Care was taken in the
prologue to explain the origins of the statute, which had ‘not always been
understood so as to do justice to the reasons and aims that led to its adoption.’
The Statute had reflected, according to the decree, the respect shown by
Portugal to the Private Law of ‘populations incorporated in the national
and the same country and, therefore, common interests […] The African peoples who took other paths are
now learning by painful experience, of which they are unfortunately not the only victims, that they are
heading toward a servitude imposed either by neo-colonialism or by a return to primitive conditions.’
Moreira, Portugal’s Stand, p. 184.
34. There would be important exceptions. One was the interview granted to the French newspaper Aurore,
on 12 October 1964 in which Salazar stated, ‘I should not be labelled a racist for saying that blacks do not
have the same aptitudes as whites: it is simply a conclusion drawn from experience. Blacks must be led.’
35. An English translation of the decree can be found in Moreira, Portugal’s Stand, pp. 225–32.
community from the time of the Discoveries.’ The Statute was a legal device
than enabled the State to protect the populations which, across national terri-
tory, were organized in ‘traditional groupings’:
The predominance of a sense of mission, a feeling for essentials regardless of

formulae, the imperative duty, always complied with, of not doing violence to
populations, led us to create a formal relationship between private law and political
status and to make the latter dependent upon the kind of private law under which
each Portuguese lived, without prejudice to the common nationality, attributed to
all according to the same rules.36
Why, then, the change? Because Portugal had worked, across the centuries,
to raise the standard of the population, thus allowing it to be brought under the
same legal code. This equality had long been the norm in India, Macao, and
Cape Verde; it had recently been enacted in São Tomé e Príncipe. Now it was
the turn of the mainland African provinces to benefit from it. The two decrees
should be taken together:
We believe, indeed, that the political and social conditions of our provinces on the
African continent permit eliminating many of the laws which left the protection of
local populations entirely in the hands of the State. We think that it would be
useful to give these populations wider possibilities of looking after their interests
and participating in the administration of local affairs.
Adriano Moreira’s vigor and ideological outlook bought Salazar some time
on the international front. At least now Portugal had a policy which it could
point to as progressive, even if it was based on a very selective reading of
Portuguese history and of conditions in the colonies, and reforms of some sort
were underway. Few knowledgeable observers, though, saw in the reforms any
kind of solution to the country’s problems. The British ambassador urged his
superiors in London to welcome the reforms, but they did not, being especially
worried by the commitment to intensifying white emigration.37 On 19
September British and American diplomats met in the State Department and
36. In the already cited Oporto speech, Moreira fleshed out the historical reasons for the Statute’s
introduction: ‘The rationalist character of public law in the nineteenth century […] which everywhere set up
a similar formulae of political organization, made current a purely technical concept of citizenship which was
not synonymous with nationality because it designated merely the capacity to exercise the political rights
connected with the choice of the members of the organs of sovereignty. Since on the grounds of authenticity
our successive Native Statutes denied individuals covered by them such political rights, accusations were not
lacking that we refused them nationality itself, and there were frequent affirmations to the effect that the
Portuguese people were subject to two political laws and thereby divided into two classes with practically no
possibility of intercommunication.’ Moreira, Portugal’s stand, p. 186.
37. Aires de Oliveira, Os despojos da aliança, p. 260.
came to the conclusion that the reforms offered little: there were no steps
towards self-determination, and it was feared that the possibilities opened up
by the repeal of the Estatuto dos Indígenas might be closed by educational and
property restrictions on the vote.38
Another important step in the transformation of the colonies was their un-
precedented opening up of the colonies to foreign journalists. José Manuel
Fragoso, a Portuguese diplomat reflecting on the Security Council session that
had debated the Angolan situation, in June 1961, pointed out that there were
almost no foreign journalistic accounts favorable to the Portuguese which the
country’s diplomats could point to, while Portuguese news sources were of
little or no use, with their headlines of ‘cleansing operations’, ‘merciless struggle
against terrorism’, ‘thousands of attackers’, ‘hundreds of dead terrorists’, etc.39
This would change with time, notably in the United States, where conservative
voices were raised to denounce the administration’s African policy, and to
praise those fighting to ‘halt communism’ in the continent. Foreign journalists
were now encouraged to visit the colonies; in one famous episode, Pravda
correspondents were welcomed into Mozambique. The result was over-
whelmingly positive. Conservative columnist James J. Kilpatrick wrote a series
of articles in October 1967, after a visit to Angola. On the 17th of that month,
for example, the article ‘Making haste slowly in Angola’ appeared:
As best an outside observer may judge these things, Portugal’s claim to a genuinely
multiracial society in Angola is quite valid. The public housing projects are com-
pletely integrated. No discrimination can be seen in parks, schools, sidewalk cafes.
The police and militia are almost wholly black. There is a single roll of voters.
Here in Luanda a stunning new technical institute, training 3,000 teenagers and
adults in three shifts a day, is turning out a vastly improved labor force. The
Angolan Africans have never had it so good.40
On 22 October 1967, in ‘“Mad” US policy loses friends in Africa’, Kilpatrick

wrote,
Consider, if you please, a few rhetorical questions: Where in Africa does one find
stability in government? Where does one find Western ideas and institutions?
Antipathy towards communism? Where is the black African advancing most
steadily on education, wealth, housing, medical care? Where are the harbors,
38. Ibid., p. 262.

39. AOS CO NE 30B, report, 22 June 1961, J. M. Fragoso. The words of Mário Silva, the Minister of the
Army, to departing troops—‘We are going to fight savages. We are going to fight wild beasts’—did not help.
Tomás, Últimas decadas, vol. 3, p. 97.
40. AOS CP 124 contains clippings of the articles, sent by their author. This one is taken from the Evening
Star.
docks, and mineral resources that hold the greatest strategic and economic im-
portance to the United States?
The answer is that these attitudes, exertions, amenities and advantages are to be
found largely in Angola, Rhodesia, Mozambique and South Africa.
This particular press campaign culminated with an interview with Salazar,

published on 29 October—‘To Salazar the outlook is gloomy but not hope-
less’.41 The United Nations, an organization that no longer carried out the aims
that lay behind its foundation, was the main target of Salazar’s spleen.
Adriano Moreira proved to be a domestically popular, if short-lived,
Overseas Minister. He fell from power in December 1962, as part of the
reshuffle that saw Salazar relinquish the National Defense portfolio. Moreira
was the victim of a power struggle that had evolved with General Deslandes,
whose populist and hard-line stance, impatience with existing legal restrictions
on his action, and costly plans for the immediate infrastructural transformation
of Angola, had proved popular with local whites.42 Acting unilaterally,
Deslandes decided to create a university in Luanda.43 Moreira, deeming this to
be a step too far, cancelled the relevant decree and summoned Deslandes to
Lisbon; Deslandes retaliated by resigning. Although Salazar dissuaded him
from this move, Deslandes maintained his refusal to see Moreira in Lisbon, as
a result of which he was eventually removed from his post, his exoneration
being announced on 25 September. There followed a tense moment, with
genuine fear in Lisbon that Deslandes might attempt to lead a coup, leading to
a declaration of independence. The white population of Angola had welcomed
the creation of a university in Luanda; there was a fear that it might appeal to
the military stationed in the territory to intervene.44 Deslandes’ movements
were reported by the PIDE. When his family left for Lisbon by plane, on 30
September, many officers and civil servants made their way to the airport to
applaud; a cry of ‘long live General Deslandes’, thought to have been uttered
41. Ibid.
42. See, in this regard, a number of reports on the Angolan situation by the Undersecretary of Overseas
Administration, João da Costa Freitas, sent to Adriano Moreira and forwarded by the latter to Salazar in the
summer of 1962, in AOS CP 186.
43. General Deslandes defended this action be explaining that exceptional times demanded exceptional
measures; just as during World War I officers were produced by the military academy in record time, so too
now graduates should be manufactured by the province to fuel its economic growth. While acknowledging
that he understood little of educational matters, Deslandes assured Adriano Moreira’s envoy that ‘the degrees
are better that those of the metropolis.’ AOS CP 186, note 6 (continuation), 4 July 1962, João (da Costa
Freitas) to Adriano Moreira.
44. In August 1962 the reported that a number of chambers of commerce in the Luanda province were
planning to write Salazar asking him for Angola self-determination as ‘the sole means to resolve the political
and economic problems of the said province, as well as [to ensure] the permanence of Europeans.’ AOS CO
UL50, report, 24 August 1962. Behind this initiative, stated the PIDE report, stood the figure of Venâncio
Guimarães, one of the most powerful figures in the Angolan economy. See W. G. Clarence-Smith, Slaves,
Peasants and Capitalists in Southern Angola, 1840–1926 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 53.
by an Air Force officer (the PIDE was trying to establish precisely who had
shouted), redoubled the ongoing clapping.45 When General Holbeche Fino,
named government delegate and interim commander-in-chief, in the absence
of a governor-general, also threatened to resign, Salazar had to intervene in his
capacity as Minister of Defense. Such a resignation would create a poor im-
pression, and, reiterating his admiration for General Deslandes, Salazar wrote,
In order to understand fully the situation it should be noted that there was never a
lack of trust among the government in General Deslandes, but rather serious mis-
understanding between the governor and the minister, especially in administrative
matters: misunderstandings which had made any collaboration and future useful
work impossible.46
There had never been any objection to Deslandes’ action as commander-in-

chief of the province; for this reason, Salazar had recommended him for a
‘suitable’ military medal. However, the kind of administration he had presided
over, with its promises of immediate progress, funded by foreign capital, had to
come to an end, since it was generating expectations that would be impossible
to satisfy, with immediate political consequences. Salazar went on to establish
very precise limits to any lusotropicalist flights of fancy:
Some think that Angola can constitute an independent white state; others think
that irrelevant agreements might allow for the creation of a mixed, or multi-racial,
state.
We must not doubt that in the present state of world and African politics there
can only be independent black-governed states or territories in which sovereignty
has a European root. It is for this solution which we have fought and it is
revolting that some there are conceiving of other possibilities […]
There is no reason to change course when it comes to overseas policy. We will
continue to defend a Portuguese Angola or, more specifically, an Angola which is
an integral part of Portugal.
Deslandes was taken seriously as a potential opponent. His letter to a

general stationed in Angola, presumably Holbeche Fino, was copied, and circu-
lated profusely in Angola, but no punitive action was taken as a result.47 He was
awarded the prestigious Ordem Militar da Torre e Espada; later he would be
45. AOS CO UL 30D, PIDE, copy of telegram received from Luanda on 1 October 1962. Forwarded to
Salazar by Fernando da Silva Pais.
46. AOS CO PC 78 K, letter, Lisbon, 3 October 1962, António de Oliveira Salazar to General Francisco
Holbeche Fino.
47. AOS CP 186, photocopy of letter by Venâncio Deslandes to an unnamed general, forwarded to Salazar
by Adriano Moreira and seen by Salazar on 5 October 1962.
given a key role in the National Defense Secretariat, and in the summer of
1968 Deslandes was appointed Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, becoming
the country’s leading soldier.
International Reaction to Portugal’s Stand
Although Salazar was to preserve his fan base among extreme-Right circles
in France, not only because of his ideological grounding but also because of his
African policy, the excellent relations which the regime enjoyed with the de
Gaulle presidency did not allow Salazar to acknowledge openly such support. It
was there, nevertheless. In December 1960 Salazar received a letter from
General Raoul Salan, who established a comparison between Portuguese and
French policies, to the detriment of the latter. As for Salazar’s latest speech,
Salan said ‘it is for us, Mister President, not just a lesson, but an encourage-
ment.’48 In April of 1961 Salazar, recently relieved of the Botelho Moniz
problem, received, via Ramón Serrano Suñer, another letter from Salan, who
informed him that he was about to undertake a dramatic action on behalf of
the French nation, and expressing his hope that such an action would find
understanding and support with Salazar.49
On 27 June 1961 Franz-Josef Strauss, the conservative German Defense
Minister, wrote Salazar, explaining his worries about the Angolan situation. The
letter was dictated, Strauss said, by his esteem for Salazar and his friendship for
Portugal: the Portuguese people, and Salazar’s government, had never, for a
moment, abandoned their traditional goodwill towards Germany, not even ‘at
the time of Germany’s catastrophe.’50 Strauss urged Salazar to consider his
stance in Africa, given France’s inability to secure Algeria with half-a-million
soldiers. Might a British-like solution to the problem not be found?
I beseech you to interpret my observation that an eventual defeat Overseas, or an

endless African war which would, in the last instance, exceed Portugal’s strength,
becoming thus a threat to the stability of your government, in the metropolis, as
an expression of my serious worries regarding the preservation of your great
work—carried out on behalf of Portugal and the whole of Europe.
Salazar replied on 13 July. Denying that Angola and Mozambique could be

compared to other colonial territories in Africa, he then launched into the
48. AOS CP 246, letter, San Sebastian, 10 December 1960, General Raoul Salan to António de Oliveira
Salazar.
49. AOS CD 1, letter, Madrid, 20 April 1961, General Raoul Salan to António de Oliveiro [sic] Salazar,
Président de la République de Portugal [sic].
50. AOS COE 3, letter, 27 June 1961, Franz-Josef Strauss to António de Oliveira Salazar.
‘Cold War’ version of the struggle in Portugal’s colonies, which placed Portugal
at the vanguard of the West’s struggle with international communism. In this
document he outlined the consequences of a Portuguese withdrawal in
catastrophic terms:
The other consequence of the loss of Portuguese Africa or of the war in Angola
will be found in the Portuguese political situation. It might even be found across
the whole of the Iberian Peninsula. As far as Portugal is concerned, the problem
would not be posed by the substitution of certain people, but by the fact that the
present regime could not but be replaced by another which, presenting itself as
democratic, would in fact be of a Popular Front variety, leading directly to
communism. The regime would be swept away not only because it had lost the
Ultramar but also because the policy of alignment with the NATO countries would
have been of no account for the defense of the nation’s vital interests. It would
thus have been the wrong policy. The consequence, which to me seems inevitable,
would be first a neutral stance, and then hostility to the West, its principles, and its
policy […]
Western Europe has still, in my view, a superiority based on civilization, technical
ability, and production, which allows it to compete with Communist Russia and its
satellites; but it lacks room for maneuver, sources of supplies, and points of
support outside of itself. And it is becoming unwilling to fight. That is why it
would not be able to resist.
[…] We believe that it is our duty to fight while our strength holds out—to fight
for the defense of the black and white population that has been entrusted to us, in
the conviction that in this way we are also fighting for the West.51
A similar letter of concern was addressed to Salazar by the Australian

Prime Minister, R. G. Menzies, in October 1961. The scale of the violence in
Angola had led him to revise his country’s traditional policy of accepting
Portugal’s view of its overseas territories.52 Of special concern to Australia—
whose government had ‘pledged itself to the principle of self-determination for
all peoples’—was that Portugal, whatever its legal misgivings, should release in-
formation to the UN about its overseas provinces, in much the same way as
France, the Netherlands, the United States and Australia itself handled their
non-self-governing territories. This was the spirit that would animate
Australia’s delegation at the on-going General Assembly, Menzies added,
51. AOS, COE 3, letter, 13 July 1961, António de Oliveira Salazar to Franz-Josef Strauss. Strauss would reply
on 7 September, praising the reforms initiated in Angola by the Portuguese authorities, and adding that ‘I am
sure that Your Excellency will take no consolation from my stating today that Providence has handed us, in
the shape of the Berlin problem, a charge as heavy as that of Portugal with the Angola situation. However,
we must remember that as in Angola, so too in Berlin is world communism the principal cause. Despite that,
we hope that we shall overcome these adversities, together with our Allies.’
52. AOS COE 1, letter, Canberra, 18 October 1961, R. G. Menzies to António de Oliveira Salazar.
before closing with a brief ‘I have pleasant memories of meeting you in Lisbon
in 1941.’ Salazar’s reply, dated 28 October, was an extremely extensive docu-
ment. A first part dealt with the presence of Angolan refugees in the Congo,
attributing their presence there to the terrorist actions unleashed on 15 March:
many others, Salazar argued, had sought the safety of Portuguese-held territory.
Salazar then considered the nature of the violence in Angola, attributing it to
an international plot, a plot which was continued in the way the matter was dis-
cussed by the world’s press and in the UN. That it was a plot could be adduced
from a simple fact: Angolan nationalism was a practical impossibility, given the
deep-rooted character of Portuguese nationalism found in the province’s popu-
lation. He then stated that Luanda and Lourenço Marques could be compared
with any other cities in Africa (with the exception of those in South Africa),
while material progress in the Portuguese overseas territories had kept pace
with the rest of the continent. And then, in a surprising departure, Salazar
added,
One sometimes hears it said that more might have been done, since Portugal takes
such pride from having been in Africa for 500 years. But what is forgotten is that
the intense labor of the European Powers in Africa began at the time of the Berlin
conference (1885), and that only in the last few decades has science permitted the
exploration of the interior.53
This was a dangerous argument to employ, since it raised more questions

than it answered: what was the point, one could ask, of taking pride in that
500-year presence, if it had achieved so little? What was, in reality, different
about Portugal as a colonizer? Nevertheless, Salazar went on to stress the his-
torical importance of the name ‘provinces’ and to emphasize the degree of
autonomy they enjoyed. And as for the criticism based around the limited
suffrage in the overseas provinces, Salazar turned the argument around, saying
that universal suffrage, given the development of Angola and Mozambique,
would merely serve to give expression to black racism, as it had done in so
much of Africa already, where even economic rights were being denied to
whites:
In the multiracial society which we intend to build and will build, if we are
allowed, none of this will occur. Individuals of diverse races and creeds rise in the
social hierarchy, occupying, alongside the white, all positions compatible with their
respective qualifications and qualities, with no segregation either by whites or by
men of color, in a fraternal atmosphere that makes the most of all talents. This is
53. AOS COE 1, letter, Lisbon, 28 October 1961, António de Oliveira Salazar to R. G. Menzies.
what happened in Brazil, this is what happened in the Portuguese State of India,
this is what happened in Cape Verde […]
The opposite path had been taken in the Belgian Congo: was that really the
model that Portugal should aspire to follow? As for the question of informa-
tion, all the relevant data was published, and was available at no cost. But to
provide it to the United Nations would mean accepting the abusive and erro-
neous interpretation of its Charter, and Portugal refused to be complicit with
such an interpretation.
It was in the UN that an increasingly isolated Portugal faced most open
criticism, especially in the early years of the war. Such pressure was never un-
bearable, however, and Portugal was able to benefit from a growing exaspera-
tion by the West with the workings of a UN undermined by the Cold War and
the growing power of the so-called ‘Afro-Asiatic group’. Thus, the UN was
essentially an irritant, and it might be argued that the lack of practical conse-
quences of the endless denunciations of the regime and its stand in Africa
served only to strengthen Salazar internally. Portugal’s explanation for the
events in Angola was simple: they were the result of outside interference; the
revolt had been provoked by foreigners who had infiltrated Portuguese terri-
tory, spreading lies and propaganda and upsetting a traditionally placid popula-
tion.
One card Washington sometimes sought to play was Brazilian interven-
tion, in the belief that Brazil’s views would carry sufficient weight in Portugal
to change minds and attitudes. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Lisbon was interested in Brazilian participation, and authentication, of a pro-
posed ‘Luso-Brazilian Community’ in which Portugal would speak for its
multi-continental whole. Such an entity it might allow Brazil to be part of a
new international bloc, and give it a greater margin of freedom when it came to
the United States. How this would benefit Brazil, in practical terms, was never
very clear. But anything else was rejected by Lisbon, which feared any Brazilian
input into African, and especially Angolan, affairs. One might in fact argue that
nothing which the Brazilians said in this regard was believed in Lisbon. In May
1961 the Brazilian ambassador to Lisbon, Negrão de Lima, visited Angola, and
returned with a favorable impression. He confirmed that a multi-racial
community was indeed being established, and that UPA was a clearly racist
organization. He added, however, that only political reforms could save
Angola: Portugal must oversee a transition towards autonomy, possibly even
independence, in such a way as to preserve Angola’s links with Portugal.
According to a PIDE report obviously filed by a senior person in the
organization,
the ambassador said that he had laid out his ideas to Dr Salazar, but he made clear
that these had not been well received by the President of the Council. He added
that while the present regime was in power in Lisbon, the indispensable political
reform of the status of the overseas provinces would not be carried out.54
At the XVIth General Assembly, and for the first time, Brazil voted against
Portugal on the colonial issue. In March 1962 Franco Nogueira met his
Brazilian counterpart, San Tiago Dantas, in Lisbon. Dantas claimed not to
disagree with Portuguese methods and objectives, which coincided with
Brazilian ideals, but helpfully added that Portugal had to be realistic, and to
find some support in the world. Otherwise it would lose, and be left with no
influence in Africa. Nogueira’s reply was, again, catastrophist: Surely, he said,
Brazil would not want to see in Angola a country built on the basis of black
racism. What would this do for Brazilian society, with its racial mix? ‘Goa was a
living and painful lesson. All the lusotropicalist values there implanted were
going to be violently destroyed.’ Brazil’s best interests in Africa were to be
found by cooperating with Portugal, against the background of the proposed
far-ranging Luso-Brazilian community.55 When, in April 1962, Brazilian
President João Goulart and San Tiago Dantas were in Washington, they
suggested to their American interlocutors that they could persuade Salazar to
change his ways, especially if their advice was accompanied by an economic aid
package. In this they were entirely misguided. In October 1962 Franco
Nogueira, in the White House, spoke to President Kennedy. According to the
record of the conversation, ‘the Foreign Minister repeated at some length the
classic Portuguese position with regard to the United Nations, and said that it
was a forum for the formulation of extreme, unreasonable, and hostile accusa-
tions and demands, which could not be met without creating chaos and paving
the way for communist domination.’56 From this position there would be no
movement until Salazar’s retirement.
The War Spreads: Mozambique, Portuguese Guinea
War came first to Angola, but the other African colonies had not been
immune to the stirrings of nationalism, and had experienced in the flesh
Portugal’s determination to remain in situ. In Mozambique, the town of Mueda,
in the northern district of Porto Amélia, witnessed serious disturbances. Large
54. AOS CO PC 81, PIDE report 1.304, 11 August 1961.

55. AOS CO NE 30, ‘Secret’ notes on a conversation between the Brazilian Chancellor Santiago Dantas and
the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Ritz Hotel, Lisbon, 25 March 1962.
56. FRUS 1961–1963 vol. 21, doc. 361, memorandum of conversation, Washington, 24 October 1962, p.
563.
numbers of the Maconde people surrounded the offices of the local admini-
strator on 16 June 1960 to protest against the low price paid by the Portuguese
for cotton, which they were being forced to grow. The Portuguese response
resulted in heavy casualties, Jorge Jardim, for one, applauding the authorities’
heavy hand. He did point out, however, that the army’s strength in Mozam-
bique was negligible, and had to be reinforced in the immediate future. In a
later letter, Jardim would stress the presence of foreign agitators, who had
crossed the border from Tanganyka in order to incite the Macondes to revolt,
and put the death toll of the siege on the administration’s offices at fourteen,
with another fifteen wounded.57 Mirroring this interpretation, and the general
lack of concern for the loss of life, General Nascimento e Silva, the military
commander of Mozambique, informed Francisco da Costa Gomes, at the time
Undersecretary of the Army, that the army had been up to the task, and that
The local authorities did not fail at the critical moment either, and on the field
there remained thirteen victims to bear witness to our policy and our right, no
matter what anyone says. The first disturbance [‘beliscadela’] had to be responded
to in this manner.58
The Belgian consul in Lourenço Marques, however, cast doubt on the

existence of foreign agitators, and stressed the fact that, in truth, the Macondes
had really only been subject to the Portuguese for the last thirty years, having
been the last people to submit to their domination. The Belgian diplomat in-
formed his government that the Portuguese forces had initially fired on the
Macondes, causing eight deaths, and that as the crowd fled, it was ambushed
by the army which, lying in wait outside the town, had caused eighty-five
deaths. The Belgian diplomat added that the Macondes’ complaints were in
fact heeded, at the expense of the industrial interests of northern Portugal,
dependent on cheap cotton, and of the Mueda administrators, who were
moved for failing to defuse the situation in time.59
As 1960 came to an end, the Portuguese security apparatus in northern
Mozambique was reinforced. One unnamed foreign official informed his gov-
57. AOS CP 144, letter, Nampula, 25 June 1960, Jorge Jardim to António de Oliveira Salazar.
58. AOS CO UL 32 E, letter, Lourenço Marques, 3 July 1960, General Nascimento e Silva to Francisco da
Costa Gomes, Lourenço Marques. The letter was passed on to Salazar by Costa Gomes on 6 July 1960. A
subsequent PIDE report spoke of tens of victims, and the resulting fear among the white population of
Mozambique, due to the shortage of military personnel in the colony; this fear was matched by the ‘lack of
respect’ of the indigenous population for the whites. AOS CO UL 32 E, PIDE report 233/60-GU, 7 July
1960. Mozambican nationalist sources regularly speak of 500 killed at Mueda.
59. AOS CO UL 32 A1, PIDE report 432/60-GU, 13 September 1960. The report includes the translation
of a report by Marcel Swinnen, Belgian consul in Lourenço Marques, to Pierre Wigny, Foreign Minister,
dated 1 September 1960. It is one of many such reports to be found in the Salazar archive, which suggests
that the had a well-placed informant somewhere in the Belgian diplomatic corps.
ernment that the events in the Congo had led to a restructuring of the forces,
especially in terms of surveillance of Portugal’s own black troops, now seen
with some preoccupation after the Force Publique’s mutiny. Their number was
reduced, they were kept away from heavy weapons, and there was no place for
them in specialist units, such as those involved in communications. As im-
portant, though, was the spirit of the white settlers, who had no intention of
returning to Portugal, ‘which the majority of them does not know, where
misery reigns and where no-one can receive them.’60 When war broke out in
Angola, and once news began to filter through to Mozambique, panic quickly
set in. According to one official, whites saw in blacks, whom they had never
bothered to befriend, a potential enemy. Any small sign of dissent was now
taken as a harbinger of revolt.61 Among the cotton workers of northern
Mozambique, propaganda brought in from Tanganyka flowed openly; some
reports spoke of white settlers welcoming it as well, since it promised to free
them from corrupt administrators.62 Writing to Adriano Moreira in June 1961,
Jorge Jardim predicted a worsening of the situation in the second semester of
the year, possibly coinciding with the rainy season, which began in
October/November.63
The situation would evolve slowly. It was only in June 1962 that the Frente
para a Libertação de Moçambique (Frelimo—Front for the Liberation of Mozam-
bique) was created out of a number of smaller forces, being led initially by
Eduardo Mondlane. Mondlane, who had studied in the United States, lectured
in Syracuse University, and been part of the UN secretariat, enjoyed con-
siderable American support, notably within the Kennedy administration. How-
ever, Frelimo would be torn by internal dissent over tactics and its overall aim,
as a result of which armed insurrection began only late in September 1964, with
a symbolic attack on the barracks at Mueda. Little headway was made at the
start; Mozambique was the slowest of the three battle fronts to develop, partly
because of the ethnic divisions in northern Mozambique, and partly because of
the backwardness of much of the territory. According to an American State
Department estimate, elaborated in May 1965,
there appears to be little doubt that the rebel groups face a long, uphill struggle
before they can seriously challenge the Portuguese military or political position in
Mozambique. Considerable preparations, training, and planning are required to
60. AOS CO UL 32 A, PIDE report 786/60-GU, 15 December 1960. The original intelligence had been sent
on 31 October of the same year.
61. AOS CO UL 32 C, PIDE report 768/61-GU. This report was based on another, prepared by the
governor of the district of Manica and Sofala.
62. AOS CO UL 32 A1, PIDE report 815/61-GU, 31 May 1961.
63. AOS CP 186, letter, Salisbury, 18 June 1961, Jorge Jardim to Adriano Moreira.
achieve this goal. At present, the best the rebels seem able to do is to frighten
scattered and isolated European settlements in northern Mozambique, keep the
military busy with patrolling duties, and inflict casualties at the rate of 1 or 2 every
fortnight.64
The province would remain basically under overall Portuguese control

throughout the rest of Salazar’s political career, although the border with
Tanzania became very dangerous territory for Portuguese forces. Most of the
white population, concentrated in the south, remained shielded from the
effects of the conflict. As in Angola, distances were a huge obstacle for the
Portuguese, who were short on the most modern military technology. A
second front eventually developed in the far west of Mozambique—the
province of Tete—and once again the Portuguese had to overcome serious
logistical difficulties, which minimized their effectiveness, in order to come to
grips with Frelimo’s fighters. The Tete front would become of paramount
importance to the Portuguese, since Frelimo was eventually provided with an
enormous target: the Cabora-Bassa dam, whose construction was approved by
a Council of Ministers on 10 July 1968. In any case, the situation was un-
doubtedly growing more serious: an internal PIDE report, from the sub-
director of the police in Mozambique to the commander in Lisbon, dated 2
February 1968, painted a grim picture, for the enemy’s tactics had changed:
Frelimo ‘terrorists’ were now acting in new units, commanded by excellent
cadres, and equipped in such a way as to have superior firepower:
It can be stated that the terrorist groups have stopped ambushing and firing from
a distance, opting instead for attacks against military units, revealing numerical
superiority, much daring and deploying weapons superior to those of our armed
forces […].
It is easy to conclude that the enemy will be able, with spectacular ease, to reduce
to dust or whole protective structure, and that neither acts of heroism, not the
loyalty of some of the population, will prevent the patient and persistent work so
far carried out from being pulverized, the re-housed population to disappear for
ever from our control, and the enemy from moving southwards […]65
64. FRUS 1964–1968 vol. 24 (Washington: Department of State, 1999), doc. 432, paper prepared in the
Department of State, Washington, 10 May 1965. According to this report, Frelimo, the sole movement
which might be taken seriously, had ‘150–250 men of officer potential, trained in guerrilla tactics for 3–6
month periods in Algeria, the UAR, Communist China, or the USSR.’ Meanwhile, ‘metropolitan Portugal,
presently entering its second year of a mild economic upturn, shows no signs of suffering from the financial
burden of the hostilities in Portuguese Africa. We estimate that Portugal, given its present situation, could
quite possibly support defense costs at twice the existing level without too much strain to the economy.’
65. AOS CO UL 50C, letter, Lourenço Marques, 2 February 1968, Deputy Director of PIDE to Director.
This document was a covering letter for a ‘Very Secret’ report, 148/68, bearing the same date, detailing the
military situation.
An American estimate of the situation in Mozambique, elaborated in
August 1968, held out little hope of a breakthrough for the Portuguese. For the
moment, both sides were ‘still fighting each other to a standstill’, but the tempo
of the ‘rebellion’ was intensifying, and the Portuguese had resigned themselves
to living with it,66 even if their investments in the territory showed a commit-
ment to remaining in Mozambique for a long time to come. Looking into the
future, however, the document made it clear that the stalemate could only ever
be broken in such a way as to favor Frelimo.
Authorities in Portuguese Guinea, meanwhile, watched with apprehension
as the Partido Africano para a Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde (PAIGC—
African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde) grew in size
and ambition, its frontman, Amílcar Cabral, gaining in reputation and
international support, notably in the Eastern bloc. Like many other nationalist
leaders, Cabral was educated in Lisbon, where he trained as an agronomist.
Contacts with opposition forces were maintained upon his return to Bissau, to
work for the government’s agriculture and forest services. In September 1956
he founded the African Independence Party, which in 1960 became the
PAIGC. By that time, Portuguese security forces had already committed a
major atrocity by attacking striking port workers in Pidgiguiti (Bissau), in
August 1959, resulting in the death of some thirty strikers.67 This massacre
shaped the future of the struggle, with Cabral determined to fight if necessary;
a number of appeals for negotiations over the future of Guinea and Cape
Verde were ignored by Salazar. However, a wave of arrests in Bissau in 1962,
which included the party’s second-in-command, Rafael Barbosa, slowed down
preparations for the insurrection. Cabral’s main external support came from
ex-French Guinea, where radio broadcasts were made urging revolt in
Portuguese Guinea. For the moment, Portuguese Guinea’s other neighbor,
Senegal, was remaining aloof, providing some support for a smaller movement,
known as the Front for the National Liberation of Guinea. The PAIGC was
not, of course, limited to Portuguese Guinea: the liberation of Cape Verde was
also part of its remit, and this made life in all of Portugal’s African colonies,
but especially Portuguese Guinea, more difficult for whites, since much of the
administration was composed of educated Cape Verdeans. It was now feared
that the administration would be powerless to respond to an open challenge.
The PIDE’s understanding of the situation was based on race:
66. FRUS 1964–1968 vol. 24, doc. 453, research memorandum from the Director of Bureau of Intelligence
and Research (Hughes) to Secretary of State Rusk, Washington, 9 August 1968.
67. Mário Matos e Lemos, ‘Guiné’ in Barreto & Mónica (eds), Dicionário de História de Portugal, vol. 8, pp. 165–
67.
The Cape Verdeans hate the black as much as they hate the European, but since
the blacks are useful to their overall aim—driving out the whites—they seek out
an alliance with them, and make common cause.68
The war in Portuguese Guinea began on 23 January 1963, with an assault on

the barracks at Tite, to the south of the capital, Bissau. By July, the Portuguese
admitted that guerrilla activity was now being experienced in fifteen percent of
the colony’s territory. On 8 May 1964 a new Portuguese commander-in-chief
was sent to Guinea in the shape of Brigadier Arnaldo Schultz, who also acted
as governor of the province, in an attempt to put a halt to rising tensions
within the Portuguese authorities. Initially, most of the fighting was concen-
trated in the south of Guinea as a result of the support from Sekou Touré, but
in 1965 the war spread to the east and even to the northern border. By 1968
the military situation in Guinea was causing serious soul-searching among the
leadership stationed there:
One continues to note that a great number of elements of the armed forces arrive
from the Metropolis without the fighting spirit that is imperative in the situation
we find ourselves in, viewing their time in the Overseas not as an imposition from
the Pátria as it fights to survive but as an annoyance to be endured.
One also notes that the personnel is not convinced, is not even aware, that the loss
of any of our African provinces would represent the coming end of Portugal as a
nation.69
So serious was the lack of modern weapons, of a kind no longer unavailable to

the PAIGC, that an inferiority complex was developing within the Portuguese
army, especially short of helicopters. Few offensive operations occurred as a
result, being carried out always be elite units, such as paratroopers, comman-
dos, and marines. The number of these operations was too small, however, to
have a real impact on the course of the conflict. Portuguese communications
were intercepted or jammed by the enemy. The report concluded that
We must hurry the war to prevent the enemy from becoming more specialized,
creating an insoluble problem for us.
Victory will be in our grasp if the province is equipped with a greater capacity to
wage war, notably in the shape of helicopters and elite troops. It is important to
remember that our soldier is beginning to feel inadequate in the face of the
68. AOS CO UL, 32 A1, PIDE report 490/60-GU, 4 October 1960.

69. Ibid., 50C, PIDE report 262-SC/CI (2), 13 March 1968. This was nothing new. Already in April 1964
Mennen Williams had noted that ‘there are reports of returning soldiers being fed up with the struggle and
feeling it is hopeless.’ FRUS 1964–1968 vol. 24, Washington, 29 April 1964, from the Assistant Secretary of
State for African Affairs (Williams) to the Secretary of State, p. 418.
modern war materiel that the enemy possesses, of good quality and in great
quantity.
We must prevent the enemy from having time to better prepare himself for war,
especially by securing aerial means, and we can only do this by annihilating him
quickly.
Schultz was replaced in May 1968 by the dynamic and charismatic

Brigadier António de Spínola. The morale of the Portuguese forces very low,
and the strategic initiative had lain for years with the PAIGC. Spínola, who
understood that the conflict could not be won by military means alone, would
bring some changes, but Salazar did not live to see them. In many cases Portu-
guese units remained pinned down in their bases, allowing PAIGC full control
over local populations. This was extremely difficult and hazardous terrain for
the generally under-equipped Portuguese: coastal areas were swamps that
offered little cover and increased the chance of illness, while a profusion of
rivers allowed for the rapid movement of the PAIGC guerrillas; the dry interior
offered no respite for the troops either. Most, but not all, ethnic groups offered
their support to the PAIGC, which generally counted on the goodwill of the
population. Significantly, the already referred-to American estimate of the war
in Mozambique, dated August 1968, included a defeat in Guinea, ‘where the
rebels have made far more substantial inroads than in Mozambique’, as one of
the variables that might determine the future of Portuguese East Africa.70
The ever-escalating Portuguese war effort in Africa was reflected in the
country’s casualties figures. In 1961, 207 soldiers were killed in Africa (136 of
whom in combat); by 1964, these figures had risen to 387 (184), and by 1968,
Salazar’s last year in power, to 734 (361). They would continue to rise. In 1973,
the last full year of war, 856 troops died in Africa (292 in combat).71 For the
whole of the colonial war, in all three battlefields, 15,507 soldiers were left in-
capacitated in some form (1,183 of whom with ‘mental illness’, an elastic con-
cept in wartime, and one whose total seems too low).72
When Salazar was dismissed, in the summer of 1968, the Portuguese were
over-stretched. As the Minister of the Army, Luz Cunha, put it, ‘the Army is
struggling with great difficulties, numerical and quantitative, in terms of per-
sonnel, due to the great effort it has been carrying out.’73 Part of the reason for
70. For a recent overview of the situation in Portuguese Guinea, and the crucial role it would play in
Portuguese decolonization, see Norrie Macqueen, ‘Portugal’s first domino: “Pluricontinentalism” and
colonial war in Guiné-Bissau, 1963–1974’ in Contemporary European History 8 (1999), pp. 209–230.
71. ‘Mortos, feridos e prisioneiros: Morte e dor’, in Aniceto Afonso & Carlos de Matos Gomes, Guerra
colonial (Lisbon: Editorial Notícias, 2000), Table ‘Mortos do Exército em Angola, Guiné e Moçambique’, 528.
72. Humberto Sertório Fonseca Rodrigues, ‘Feridas de guerra: Deficientes’, in Afonso & Matos Gomes,
Guerra colonial, pp. 566–69, Table, p. 568.
73. AOS CP 87, letter, Lisbon, 25 May 1968, Luz Cunha to António de Oliveira Salazar.
this was that the war was being fought on the cheap. One iron rule applied to
Portugal’s war effort: it must not throw the continental economy out of shape.
It was never, thus, a ‘total war’, one in which every ounce of Portuguese
strength had to be invested. It was also an increasingly ‘dirty’ war, with
Portuguese forces hard-pressed to distinguish friend and foe. The combination
of these factors—the over-reliance on a small group of men, the feeling that
sacrifices were not being shared equally, and the realization that Portugal was
not fighting a just war, and fighting the war justly—was to have dramatic con-
sequences in the future.
Salazar as War Leader
Having installed himself as Minister for National Defense, what was

Salazar’s long-term plan? How did he propose to ride out the ‘wind of change’
blowing through Africa? Salazar’s rhetoric on the subject was initially apocalyp-
tic, and fitted into a broader Cold-War view of the world. Salazar described a
clash of civilizations, with Asians and Africans trying to overthrow the
supremacy established over centuries by the white man. Nowhere is this view
expressed better than in a letter to Francisco Franco, a belated note of thanks
for the Generalissimo’s message of support in April 1961:
Since Europe appears to have lost its sense of mission, and the United States
would only understand it with difficulty, we are under the dominion of a wave of
subversion raised by the afro-asians which is competently exploited by inter-
national communism for its own ends. […] The struggle is extremely difficult and
costly; and we cannot convince ourselves that we are ready to fight efficiently such
a war. Since the war can only sustain itself with outside help, the unfolding of
events will be defined by the attitude of the great powers, especially the United
States. It seems to me that the Americans at first were perturbed and adopted un-
fortunate attitudes; but I trust that they are beginning to review their position.
Unless Russia comes to dominate Congolese politics, using them to dominate
what remains of Africa under western control, things will improve bit by bit.74
This view that the American position would have to shift, becoming at
least accepting of Portugal’s stance, was confirmed over the coming years.
With the United States increasingly bogged down in Southeast Asia, and with
the Soviet Union’s ability to act in Africa still restricted, there was sufficient
room for the pursuit of an independent policy; moreover, local alliances were
established, above all with Rhodesia and South Africa, which allowed Salazar
74. AOS COE 2, letter, Lisbon, 31 July 1961, letter, António de Oliveira Salazar to Francisco Franco
Bahamonde.
and Franco Nogueira to dream of a way out of the crisis. Salazar’s Portugal was
no longer, by the mid 1960s, grimly hanging on: it was, in many ways, in the
driving seat, carrying out an aggressive policy based on the destabilization of
those who, in Africa, got in its way.
As can be expected, Salazar, both as President of the Council and, for a
time, Minister of Defense, was not an inspirational leader. He could not
become, in his seventies, an emotional speaker, capable of inspiring men to
fight in defiance of world opinion. Salazar took to the airwaves in November,
in anticipation of the 1961 legislative elections, denouncing the similarity of
arguments between the internal opposition and Portugal’s external enemies. He
added,
In the meantime our people fight and die in Angola, as they have fought and died
in the rest of overseas territory. Do they fight and die for the present government?
What an idea! Are they going to fight, tomorrow, for democracy? What a mistake!
They fight, and will continue to fight, for the nation, which is a tangible reality,
one which the people feel in the purity of their patriotic instinct and not in the
distorted philosophies of wise men.75
There were occasional exceptions. One was a televised address made on 12

August 1963, in which a clearly emotional Salazar stated, to the country, that
‘we should not mourn the dead unless the living are unworthy of them.’ Salazar
explained patiently, and at length, the basis of his policy. Constitutional
strictures and the vision of Portugal as a civilizing agent that underpinned them
could not be altered by changing fashions. Portugal was now at odds with a
new spirit seizing Africa, but this did not mean it was wrong, or that others had
the right to interfere in Portuguese affairs. African nationalists and the Organi-
zation of African Unity would count for nothing if deprived of support from
the communist bloc, or some Western countries which feigned support merely
in order to ingratiate themselves with African leaders and preserve their selfish
interests in Africa. The speech continued with a sharp denunciation of
American policy, which included a reminder of the links between the United
States and the heads of the ‘terrorist associations’ that threatened the overseas
provinces, after which Salazar surprised everyone, saying that his African policy
should be approved of by a public, solemn act. The country, not to mention
the international community, was puzzled—did Salazar mean a plebiscite? That
certainly was what Franco Nogueira wanted, believing that it would be carried,
with positive implications for Portugal’s treatment abroad. Instead, however, a
tamer and ultimately useless alternative, from a diplomatic point of view,
75. Quoted in Tomás, Últimas décadas, vol. 3, p. 105.

solution was devised: the holding of a popular demonstration of support.
Coming in the wake of a very solemn celebration of the old victory over Castile
at Aljubarrota, and an orchestrated expression of support by the commanders
of the three branches of the armed forces, a series of massive events was
organized for the whole of Portugal, the most important being held, naturally,
in Lisbon. Franco Nogueira writes of between 250,000 and 300,000 people in
the Terreiro do Paço and the surrounding streets. Photographs certainly reveal
a sea of densely packed people, whom Salazar addressed from a first-floor
window. Franco Nogueira admits that many had been brought by the União
Nacional, but orchestrating an event such as this was clearly beyond its now
limited ability: many had joined the rallies, out of belief or out of curiosity.
Salazar’s words were few but well chosen:
Some days ago I mentioned our obligation to be worthy of our dead. But con-
fronted by the sight, which God has allowed me to witness, of a whole people
which, united and fraternal, compresses itself, in its thousand delegations, close to
the seat of power; before this enthusiastic demonstration of the mobilization of
souls who offer up their complete devotion; […] before all of this beauty, great-
ness, and uniqueness, we have an obligation not only to be worthy of our dead,
but also to be proud of the living.76
This limited interaction with the crowd was as far as Salazar went in the
direction of demagogy. For the most part, he seems simply to have tried to
keep up with the vast amount of information thrown up by the wars. The
quantity of intelligence reaching Salazar was staggering, far outweighing the
material that reached him during World War II, and this at a time when, due to
his age, Salazar could no longer function as efficiently as before. On his desk
arrived the army’s reports, covering every action, no matter how minute; the
PIDE’s own assessments of the military situation, as well as of political
developments in the colonies (which covered the activities and political inclina-
tions of settlers, the indigenous population, and those in between); diplomatic
information from around the world; and significant correspondence from
Salazar’s trusted confidants in Africa, the most important of whom was Jorge
Jardim. We know that Salazar waded through this material, because of his diary
entries and the markings on the actual documents; the extent to which he inter-
vened in the military sphere, however, was negligible. A number of conclusions
might be drawn from this. Firstly, and unsurprisingly, Salazar did not trust his
own judgment in military affairs, so that while not entirely confident of the
Portuguese army’s efficiency, he had no choice but to listen to its advice.
76. Franco Nogueira, A resistência, p. 511.

Secondly, as the three wars developed, he did not believe that triumph in
Africa could be achieved through military means alone, at least by Portugal,
because of the declared and covert enemies that the country faced; the solution
had to come from the diplomatic arena. Thirdly, and as a result of the first two
points, the war was run on the cheap. The Portuguese armed forces, which in
the post-war years had been substantially re-equipped with an eye towards
military activity within the NATO sphere of operations, were not ready for the
war in Africa, and had to be retrained and reequipped: this was not done as
quickly and as efficiently as it might have been. There were constant tussles
between the army and the Ministry of Finance over funds, and it is clear that
Salazar did not wish to sacrifice the ongoing economic surge, unique in recent
Portuguese history, for the sake of the war. This conflict, which foreign leaders
were told was about Portugal’s ultimate survival as an independent nation, was
not, in reality, a total war, and was not treated as such; it was more a police
action, and there was a marked reluctance to dedicate all available resources to
its successful prosecution. The realization that this was the case significantly
affected morale within the army. It made only too possible the damaging
accusation that soldiers and junior officers were being sacrificed in Africa for
the sake of a few financiers and industrialists back in Portugal.
From certain sources, however, notably Franco Nogueira’s memoirs, it is
hard to avoid the conclusion that Salazar relished the challenge of hanging on
to every single part of the empire, that he saw it as a worthy and indeed
welcome challenge, and that he believed, his usual skepticism and desire to
retire aside, that Portugal stood a good chance of success. A number of points
should be made clear in this respect. Firstly, the threat to the remaining Asian
empire, after the fall of Portuguese India, was slight. Indonesia was, for the
moment, more concerned with the potential difficulties of incorporating East
Timor than with the embarrassment of allowing it to exist; and the Chinese
government actually profited from Macau’s existence, not being too inclined to
seize the territory.77 Thus, once Portuguese India had been lost, military
77. This did not mean that Macao was a haven of tranquility. Over the course of the 1960s the power of the
Chinese Communist Party grew in the territory, to the detriment of the Kuomintang’s; once its domination
was complete, it began to mobilize the population against Portuguese rule. The crisis reached a peak in
December 1966 when, over a minor administrative incident (which nevertheless revealed the venality asso-
ciated with Portuguese administration of the city), the Chinese population, in scenes mirroring the ongoing
Cultural Revolution, erupted, and Macao was surrounded by land and sea forces. The local population
demanded the resignation of the Portuguese military commander and the chief of police, the closing down of
all anti-communist organizations in the territory, an end to anti-Chinese espionage, and a written apology
from the governor. Salazar refused at first, but other ministers, including Franco Nogueira, argued that losing
Macao might embolden Indonesia to seize Timor. The Chinese government itself was largely silent. The
situation worsened in January 1967 with the arrival of the Red Guards to Macao. On 11 January instructions
were finally sent to the hard-pressed governor, who was told to negotiate away as much as was necessary to
appease the Chinese, without allowing Portuguese honor to be besmirched. According to Franco Nogueira,
Salazar had to intervene personally during a Council of Ministers in order to force other ministers, including
fighting was restricted to areas where Portugal could establish its control and
fight with some degree of success. Salazar, as we have seen, included the move
towards decolonization in the general decline of the West, a consequence of
falling spiritual values, and an abdication by the European white of his his-
torical responsibilities. However, he believed this confusion would be dispelled,
sooner or later, as the waters became less muddled and the practical alliance
between Moscow, Beijing, and the newly independent states became clear for
all to see. There is no doubt that, at least in relation to the United States,
Portugal’s star was rising as the 1960s came to an end: John F. Kennedy’s
hostility to Salazar was not matched by his successors (and Salazar did not live
to experience the outright thaw in relations with the Nixon administration).
In a 1964 memorandum, George Ball expressed doubts over the continua-
tion of funding for Holden Roberto to Dean Rusk. Ball made the point that
this would involve breaking pledges to Portugal—scrapping America’s stance
as an honest broker—and place it alongside communist countries such as
China in support of Holden Roberto:
I put, therefore, what I regard as a relevant question: All sentiment aside, is it in

the interest of the United States to become the accessory to terrorizing Portuguese
settlers in Angola? Isn’t it rather in our interest to discourage such a state of affairs
in the heart of Africa? Or, if we cannot discourage it, shouldn’t we at least avoid
associating ourselves with it?
To put the question in larger terms, is there any hurry in Angola?78
There was an air of unreality about American policy at this period. A

Memorandum for the Record expressed the hope that the Portuguese would
negotiate, and that nationalist movements might move towards a position of
non-violent political action. At the same time, however, the American am-
bassador to Lisbon was reminding Washington that ‘until the Portuguese poli-
Correia de Oliveira, to accept the instructions sent. On 14 January, fearing the imminent loss of Macao,
Salazar wrote the governor, reminding him of his duties: ‘We trust that in case of need all will carry out their
duty, even at the cost of the greatest sacrifices.’ This was a less bellicose letter than sent to the governor-
general of Goa in December 1961, and in the end Portugal capitulated on all points to the protesters, who
allowed the governor to remain in place. A decisive power shift had occurred, and both Portuguese and
Chinese knew it: Portugal now governed Macao at China’s pleasure. For a damning report concerning the
causes of the event, and its course, see AOS CO UL32C, report, 27 February 1967. See also João Hall
Temido, Uma autobiografia disfarçada (Lisbon: Instituto Diplomático, 2008), pp. 85–91. Temido was part of a
mission sent to Macao to aid its inexperienced governor to negotiate his way out of the crisis, and writes of
the incident that it ended ‘in a shameful manner for Portugal.’
78. FRUS 1964–1968, vol. 24, doc. 417, Washington, 17 March 1964, from the Under Secretary of State
(Ball) to Secretary of State Rusk.
tical system changes, there are no prospects of Portugal permitting self-deter-
mination and it is useless and counterproductive to try to get them to do so.’79
Early in 1964, Ambassador Anderson went on a visit to the overseas
provinces; on his return he met Salazar for one hour and forty minutes.80 Once
again, there was little new to report:
Regret I must report that Salazar remained adamantly opposed any public state-
ment on self-determination. He adduced familiar case of Belgian Congo and said
with entire weight of evidence against prospects any orderly transition he could
not understand why USG insisted upon trying invent yet one more formula. I told
him we did so precisely to avoid repeating errors of the past. Salazar said that
while Nationalist pressures of today are from outside Mozambique and Angola
they would promptly develop internally if GOP [Government of Portugal] were to
make public utterance of type we sought press upon it.81
In the summer of 1965 a new American plan—the ‘Anderson Plan’—

rested on the notion that Portugal might negotiate from a position of strength
in order to get a better deal.82 The plan was a rehashing of earlier ideas, with
the Portuguese announcing a definite timetable for the implementation of self-
determination of its African territories,83 in return for ‘a suspension of African
nationalist anti-Portuguese activities during that period and carefully tailored
political assurances and specified economic inducements offered to the
Portuguese government.’ At the end of the period the people of the territories
in question would be allowed to choose freely between the existing status quo,
a ‘Portuguese Commonwealth’, and full independence. Anderson met Franco
Nogueira on 2 September: ‘FoMin listened attentively and with evident and
increasing interest. He also took notes which I have never seen him do before.
From his facial expression I gathered that most elements in package made con-
siderable impression on him.’84 Franco Nogueira remarked that he had to dis-
cuss the proposals with Salazar and the rest of the cabinet and, according to
79. Ibid., doc. 420, Washington, 19 May 1964, from the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African
Affairs (Fredericks) to the Under Secretary of State (Ball), 420. Fredericks disagreed with the approach,
which was, he claimed, ten years too late.
80. Ibid., vol. 12, doc. 151, Lisbon, 18 April 1964, from the embassy in Portugal to the Department of State.
81. Anderson reported, in this telegram, that Salazar, while mentally alert, was physically subdued, which tied
in with rumors that he was recovering from pneumonia. Nevertheless, Anderson was amazed ‘at the amount
of detailed knowledge’ that Salazar had ‘over an area which he has never visited.’
82. FRUS 1964–1968, vol. 24, doc. 433, Washington, 23 August 1965, from the Department of State to the
embassy in Portugal.
83. In an earlier document, Rusk had suggested a transition period of eight years, leading to ‘free and open
plebiscite observed by UN and OAU representatives.’ FRUS 1964–1968, vol. 12, doc. 160, Washington, 9
June 1965, from the Department of State to the embassy in Portugal.
84. Ibid., vol. 12, doc. 163, Lisbon, 3 September 1965, from the embassy in Portugal to the Department of
State.
Anderson, the fact that he did not dismiss it outright was encouraging. Nothing
happened, however.
A conversation between Franco Nogueira and Dean Rusk in June 1967
reveals how low American expectations of progress had fallen. Nogueira told
his American counterpart that the United States could not be indifferent to the
fate of Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, Rhodesia, all of which were
favorable to the West. Rusk replied, “yes, it is not indifferent […] provided it
lasts. How long will it last?” According to Nogueira’s account,
We got up. I still had time to say, already standing up, that I did not know what
else we had to do to convince the United States that we would not alter our policy;
and if the problem was one of duration, and if our lasting longer was of benefit to
the United States, then we were not faced by questions of principle and con-
science, but rather by practical realities, and so the question was this: why did the
United States attack us, rather than help us?
Then Rusk became serious again, and began to think; like somebody returning to
an earlier point he said that the white race was surrounded in the world, and that
the disproportion between it and the other races was terrifying: the survival of the
whites could not rest on force, as a result of which some platform for neighborli-
ness and coexistence would have to be found so that the white race could live in
peace and without threat.85
Salazar underlined these sentences, and added a question mark on the mar-
gin. Some months later, Franco Nogueira was present at a dinner party in the
Portuguese embassy in Washington. During the event, Dean Acheson re-
counted his own forceful appeal to President Kennedy against anti-Portuguese
votes at the United Nations, and his failure to change the President’s mind.
According to Nogueira, Acheson had deemed it ‘a nameless madness to over-
throw Rhodesia or to annihilate South Africa and overseas Portugal.’ Acheson
continued by stating that ‘“fortunately, the United States would not succeed:
those territories would hold out and survive.”’86
Salazar was not acting, as he had done during World War II, from a posi-
tion of weakness; Portugal was strong in Africa and becoming stronger with
every year that passed. Portugal was strong by virtue of the number of troops
on the ground, of settlers arriving in Angola and Mozambique, of foreign firms
investing in the colonial economies, of improving infrastructure, and of local
85. AOS CO NE 30, notes on a conversation between the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the American
Secretary of State, in Luxemburg, 14 June 1967. Rusk’s account of the conversation can be found in FRUS
1964–1968 vol. 12, Washington, 16 June 1967, from the Department of State to the embassy in Portugal,
Washington. It does not contain these parting comments.
86. AOS CP 193, ‘Secret’ letter, New York, 9 November 1967, Franco Nogueira to António de Oliveira
Salazar
alliances. Traditional rivals such as Rhodesia and, most importantly, South
Africa, were now firm allies; and even neighboring African-run states could be
influenced. Hastings Banda, President of Malawi, was proving to be a useful
supporter of Portuguese aims in the region,87 and there were hopes for
detaching Zambia from the anti-Portuguese front, based on sound economic
fact and the general observation that the African leadership could be bought,
its anti-colonial rhetoric being acceptable as a necessary evil provided there was
no concrete anti-Portuguese action being taken.88 In other cases, there was the
hope of sowing internal disorder and chaos among Portugal’s enemies.
Portuguese support for Katangese independence throughout the 1960s fell into
this category,89 as did the later support for Biafra’s cause.90 Relations with the
87. Jorge Jardim organized military special forces within Malawi so as to prevent the use of its territory by
Frelimo; these were commanded by Portuguese officers. He also put together a naval force on Lake Nyassa.
There are countless examples of the close relations between the Portuguese government and its Malawi
counterpart. See, for example, AOS CO MNE 30A, 31 July 1967, notes on a conversation between the
Minister for Foreign Affairs and Dr Kazumu Banda: ‘Southern Africa was a different Africa: it had other
problems, and other solutions. We did not have to worry about politics: the responsibility of a government
was to govern well for its people, not to act as a policeman of how others did their jobs. There were
multilateral problems—illness, communications, transport, use of natural resources. All of these had to be
resolved on a collective basis, outside, and even against, politics. It was this economic, technical, scientific—
and apolitical—cooperation that we in southern Africa had to start. Neither Portugal nor South Africa could
launch the idea […] but the President of Malawi was the right man to do it […] he was the statesman to
propose and make credible an international technical organization, restricted to southern Africa, capable of
ensuring the apolitical cooperation of all countries and territories in the region. If President Tsiranana [of
Madagascar] embraced the idea, he would be followed by Lesotho, Botsawana, Swaziland, and then Portugal
and South Africa could join. Zambia would inevitably follow, and as soon as possible Rhodesia as well. The
President’s reaction was euphoric. He agreed. He would launch the idea.’
88. In December 1965 both the British and the Zambian governments—the latter being an unwitting victim
of the Rhodesian blockade—asked for Portuguese help regarding transit facilities for imports and exports,
notably the use of airport facilities in Beira for deliveries of oil: this was granted. See Franco Nogueira,
Salazar vol. 6 O último combate (Oporto: Livraria Civilização Editora, 1985), p. 99, and AOS CO NE 30B,
notes on a conversation between the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the British ambassador (Sir Archibald
Ross), Lisbon, 22 December 1965. See also Aires Oliveira, Os despojos, p. 328, footnote 87. Zambia depended
on the Benguela railway for its exports and imports, so that Portugal could bring pressure to bear on
Kenneth Kaunda’s government: but too much pressure might bring about the construction of a Lusaka-Dar-
es-Salaam railway, which China had offered to finance.
89. See AOS CO UL 50C for the Portuguese point of view of the most spectacular of these interventions in
Congolese affairs, the massive mercenary operation designed to overthrow President Mugabe in the summer
of 1967. This operation, commanded by figures such as Jean ‘Black Jack’ Schramme, failed in part because of
the absence of Katanga’s leader, Moïse Tschombé. Also to blame were the difficulties involved in providing
supplies for the mercenary forces once their advance had been halted. Despite its caution, Portugal would be
condemned in Security Council Resolution 241, of 15 November 1967, for failing ‘to prevent the
mercenaries from using the territory of Angola under its administration as a base of operations for armed
attacks against the Democratic Republic of Congo.’ Franco Nogueira, meeting Dean Rusk at the State
Department in November 1967, accused the United States of being the prime mover behind the resolution.
Nogueira went further: ‘While we were on the subject of Africa, I continued, I wanted to mention the Biafra
question. Rusk would certainly have read sensationalist news in the press. It seemed as if nothing could
happen in Africa without Portuguese intervention. We invaded Congo and Tanzania, and attacked Brazza-
ville, and struck Guinea and Senegal, and now we supported Biafra against Lagos, which was supported by
Russia, and it was said, the United States. All of this was absurd. It was easy to attack Portugal, and this was
done to cover up the activities of others. This is what was happening in the case of Biafra […] we merely
allowed for the free transit of people and goods traveling legally. We behaved towards Biafra as we did
towards Rhodesia, Congo, Malawi, and others. Nothing else.’ AOS CO NE 30, 17 November 1967, notes on
Katangese were especially good, and in the summer of 1965 Salazar met Moïse
Tshombe, whom he considered ‘well informed, reasonable, realistic, lucid, and
aware that today’s situation will head Africa into a form of colonialism which is
much worse than today’s.’ Concluding this sketch for Franco Nogueira’s
benefit, Salazar added ‘I liked the man. I promoted him to white.’91 Over and
over Salazar, in his dealings with Franco Nogueira and others, insisted on being
“brutal” with America, with Britain, with the Holy See. And in this respect the
response to the Rhodesian blockade was a real eye-opener. The following
extract from a letter (written, it appears, in partnership with Franco Nogueira)
to Harold Wilson, of 20 April 1966, is more than significant:
I appreciate your comprehension of our desire for peace and stability on the
frontiers of Mozambique and I take note of your desire and your frustration that
there be in Rhodesia a regime both stable and friendly to us. At the moment we
do not find ourselves threatened by the situation in Rhodesia; but, after the
independence as envisaged by Her Majesty’s government, the latter will not be in a
position to offer any guarantees in regard to Rhodesia’s conduct. In fact, I do not
even know how to reconcile the desire and the intention you express with the fact
that the terrorist chiefs operating against Mozambique are received regularly by the
British High Commissioner at Dar-es-Salaam or with the encouragement given by
British agents in Zambia to other terrorists who cross into Angola by the eastern
frontier.92
a conversation between the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the American Secretary of State. Rusk’s account
of the conversation can be found at FRUS 1964-1968 vol. 12, doc. 168, Washington, 18 November 1967,
from the Department of State to the embassy in Portugal, 170. Rusk said that ‘USG had considerable interest
in helping preserve unity of Congo and preventing it fragmenting […] US invested about half a billion dollars
in this policy’, backing not individual leaders but ‘whichever government was in power.’
90. Franco Nogueira would write, in his diaries: ‘Lisbon, 27 December [1965]—When I said that all our
problems, as a whole, and occurring at the same time, added up to hell, Salazar commented, “Ah! Yes, it is
much worse than during the Spanish War, much worse than during the World War. Nothing then could be
compared to the difficulty and complexity of the present. Ah! I only wish I was twenty years younger, so that
I might see this through to the end.” Silva Cunha and I said that he would surely see this through to the end,
to which Salazar replied, “Hmm! I won’t: But if only I was twenty years younger! Ah! I’d set blacks against
blacks, and whites against whites, all fighting each other.” I commented that there was already quite enough
fighting for my liking, and Salazar laughed, agreeing that in truth there has been too much fighting already.’
Franco Nogueira, Um político confessa-se, p. 157. In relation to Biafra, see AOS CP 14, letter, Lisbon, 12
October 1967, Manuel Gomes de Araújo to António de Oliveira Salazar.
91. Franco Nogueira, Um politico confessa-se, p. 133.
92. AOS COE 2, letter, Lisbon 20 April 1966, António de Oliveira Salazar to Harold Wilson. This letter must
be read alongside Franco Nogueira’s diary entry for the same day: ‘Salazar does not doubt that England
proposes to attack Beira, and soon. We will carry out démarches in Washington, Paris, Rio, and Pretoria. I
am sure that London would back off if only we were able to mount a first-class military operation in Beira,
one which Britain, while obviously overcoming, would do so only at great cost to its interests and its
reputation.’ See also AOS CO NE 30B, notes on a conversation between the Minister of Foreign Affairs and
Ambassador Elko Van Kleffens: ‘Mr Wilson is a committed enemy of Portugal, and his ill-will towards us
constitutes one of his three or four obsessions.’
What is extraordinary about this display of confidence, and of disdain, for
the country on which Portugal had for so long relied on for its security is that,
looking back, it defies our expectations: this was supposed to be a period when
the New State was floundering, now stripped of all ideological underpinnings,
divorced from public opinion, unable to communicate with the young, alone
and vulnerable in the world, and led by a frail septuagenarian. Squaring this
circle is not so easy: either Salazar’s confidence was completely misplaced, and
his understanding of Portuguese reality was indeed slipping, so that while the
formal opposition continued to be controlled, the effects of a lack of enthu-
siasm for his action were not comprehended, or we have to look more carefully
at Salazar’s relationship with the ideological underpinnings of the New State,
and see in them a mere accessory, nothing more than trappings to be discarded
when they no longer suited, with no great regret. What mattered to Salazar, at
the end of the day, was the simple application of realpolitik, an activity in which
he doubtlessly excelled.
Cooperation with Rhodesia and South Africa
It was perhaps inevitable that, with their backs to the wall, a number of
white-governed territories in southern Africa should come together for mutual
protection. At the heart of this informal, but nonetheless real, alliance, stood its
most powerful and wealthiest member, South Africa, which viewed the struggle
in the Portuguese colonies with very real interest. As long as Angola and
Mozambique held out, the apartheid regime in South Africa would be relatively
safe. That apartheid stood in direct contradiction to the supposedly integra-
tionist colonial practices of the Portuguese mattered little to both sides. A
pessimistic prognosis about the direction of African affairs was shared by
diplomats of the two countries as the 1960s dawned, especially as a result of
the British withdrawal which, according to Pretoria, was an abdication of
responsibility masked by the illusion that something new and permanent was
being left in place. Only Portugal, the South Africans believed, could be relied
on to stay and fight—but Portugal would be subjected to ‘terrible pressure,
either through the United Nations or through subversive means, whose origin
would lie not only in Moscow.’93 From 1961 onwards there were frequent
meetings of intelligence operatives of the two countries, as well as visits by
South African politicians to Angola and Mozambique.94 In late July of that
93. AOS CO UL 32E, letter, Lisbon, 9 February 1960, Alfredo Lencastre da Veiga to Secretário Adjunto da
Defesa Nacional.
94. See, for example, AOS COE 1, letter, Lisbon, 15 July 1964, H. A. Lester to António de Oliveira Salazar,
reporting that a Colonel Buys, of South Africa’s secret services, had been most pleased by his stay in Lisbon,
year, in a curious exchange, Salazar and South African Prime Minister Hendrik
Verwoerd each refused to accept responsibility for the idea of a representative
of the latter meeting with Salazar, but accepted nevertheless the need for close
cooperation at the highest level of government. Salazar, noting that recent
events in the Congo and in Malawi were generally positive, wrote,
The tendency which the African countries have displayed to get themselves and
their economic life involved in the web of somewhat obscure political ideologies
has complicated the situation of their peoples, and it might be that with a patient
and benevolent, but at the same time clear and firm policy, we can help them.95
Verwoerd replied by stating that he had appointed as his envoy H. L. T.

Taswell, formerly head of South Africa’s diplomatic mission at the Federation
of Rhodesia, adding that ‘I was very interested in your observations on political
developments in certain neighboring countries in Africa and fully agree that
there is a great deal in the balance in Southern Africa at present.’96 Salazar met
Taswell on 14 August, discussing political prospects in southern Africa and the
implementation of formerly arrived at deals on railway transport on which
Lisbon seemed to be dragging its heels. As a gesture of goodwill, Salazar stated
that ‘under the circumstances’, he would be willing ‘to eliminate from art. 41 of
the Convention the words which are objectionable to Your Excellency’s
government.’97
In May director Silva Pais sent Salazar copy of a telegram received from
the office in Lourenço Marques, which demonstrated the ‘good collaboration’
with South Africa. According to the report, and thanks to the efforts of a
Brigadier Van der Bergh, Frelimo refugees—some of them significant
figures—forced to exit Swaziland had been lured into South Africa, where they
were promptly detained; the operation had been a real coup. September 1965
saw the holding of a second conference of the security services of South
Africa, Rhodesia, Angola, and Mozambique, this time in Lourenço Marques.
The agenda was a heavy one, including a review of arrangements established at
the first conference for the exchange of intelligence, the nature of the threat
facing the four territories, and a number of technical issues, including ‘the
efficiency of foreign passports for use by our respective services.’98 In February
which had been kept secret, and that the South African Prime Minister would like to send a secret envoy to
meet with Salazar, if Salazar were willing to receive him.
95. Ibid., 3, letter, Lisbon, 28 July 1964, António de Oliveira Salazar to Hendryk Verwoerd.
96. Ibid., 3, letter, Pretoria, 3 August 1964, Hendryk Verwoerd to António de Oliveira Salazar.
97. Ibid., 3, letter, Lisbon, 19 August 1965, António de Oliveira Salazar to Hendrik Verwoerd.
98. AOS CO UL 50A, agenda of the Second Conference of the Security Services of South Africa, Rhodesia,
Angola, and Mozambique, to be held in Lourenço Marques, 13 and 14 September 1965. According to Silva
Pais, the first meeting had been held some months earlier in Pretoria. Another meeting was held in Pretoria,
1967, Salazar learned that the South African police, during the latest round of
conversations with the PIDE, had offered Portugal the use of six of its
helicopters to patrol the district of Cuando-Cubango, along the border with
Zambia—in part, the believed, because of the fear of SWAPO infiltration into
Namibia through Angola territory. These helicopters could fly either without
national markings, or with Portuguese markings, and always with a PIDE
operative on board.99
Government contacts were renewed in April 1967 when P. W. Botha, at
the time South African Minister of Defense, visited Portugal, meeting Franco
Nogueira in the morning of 7 April. Botha assured the Portuguese that there
had been no change of policy since the murder of Hendrik Verwoerd and his
replacement by John B. Vorster. Botha was positively bullish about the pros-
pects for Southern Africa; asked if he believed the British might enforce a
blockade of Lourenço Marques, he replied ‘“no, because they would not dare
to have a confrontation with South Africa.”’100 That afternoon Botha met
Salazar, and the conversation followed similar lines, Botha assuring Portugal of
the ‘firmness of the South African attitude’, adding that he did not foresee any
action against the Mozambican capital. And at night, at a banquet offered by
his Portuguese counterpart, Botha was placed next to Franco Nogueira, whom
he informed that
the time had come for Portugal and South Africa to “talk” more intimately. He did
not mean formalizing, on paper, a military alliance—there was no need for that.
But it seemed to Pretoria fundamental that generals should begin Staff talks about
problems relating to the defense of southern Africa and about the enemy’s
intentions.
Franco Nogueira, reminding Botha that the Portuguese had long suggested this
step, was only too ready to accept. Botha added as well that South African-
made weapons, such as license-built French jets, could be used by Portugal if
necessary. The new spirit was reinforced during Franco Nogueira’s visit to
South Africa to meet Prime Minister Vorster. Franco Nogueira wrote,
Portugal’s struggle in Angola and Mozambique was absolutely vital for the
Republic of South Africa. He would go even further: he was aware that South
Africa would find it hard to survive a Portuguese collapse in those provinces […]
6 December 1966; the agenda for this encounter can be found at AOS CP 208, sent to António de Oliveira
Salazar by Fernando Silva Pais.
99. AOS CO UL 50D, PIDE report, 15 February 1967.
100. AOS CO MNE 30A, notes on a conversation between Minister of Foreign Affairs and the South
African Minister of National Defense, 7 April 1967.
For all these motives, South Africa was ready to help us in whatever way it could,
as soon as, and in the manner that, we requested it […] It was so obvious that
South Africa could not exist without Angola and Mozambique, and that these
could not exist without South Africa, that there was no need to formalize the
existing state of affairs.101
Since Wilson had mentioned Lourenço Marques in a recent speech in the

House of Commons, Vorster had taken the step of summoning the British am-
bassador for 27 July, ‘to take a cup of tea’. It was Vorster’s intention to ‘tell
him clearly and brutally that South Africa would respond strongly to any
attempt top blockade Lourenço Marques.’ Vorster ruled out American inter-
vention in the area, thanking ‘the Good Lord for His generosity’: America was
paralyzed by Vietnam, racial conflict, and an upcoming presidential election.
By late 1965 a new form of Portuguese-South-African cooperation had
begun to be discussed: the building of the giant Cabora-Bassa dam in Western
Mozambique. On 10 December 1965 the Overseas Minister, Joaquim da Silva
Cunha,102 cabled from Mozambique reporting on a meeting with the president
of the South African Industrial Development Corporation, who had stressed
the importance to his government of the project: South Africa was ready to
purchase all excess electricity generated by the dam, and was willing to finance
its construction. He also ‘insisted on the various political aspects of the enter-
prise.’103
The other partner in this informal alliance was white-run Rhodesia, whose
Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) on 11 November 1965 Portugal
had accepted and even encouraged. Salazar had watched with apprehension the
breakup of the old Rhodesian Federation, over the course of 1960-1964. In a
letter to Sir Roy Welensky, the last Prime Minister of the Federation, Salazar
sounded a pessimistic note:
I believed for some time that it would be possible to save white influence and with
it western civilization in the territory south of the Congo, to the benefit of Europe
and of that territory’s indigenous peoples. I see that the central plank of that
resistance to the new African order is being lost, first through the dissolution of
101. Ibid., 26 July 1967.

102. Joaquim Moreira da Silva Cunha (b. 1920) graduated with a degree in Law from the University of
Lisbon, where he also concluded a doctorate (1953) examining Portugal’s policy towards the indigenous
peoples in the colonies. In December 1962 he was brought into the cabinet as Undersecretary of Overseas
Administration, and in March 1965 he was promoted to Minister of Overseas, where he acted as a staunch
defender of Portugal’s right to its overseas provinces, as well as a committed reformer, notably in matters of
education, health, and the material well-being of the population. He defended closer ties with all African
countries willing to help Portugal. In 1973 he was moved to the Ministry of National Defense, where he
remained until the April 1974 revolution.
103. AOS CO UL 81, telegram received from the Ministry of Overseas, 10 December 1965.
the Federation, and then through the possible alteration to the Constitution of
Southern Rhodesia in such a way as to safeguard no more than was safeguarded
elsewhere.104
Portuguese appeals to the friendly Salisbury government for help in the

Angolan war, notably in relation to the so-called Mystère plan,105 met with the
objection of the British authorities still in the Federation, who warned that
future collaboration with African nationalists would be greatly impaired.106
Independence was eventually granted to Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and
Nyassaland (Malawi), but not to Southern Rhodesia, where the presence of
white settlers who controlled the political process made decolonization much
more difficult. These whites’ increased militancy was demonstrated by the rise
of Ian Smith, who took over the Rhodesian premiership in April 1964. From
that moment on, Rhodesian and Portuguese officials began to explore the im-
plications of UDI and the possible avenues of cooperation that it opened up.
Portuguese diplomatic and intelligence officials stressed the importance of will-
power to their Rhodesian counterparts: it was possible to defy the winds of
change, and halt African nationalists in their tracks. These contacts culminated
on 5 September 1964, when Salazar was twice visited (in the morning and the
evening) in the Estoril fort by Ian Smith.107 No minutes of their conversation
104. AOS COE 3, letter, Lisbon, 7 November 1963, António de Oliveira Salazar to Sir Roy Welensky. This is
the author’s translation of the Portuguese draft of the letter; no copy of the official English translation was
found in the AOS.
105. This was the code name given to a large-scale military action against Angola by a number of African
states, which the Portuguese claimed to have uncovered in 1962. Salazar was skeptical about either the
existence of the plan or its actual implementation. See Franco Nogueira, A resistência, pp. 443–44.
106. Portugal also requested certain services from South Africa as a result of this Mystère plan, receiving no
concrete answers. The matter was brought up by Franco Nogueira at a meeting with the South African
ambassador, during which Nogueira passed on what he called a Rhodesian request for tripartite discussions
on political matters, which might then be opened up to other matters. AOS CO NE 30B, report on a
conversation between the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the South African ambassador, 13 February 1963.
Some months later, the governor-general of Angola reported that a meeting of his Defense Council, after
analyzing the political and military situation in Africa, had unanimously resolved to suggest to the
government the creation of a ‘united front [consisting of the] provinces Angola and Mozambique [as well as]
Southern Rhodesia and South Africa.’ AOS CO UL 8I, telegram, Luanda, 22 May 1963, governor-general of
Angola to Minister of Overseas.
107. On 3 September, Franco Nogueira sent Salazar a long memorandum about the conversations to be held
with Smith, which included the subject matter which the Rhodesians wanted to see discussed. These included
the status of Rhodesia’s representation in Lisbon, which, the MNE advised, should not be accepted as a full
diplomatic mission; the defense, by Portugal, of Rhodesian points of view at international forums, which the
MNE was decidedly hostile to, being slightly more flexible—to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis, when it
came to backing Rhodesian requests to Pretoria on security matters; increased cooperation between the
civilian intelligence agencies, which, according to the PIDE, should go ahead, but only if based on personal,
and not institutional, contacts [‘one must ponder the fate of the archives after the possible independence of
Southern Rhodesia, since many operatives would return to London’]; imprisonment and exchange of
subversive elements; intensification of the contacts between armed-forces staff, which was to be welcomed,
with a view to future joint actions along the Rhodesia/Mozambique border; and aerial reconnaissance by
Royal Rhodesian Air Force Canberras, from which Portugal was benefiting and which should be encouraged:
the use by the RRAF of airbases in Angola and Mozambique for its own purposes should be tolerated. AOS
have been found, but there is no doubt that the meeting was a positive one. In
his memoirs, Smith describes how Salazar, asked if he would support an in-
dependent Rhodesia, smiled, got up, and warmly shook his hand: ‘He did not
speak, and I sensed that he was overcome by a certain amount of emotion.’108
Salazar, in his diary, noted the main topic of their conversation: ‘African
problems and the possible (assured) independence of Rhodesia’.109 Charac-
teristically, Salazar noted the sending of flowers to Mrs. Ian Smith. While Smith
met Salazar, a wider airing of views took place in the Ministry of National
Defense between Portuguese and Rhodesian officials. The latter expressed the
view that African nationalists in Southern Rhodesia would be controlled in the
future, and that all seemed to be going well in Malawi, where Hastings Banda
was becoming a dictator, centralizing power in his person. The situation in the
future Zambia, however, was harder to predict: ‘there is no-one responsible to
look after the government, and there is a strong communist influence among
syndicalists—the Minister of Labor himself is a communist.’110 There were
other areas of concern—both the Soviet Union and China would shortly open
an embassy in Lusaka, while it was believed that Zambia and Tanzania would,
with financial support from the communist powers, create a railway link that
would relieve Zambia of its dependence on Portuguese railways and ports for
the exportation of its mineral goods. After this meeting, matters accelerated,
with two rounds of talks (December 1964 and February 1965) by sizeable dele-
gations working out not only a trade accord between Portugal and Rhodesia,
but also deeper economic cooperation.
In July 1965, Rhodesia appointed a new representative in Lisbon. London
saw this step with great apprehension, since so far only South Africa had
accepted Rhodesian diplomatic representatives appointed without London’s
permission. Great Britain asked Portugal not to receive the diplomat in
question, Harry Reedman, while the British press piled on the pressure. The
CO MNE 30A, notes on a conversation between the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Prime Minister of
Southern Rhodesia.
108. Ian Smith, Bitter Harvest: Zimbabwe and the Aftermath of Its Independence (London: John Blake, 2008), p. 73.
Salazar made a considerable impression on the Rhodesian leader: ‘Salazar was one of the most remarkable
men I had met. He was referred to as a dictator of Portugal, but this had no bearing on the truth […] His
eyes were blue and crystal clear; he had grey hair and an aquiline nose. His whole face displayed character and
he spoke quietly and in measured tones. His actions were dignified, and everything about him depicted
modesty, that characteristic which is probably the most important ingredient of civilized man.’ Smith, Bitter
Harvest, p. 72.
109. Ian Smith would write to Salazar on 16 September 1964, thanking the Portuguese leader, on his own
behalf and that of his wife, for the hospitality accorded to them in Lisbon. Smith added, ‘I was particularly
impressed with the frankness of our exchanges, and am now absolutely certain of a deep and understanding
friendship between our two countries’, before inviting Salazar to visit Rhodesia, although he understood ‘that
it is not your practice to travel outside Portugal.’ AOS COE 3, letter, Salisbury, 16 September 1964, Ian
Smith to António de Oliveira Salazar.
110. AOS COE 3, notes on the meeting of 4 September 1964 at National Defense, 7 September 1964, signed
by Ribeiro da Cunha.
Observer, in an editorial on 15 September, called on the government to cut
diplomatic ties with Portugal should Reedman be recognized by Lisbon. That
same day, Reedman arrived in the Portuguese capital to be received by a Portu-
guese diplomat. According to The Times, ‘it is understood that Mr Reedman,
whose exact status here has not yet been officially announced, will work from
offices near the fashionable Marquis de Pombal square.’ In his first statement
on Portuguese soil, the Rhodesian diplomat stated that ‘“what Portugal has
done and is doing in Africa, we will continue to help in the future.”’111 On 15
August, a request arrived through a non-official contact for a meeting between
Salazar and the heads of the Rhodesian army and air force.112
Rhodesia’s UDI did not thus come as a surprise to anyone in Lisbon. Jorge
Jardim was in Salisbury to witness the first days of Rhodesian independence:
I listened to the Prime Minister’s speech at the Salisbury Club […]At the neigh-
boring table sat Sir Roy Walenski [sic] listening with great interest, like everyone
else, to the PM’s words. Reclining on his chair, his eyes closed, it was impossible
to discern any change in countenance during Smith’s speech. He uttered not one
word as a comment at the end.
The “self-control”113 of these people is unnerving.114
There had been no public celebration on the streets of Salisbury, or any other
town; the sole to rejoice, in fact, had been Portuguese living in Umtali.
According to Jardim, assurances given by Portugal of help in case of a fuel em-
bargo had done much to calm public opinion: ‘Without a doubt we performed
a remarkable service in this regard’.
Great Britain, in order to save the Commonwealth and its role in Africa,
immediately imposed a number of sanctions on Rhodesia, and through the
United Nations asked other countries to do the same. Portugal, after some
hesitation, quickly set about providing quiet economic support for Ian Smith’s
regime, a stance not too far removed from that which guided it in relation to
Franco and the Nationalist camp during the Spanish Civil War. That a row
between the two ‘ancient allies’ was brewing was clear for all to see. Meeting
the British ambassador at the close of 1965, Franco Nogueira stressed that
Portugal’s help could not be enlisted in the oil embargo, since Portugal did not
111. ‘Lisbon arrival of Rhodesian envoy’ in The Times (London), 16 September 1965. Reedman was inter-
viewed some days later by the Emissora Nacional, speaking of his mission in Portugal and the future of Africa,
and stressing that Rhodesia would not allow the appearance of ‘“trash democracy of one man one vote”’ to
take hold within its borders. ‘Rhodesia envoy puts the case for independence: Diplomatic status reasserted in
Lisbon broadcast’ in The Times (London), 25 September 1965.
112. AOS COE 1, letter, Lisbon, 15 August 1965, H. A. Lester to António de Oliveira Salazar.
113. In English, in the original.
114. AOS CP 145, letter, undated, received 21 November 1965, Jorge Jardim to António de Oliveira Salazar.
produce, or transport, oil: provided Britain ensured that no oil got to Beira,
none would be sent on to Rhodesia.115 When Sir Archibald Ross suggested that
the destruction of Ian Smith’s regime would benefit Portugal, Franco Nogueira
was scathing:
I commented that we were becoming tired of this vision of our interests which
consisted of our satisfying the interests, requests, and needs of Her Majesty’s
government […] I told him, frankly, the following: in all of this Rhodesia question
we had never heard from Her Majesty’s government a single word of concern, of
respect, of safeguarding, of protection of Portuguese interests.
As one historian has pointed out, Salazar believed that Harold Wilson, by
stating that violence would not be employed to bring Salisbury back into line,
had shown his hand too soon.116 More than anything else, Wilson needed to be
seen to be doing something, in order to preserve the possibility of a moderate
solution to the crisis: preventing oil from reaching Rhodesia was one thing he
could do. At the end of the month the Economist wrote that
Portugal still has not said just how it intends to handle Rhodesia’s seizure of inde-
pendence. Front-page coverage was given to the event in the press, but mainly in
the form of foreign agency messages […] But in his press conference on Thursday
Dr Franco Nogueira, the foreign minister, only said it would be “untraditional” for
Portugal to take part in sanctions. What he did not say was whether Portugal
would help to get oil through to Rhodesia if other people clapped sanctions on.117
In December 1965 the British Parliament approved an oil embargo against

Rhodesia. In Salisbury and Lisbon there was apprehension. Jorge Jardim,
setting down on paper what he understood to be Salazar’s wishes, noted,
Portuguese policy in the face of the oil embargo against Rhodesia has the
following objectives:
• Render all possible assistance and help to the Salisbury government.
115. Franco Nogueira mentioned as well that given Mozambique’s low consumption of oil, there could be no
question of supplying Rhodesia’s needs out of what regularly arrived in the Portuguese territory. Never-
theless, Nogueira avowed, the figure for Mozambique’s needs he had advanced was ‘considerably superior’ to
the real one. AOS CO NE 30B, notes on a conversation between the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the
British ambassador (Sir Archibald Ross), 22 December 1965.
116. Oliveira, Os despojos da aliança, p. 336.
117. ‘Portugal keeps quiet’ in The Economist (London), 27 November 1965. The article went on to explain that
Angolan oil was increasingly abundant and that it represented an obvious answer to Rhodesia’s needs: ‘How
would the Portuguese transport Angola oil to Rhodesia? Maybe by way of South Africa. Portugal supplies
South Africa with a certain amount of petrol […] There has also been talk of building a pipeline from
Luanda to Johannesburg, and of a Portuguese oil refinery being built to refine large quantities of Angolan
crude oil. In the meantime, the oil could, if necessary, be taken by tanker to South African ports.’
• Not involve Portugal in situations that might lead to a blockade of

Mozambique or help those who might wish to bring such a blockade
about.118
In other words, Portugal was following a careful path, all the more since,
according to Jardim, South Africa had not yet made its response to the oil
embargo clear. Should Pretoria accept the embargo, Portugal alone could not
ensure the supply of Rhodesia in defiance of the international community.119
Portugal’s representative in Salisbury, Freitas Cruz, reminded a worried Ian
Smith that for some time now Portuguese advice on the oil situation had gone
unheeded in Salisbury:
He reminded him [Ian Smith], in effect, that since May we had been
recommending that Sonarep120 be authorized to operate in Rhodesia which, had it
occurred, would not only have been an argument against the setting up of the
embargo but would now justify the supply through the refinery at Lourenço
Marques as the continuation of a normal commercial flow.121
Fortunately for Salisbury, implementation of the oil embargo was made

more difficult by the actions of foreign oil companies and the foreign subsi-
diaries of British companies. In the meantime, Salazar did what he could to
minimize British pressure on Rhodesia and himself.122 A gesture was needed,
118. AOS CP 145, ‘Boicote de combustíveis—Posição portuguesa’, document attached to letter, Christmas
Day 1965, Jorge Jardim to António de Oliveira Salazar. Jardim wrote, in this letter, ‘I include some notes […]
they contain a note on the government’s orientation in which I made an effort to summarize the principles,
the rules and the intentions I could glean from our meetings in Lisbon.’
119. Pretoria’s position was made clearer at a meeting between Franco Nogueira and Ambassador Burger,
Verwoerd’s special envoy, in Lisbon, on 31 January 1966. See AOS CO MNE 30A, notes on a conversation
between the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Ambassador Burger, special envoy of Prime Minister Verwoerd.
Both countries agreed to support Rhodesia, and were taking steps to do so, but each wanted the other to
take the lead when it came to supplying Salisbury with the oil it needed. No conclusion was reached at the
meeting. That same afternoon, after a quick briefing from Franco Nogueira, Salazar himself met the South
African diplomat, discussing the Rhodesian question for over three hours. Two days later, at a new meeting
with Franco Nogueira, Burger proposed a way out of the impasse: ‘Pretoria will supply the oil, from its
stocks or its usage; the fuel will go by rail to Lourenço Marques; and from here to Rhodesia, by way of
Limpopo.’ AOS CO MNE 30A, notes on a conversation between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and
Ambassador Burger, 2 February 1966. The details of this new scheme, involving firms such as Sonarep-
South Africa and Genta, was spelled out by Jorge Jardim in an undated note entitled ‘Rodésia—Com-
bustíveis (23)’, which can be found in AOS CP 145. Another note on the same topic, dated 9 March 1966,
reported that ‘the situation in Rhodesia as regards the supply of fuel has improved appreciably.’
120. Sonarep (Sociedade Nacional de Refinação de Petróleo) was the Franco-Portuguese syndicate respon-
sible for the establishment of a refinery at Lourenço Marques.
121. AOS CP 145, report, 25 December 1965, Jorge Jardim to António de Oliveira Salazar. Some days later,
Jardim wrote of the increasing ‘nervousness and lack of control’ of the Rhodesian leadership. AOS CP 145,
letter, 5 January 1966, Jorge Jardim to António de Oliveira Salazar.
122. One Conservative Member of Parliament who met Salazar at this time wrote, ‘it was a crowning
conclusion to my tour to be received by one of the greatest men of our Century and to benefit by Your
Excellency’s penetrating and helpful exposition of your country’s attitude to Africa based on more than five
hundred years of heroic experience’. AOS CP 93, letter, London, 26 January 1966, John Biggs-Davison MP
especially since it was now reported that in Beira, ‘furious activity’ was
underway as new oil storage tanks were built.123 Existing tanks were owned by
companies obeying the embargo, so an alternative was required. The British
response was to impose a naval blockade on the port of Beira, in order to
prevent any oil flowing through the Beira-Umtali pipeline, which the Portu-
guese controlled. The blockade would last until 1975, and months after its crea-
tion handed Harold Wilson a seemingly important diplomatic victory, when the
Greek tanker Ioanna V, having defied the blockade, was prevented, through
diplomatic pressure on Portugal,124 from unloading its cargo. The crisis reached
fever pitch, the Portuguese taking seriously the possibility of a British seizure
of Beira.125 The Portuguese Consul in Swaziland established a network of
‘permanent observation’ over the airport and barracks which housed British
forces.126 In the end, Portugal appealed to Ian Smith to declare that he would
forego the oil aboard the Ioanna V, which he did, bringing the incident to a
close.127 This was a humiliation for Salazar in the eyes of the world; as the
to António de Oliveira Salazar. Biggs-Davison would go on to write Rhodesia: The Realities (London: British
Commonwealth Union Publications, 1967).
123. ‘Plugging the oil leak’ in The Economist (London), 12 March 1966.
124. This pressure included, after an unsuccessful flying visit to Portugal by Lord Walston, representing the
British government, Security Council resolution 221, of 9 April 1966, which called upon ‘the Portuguese
government not to permit oil to be pumped through the pipeline from Beira to Southern Rhodesia’, and
called on the British government ‘to prevent, by the use of force if necessary, the arrival at Beira of vessels
reasonably believed to be carrying oil destined for Southern Rhodesia […]’. For more details on the
evolution of the crisis see AOS CO NE 30B, notes on a conversation between the Minister for Foreign
Affairs and Sir Archibald Ross, 5 April 1966; AOS CO NE 30A, notes on the first conversation with Lord
Walston, 6 April 1966; on the second conversation with Lord Walston, 7 April 1966; on the third
conversation with Lord Walston, 7 April 1966.
125. On 11 April instructions were sent by the Minister of National Defense to the commander-in-chief in
Mozambique to prepare the defense of Beira against the forcible seizure of the port by a foreign power. AOS
CO PC 78L, message 009/4511, 11 April 1966, General Secretariat of National Defense. Salazar was
sufficiently worried to write Verwoerd, on 29 April, asking for clarification of the South African position in
case of a British attack against Beira. Verwoerd replied on 12 May, his letter constituting an extremely
illuminating document. Verwoerd minimized the risk of a British attack, provided that Portuguese troops in
Beira were kept in a high state of readiness; insisted that military cooperation with the Rhodesian armed
forces would be counter-productive, since it ‘would be a complete negation of your attitude and ours that the
current dispute is the exclusive responsibility of Britain and Rhodesia’; and denied the need for Portuguese-
South African staff talks, which might do more harm than good if publicized, which they would have to be
in order to have deterrent value. Verwoerd added, however, ‘I recognize the continuing need for
conversations between our two governments at the highest level […]’. AOS COE 3, letter, Pretoria, 12 May
1966, H. F. Verwoerd to António de Oliveira Salazar.
126. AOS CO UL 81, telegram, 24 May 1966, governor-general of Mozambique to Overseas Minister.
127. Jorge Jardim met Ian Smith in the afternoon of 13 April 1966 to map out the solution to the crisis.
Jardim’s crucial role in southern African affairs is evidenced by the last paragraph of his description of the
meeting (AOS CP 145, report n. 200, Jorge Jardim, 13 April 1966): ‘Once the plan of action had been
established the P. M. [Smith] stressed that he considered it indispensable for me to go to South Africa, to
inform there the P. M. [Verwoerd] in the greatest possible detail of the reasons that determined our common
stance and to present the basis for the Portuguese suggestions, which, in the name of the Portuguese
President of the Council I had transmitted to him. He insisted that I do this with the greatest openness “and
the sooner the better” so that the South Africa P. M. might have full knowledge of the problem and the
intervention that is expected of his country in the supply of Rhodesia.’ In a letter to Salazar written on 14
April, and received the following day, Jardim explained that ‘the favorable solution was due, above all, to the
Economist put it, the incident ‘had put a glass window into Beira and frightened
off the weaker Salazar administration.’128
Lyndon Johnson, for whom Africa was of lesser importance as an issue
than it had been for Kennedy, attempted to reel in Salazar with a personal
letter:
Please understand, Mr Prime Minister, that I do not minimize the difficulties

involved in the Rhodesian situation. But I have faith that if all those in authority in
southern Africa would strive to create an atmosphere of mutual trust and respect
by word and deed, the forces of peace and progress could triumph over those of
violence and destruction. […] We have supported the British government in its
efforts peacefully to restore constitutional rule in Rhodesia because we believe that
eventual majority rule is essential to the political stability of the area.129
The letter failed. The Ioanna V affair was not the end of the affair as far as
Portugal, South Africa, and Rhodesia were concerned. Gasoline and other
products continued to pour into Rhodesia, by road from the Transvaal, having
been refined at the Lourenço Marques Matola refinery, which was owned, in-
credibly, by Shell and British Petroleum.130 Portugal also benefited from the full
cooperation of the French authorities. After a meeting with Marcelo Matias,
Portuguese ambassador to Paris, Jorge Jardim described the French position in
the following fashion:
While England handled the Rhodesian affair as an internal rebellion, France

backed England every time she was asked to collaborate in the restoration of
legality.
Since it became an international affair, being handled in another way and with
other interests clashing directly, France has begun to abstain and to not interfere
in the commercial activity of French companies.131
respect and admiration that Mr Ian Smith has for you.’ AOS CP 145, letter, Dondo, 14 April 1966, received
by Salazar on 15 April 1966, courtesy of TAP staff. Jardim went to Pretoria, where he met Verwoerd for
nearly three hours on 21 April 1966. Details of the meeting are to be found in AOS CP 145, letter, Beira, 24
April 1966, Jorge Jardim to António de Oliveira Salazar.
128. ‘Whites in Mourning’ in The Economist (London), 10 September 1966.
129. AOS COE 2, letter, Washington, 10 June 1966, Lyndon B. Johnson to António de Oliveira Salazar.
130. See, for a description of the inefficiency of the Rhodesian oil blockade in the late 1960s, S. R. Ashton
and Wm Roger Louis (eds), British Documents on the End of Empire, Series A, vol. 5 East of Suez and the
Commonwealth, 1964–1975 part II Europe, Rhodesia, Commonwealth (London: TSO, 2004), doc. 231, letter, 15
March 1968, D. P. R. Mackilligan (private secretary to Lord Thompson, Secretary of State for
Commonwealth Affairs) to A. M. Palliser (private secretary to the Prime Minister): ‘To succeed in preventing
oil delivered to Lourenço Marques getting to Rhodesia, the enforcement measures would have to extend to
such a degree of control over oil supplies to other customers supplied from Lourenço Marques, especially
those in the Transvaal, as would be bound to involve us in a confrontation with South Africa.’
131. AOS CP 146, report, 10 December 1966, Jorge Jardim to António de Oliveira Salazar, ‘Dr Marcelo
Matias, 6 December 1966’.
Besides collaborating in the supply of oil, Portugal helped the Salisbury
government in other ways; Portugal, which recognized the validity of Rho-
desian passports and official documents, provided railway carriages, helped to
create the Acceptance Bank of Rhodesia, and provided contacts for the pur-
chase of weapons, notably in Spain. After 1968, when the Rhodesian insur-
gency began, the security forces of the two countries began to cooperate
regularly, being backed in their efforts by South Africa.
Chapter XI
Portugal at War
The 1960s
O n 14 January 1964 José Ibañez-Martín, Spanish ambassador to Portugal,

wrote to Salazar, complaining of the publication, the previous day, by the
‘opposition’ daily República, of an article entitled ‘República thirty years ago: 13
January 1934—Spanish Fascism’. As the name suggests, this was a reprint of an
article published in 1934, and was an attack on the founder of the Falange, José
Antonio Primo de Rivera. Salazar replied immediately:
I never read the República, as a result of which only through your letter did I
become aware that it inserted in yesterday’s issue a thirty-year old article which, I
can understand perfectly, indisposed Spain and all Spaniards who, in José
Antonio’s sacrifice and in his ideals see only motives for the highest respect. What
most amazes me is that in 1934 such an article was published […]1
This was the incredible situation that Portugal found itself in the 1960s. It was
in the hands of a leader for whom the period since the late 1920s was a single,
1. AOS COE 2, letter, 14 January 1964, José Ibañez-Martin to António de Oliveira Salazar, and draft reply,
14 January 1964.
Portugal at War: The 1960s 545
uninterrupted continuum, a man already in power when the young Primo de
Rivera’s name was first spoken of, and who had overcome the challenges to his
authority posed by the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and the Cold War.
Given that Portugal was no Albania, shut off from the rest of the world by an
impenetrable ideological wall and coils of barbed wire, it was no surprise that
its population, and especially its youth—the same youth now being called on to
fight in Africa—was growing increasingly estranged from its leader. The
number of Portuguese who felt no debt of gratitude towards Salazar for his
financial achievements of the 1920s and 1930s, and for keeping Portugal out of
the war in the 1940s, was growing every year. The Delgado election had caused
great damage to the regime’s claims of legitimacy. Could Salazar’s Portugal re-
invent itself, in order to claw back popular support, in the face of the
challenges that beset it?
The Santa Maria Affair
On 22 January 1961, less than forty-eight hours after John F. Kennedy’s

inauguration as President of the United States, the Portuguese cruise liner Santa
Maria was seized while in the Caribbean by twenty-four members of a
movement which called itself the Directório Revolucionário Ibérico de Libertação
(DRIL—Iberian Revolutionary Directorate for Liberation). These men were
led by Henrique Galvão, recently escaped from a Portuguese prison, where he
had been kept for years, with little hope of release, via the Argentine embassy,
where he was granted political asylum.2 Salazar, in bed with a flu which doctors
feared might take a turn for the worse (his diary entries for these days are
extremely short) learned of the Santa Maria’s seizure by a phone call from
Pedro Teotónio Pereira on 23 January.3 One member of the crew was killed
during the operation, and another one wounded; this man was dropped off for
treatment in the island of St Lucia on 23 January, which was when the ship’s
whereabouts were first pinpointed; it then set off into the Atlantic, its final
destination unknown, with 600 bewildered passengers aboard. In fact, the
original idea was to carry out an attack against the Spanish island of Fernando
Pó, and then seize control, with forces raised locally, of the continental part of
Spanish Equatorial Guinea. From there, an assault might be mounted on
Luanda:
2. For Henrique Galvão’s account of the operation, see his Santa Maria: My Crusade for Portugal (Cleveland &
New York: World Publishing Company, 1961).
3. Franco Nogueira’s account, which has Teotónio Pereira learning of the Santa Maria’s seizure in the evening
of 22 January and informing Salazar immediately, while the latter was in conversation with Luís Supico Pinto,
seems to be off by one day; according to Salazar’s diary, it occurred on 23 January.
We knew how well we had studied and organized the project and how practicable
it was, provided the essential tactics of surprise and audacity and the outside
elements in which we placed a calculated reliance did not fail us.4
Portugal called on its allies to help find the missing liner, stressing that an
act of piracy had been committed. Two American destroyers, the USS Wilson
and the USS Damato, and a British frigate, HMS Rothesay, joined the chase for
the large liner, but their respective governments’ attitude was quickly altered
after 24 January, once Galvão issued an initial communiqué, ‘in the name of
the Independent National Council of Liberation, presided over by General
Humberto Delgado, who was elected President of the Portuguese Republic but
was fraudulently deprived of his rights by the Salazar government.’ Galvão
explained that
We seek to attain political objectives of a purely democratic anti-totalitarian nature,

opposed to all arbitrary forms of government. We seek not only the support of the
governments of all the truly free peoples of the world but also recognition of this
portion of free territory […] We shall put the passengers ashore at the first neutral
port that will guarantee our safety and the safety of our ship.5
According to Franco Nogueira, the communiqué impressed world opinion,

and the search was called off. The New York Times speculated about where the
ship was headed, and correctly read the situation, interpreting a greeting by
Galvão to President-elect Jânio Quadros and the Brazilian press and people as
the intention to call into a northern Brazilian port, if necessary.6 The recently
installed Kennedy administration used concerns over the passengers’ well-
being to justify its apparent inaction. This stance was exploited by the regime in
Portugal, with protests addressed to the young American President from all
manner of professional bodies, the ship’s owners (the Companhia Nacional de
Navegação), families of crew members, and even Cardinal-Patriarch Cerejeira,
who asked John F. Kennedy to ensure that the crew be allowed to leave the
ship along with the passengers. Behind closed doors, Portuguese officials were
more forceful.7
4. Galvão, Santa Maria, p. 114.

5. Ibid., p. 144.
6. ‘Enemy of Salazar, Now in Brazil, Ordered Ship Captured’ in New York Times, 25 January 1961.
7. One historian writes, ‘the American ambassador in Lisbon, C. Burke Elbrick, was called to the Portuguese
Foreign Ministry so that Lisbon could express its “most vehement protest” against the American “neglect”
of the 370 Portuguese crew members and the ship’s safety. Portuguese officials bluntly reminded Elbrick that
the Azores agreement was coming up for renewal in 1962.’ Witney W. Schneidman, Engaging Africa: Washing-
ton and the Fall of Portugal’s Colonial Empire (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2004), p. 4.
On 25 January the Santa Maria, now renamed Santa Liberdade, was spotted
by an American plane, whose crew, establishing contact with the liner, invited
Galvão to bring the liner into Puerto Rico, which Galvão declined to do. From
that moment on, however, the ship would be regularly over-flown, making it
impossible for Galvão to recover the element of surprise. That same day, for
example, Salazar was informed by Beleza Ferraz, Chief of Staff of the Armed
Forces, that the latest sightings of the Santa Maria suggested it might be
heading for Cape Verde or Portuguese Guinea; the first of these destinations
was a mere four days away.8 Humberto Delgado denied, at the close of the day,
that the rebels aboard the Santa Maria had ever planned to come to Brazil,
although he still refused to say where the liner was headed.9 On 26 January,
Salazar was informed by Beleza Ferraz that American patrol planes usually
stationed in Spain and in Sardinia had been made available to the Portuguese,
and that a request had been made for them to be grouped in the Sal air base, in
the Cape Verde islands. However, an American admiral had informed the
Portuguese Air Force Chief of Staff that while the U.S. Navy would shadow
the Santa Maria, boarding it would be a matter for the Portuguese.10 To this
end, the Americans would pass on its whereabouts to a Portuguese vessel now
underway, the Pero Escobar. Spain had also offered to help: military transport
planes were earmarked for the supply of Sal, in case of trouble, while the
cruiser Canarias and two destroyers were prepared to leave Cadiz for the
Canaries, although it was thought they would arrive too late. From this day on-
wards, with a growing military force based on the island of Sal and an officer
coordinating its action, attention turned to how this force should carry out its
mission. Salazar discussed this with Beleza Ferraz and with the Navy Minister.
On 27 January, Teotónio Pereira suggested that thought be given to the first
words to be exchanged between pilots aboard Portuguese patrol aircraft and
the Santa Maria. Precise instructions would be needed, for this matter could not
be left to the sudden inspiration of the pilot in question.11 That same day,
Beleza Ferraz forwarded Salazar the definitive orders to be sent the officer
leading the search for the Santa Maria, Commodore Laurindo dos Santos. A
violent assault of the ship had been discussed, Beleza Ferraz pointing out that
8. AOS CO PC 63, letter, Lisbon, 25 January 1961, General Beleza Ferraz to António de Oliveira Salazar.
Beleza Ferraz enumerated the steps taken in response: Two maritime patrol airplanes had been dispatched to
Cape Verde, along with the frigate Pero Escobar and a contingent of paratroopers.
9. ‘Delgado Terms Ship Seizure a Signal for Uprisings’ in New York Times, 26 January 1961. The report added
that ‘General Delgado spoke before Senhor Galvão disclosed the destination of the ship as Angola, a Portu-
guese colony in West Africa.’
10. Beleza Ferraz claimed that another Portuguese warship, the destroyer Lima, would leave Lisbon that day
for Cape Verde. AOS CO PC 63, letter, Lisbon, 26 January 1961, General Beleza Ferraz to António de
Oliveira Salazar.
11. AOS CO PC 63, letter, Lisbon, 27 January (morning), 1961, Pedro Teotónio Pereira to António de
Oliveira Salazar.
he had ‘taken the liberty’ of ruling out a rocket attack against the Santa Maria’s
bridge. The government’s orders stipulated that, if possible, it should be left to
the Americans to halt the liner; only if they refused to do so should the
Portuguese intervene, using force, if necessary, to disable the ship’s rudder.12
While these decisions were being taken in Lisbon, the American officer in
charge of the Atlantic fleet, Admiral Robert L. Dennison, was attempting to
convince Galvão to put his hostages ashore, with Brazil as an obvious choice,
arguing that since it had now been deprived of the element of surprise, the
game was up for the expedition. Galvão procrastinated, since Brazil would be,
until the end of the month, in the hands of outgoing President Kubitschek,
who had always enjoyed good relations with Salazar: once he had been replaced
by President-elect Jânio Quadros, however, it might be possible to call into a
Brazilian port, release the hostages, and set sail once again. The role of
Quadros was becoming increasingly suspect to Lisbon, a rumor circulating to
the effect that his departure from Lisbon to Brazil, after a pre-inauguration
tour of Europe, had been hurried because he had been tipped off about the
seizure of the Santa Maria, aboard which he had been due to travel.13 The Santa
Maria nevertheless remained close to Brazil.
On 31 January, a meeting occurred which infuriated the Portuguese gov-
ernment:14 the Santa Maria, anchored off the Brazilian port of Recife, was
reached by an American destroyer, from which emerged Admiral Allen Smith,
who spoke to Galvão aboard the hijacked liner. As Galvão wrote, the meeting
‘amount[ed] to America’s tacit recognition of our political status as rebels.’
Looking back on this event, Américo Tomás considered the Americans’
attitude to be ‘amazing and lamentable, explicable only by the decadence of the
times we now live in.’15 Allen Smith arrived with other American authorities
and a host of journalists; the mechanics of the passengers’ release was the main
topic of their discussions, although no definitive conclusion was yet reached.
That same day Harry Franklin, writing in the Guardian, strove to increase
12. AOS CO PC 63, telegram, Lisbon, 27 January 1961, General J. Beleza Ferraz to Commodore Laurindo
dos Santos.
13. Ribeiro de Meneses (ed.), Correspondência diplomática, doc. 254, report, Lisbon, 31 January 1961, J. W.
Lennon to Secretary, Department of External Affairs, Dublin, pp. 368-69. Américo Tomás wrote, in his lack-
lustre memoirs, that ‘out of curiosity it should be mentioned that the president-elect of Brazil, Dr Jânio
Quadros, who was on a visit to Portugal, embarked [...] on a cargo ship, practically without saying goodbye,
after a long list of eccentricities [...]’. Américo Tomás, Últimas décadas, vol. 3, p. 76.
14. American authorities in Lisbon refuted the charges made by the Portuguese government, pointing out
that ‘the US Navy has gone to considerable lengths and much expense to track the ship involving thousands
of man-hours of continuous flying during day and night, as well as thousands of hours of steaming.’ During
that time, the Navy ‘has had Portugal’s interests very much in mind […]’. AOS CO PC 63, statement from
the Chief of Naval Operations, United States Navy, for information of the Portuguese Government.
support in Great Britain for Galvão, by linking his action to the situation in the
Portuguese colonies:
Any man who can steal a liner merits the astonished respect of the seafaring, but
now perhaps effete, English, who gave up ship stealing long ago to pursue the
sordid profits of industry. Captain Galvao, who has purloined the Santa Maria not
for gain—in any event receivers are reluctant to deal in stolen liners which are so
easily identifiable—but for the purpose of liberating the Portuguese Colonies,
starting with Angola, will be accorded a good deal of sympathy, besides respect.16
On 1 February a welcoming message was sent to Galvão by President

Quadros, who assured him that ‘in the exercise of my constitutional powers
you will be granted the right of asylum in our national territory and whatever
else is permitted me by the laws and treaties now in effect’, and a Brazilian
delegation arrived aboard the Santa Maria, to negotiate the ship’s entrance into
Recife. Galvão wanted the DRIL men to remain aboard while the ship received
water and fuel, and repairs were carried out to the engines. Most important of
all was that the ship be allowed to leave. On 2 February, the Santa Maria
entered Recife and the passengers began to disembark, tugboats taking them
ashore. By the close of day the operation was complete and, as Galvão relates,
he had changed his mind about the course of events. There was no longer any
reason for the expedition to continue: there was a promise of asylum in Brazil,
no money with which to secure supplies, and no element of surprise: the
adventure was over, but the damage already done to the New State was great.17
As one historian writes, ‘Galvão’s demands for self-determination in Portugal’s
African colonies focused worldwide media attention on Portugal’s harsh
colonial policies and, for the first time, pierced the harsh wall of silence that
Salazar had imposed on the colonies.’18 Or, as the Observer put it at the time,
Senhor Professor Doctor António de Oliveira Salazar, Prime Minister of Portugal

for the last thirty-four years, must be furious. Portugal is in the news and that is
the last thing he ever wanted. […]
16. ‘Portugal’s Iron Grip on Angola’ in Guardian, 31 January 1961. The author, Harry Franklin, who had been
in Angola, wrote of Galvão that ‘he has brought the freedom of Angola one stage nearer by shattering for
ever that silence that is the basis of Portuguese colonial policy’.
17. In reality, there was considerable tension between Galvão and the leading Spanish figure in the operation,
Jorge Sotomayor, who would later state that Galvão never really intended to make it to Africa. See D.L.
Raby, ‘Assalto do Santa Maria’ in Barreto & Mónica (eds), Dicionário de História de Portugal vol. 9, pp. 396–97.
Humberto Delgado, in his memoirs, stressed that the ship’s entry into Brazil was carried out against his
advice, which was that passengers be allowed to disembark in Ascension island. For his truncated account of
the episode, see Chapter 14 of The Memoirs of General Delgado (London: Cassell, 1964).
18. Schneidman, Engaging Africa, p. 13.
Except for royal visits, occasional and regrettable arguments with India about
Goa, and the odd British trade fair, nothing ever happens in the territory of
Britain’s oldest ally […] Now his country is being talked about on ITV news. How
vulgar can the world become?19
The impact of the Santa Maria case in Portugal is hard to establish. Press
censorship played its part in filtering information,20 and the National
Assembly’s outrage was manipulated by the government.21 The Irish minister
in Lisbon believed the regime to have been strengthened by the crisis while it
was still unfolding,22 an opinion he did not alter in the weeks and months that
followed.23 Part of the opposition (‘a committee purporting to represent the
non-communist opposition to the Portuguese regime’24) was emboldened to
attempt a public gesture, delivering a petition for reforms to the President of
the Republic—hardly a revolutionary action, and one he essentially ignored.25
Regime loyalists could speak of a ‘healthy reaction’ by the country against the
Santa Maria hijackers,26 and this was evident by the size of the crowd that
19. ‘A Ship Steams Out of the Fog’ in Observer, 29 January 1961. That day, under the headline ‘Only the Dead
Exempt From Forced Labor’, the Observer published extracts from Galvão’s 1947 report on conditions in
Angola.
20. The República was suspended on suspicion of siding with Galvão. See ‘Salazar’s Rivals File Lisbon Plea’ in
New York Times, 29 January 1961. According to the Irish minister in Lisbon, ‘República’s handling of the Santa
Maria was negative, the newspaper sinning in not giving sufficient coverage to the seizure of the vessel—it
disposed of the whole affair in about twelve lines and failed to publish the official communiqué issued to the
Press by the authorities.’ Ribeiro de Meneses (ed.), Correspondência diplomática, doc. 254, report, Lisbon, 31
January 1961, J. W. Lennon to Secretary, Department of External Affairs, Dublin, p. 368.
21. See AOS CP 236, letter, Lisbon, 31 January 1961, Albino dos Reis to António de Oliveira Salazar, in
which Albino dos Reis, President of the National Assembly, sent Salazar copy of a speech by deputy José
Venâncio Paulo Rodrigues, who ‘had spoken to Dr Teotónio Pereira’, structuring his intervention as a result
of that exchange. Paulo Rodrigues, who had belonged to Mocidade Portuguesa and, later, the Legião’s central
junta, and was also linked to the JUC, blamed Moscow for the web of lies and misunderstandings that
surrounded the affair and which allowed some to think of Galvão and his men, whom the deputy estimated
at some seventy individuals, as anything other than criminals. Paulo Rodrigues was non-confrontational in
relation to President Kennedy, ‘whose moral education rests on the same faith as ours’, and appealed to
incoming President Quadros to mount an armed guard of the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de
Janeiro, should he choose not to imprison Galvão and his followers, for ‘these are the same men who, at the
hill of Los Angeles, near Madrid, one day executed by firing squad the statue of Christ the King.’
22. Ribeiro de Meneses (ed.), Correspondência diplomática, doc. 254, report, Lisbon, 31 January 1961, J. W.
Lennon to Secretary, Department of External Affairs, Dublin, pp. 368–69.
23. On 9 February Lennon wrote that the ‘ending of this affair has not been unsatisfactory from the
viewpoint of the Portuguese Government’, since negative comment abroad had been more than made up for
by the ‘comic-opera nature of the seizure, heightened by the Captain’s spectacular uniform and his
apparently volatile temperament.’ Ribeiro de Meneses (ed.), Correspondência diplomática, doc. 256, report,
Lisbon, 9 February 1961, J. W. Lennon to Secretary, Department of External Affairs, Dublin, p. 370.
24. ‘Salazar’s Rivals’ in New York Times, 29 January 1961. Benjamin Welles, the author, added that ‘the
petition was reported to have been signed by about fifty persons, including former government officials,
lawyers, economists, engineers, doctors and architects. They are reliably said to represent the middle-class
Opposition throughout the nation including Oporto, the traditional Opposition center in the north, and the
capital here.’
25. Tomás, Últimas décadas, vol. 3, pp. 78–79.
26. AOS CP 73, letter, Lisbon, 20 February 1961, Ulisses Cortês to António de Oliveira Salazar.
turned out to greet the liner as it returned to Lisbon, on 16 February.27 Salazar,
who was there in person to speak to the Captain and the rest of the crew, was
prevailed on by ministers and friends to say some words to the press; ‘We have
the Santa Maria with us once again. Thank you, Portuguese’, was his short con-
tribution. Nevertheless it is interesting that the PIDE reported poor attendance
at a mass organized in Oporto by the Mocidade Portuguesesa for the Santa Maria
crewman killed by Galvão and his men.28 This might be interpreted as a refusal
to allow certain groups to exploit the seizure of the ship for their own political
ends. The New York Times correspondent admitted that as the crisis came to a
close most Portuguese stood behind Salazar in the face of foreign criticism, but
added that ‘cautious observers of Portuguese affairs suspect that the ship of
state may have sprung some leaks.’ Welles explained that
the Portuguese nation has been shocked to learn how little the Salazar dictatorship
is liked—even among Portugal’s allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.29
This impression would be confirmed by the lack of sympathy for Portugal over
the outbreak of violence in Angola.
Portugal and Europe in the 1960s.
We have already considered the importance attached by the Portuguese

government to cooperation on economic matters with other European states.
Portuguese membership of EFTA had, in the 1960s, undoubtedly positive
results. It served as a powerful spur to the modernization and development of
the Portuguese economy. Having joined the International Monetary Fund and
the World Bank in 1960, it came as no surprise to see, that same year, Portugal
applied to join the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs, which it did on 6
April 1962. Economic nationalism was well and truly dispensed with. However,
EFTA was a transitional institution, since Great Britain, its driving force, was
intent on entering the EEC. EFTA without Britain made little sense, especially
for Portugal. The moment Britain announced that it intended to join the EEC,
and that such a move might be possible, Portugal would have to jump ship as
27. J. W. Lennon wrote that ‘the return of the “Santa Maria” to Lisbon was the occasion of a popular
demonstration—perhaps not quite as spontaneous as employers were “asked” to free employees to take
part—and the funeral of the ship’s officer killed by the rebels resulted in the largest public gathering seen in
Lisbon for many years. This appeared to be genuinely spontaneous, but whether through sympathy with the
regime or with the deceased officer, or for any other reason, is impossible to say.’ Ribeiro de Meneses,
Correspondência diplomática, doc. 258, report, Lisbon, 4 March 1961, J. W. Lennon to Secretary, Department of
External Affairs, Dublin, p. 374.
28. AOS CO PC 63, PIDE report 25/61, 9 February 1961.
29. ‘Portuguese See Salazar Victory’ in New York Times, 4 February, 1961.
well, this time into a very different organization, founded on the principle of
supranationalism—the surrender of sovereignty to a set of independent and
multi-national institutions. This European brief continued to be overseen by
Correia de Oliveira, a believer in European project who wanted Portugal to
participate in its construction while preserving certain existing privileges.30
Correia de Oliveira was able to keep Salazar on board, as a result of which
other ministers had to follow his lead on the matter. Can one speak of the
triumph of a technocratic class in 1960s Portugal? There were probably not
enough of these modernizing pragmatists to call them a class: there was never-
theless a handful of civil servants from various quarters who had been involved
originally with the OEEC, and who had conducted subsequent negotiations.
Some entertained doubts about aspects of the regime, notably the colonial
policy (to which Correia de Oliveira always professed adhesion); and it was
from their number that Salazar recruited the government ministers and under-
secretaries responsible for economic affairs.31
One man who was skeptical about Portugal’s involvement in Europe was
Foreign Minister Franco Nogueira. Speaking to a foreign diplomat in May
1961, Franco Nogueira explained that Portugal wanted a solution to the two-
bloc problem, but that he could not see where such a solution might come
from. Perhaps some kind of temporary umbrella group might be created, while
a common market covering the whole of Western Europe was negotiated.
Portugal would, in that case, seek to preserve the privileges it enjoyed in
EFTA.32 This was not an unrealistic scenario, since around this time Britain
asked the other EFTA members their thoughts on the EEC. Portugal, through
Correia de Oliveira, made it known that it preferred negotiations between the
two blocs to forcing each country to deal with the EEC by itself. Portugal
could not opt for full membership of the EEC, but might be able to negotiate
some kind of living arrangement with the bloc. In June 1961, at an EFTA
Council, the so-called “London compromise” was reached, by which all EFTA
countries agreed to stand united until all had reached a satisfactory deal with
the EEC. Britain was thus allowed to join the EEC, which it wanted to do,
while its political and economic power was promised to the other EFTA
members in order to secure their own deal with the EEC, be it for full
membership, be it for ‘association’ (the preferred option for Portugal).
30. When Correia de Oliveira was appointed Minister of State at the Presidency of the Council, a foreign
diplomat wrote that ‘he is young—middle 30s—and technically very competent and tends to support the
impression already fairly definite that Dr Salazar is surrounding himself with technicians rather than
politicians’. Ribeiro de Meneses, Correspondência diplomática, doc. 272, report, Lisbon, 27 June 1961, J. W.
Lennon to Secretary, Department of External Affairs, Dublin, pp. 392–93.
32. Ribeiro de Meneses, Correspondência diplomática, doc. 269, report, Lisbon, 23 May 1961, J. W. Lennon to
Secretary, Department of External Affairs, Dublin, pp. 389–90.
On 4 August 1961 Correia de Oliveira, with Salazar’s blessing, decided to
request association status with EEC.33 Although it fell short of full member-
ship, association was still a tremendous step for Portugal, explicable only by the
lack of alternatives. Were Great Britain to join the EEC, EFTA would become
meaningless for Portugal, whose trade with its remaining EFTA partners was
minuscule. Where London went, Lisbon had to follow. However, association,
as defined by the EEC, was a stop-gap measure, one intended only as a
preparatory stage in a process leading to full membership. As a result, it in-
volved the recognition, in principle, that in a medium-term future Portugal
would accept supranational decision-making (and hence a reduction in the
powers of its government) and a complete overhaul of its relationship with
‘Overseas Portugal’. Associate status lasted fifteen years: in applying for it, the
Portuguese government was thus accepting that the New State, as it had
existed, had another fifteen years left to run. What it would metamorphose into
was not, for the moment, clear. Officially, the Portuguese stated that they
hoped that after those fifteen years the EEC might come to accept Portugal’s
‘pluricontinental’ status. In reality, it was impossible, even then, to conceive of
this happening, be it for commercial, be it for political reasons. Andresen
Leitão writes,
It is unlikely that Correia de Oliveira believed sincerely that circumstances could

be altered so radically within the EEC; he had to defend politically the future
inclusion of the colonies within the EEC in order to preserve the constitutional
unity of Portugal and its colonies. In truth, the problem would vanish within the
proposed time frame: in 1968 Salazar was forced to abandon the Presidency of the
Council as a result of illness; in 1975 the Portuguese colonies became independent
after the previous year’s democratic revolution; and in 1977 Portugal requested full
membership of the EEC.34
Looking back, it is clear that Great Britain’s application for membership of

the EEC had changed the goalposts for Portugal, and sounded the death-knell
of the New State. Portugal, despite the on-going drive for a common Portu-
guese economic space, the defense of its national sovereignty, and the con-
cessions gained in the Stockholm Treaty which had created EFTA, was now
forced to seek association with the EEC. This halfway house was necessary
33. Article 238 of the Treaty of Rome states: ‘The Community may conclude with one or more States or
international organizations agreements establishing an association involving reciprocal rights and obligations,
common action and special procedures.’ Greece had entered into such an arrangement in 1961, and the
Portuguese intended to use the deal struck by Greek negotiators as a template, being willing, however, to ask
for less than the Greeks had done, not contemplating financial aid. This, they hoped, would sweeten the
Portuguese pill, which promised to be politically bitter for others to swallow. Andresen Leitão, Estado Novo,
pp. 132–33.
34. Ibid., p. 134
since Portugal would not be accepted as a full member, given the authoritarian
nature of the New State and the worsening situation in the colonies. Asking for
full membership was also politically impossible for Salazar, since it meant
opting immediately for either Europe or Africa. Association seemed to be the
only way to keep moving forward without having to make hard choices in the
most immediate of futures; it gave Portugal some room to breathe, but could
provide no lasting solution. Fortunately for Salazar, the great dilemma—
Europe or Africa—did not have to be resolved in his lifetime: but as he gave
Correia de Oliveira the green light to begin negotiations with the EEC, Salazar
was handing his successor, whoever that might be, a poison chalice. One can
debate whether or not the EEC would have granted Portugal association
status, which depended, ultimately, on the strength of the ‘London Compro-
mise’ and the ensuing solidarity between EFTA members. From the point of
view of Salazar’s career, however, and of his relationship with the regime he
had built, this was a crucial moment.
The Portuguese request for associate status did not materialize imme-
diately. The situation in Angola was given political priority, which meant that
Correia de Oliveira had to turn his attention to the creation of the Portuguese
Economic Space (see below). There was then the invasion of Goa to digest,
and then, in early February 1962, came a bombshell: Franco’s Spain had
resolved to apply for associate status with the EEC. Portugal was surprised by
the move, and the Lisbon government decided to sit back and watch how the
negotiations developed. Franco’s regime enjoyed a worse reputation abroad
than the New State, but it did not bear the burden of colonial empire, and a
substantial economic reform program was underway. In any case, initial con-
tacts about a Portuguese bid had led to a mixed reception. France and Ger-
many had been well disposed,35 but this was not the case of the other EEC
members, notably the Benelux countries, whose leaders could not envisage a
deal with the New State.
Nevertheless, on 4 June 1962, the Portuguese government requested the
opening of negotiations with the EEC. Little, though, was done. Since the
Portuguese strategy hinged on the success of the British application, on whose
tailcoat Portugal intended to ride, Correia de Oliveira sat back and watched the
progress of London’s bid. It was not without relief that Salazar watched de
35. At a meeting between Franco Nogueira and the West German ambassador, on 10 April 1962, the latter
suggested that Portugal think about reaching some arrangement with the EEC, and informed Franco
Nogueira that there were 1.5 billion marks allocated for financing projects abroad. His government would be
happy to provide credit to Portugal, which should ask for 500 million marks in order to secure 250 million
for ambitious public projects, such as a motorway from Lisbon to Oporto. AOS CP 193, notes on a
conversation between the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the ambassador of the Federal Republic of
Germany, 10 April 1962.
Gaulle, on 13 January 1963, put paid to British aspirations to join the EEC.
Salazar could exhale and discuss the possibility, one day, of a united Europe
serving as a Third Force between the USA and the USSR: this was a merely
academic discussion, with no bearing on the present.36 The terrible choice—
Europe or Africa—had been postponed, perhaps indefinitely. EFTA, which so
suited Portugal, continued to operate, and even to generate tension within the
Portuguese government. After an EFTA meeting in Lisbon, in May 1963,
Correia de Oliveira called for a rapid dismantlement of trade barriers, but the
Finance and Economy ministers, Pinto Barbosa and Teixeira Pinto, insisted on
slowing the process of integration down. Salazar did not indicate a preference
for the way forward.37
Relations between EFTA and the EEC, and the merits of the two organi-
zations, formed part of the agenda in Salazar and Franco’s seventh and final
meeting, held in Mérida, on 14/15 May 1963.38 This summit was delayed
because of international condemnation of Franco following the execution of
communist leader Julián Grimau, on 20 April 1963, from which Franco sought
to spare Salazar. The two men discussed world affairs, their relationships with
individual European countries, the United States, and Latin America, and the
United Nations; they also conferred on colonial matters. Franco promised
support for the Portuguese position in Africa, be it in the UN or anywhere
else. Such discussions occupied the four hours Salazar and Franco spent alone
in the evening of the 14th. On the 15th, however, the Spanish showed them-
selves rather less forthcoming about the future of their Sub-Saharan African
possessions, which they themselves described as of little interest, and not
worth the souring of relations with the Arab world. Franco Nogueira, whose
suspicion of Spanish motives would soon turn into hostility, if not outright
paranoia, would later write, ‘Salazar concludes that the Spaniards, at the first
opportunity, are ready to abandon everything in black Africa, in order to avoid
conflicts with the UN: and that they are willing to sacrifice something for the
mirage of a great policy in the Arab world.’39
The Portuguese Economic Space
Alongside developments in Europe, and in response to African

nationalists, the UN, and the white population of the colonies, the Portuguese
36. Rollo, ‘Salazar e a construção’, p. 71.

37. Franco Nogueira, A resistência, p. 480
38. Ibid. See p. 483, for a priceless example of Salazar’s bureaucratic thinking: having lunched and rested in
Elvas, on the Portuguese side of the border, Salazar realized, in the automobile, that he did not have his pass-
port with him: ‘[…] he suddenly strikes his knees with his hands and announces, as if dazed: “I forgot my
passport! How are we going to cross the border?”’
39. Ibid., p. 484.
government unveiled, in November 1961, the Espaço Económico Português
(EEP—Portuguese Economic Space). Moves in this direction had been fore-
seen in the constitutional revision of 1951 and the ensuing Organic Law of
Overseas Portugal (1953). Decree-Law 44,016, which gave birth to the new
entity, contained the commitment to abolish all existing tariffs operating
between continental Portugal and the overseas provinces (this was in fact
largely achieved by 1964), with the resulting creation of a single economic
space united by a common currency, the escudo, within a time frame of ten
years. It was hoped that one traditional bugbear of commercial activity within
the empire, the liquidation of payments, might be resolved once and for all by
the creation of a special Escudo-Zone Monetary Fund. Clearly, the Portuguese
were learning from their participation in European associations, and applying
those lessons to the empire. For the government, this step represented the loss
of considerable revenues hitherto gained from existing intra-imperial tariffs.
The establishment of the EEP was clearly at odds with Portugal’s active
stance in Europe, and even with economic common-sense, given the differing
stages of development reached by the disparate colonies. The motivation for
the EEP lay in the irrational, even mythical, aspect of the empire. The response
to the nationalist challenge in the colonies was to integrate those territories
more closely than ever with the metropolis, whatever the consequences. The
measure was not a success, since it did not contribute significantly to the
prosperity of any part of that space; the abolition of tariffs was not enough to
support material improvements in the poorer colonies, while the rhetoric of
the EEP could not disguise the fact that trade between metropolitan Portugal,
on the one hand, and Angola and Mozambique, on the other, was falling in
importance as each side developed in a different direction. The quantitative
difficulties between the Portuguese and colonial economies posed serious
difficulties for the EEP: unable to deploy currency controls and to manipulate
their tariffs, some colonial economies suffered under the weight of contact
with Portugal’s more developed economy within a single market.40
Part of the problem lay in the fact that alongside the attempt to create this
EEP, the government opened the colonies up to foreign investment, while
stepping up its own investment. After years of jealously evaluating the strength
and possible political implications of each foreign investment in the colonies,
this sudden reversal of policy was driven by a cold calculation—it rendered
groundless the charge that Portugal could not, given its relative poverty, im-
prove the material standing of the African population. Salazar was now in-
volving foreign capital in the preservation of the colonies, hoping that foreign

investors would demand of their own governments that they support
Portuguese sovereignty in Angola and Mozambique. Foreign investment
created prosperity and jobs that attracted white Portuguese to Africa in greater
numbers than State-backed settlement programs had ever done. There was
much to invest in, especially in the case of mineral-rich Angola, whose white
population grew rapidly, jumping from 172,500 in 1960 to 400,000 in 1974.41
Foreign investment led to establishment of factories designed to cater for the
needs of this growing population; Angolan industry grew at a rate of 17.8% per
year in the 1960s, while the colony’s GDP increased by 10% year on year.
There was added wealth from the strategic Benguela railway. Much of this
growth, however, came at the expense of firms based in Portugal itself—what
was happening was a form of import substitution, by which Angola was
ridding itself of its dependence on expensive Portuguese imports. This did not
affect Portugal unduly, however, since trade with the colonies was increasingly
irrelevant to the most dynamic elements of the Portuguese economy, which
were geared for exports to Europe. The main Portuguese economic consortia
all had investments in Africa, but were busy diversifying, hedging their bets on
an uncertain future and investing in trade with the developed world, where
returns were higher.
In May 1966 The Economist reflected on the on-going transformation of
Angola, a territory where ‘the absence of a color bar seems genuine.’ The
advance had been considerable, although, since the starting point had been
modest, ‘the visible evidence is less impressive for a visitor than a resident.’
Gross industrial production, since the start of the war, had grown by an
average of 15 percent:
In the five years to 1964, under Portugal’s second economic development plan,
£52 million was invested in Angola, and in the three-year period to the end of
1967, investment of another £90 million is planned, most of which will also come
from Lisbon. Troops stationed in Angola have helped pump money into the local
economy, and since 1961 the tightening of exchange controls governing transfers
to Portugal has locked in locally generated funds formerly repatriated to Lisbon.42
According to this article, despite the advances made, there remained some
serious questions about the Angolan economy, whose advance remained ‘dis-
turbingly artificial’. Foreign investment remained low, with a few notable
exceptions, notably in the production of oil. Angolans themselves seemed to
have little confidence in the continuation of this growth, since savings were
41. Eric N. Baklanoff, The Economic Transformation of Spain and Portugal (London: Praeger, 1978), p. 107.
42. ‘Angola Is For The Brave’ in The Economist (London), 21 May 1966.
being illegally channeled out of the country in vast quantities. This lack of con-
fidence was not the result of disbelief in the province’s economic potential:
‘what particularly disturbs local and potential foreign investors in Angola is the
knowledge that Dr Salazar is 77, and that he cannot go on forever. When he
retires what happens?’
Paying for the War
Economic gains made by colonial development and as a result of the EEP

had to be offset against the cost of waging war in order to preserve ‘Overseas
Portugal’ intact. What was the impact of the colonial war? Between 1961 and
1974, thanks to the war, the colonies absorbed twenty-six percent of the
national budget; of this, eighty-five percent was spent on the armed forces.43
Thus, some twenty-two percent of the State’s total expenditure went on
fighting the war. This was eight percent of GNP, undoubtedly a high cost for
an action with no end in sight, even if the war acted as a boost to industry and
domestic spending. By 1970, military expenses accounted for ten percent of
GDP; 6.2% of the active population was serving in the military. To the cost of
the war should be added the financing of politically important schemes like the
Cabora-Bassa dam in Mozambique.44 War-related expenses were greater than
any benefits derived by the Portuguese exchequer from the colonial economy.
Fighting three wars while preserving living standards at home implied one
major change: Salazar’s government was forced to borrow. Humberto
Delgado, as leader of the opposition, warned that future government led by
him would not honor these loans,45 but he was generally ignored. Portugal
borrowed from international institutions, such as the World Bank, and private
lenders in Germany, the United States, and France.
The conflicts in Africa generated many new expenses, in addition to which
stood the ongoing modernization of the armed forces, an increasingly costly
necessity. Renewing the navy proved especially problematic, for, although this
branch of the armed forces had some modern material, this was reserved for
NATO duties;46 much of the rest dated back to the 1930s naval reorganization.
43. Lains, Os progressos do atraso, p. 242.

45. ‘Portugal Would Not Repay Loans’ in Observer (London), 16 September 1962
46. According to Franco Nogueira, this issue lay behind a singularly violent display of anger on the part of
Salazar. The Portuguese navy had decided to send a new frigate, the Pereira da Silva, to Angola, to greet a
Brazilian fleet set to visit the territory. Franco Nogueira informed Salazar that the Americans had objected to
this use of the ship, built in Portugal to an American design and with American money. Salazar exploded:
‘“The ship is ours, it goes where we send it […] We must be brutal with the United States. The moment is
coming when we destroy our relations with the Americans. I can’t wait. I hope it happens in my lifetime.”’
Franco Nogueira, Um político, p. 215.
Thus, while the Afonso de Albuquerque had been destroyed in the Goa invasion,
her sister-ship, the Bartolomeu Dias, was still serving in Mozambique. The chief
of the navy’s general staff, Vice-Admiral Armando de Roboredo, wrote, on 8
September 1965,
I know of the financial difficulties to support the war we have been forced into
overseas, which I would be criminal and anti-national to turn our backs on, and I
know of the overall tendency for military expenses to grow. I recognize as well
that the country must progress economically. However, I think that without a
minimum of ocean-going units that proclaim our presence and determination, at
least in the seas that bathe our overseas provinces, imposing respect on those who
would engage in incursions and infiltrate them, we will not win the war […].47
There was undoubtedly a budget conflict taking place between the Ministry
of Finance, traditionally the all-important nerve center of the New State, and
the military authorities. In November 1966, for example, with the war well
established on three fronts, the Army Ministry requested a strengthening of its
annual budgetary allocation by 161 million escudos; it mentioned, as a pallia-
tive, a possible twenty-five million escudos saving that might be effectuated.
Ulisses Cortês, the Finance Minister, considered the first sum impossible to
reach. The most that could be found, by making cuts elsewhere, was thirty to
forty million.48 The Minister of the Army, Joaquim da Luz Cunha, retaliated
two days later, by pointing out that Ulisses Cortês had not really understood
the problem: the sought-after sum had already been spent:
I think that, given the gravity of the situation, and should no other solution be
found—in the immediate term—to the problem at hand, we shall have to suspend
the greater part of the courses and training and even the on-going instruction for
this year’s recruits, despite all the grave consequences of such a measure. This sus-
pension will have to be applied as well at the start of 1967, if the necessary funds
are not attributed that year to the Army Ministry.49
However important the war was deemed to be for Portugal’s survival as an

independent nation, and however much it was costing the metropolitan
economy, it did not override a basic stricture of Portuguese life since 1928: a
balanced budget was the cornerstone of public policy, and continued to be
deemed worth celebrating. Thus, on 13 May 1966, Finance Minister Ulisses
Cortês wrote to Salazar, presenting him with the proofs of the budget report
47. AOS CP 235 letter, 8 September 1965, Armando de Reboredo to António de Oliveira Salazar.
48. AOS CO PC 78L, note, 7 November 1966, Ulisses Cruz de Aguiar Cortês.
49. Ibid., letter, 9 November 1966, Minister of the Army (Luz Silva) to Minister of National Defense.
for 1965 and adding, ‘since the results are clearly favorable, I think that the
approval and publication of the accounts should take place around the 28th of
May.’50 In other words, news that the budget remained balanced was worth
celebrating as part of the fortieth anniversary of the ‘National Revolution’.
The virtues of a balanced budget were not high on the priority of the men
in the armed forces, who by 31 January 1967 numbered 198,000. Of these,
85,000 were stationed in Portugal, and 113,000 were in the colonies. This force
included 28,000 men recruited locally.51 Numbers would continue to rise as the
situation worsened: by April 1974, there were 150,000 soldiers in the colonies
(100,000 of whom were white). Tellingly, however, the numbers entering the
military academy were falling. 1967 marked a peak in the number of cadets
graduating from the military academy: 146 (up from sixty-eight in 1962); this
total fell significantly to ninety-seven in 1968, and sixty in 1969.52 There could
be no greater sign of disaffection between the social groups that had supported
the New State and the war policy. From 1966 onwards, therefore, the army had
recourse to the increased use of temporary officers, a move which would lead
in the future to fatal tensions within the armed forces. Ironically, the same
thing had happened during the First Republic, when participation in World
War I led to a significant increase in the size of the army. The cost of keeping
the war within the national budget was borne ultimately by the troops on the
ground, it was suggested in an Army ministry report of 1968. Military units had
set off for Africa, at the start of the conflict, with inadequate material, and were
subjected to frequent shortages; subsequent purchases barely kept up, if at all,
with wear and tear in Africa; meanwhile, units in Portugal were cannibalized
for spares and the their soldiers reduced to a pointless barracks life.
The already mentioned Cabora-Bassa dam was the subject of a violent
discussion in a Council of Ministers, 9 July 1968. The Defense and Foreign
affairs Ministers were in favor of going ahead with the project, while the men
in charge of the Economy and Finance portfolios were against. According to
Franco Nogueira, who was present,
[…] Correia de Oliveira rubbished Cabora-Bassa defending that at the present

moment only enterprises that can be carried out rapidly, and be immediately
profitable, and that in a short space of time increase national productivity, are of
interest; since Cabora-Bassa meets none of these criteria, it would be a disaster, a
50. AOS CP 73, letter, 13 May 1966, Ulisses Cortês to António de Oliveira Salazar.
51. AOS CP 87, note, 11 April 1967, Luz Cunha to António de Oliveira Salazar.
52. David Martelo, ‘Pessoal e orçamentos: Esforço de guerra’, in Afonso & Matos Gomes, Guerra Colonial,
Table C, p. 520.
tragedy […] Correia de Oliveira insinuated that the metropolitan economy does
not take off because of the overseas provinces.53
In other words, all the rhetoric of a uniquely Portuguese colonizing talent,

or of a national mission to colonize, was shown up by the harsh truth that the
two great colonies in the empire, Angola and Mozambique, had little economic
need of Portugal, and that the continued link with the metropolis was of
benefit to neither party. In this respect it is worth noting that in August 1966
Franco Nogueira sent Salazar a translated BBC broadcast regarding Mozam-
bique, which noted the territory’s strategic importance not only to Rhodesia
and South Africa, but to Zambia and Malawi as well—countries with which,
despite appearances, Portugal enjoyed good relations. The report concluded
that the greatest threat to continued Portuguese rule in Mozambique came
from the white community, who resented the need for Portuguese authoriza-
tion to invest, or to accept foreign investments, and who therefore looked for-
ward to a rich future as the leaders of an autonomous entity within a ‘Portu-
guese community of nations’. Nogueira commented that this last passage was
‘highly significant’, since it was the first time that such a ‘doctrine’ was noted by
the British media.54
The Ongoing Modernization of the Country
As we have seen, in 1958 Ferreira Dias returned to the cabinet as Minister

of the Economy. This was a sure sign by Salazar that development, moderniza-
tion, and industrialization were once again the order of the day. State and
private investment during the 1950s, preserved in the 1960s, was now paying
off:
Beginning in the 1950s, but in a more pronounced form at the start of the 1960s,
the Portuguese economy registered a rate of growth greater than that of the Indus-
trialized economies of Europe. In 1963, the year in which for the first time the
53. Franco Nogueira, Um político, pp. 305–6.

54. AOS CP 193, undated card, Franco Nogueira to António de Oliveira Salazar, containing the transcript of
a BBC broadcast, 3 August 1966. The idea was developed in a further BBC broadcast, on 29 September
1966, which Franco Nogueira also passed on to Salazar. The BBC was this time exploring the possibility of a
common market involving the Angola and Mozambique, Rhodesia and South Africa, Zambia, Malawi, and
Katanga. Once again the frustration of the whites in Angola and Mozambique was stressed: Portuguese
Africa was twenty-two times larger than Portugal, but Portugal could only invest some eighty million pounds
a year, a far cry from what was needed. Also repeated was the notion of a ‘Portuguese Community’ within
which countries would have total independence. AOS CP 193, undated card, Franco Nogueira to António
Salazar, containing the transcript of a BBC broadcast, 29 September 1966.
value of industrial production was greater than that of agricultural production,
Western Europe witnessed in Portugal the birth of its last industrial nation.55
César das Neves, meanwhile, writes that
from 1959 to 1973 most of the new structure of the Portuguese economy was
created. Product almost trebled in these years. Agriculture, which contributed 34
per cent of GDP and occupied 43 per cent of the population in 1958, was down
to 16 per cent of total product in 34 per cent of population by 1973. Openness to
external trade (imports + exports) rose from 41 to 56 per cent of GDP.56
Did this mean, as many have suggested, a deliberate and conscious political
choice by the government in favor of industry? Despite the continued exis-
tence of a rural lobby, which prevented any active steps towards genuine agri-
culture reform, the answer is yes. Agriculture was increasingly seen by the
ministers now running the Portuguese economy as a means by which to pro-
vide the growing industrial workforce with cheap food, thus enabling the pay-
ment of the low wages which both made Portuguese industry competitive in
Europe and rendered investment in Portugal so inviting. The new economic
realities were evident as well in the strong fall in traditional exports, based on
agriculture and fishing, and the marked increase in light industrial products—
textiles, clothing, and footwear.57 The EEC six, as an economic bloc, were
Portugal’s best customer, although Great Britain remained the single most
important national market.
The new and subaltern status for agriculture was made clear in the Second
Economic Plan (1958–1964). The single largest recipient of investment was
transport and communications (30.8%), closely followed by industry (17.4%).
Energy was down from the First Economic Plan (from 34.6 to 21.4%) while
agriculture once again lagged behind at 17.3%. Teaching and Research stood at
a miserly three percent.58 The Intercalary Plan (1965-7) and the final plan
whose elaboration was nominally overseen by Salazar, the Third Economic
Plan (1968–1973), saw belated investment in health and housing—a social
dimension lacking theretofore.
Was this growth viable in the long run? Portugal, against so much of what
Salazar had preached in the 1930s, was undergoing a process of industrializa-
tion based on low salaries, made possible by artificially low prices in the shops.
At the bottom of the pecking order was the countryside, condemned to back-

57. Ibid., p. 347.
58. Ibid., p. 340, Table 11.9.
wardness in order to sustain the cities. Portuguese industry benefited from low
salaries and a cowed workforce, but also from low-cost raw materials obtained
in the ‘overseas provinces’, although this too could not continue in the long
run, whether or not Portugal remained in Africa: labor abuses in the colonies
had to come to an end for political reasons. The precarious nature of Portugal’s
economic development was an increasingly heard criticism in the 1960s,
especially among an opposition eager to blacken recent achievements. Salazar’s
days were coming to an end; the same might be true for the colonial empire;
and State investment and protection—decades of industrial conditioning and
corporatism—had merely spawned a small number of Industrialists, who taken
together constituted the so-called ‘forty families’, and who were depicted by the
opposition as the country’s real leadership. The New State, in its rush for
growth, had encouraged an enormous concentration of wealth and power in a
few hands, to the detriment of entire regions of the country. For all of these
doubts, however, the pace and scale of change was impressive, and the face of
much of the country was changing:
The last years of the Salazar era witnessed the creation of important privately
organized ventures, including an integrated iron and steel mill, a modern ship
repair and shipbuilding complex, vehicle assembly plants, oil refineries, petro-
chemical plants, pulp and paper mills, and electronic plants.59
August 1966 saw the most impressive achievement of the regime on the
public works front: the inauguration of the enormous Salazar bridge, linking
the two banks of the Tagus in Lisbon.60 This was, at the time, the fifth longest
suspension bridge in the world, and the longest outside the United States
(3,323 feet, compared with the 4,200 feet of the Golden Gate). The bridge was
a long-standing aspiration of the people of Lisbon and the surrounding areas,
and allowed for the economic transformation of the Setúbal peninsula, to the
south of the capital. This technical triumph coincided with the end of the work
in the Church of St. Engrácia, begun in the Seventeenth Century but left un-
finished until 1966, becoming a Portuguese by-word for never-ending enter-
prises. With construction finally finished, it was turned into a National Pan-
theon. Once again, the regime could boast, the New State was finishing what
others had begun but soon abandoned, out of lack of persistence.
59. Baklanoff, The Economic Transformation, p. 106.

60. Salazar, it seems, objected to the naming of the bridge—but not too much. According to Américo
Tomás, there was an outright conspiracy among ministers to keep the projected name of the bridge secret, in
order to present Salazar with a fait accompli. The conspiracy did not hold for long, but neither did Salazar’s
opposition once he found out what was in store. See Tomás, Ultimas décadas, vol. 3, p. 223.
Portugal’s economic transformation was not limited to the growth of
industry, light and heavy. The 1960s saw the explosion of a new phenomenon
across Europe: mass international tourism, as wealthy and not-so-wealthy
northern Europeans made their way southwards in the search for sun and
sand. Portugal, previously a high-end tourist destination reserved for a few,
embraced this annual migration of package-holiday sun seekers, which affected
neighboring Spain more intensely. In 1963 some 520,000 tourists entered the
country, each of whom spent some on average some $123. This $51 million
income from tourism represented a 360% increase in tourist revenue in a single
decade; by then tourism had become more important to the economy than the
two biggest traditional exports—cork and canned fish.
Continued Backwardness and Mass Emigration (Again)
Having committed themselves to the industrialization of Portugal, the

country’s economic planners understood that conditions in rural areas would
deteriorate. This meant that the New State was turning its back on what was
still a considerable part of the population. A report, dated 3 July 1961, detailed
the political situation in the floodplains of the district of Santarém, upriver
from Lisbon. Reading the report, one finds a situation totally at odds with the
realities of Portugal’s trading partners in Western Europe:
In winter, there is little work, sometimes reaching crisis proportions. At such times
the landowners do not hire rural workers, or pay very low wages. There are other
times—especially in the summer—when work is plentiful and a shortage of
workers. Such times are taken advantage of by workers to exact their revenge on
employers, presenting them with all sorts of demands.61
Clearly the corporative machinery was not working well, betraying the
idyllic image portrayed in the regime’s propaganda. Agriculture remained the
weakest spot of the regime’s economic policy. Prices were kept low for the
consumer as a way of ensuring stability in the cities, where wages had to be
low. This did not mean, however, that there should be no changes in the
primary sector; many realized that reform was necessary there as well. Never-
theless, the government remained paralyzed by the fear of tinkering with the
landholding arrangements that bedeviled Portuguese agriculture—even when
the modernizing Correia de Oliveira took over, in 1965, the Ministry of the
Economy. The most that was attempted was a plan, with State funding, to
divert agricultural production away from wheat: to carry out, as Manuel de
61. AOS CO PC 65, PIDE report 112/61, 3 July 1961.

Lucena points out, in an age of greater technical proficiency and improved
transport, the reforms sketched out by Salazar in his thesis, ‘The cereals
question: The case of wheat’. The program, however, came to naught in the
end.62
Poverty, and especially rural poverty (although this continuously spilled
over into the cities as migrants arrived looking for work), continued to be the
regime’s Achilles’ heel, an acute source of embarrassment for nationalists
whenever it was pointed out by foreign observers. In the 1961 legislative
elections, the opposition capitalized on the fact that Portugal was second only
to Yugoslavia in Europe when it came to infant mortality, while per capita
caloric intake was 2,470 and consumption of electricity stood at fifteen percent
of OEEC average. Given the post-war ‘economic miracle’ in Western Europe,
there were fewer and fewer reasons to endure such poverty. Their views
ignored by the politicians, as had always been the case, rural Portuguese voted
with their feet and left the country. It was no longer necessary to go all the way
to Brazil in search of work: one merely had to travel across Spain. As 1960s
wore on, the scale of illegal Portuguese emigration grew clear; it became a
major international phenomenon, with dramatic social repercussions for
Portugal and the countries of destination, the most important of which, in
numerical terms, was France. However, illegal emigration evoked but little con-
cern in official circles. The Portuguese consul in Bayonne to wrote to the
ambassador in Paris (a copy of the letter being sent to Salazar), on 10 February
1964, stating that near Châtillon-sur-Indre, ninety-five Portuguese had been
detained in one swoop, and returned to Portugal. The scale of the illegal
operation showed that there was a good organization behind it all; neverthe-
less, of the ninety-five men arrested, seventy-seven had no trade or skills: only
eighteen had any sort of qualifications. What bothered the consul most, how-
ever was that the French state broadcaster had aired an interview with some of
these men, ‘one of whom begged, on his knees, not to be sent back to Portu-
gal.’63 One French academic has summarized the plight of the Portuguese emi-
grants in the following terms:
From 1962 onwards, when the French press became interested in Portuguese
immigration and its dramatic aspects, the number of articles multiplied, and they
were full of true accounts: groups of Portuguese hiding out in huts, having barely
eaten for days; refrigerated trucks carrying fifty workers at a time. Above all
attention was turned to the plight of those who made the journey on foot (for
62. Lucena, ‘José Gonçalo Correia de Oliveira’, pp. 631–39.

63. AOS CP 173, letter, 10 February 1964, José Pinto de Aguiar (Portuguese consul in Bayonne) to
Ambassador Marcelo Matias. This letter was forwarded by Matias to António de Oliveira Salazar.
some the trip lasted fifteen days) and the crossing of the Pyrenees, in winter, with
no specialized equipment.64
By 1964, the Portuguese consulate in Paris was receiving 600 people per
day to handle administrative matters, and was totally unprepared for it;65 a
senior diplomat wrote, ‘the agglomeration of Portuguese at the building’s
entrance is a form of permanent propaganda against our country: their appear-
ance, upon arrival in France, is deplorable and their habits, quaint in a Portu-
guese village, are unfit for a city centre.’ The correspondence pertaining to the
emigrants showed one great fear—that, beyond the reach of Portuguese
authorities, they would flock to the communist party. Volovitch-Tavares writes,
The Salazar dictatorship worried too late and too little about the fate of the
Portuguese emigrants in France. It contented itself with carrying out an occasional
and limited repression of the traffickers, and with recognizing a posteriori those who
had acquired legal status in France […] This intéressée tolerance did not prevent the
appearance of worries about “communist contamination” that would inevitably
affect emigrants suddenly plunged into a free society. The Portuguese government
attempted, as a result, to keep an eye on, and to regiment, “its” emigrants. PIDE
informers were present among them.66
In a letter to Salazar, dated 29 June 1966, Daniel Barbosa pointed out that
emigration—especially the illegal kind—had become a regular source of
comment among foreigners he met, and that the political exploitation of the
phenomenon by the opposition had begun. Barbosa sent Salazar copy of an
article in a Spanish publication—El Pensamiento Navarro—which devoted atten-
tion to the phenomenon, in order to illustrate his point.67 If we recall that
much of Salazar’s popularity in the 1920s and early 1930s was due to the
transformation achieved in how Portugal was spoken of abroad, the political
importance of this sudden focus on Portuguese emigrants becomes clear. They
were tangible proof of a rural Portugal which the country’s elites ignored, and
felt embarrassed by. The pace of illegal emigration was increasing all the time.
From 1946 to 1973, two million people left Portugal; forty-eight percent of
these left between 1966 and 1973.68 What did this emigration mean in practical
terms? It was not without benefits, notably in the shape of remittances. By
64. Marie-Christine Volovitch-Tavares, Portugais à Champigny, le temps des baraques (Paris: Autrement, 1995), p.
41.
65. AOS CO NE 30A, ‘Confidential’ report by Ambassador José Luís Archer (Secretary General of the
MNE), 25 March 1964.
66. Volovitch-Tavares, Portugais à Champigny, p. 117.
67. AOS CP 24, letter, Lisbon, 29 June 1966, Daniel Vieira Barbosa to António de Oliveira Salazar.
1967, these remittances overtook the colonial economies as sources of foreign
exchange.69 But the question was not so simple. One economic historian
writes, ‘the impact of emigration on Portuguese economic development is not
clear. Was it a good bargain for Portugal to sell the human capital of the emi-
grants in return for their remittances? Several opposing answers have been
given to this question.’70
For a nationalist regime, such emigration, implying the weakening and
ageing of the population, was a clear defeat. However, it was a mostly unedu-
cated workforce that made its way across Spain to France and beyond: emigra-
tion was a consequence of the low prices fixed for agricultural goods, and the
resulting inability of small landholders to make ends meet. No money had to
be spent by the State on providing these men with work or welfare, in the same
way that little had been spent on their education and training. From France or
Germany they could now support their families, allowing them to become
better consumers of new Portuguese products, and allowing Portuguese
markets to expand. Savings in Portugal grew as families of emigrants were
lifted above the poverty line: more money was therefore available for
developing banking networks to finance investment. Moreover, the geographi-
cal emphasis on the densely populated north and center of the country meant
that there was still a southern underemployed class willing to flock to the
industrial centers developing in Lisbon and the area to its south, all the way to
Setúbal and, later, Sines: the landless laborers of the Alentejo province. Finally,
this exodus from the countryside, and the resulting shortfall in labor, was to
prove more significant in bringing about better conditions for the rural work-
force that stayed behind than the corporative regime had ever been. In other
words, this was a generation that was willingly or unwillingly sacrificed in order
to secure a better standard of living for the rest of the country. Upon coming
to power, Salazar had spoken of just such a generation, meaning his own, con-
demned to poverty in order to endow the State with the financial means to
meet the nation’s needs. Now another generation was being forced to change
its expectations, and abandon its roots, in the attempt to make ends meet.
A more serious problem, as far as the Portuguese economy was concerned,
arose when skilled workers realized that they too had a chance at a much better
lifestyle through emigration, which led to shortages of labor in industry and,
consequently, improved conditions and salaries. On 23 September 1964 a new
law governing individual labor contracts was published, one which improved
the status of the worker within a given enterprise. Despite steps like this, and
given the limited nature of Portuguese elites, the prospect of emigration

reaching upwards into skilled workers and university graduates was a worrying
one.71 Foreign observers naturally focused on the potential harmful effects of
emigration. Reporting on the inauguration of the Salazar bridge, The Economist
noted the scale of foreign investment in Portugal, which the government, since
it was spending 34% of its budget on defense, could not match. Foreign firms
were attracted by low wages and by the ‘possibility of exporting back to parent
companies in other countries.’72 This had resulted in considerable growth, but
such growth was hampered not only by the war, but especially ‘by the humili-
ating fact that every Portuguese worker who can, wants to hightail it out of
Portugal as soon as he has acquired a modicum of skill, and goes to the
Common Market countries where wages are a good deal higher than 15
s[hillings] a day.’ Remittances were important, but not as important as pre-
serving the work force in situ. Tourism was increasing, but here too labor
shortages could be expected. The outlook, therefore, was bleak:
There is in Lisbon a caucus of young cabinet ministers—half Professor Salazar’s

age—who are attempting to keep their country’s industrial revolution rolling, and
rolling towards associate membership of the Common Market with all the political
commitments that implies. But these men are already over-worked, and without a
properly qualified administrative machine to back them. With wages outside
government service bounding up ten percent a year, who wants to be a civil
servant?
One example of how Portugal’s narrow social and economic elite was
coming under increased pressure is provided by a report by Luz Cunha, Army
Minister, on the subject of recruitment for the army of medical officers, who
were greatly needed:
The annual average recruitment of these officers is very low and insufficient, as a
result, to satisfy the considerable needs for 1963.
It has also been noted that the percentage of doctors approved by the medical
boards has been surprising low.73
71. In 1966 there were, across the country’s universities, some 1,600 graduates. The most popular degrees
were Science (319), Medicine (253), and Engineering (241). Law had fallen back in numerical importance, to
184, while Social Science and Overseas Policy lay further behind, with seventy-three. In addition, 253 officers
had graduated from the Military Academy, and forty-three from the Naval Academy. 137 priests left Portu-
gal’s seminaries. AOS CO GR 11, Army General Staff, cabinet bureau, Estado-Maior do Exército, Reparti-
ção do Gabinete: Table of university-level graduates, 1955–1966.
72. ‘The Salazar Bridge’ in The Economist (London), 13 August 1966. The same article noted of a modern
textiles plant that ‘with a labour force of 1,500 working a 3-day shift and a 5½-day week’, it was ‘already close
to its production target for 1967 of 10 million yards of synthetic textiles and 12 million pounds of yarn
annually’.
73. AOS CP 87, letter, Joaquim da Luz Cunha to António de Oliveira Salazar, 19 January 1963.
The conclusion was clear: social elites were safeguarding their interests, even if
this meant undermining the war effort in Africa.
New Forms of Political Opposition: The Catholic Church.
J. W. Lennon, the Irish minister in Lisbon, wrote, on 4 March 1961, that

‘in my opinion the average Portuguese while not entirely satisfied with the
régime is prepared to tolerate it. Many remember the pre-Salazar chaos of
1910–1926 and all have been indoctrinated with the view that a change would
mean a return to the conditions then prevailing.’74 Opposition to Salazar was to
be found across the political spectrum, but this great variety divided it and cur-
tailed its effectiveness. The recent Santa Maria affair had worked to Salazar’s
advantage, and the outbreak of war in Angola would do the same, as Lennon’s
subsequent reports would show. The war in Africa allowed the regime to
appeal to popular support not for a political policy, but for the very survival of
Portugal. Lennon wrote, on 28 June 1961, that ‘here propaganda is increasing.
The “stickers” on buses, taxis and in shop windows are more varied than pre-
viously, and while still avowing that Angola is Portugal, [they] call for the
defense of the Fatherland, now in danger, direct attention to the common
enemy, plead for unity, etc. Knitting and sowing circles have been organized
for the making of bandages, comforts for the troops, and the like.’ Lennon,
however, was skeptical of this campaign’s staying power: ‘I have the impression
that discontent with the government is becoming more widespread.’75
Not surprisingly, given the realization that the country was at war, and the
practices engaged in by the regime during the 1958 presidential election, the
1961 general election was a muted affair. Lennon wrote, on 3 November 1961,
that ‘the campaign—if it can properly be so styled—proceeds in a manner
entirely foreign to our conception of an election. So far there have been no
public meetings of the type one accustomed to our system would expect
[…]’.76 The opposition—which significantly included two prominent Catholics,
Francisco Lino Neto and António Alçada Baptista, withdrew from the contest
days before the voting was held. As ever, foreign observers had to proceed on
hunches and rumor. Thus Lennon, on 8 January 1962, and in the wake of the
fall of Goa and the disturbance in Beja (see below), wrote,
74. Ribeiro de Meneses, Correspondência diplomática, doc. 258, report, Lisbon, 4 March 1961, J. W. Lennon to
Secretary, Department of External Affairs, Dublin, pp. 373–75.
75. Ibid., doc. 273, report, Lisbon, 28 June 1961, J. W. Lennon to Secretary, Department of External Affairs,
Dublin, pp. 393–94.
76. Ibid., doc. 282, report, Lisbon, 3 November 1961, J. W. Lennon to Secretary, Department of External
Affairs, Dublin, pp. 407–8.
There seems to have been a decline in Dr Salazar’s popularity among the
Portuguese public. Criticism—of a mild and discreet kind—is now heard where
previously all was praise. In the not unlikely event of the seizure by a powerful
neighbor of more of the Overseas Territories—Indonesia and Timor for
example—his popularity could decline even further, and he might lose Army
support.
Lennon’s successor, Count O’Kelly de Gallagh, an admirer of the regime, was

not so sure. On 3 May 1962, reflecting on the May-Day demonstrations, which
the PCP had attempted to use as a show of force, O’Kelly de Gallagh wrote,
I was dining with some friends last night—both Portuguese and foreigners—and
the most notable feature of the evening was that not a word was uttered con-
cerning the previous day’s incidents, all the guests being genuinely far more
interested in the Portuguese football victory over Madrid which gave them the
European championship. People in this country are mad about football and I
doubt the attraction of any revolutionary movement would be sufficient to draw
the crowds away from the Stadiums.
The international footballing successes of Lisbon-based teams such as

Benfica and Sporting were not sufficient, however, to overcome the appre-
hension provoked by the war. And there were other reasons for apprehension
on the part of the government. Of these, the most serious was the growing rift
with the Catholic Church—although outsiders often exaggerated the Catholi-
cism of the Portuguese, seeing it as a universal phenomenon.77 Events in Africa
played an important role in this estrangement. There was the issue of the
Bishop of Beira, Sebastião Soares de Resende, who, Salazar feared, might turn
into a new Bishop of Oporto. Dom Sebastião, the first prelate in this new dio-
cese, was a reformer, eager to see Portugal live up to its ‘spiritual mission’ in
Mozambique. To the mounting concern of the government, he used the dio-
cese’s newspaper, the Diário de Moçambique, to vent his frustration with the
obstacles he met.78 In 1962 Dom Sebastião wrote to the Overseas Ministry to
complain of the delays in allowing three missionaries, members of the White
Fathers order, to arrive in is diocese. These were, he explained, excellent
missionaries, and much needed in the province, but their nationality was
77. Ibid., doc. 302, report, Lisbon, 20 February 1962, J. W. Lennon to Secretary, Department of External
Affairs, pp. 438–40.
78. One article which raised eyebrows in Lisbon was published on 20 January 1959. Dom Sebastião wrote,
greeting a new governor-general, that he hoped to see a new policy in place, in which the ‘African might—at
long last!—be a free human being, fulfilling himself through a participation in God’s Work, and, as a result,
being no longer the servant of a class, of a group, of a Nation […] That he might, in a word, feel the effects
of a true and healthy decolonization, directed towards an eminently Christian cohabitation.’ AOS CO PC 51,
telegram, Lisbon, 11 February 1959, MNE to the Portuguese embassy to the Holy See.
making it impossible for them to enter Mozambique. There was no doubt in
the prelate’s mind about who was to blame:
By acting in this manner the PIDE is carrying out a work which is highly
damaging to Mozambique and will eventually reduce it to chaos. Recently it
arrested tens of blacks in Beira, the best elements of Catholic Action based in the
St Benedict Mission and some others, and sent them mysteriously, as a warning, to
Lourenço Marques. They were all innocent…an abyss is being dug between them
and us!79
The Bishop of Beira would remain a source of concern throughout this

period. In May 1965 a homily by the Bishop was published in the Diário de
Moçambique without having been submitted to the censorship authorities. As a
result, the governor-general of Mozambique imposed a ban on the newspaper.
Dom Sebastião eventually met with Salazar and the Overseas Minister, but
failed to see the ban imposed on his newspaper lifted. He began to be regarded
as an opposition figurehead, like the Bishop of Oporto, at home and abroad,
but a decisive break never came. When he met with Salazar the latter told him
that had he, Salazar, been a member of the censorship board, he would not
have made cuts in the homily, and that Dom Sebastião was basically in the right.
And when later the Bishop complained to Ambassador António de Faria that
nothing had come of the meeting, Faria told him to be content with the fact
that Salazar has sided with him, since ‘a review or the revocation of the penalty
already imposed would constitute, in my opinion, a public disavowal of the
governor-general, with the possibility of a political crisis which the incident’s
limited importance would not justify at a moment such as this.’80 African
priests in Angola, meanwhile, were closely supervised, and many were actually
out of the colony, or under arrest. As Lennon, pointed out, on 16 November
1961, ‘the Vicar-General of Angola, arrested in Luanda in March and brought
to Portugal, was mentioned specifically [by the opposition during the cam-
paign]. He is now free, but must live in Portugal, and no denial or confirmation
of the charges against him has been made public.’81
Internationally, the difficulties felt by the regime over the Bishop of
Oporto affair refused to go away. A telegram from the Portuguese ambassador
79. AOS CP 186, ‘Secret’ report, 23 April 1962, from the General-Government of Mozambique to the
Education Division of the Ministry of Overseas; forwarded by Adriano Moreira to António de Oliveira
Salazar.
80. AOS CD 1, ‘Secret’ notes on a conversation between the ambassador to the Holy See and the Bishop of
Beira, 16 October 1965. Included in a letter, Rome, 18 October 1965, Ambassador António Faria to António
de Oliveira Salazar.
81. Ribeiro de Meneses, Correspondência diplomática, doc. 284, report, Lisbon, 16 November 1961, J. W.
Lennon to Secretary, Department of External Affairs, Dublin, 410–11.
to the Holy See, on 11 April 1962, informed the MNE that Cardinal-Patriarch
Cerejeira, in Rome, had been informed of the latest thinking on the Bishop.
The Vatican was now looking for a solution that might lead to his definitive
replacement, but did not want to impose a solution on him, since such a move
might lead him to adopt prejudicial public attitudes. It was estimated that Dom
António would probably refuse to be Dean of St Peter’s Cathedral in Rome,
the position now dangled before him.82
Ambassador Faria later reported a conversation with Monsignor Samoré,
telling the Vatican official that ‘for us, this is no longer a political problem but
rather an ecclesiastical question whose solution belongs to the Church, but that
we, as the Catholic country we are, cannot remain indifferent to the ill will
present among the clergy in one of the most important dioceses of Portugal.’
Faria continued, ‘Dom António’s supporters, ever more active, raise funds, pay
him visits, and mock the Apostolic Administrator. The great mass of the clergy,
who would rather remain alien to this conflict, out of fear of the Bishop’s
vengeful return, lean towards him. Only a few priests support the Apostolic
Administrator.’83 On 11 December 1963 Faria wrote directly to Salazar with
the latest news: the Bishop of Oporto wanted to go to Cologne, to be near
Cardinal Frings, ‘who has a reputation for being progressive.’ On 28 April 1964
Franco Nogueira met the Papal Nuncio, who informed him that the Pope had
written to the Bishop of Oporto, urging him to accept a new position. The
Bishop, however, had refused to budge, as a result of which the Holy See’s
hands were tied.
Faria’s letter of December 1963 contained as well the first hint of a matter
that would considerably sour relations with Rome—the Pope’s projected atten-
dance at an Eucharistic Congress in Bombay, scheduled for November 1964.
News that the Pope would attend this event infuriated Salazar to a hitherto
unknown degree. Few understood the reasons for this fury, and the obstinacy
with which Salazar opposed the visit. Ten months later, on 16 October 1964,
Cardinal-Partriarch Cerejeira wrote to Salazar, detailing his audience with Paul
VI. The Pope, Cerejeira explained, was upset by the Portuguese government’s
reaction to his announced trip to Bombay. This was a purely religious mission,
not a State visit to India. The head of the Catholic Church was engaging in a
religious pilgrimage, devoid of political meaning. This much the Pope had
wanted Cerejeira to tell Salazar, and to it Cerejeira then appended his own
argument: matters would have been very different had the Pope agreed to go to
Goa, to see the remains of St Francis Xavier. Cerejeira made an appeal for
conciliation: ‘Days ago I understood, as I spoke to the Pope, the martyrdom of
82. AOS CD 1, telegram, 11 April 1962, ambassador in Rome (Holy See) to Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
83. Ibid., letter, 13 April 1963, António Faria to António de Oliveira Salazar.
being the Vicar of Christ. Do the Portuguese understand your own? I am
kneeling beside you, beseeching God to assist you with His light and grace.’84
Salazar’s reply to his oldest friend is worth quoting at length. He set out to
discuss three points: the way the matter was conducted by the Vatican, the
political aspects of the Pope’s decision, and the reaction against the Pope’s visit
of the ‘national conscience’, which the government had to respect. In relation
to the first, Portugal, despite making its concerns over the reported trip known
for nearly a year, had never actually been consulted on the matter—its govern-
ment had never, in fact, been informed officially of it, so that in the end it had
been surprised by the announcement of the visit. In relation to the second,
Salazar pointed out that before becoming Pope, Paul VI had been the Holy
See’s Secretary of State, so that he knew fully well that ‘actions often transcend
intentions’. The Pope would hardly win over the mass of Indians to the
Church; all that would be remembered of the visit, as a result of these side-
effects, was that the head of the Catholic Church had visited the Indian Union.
This fact would be seized on by anti-Western nations, which were, by
definition, anti-Catholic nations:
Whether he means to do it or not, the Pope is visiting the Indian Union—New

Delhi is already stating so—and through that visit is carrying out a gesture of the
greatest international importance—it is propping up on the international stage a
country that had lost all its prestige as a result of the discrepancy between its
official doctrine and the actions of its leaders.85
In relation to the third point, although the Church would not gain from the
visit, since it was Hinduism that gave India a reason for being, it would never-
theless lose the support of those, in Portugal, who believed that the govern-
ment was carrying out the correct policy:
The reaction here, among those capable of evaluating the significance of these
decisions, was one of pain. And although everyone is waiting for the government’s
reaction, as a result of which the newspapers have published little on the matter,
what was written was enough for the public displeasure, if not actual rejection, to
be made clear. The country felt that it had been harshly insulted and that the insult
was not only unmerited but also of little use to the Church.
84. AOS CO NE 30A, letter, Rome, 16 October 1964, Cardinal-Patriarch Manuel Cerejeira to António de
Oliveira Salazar.
85. Ibid., Lisbon, 21 October 1964, António de Oliveira Salazar to Cardinal-Patriarch Manuel Cerejeira,
Lisbon, 21 October 1964.
In the face of this, what could the government do? It had to put an end to
the discussion, of course, so as to not allow political exploitation of Paul VI’s
gesture to cause even more damage. But lessons had also to be learned. All the
goodwill and support shown by the regime to the Church and its concerns for
over forty years had to be revised:
In Rome, perhaps, they ignore the difficulties faced and the greatness of the work
carried out by this regime in order to allow the Catholic Church to enjoy the
possibility of expansion, since I became, in some measure, responsible for the
course of public life. In the Vatican much is thought about Christian Democracy,
and about liberalism, and progressivism is permitted. May God not allow me to
see the result of such doctrines and attitudes applied in Portugal. Since the advent
of liberalism [in Portugal] Catholics have endured a lot, and even more since the
founding of the Republic, with its jacobinism. If the Church desires its return,
then it is because it no longer wants saints, preferring instead to have martyrs.
Salazar’s reply was written the day after a Council of Ministers which dis-
cussed the crisis. According to Franco Nogueira, Salazar had said that the
decision was ‘an insult to Portugal’; it was, more precisely, ‘a gratuitous insult,
in the sense that it is both useless and unfair, and carried out by the leader of
Catholicism against a Catholic nation.’86 The Council charged the Foreign
Minister with expressing the feelings of the government and the people
regarding the papal decision:
And, in effect, on 22 October 1964, in answer to a journalist’s question during a

press conference, the minister for Foreign Affairs makes public the attitude
defined by the government, using the formula proposed by Salazar.
Cerejeira replied to Salazar on 2 November 1964:
I cannot hide from you how worried I am by your words regarding “the
conclusions to be drawn from the Holy Father’s attendance at the Bombay
Congress.” […]
The new political orientation in relation to the Church in Portugal would hurt
those who in no way contributed to the Holy Father’s action and have always
remained loyal and grateful to the State (some minor and contained episodes do
not negate such a statement) […]
I tremble when considering the possible and unforeseeable consequences of the
announced “consequences”. I do not want to discuss the unhappiness and

distancing of a great part of those who admire, like, and follow you: of that you
are a better judge.87
O’Kelly de Gallagh, usually sympathetic to Salazar, would write, on 3

November 1964, that ‘in conversation with me the Nuncio described the
Portuguese attitude as completely irrational. “They seem to have lost all sense
of reality” he said.’ Many in Portugal thought so too: Franco Nogueira’s words
during the press conference caused protest letters to Salazar by eight priests
from Lisbon, who pointed out that the Foreign Minister was not speaking in
accordance with the wishes of the Portuguese people: ‘Quite the contrary—we
see that a growing number of thoughtful and lucid Catholics, mature in age and
in faith, feel, upon learning of the papal decision, joy, seeing in that gesture by
Paul VI the desire of the Church to adjust its dimensions to those of the
world.’ The PIDE kept an eye on the reaction to the controversy in the
country’s churches, usually neutral, but in some cases, such as Évora, worth
noting. In that city’s churches a note was read out, said to have come from the
Diocesan Curia, stating,
The clergy feels the obligation to enlighten the faithful regarding the inelegant
words, proffered in a press conference, which amounted to unfair affirmations
against the respect deserved by His Holiness the Pope. The Holy Father is going
to the Eucharistic Congress in Bombay with the same evangelizing goal that took
him, last year, to the Holy Land. His Holiness does not have to ask the permission
of the various nations of the world to exercise his mission in any part of the world.
Portuguese Catholics are, as a result, hurt by the unworthy and unprecedented
words that were spoken, all the more so since Portugal is a country that owes its
independence to the Holy See’s protection—besides which, only the Head of State
could speak in the name of the Portuguese people.88
Justice Minister Antunes Varela wrote Salazar, informing him that some in
Catholic circles had not welcomed Franco Nogueira’s words; a number of
priests had held a meeting on Saturday, to coordinate their criticism in the
following day’s homilies. Varela wrote, nevertheless, that ‘the little that I have
heard on this matter suggests that well-formed Catholic circles interpreted the
trip in much the same way as the government, and I presume that our prelates
will feel about it the same way. In any case, it may be that this is not true, and
that their return [from Rome] might bring us some added surprise.’89
87. AOS CO NE 30A, letter, Rome, 2 November 1964, Cardinal-Patriarch Manuel Cerejeira to António de
Oliveira Salazar.
88. AOS CO PC 76, report, 26 October 1964.
89. AOS CP 274, letter, 25 October 1964, João de Matos Antunes Varela to António de Oliveira Salazar. It is
hard to assess the state of public opinion on this matter. See AOS CO NE 30B, ‘Confidential’ notes on a
The Pope, of course, went to Bombay, and a year later he tried to placate
lingering Portuguese resentment through the offer of a Golden Rose to the
Fátima sanctuary. Cerejeira tried, in a letter dated 23 November 1964 to
demonstrate how important the offer was, stressing that Portugal’s enemies
were indignant over the papal award.90 But the Golden Rose brought little in
the way of improvement in relations between Portugal and the Holy See: there
was a heated clash between Monsignor Furstenberg, the Papal Nuncio in
Lisbon, and Franco Nogueira, on 11 December.91 The cause was Portugal’s
criticism of the Vatican’s weak denial of a report in an Indian newspaper, Blitz,
which had mentioned the Holy See’s approval of the invasion of Goa. Yet
another source of tension developed when Furstenberg suggested the appoint-
ment of a black bishop in Overseas Portugal as a way of demonstrating the
country’s commitment to multiracialism; he even advanced the name of a
possible candidate. Franco Nogueira was skeptical. The issue remained open,
since on 5 October 1964 Faria wrote from Rome describing a conversation
with Monsignor Samoré, head of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesi-
astical Affairs. Faria argued that while he had nothing against the appointment
of a black Bishop in Angola, this was probably not the right moment. Why not
appoint the person in question, obviously well regarded by the Church, as an
auxiliary bishop to a diocese in continental Portugal? Samoré was not con-
vinced. For Faria, the nomination of this clergyman would be seen as Portugal
caving in to Holy See’s pressure, a development with potentially serious con-
sequences.
Finally, when Paul VI spoke at the UN in October 1965, Franco Nogueira
was horrified by the Pope’s praise for the institution, and his description of it
as ‘the ideal of which humanity has dreamt through its pilgrimage across time.’
The UN, Paul VI said, was part of ‘God’s design’. The UN staff was delighted,
as were representatives of the African countries, who saw in the sole reference
to colonialism an attack against Portugal.
A conflict with the Catholic Church was damaging to Salazar for a number
of reasons. In the first place, Salazar could not win such a conflict. The Church
was both a national and an international institution, and to attack it frontally
conversation between the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Papal Nuncio, 28 October 1964, in which
Franco Nogueira wrote, ‘I informed Monsignor Furstenberg that I was receiving letters and telegrams of
support and protest, in the proportion of 5 to 1. The Nuncio said that he too was receiving corre-
spondence—but “plutôt dans la proportion contraire”, he added, smiling.’
90. AOS CO NE 30A, letter, Lisbon, 23 November 1964, Cardinal-Patriarch Manuel Cerejeira to António de
Oliveira Salazar.
91. See AOS CO NE 30B, ‘Confidential’ notes on a conversation between the Minister of Foreign Affairs
and the Apostolic Nuncio, 11 December 1964: ‘Monsignor Furstenberg, for the first time in our interviews
losing his calm, added, verbatim, with a loud voice and no holding back: “I see that all means are deliberately
used to create obstacles for the Holy See.”’
merely generated martyrs, as the Bishop of Oporto had become. More
realistically, though, such a conflict was damaging because the Church was a
central, vertebrating institution in Portugal, one which brought together all
classes and regions of the country. The Church could make its displeasure
known to all elements of society every Sunday, and it could do what Salazar
most feared: it could bring together disparate opposition forces on a given
issue. In August 1965 a pamphlet circulated in Portugal, being posted above all
to parish priests in rural areas. This product of a ‘Christian Movement for
Democratic Action’ stated that
The Portuguese situation is anti-Christian. The national economy’s structures rest

on a plutocracy and on the formation of capital at the expense of a low standard
of life for the working classes, representing a compromise of doubtful success
between the industrial-capitalist forms of expansion of the Nineteenth Century
and the interventionist planning of the modern State […] There is no longer emi-
gration but rather a mass exodus. The Portuguese have no present and do not
believe in the future. […] We demand the right to dialogue. The presence of
Catholic thought in Portuguese life is justified by eight centuries of history […]’.92
Such conclusions were reached by Catholic intellectuals in tune with events

in the outside world, and influential in the Catholic Action movement. They
were acting independently, but their ideological guidance was coming from
abroad, not least from the Vatican itself. In April 1963 the Papal Encyclical
Pacem in Terris affirmed that the laws which govern men had been inscribed by
God in man’s nature; it was there that they must be sought. To share in God’s
authority, and partake of the resulting legitimacy, governments must respect
the rights of men: ‘The fact that authority comes from God does not mean that
men have no power to choose those who are to rule the State or to decide
upon the type of government they want […]’. Men, the Pope argued, had a
right to be informed of the affairs of their State. This doctrine also had implica-
tions in the colonial sphere: ‘All over the world men are either the citizens of
an independent State, or are about to become so […]’. These ideas were rein-
forced in March 1967 by another encyclical, Populorum Progressio, which stated
that ‘it is […] quite natural for nations with a long-standing cultural tradition to
be proud of their traditional heritage. But this commendable attitude should be
further ennobled by love, a love for the whole family of man. Haughty pride in
one’s own nation disunites nations and poses obstacles to their true welfare.’
Portuguese Catholics, not unsurprisingly, found it hard to square this sentiment
92. AOS CO PC 77A, PIDE report 46—C.I. (2), 17 August 1965. The pamphlet’s author was Joaquim Pires
de Lima.
with their government’s explanation of the colonial wars. For organized
Catholics, poverty was another serious issue, and probably the greatest source
of disaffection from the regime. Not all involved in the country’s political life
realized the seriousness of the disaffection of middle-class Catholics: this was
the class that the New State had nurtured, had protected from the shocks of
war, of international competition, and of domestic disturbance. If they deserted
the regime, who would be left?
While the opinion of the broader mass of Catholics is harder to account
for, they did, however, receive some good news in 1967, when Pope Paul VI
visited Portugal to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Fátima apparitions. The
invitation was made by the Portuguese episcopate, although Salazar was kept
abreast of the issue by Cerejeira, who in February believed that the Pope
would, more likely than not, decline the invitation.93 Since he had seen the
Papal visit to Bombay as a political defeat, Salazar could now logically exploit
the visit to Portugal as a diplomatic victory, reinforcing the battered notion of
Catholic support for the regime. The two men met briefly on 23 May 1967 on
the margins of an event that drew as many as 1.5 million pilgrims to Fátima—
but the gulf between them was too wide to allow for any bridging. Church-
State relations would suffer one last blow during Salazar’s tenure. A Lisbon-
based priest, José da Felicidade Alves, began to manifest his growing disquiet
over the colonial war to his parishioners in Belém. His personal reflections
during homilies provoked complaints from his audience. Returning from on-
going theological studies in Paris, in the Easter break of 1968, Fr Alves became
more overt in his criticism. At a meeting with his parishioners, he distributed a
far-ranging document which criticized the war, the actions of the PIDE, and
censorship; it went on to call for socio-political revolution in the country. He
returned to Paris, but the text began to circulate in Portugal, and to be revised
by the priest in question, so that by January 1969 seven editions had hit Portu-
gal. He was dismissed by hard-pressed Cerejeira without so much as a hearing.
Other Sources of Opposition
With the coming of the 1960s, university campuses became an ideological
battleground, one in which the government was in clear retreat. Growing dis-
turbances in the campuses hinted at future trouble, since they suggested that
this regime, hitherto run by a narrow, university-educated elite, would be un-
able to renew itself. Allowing open expressions of defiance to go unpunished,
at a time of war, was unthinkable; but intervening forcefully also posed serious
difficulties for the government, insofar as invading campuses meant upsetting
93. AOS CD 1, letter, 22 February 1967, Cardinal-Patriarch Manuel Cerejeira to António de Oliveira Salazar.
the academic authorities, jealous of their independence and in close contact
with the government. There were other considerations as well: a police force
designed to repress striking workers or peasants, and to wage an increasingly
bitter campaign against the PCP, found it hard to deal with socially well-
connected university students, the offspring of the classes most favored by the
regime. On 23 March 1962 the Minister of Education, reversing an earlier
decision, decided to cancel an upcoming ‘Student Day’. This move by the gov-
ernment was to set off a crisis that lasted until June. In a letter to Salazar,
Marcelo Caetano, now rector of the University of Lisbon, complained, listing
the complications that the change of mind would cause.94 Salazar replied four
days later. He understood Caetano’s views, and was sorry that the decision had
been taken: ‘But for the love of God do not make resolutions regarding the
future, for no-one knows what the nation might demand from you at a given
moment and what your past services might impose on you.’95
For the moment, events were impossible to control. May Day saw violent
confrontations on the streets of Lisbon. According to the Observer, on 13 May
1962, there was generalized anger over the violence employed by police to deal
with workers’ and students’ demonstrations: ‘Prisons are so overcrowded with
anti-government demonstrators that the 1,200 students at Lisbon University
arrested yesterday were held in police barracks on the outskirts of the capital.’
A week later, the same British newspaper returned to this story: the Portuguese
regime was now facing the most serious threat for years in the shape of two
separate attacks: student unrest and strikes, on the one hand, and demonstra-
tions by workers on the other. Students wanted academic freedom and the
police to be kept out of the University. Marcelo Caetano, ignoring Salazar’s
plea, joined the faculty deans and resigned over the police’s presence on the
University grounds. In the University of Coimbra, Salazar’s Alma Mater, 300
arrests were made. The protesting students hailed from a number of political
backgrounds—their numbers included Catholics, communists, and even the
radical Right. Immediate political issues were not at the fore of their protests,
although their demands were unacceptable to the government: The indepen-
dence of the University, seen as an island where free-speech should be allowed,
and the defense of the privileged status of ‘university student’, could not be
countenanced in a dictatorial situation and, of course, in wartime.
Salazar, with much to worry about, now had to restore order to the
universities. He had also to deal with more traditional foes such as the PCP,
which remained in place; in fact, the PCP had been reinforced by Álvaro
94. Freire Antunes (ed.), Salazar e Caetano, doc. C 225, letter, Lisbon, 5 April 1962, Marcelo Caetano to
95. Ibid., doc. S 258, letter, 9 April 1962, António de Oliveira Salazar to Marcelo Caetano, p. 401.
Cunhal’s escape from the prison in Peniche fort, and his subsequent trip to
Moscow. Cunhal’s escape led to an intense blame game being played between
the PIDE and the Ministry of Justice; there was no love lost between them. It
also revitalized the party, and spelled the destruction of its more liberal wing.
Under Cunhal’s renewed leadership, the PCP would stand out for its loyalty to
Moscow and the complete rejection of ‘eurocommunism’, even after the
Prague Spring of 1968.96 The PIDE, which saw the PCP as its primary enemy,
kept an eye on developments within the party throughout the decade, but its
efforts were insufficient. The May 1968 events in France provided another
serious source of worry for Salazar and his ministers. Salazar, who had come to
admire de Gaulle greatly, and to rely on France’s international support, was
amazed by both the speed with which the crisis occurred and the French
President’s inability to contain it. Salazar was resolved to meet any such
outbreak with force. The first victim of this grim resolution was an unlikely
candidate, Brussels-based dance choreographer Maurice Béjart, whose troupe
was putting on the ballet ‘Romeo and Juliet’ in Lisbon at the invitation of the
Gulbenkian foundation. This performance, on 6 June 1968, followed closely on
news of the death of Robert F. Kennedy. Béjart’s dancers shouted, in the final
scene, ‘make love not war’, while a voice was heard denouncing war and other
injustices of the age. Béjart was quickly shown to the border, despite the
protests of the Gulbenkian foundation and the Belgian embassy. At a subse-
quent Council of Ministers, on 11 June, an exasperated Salazar told his
ministers that ‘here things must be different. There can be no crisis of
authority: when the first symptom manifests itself, we must solve the case
radically, whatever the cost, be it with students or workers.’97 The following
day he sent a note to the MNE, urging better sharing of information among
government services, as well as international players such as the Gulbenkian
Foundation and even TAP, the national airline: had the government known
about the choreographer’s past and his political views, he would not have been
allowed to perform in Portugal, thereby avoiding the whole embarrassing
episode.98
The Delgado Murder and Its Implications
In May 1961 the PIDE warned that the dismissal of Botelho Moniz,
having diminished the possibility of a military coup, had, for that very reason,
96. AOS CO IN 14, PIDE report 1789/61-G.U., 27 December 1961.

97. Franco Nogueira, Um politico, p. 301. Two days earlier Salazar had said, of de Gaulle, ‘he is following a
difficult path—that of concessions. He will no longer be de Gaulle. We must admit that his decline has
begun’. Ibid., p. 300.
98. AOS CO PC 76A, letter, Lisbon, 12 June 1968, Cabinet of the President of the Council to the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs.
led some opposition sectors to consider the possibility of a new attempt on
Salazar’s life.99 It was believed, for example, that the Spanish section of DRIL
would take care of the job. The same report stated that Delgado now wanted
to settle in Paris, where he would install a Portuguese government-in-exile.
Tracking where Delgado would go next became a serious issue for the PIDE.
Italy was one possibility; he had been in Rome in September 1961, but had not
been allowed to leave the airport, since he had only a transit visa. From Rome
he headed to Zurich, and the PIDE considered it possible that he may have
gone from there to Yugoslavia. It was suspected that he might travel from
Belgrade to Delhi, to meet up with Nehru. Another possible destination was
Prague, which might allow him to board an existing Prague-Paris-Azores-
Havana flight.100 The guessing games frayed nerves in the Portuguese security
apparatus. In reality, Delgado went to Morocco. There he met up with
Henrique Galvão, who had also traveled, through Rome, to Rabat.101 Once the
PIDE realized this, it began to see Rabat as home to a headquarters for anti-
Portuguese activities, working with the knowledge of the Moroccan
government; meanwhile, in Casablanca, there existed a recruitment centre for
anti-Portuguese activists.102 One thing especially worried the PIDE: Galvão
seemed to have access to a powerful twin-engine ship, which might allow him
to land in the Algarve undetected.103 The southern Portuguese coast was placed
on a high state of alert. A further report, dated 24 October 1961, stressed the
integration of Humberto Delgado and Henrique Galvão in Spanish republican
networks, indicating as well that the two were lobbying the Moroccan gov-
ernment for access to a radio transmitter, in order to reach Portuguese popula-
tion directly. The expected blow came in the fall: a TAP flight from Casablanca
was commandeered on 11 November and used to drop propaganda leaflets
over Lisbon and other locations.104 Galvão was seen waiting for the hijacked
plane when it touched down in Tangier.
This was not the culmination of their activity. Salazar dedicated the last
days of 1961 to the speech he was set to deliver, on New Year’s Day, to the
National Assembly. However, in the early hours of 1 January 1962 he was
woken up by the PIDE: a revolt was underway in the southern city of Beja,
with an assault being mounted on the barracks of Infantry 3. Salazar spent the
99. Ibid., 63A, PIDE report 802/61-GU, 20 May 1961. Américo Tomás reports a meeting, in January 1962,
with José Nosolini, in which the two men discussed Salazar’s safety. His weekly routine being immutable, the
President of the Council was at the mercy of assassins. As a result of this conversation, Tomás altered the
day, time and place of his weekly meetings with Salazar. Tomás, Últimas décadas, vol. 3, p. 116.
100. AOS CO PC 81, PIDE report 1473/61-GU, 4 October 1961.
101. Ibid., PIDE 1443/61-GU, 27 September 1961.
102. Ibid., PIDE 1466/61-GU, 2 October 1961.
103. Ibid., PIDE 1557/61-GU, 24 October 1961.
104. Ibid., PIDE 1624/61-GU, 11 November 1961.
whole morning on the telephone to the security services and to Correia de
Oliveira, trying to ascertain what was happening. The news was bad. Although
the revolt was a failure, it cost the life of a member of the government, Under-
secretary of State for the Army Jaime Fonseca, who had hurried from Lisbon
to lead its suppression from the front. The following morning Salazar attended
a funeral Mass for his young collaborator. His diary betrays no emotion:
10¼. To the Estrela Hospital. Funeral Mass for the Undersecretary of the Army,
Fonseca, killed in Beja.
Salazar discussed with Américo Tomás the possibility of a posthumous

medal for Jaime Fonseca, and then, with Silva Pais, the latest intelligence on the
Beja rising, as well as communist involvement in the plot. This was next to
none; the party had not supported the movement, whose civilian leader was the
Catholic opposition figure Manuel Serra. Delgado, who had slipped into the
country in order to assert his claim to the headship of state, was able to leave
undetected.
Delgado and Galvão kept the regime worried with their high visibility, and
their audacious plans. However, the two men were soon to head in different
directions, partly because of personal incompatibility, and partly because of
tactical differences: Galvão’s hostility towards communists was complete, and
he could not envisage working alongside them, even if to overthrow Salazar.
Delgado and Galvão managed, with their acts of defiance, to focus inter-
national attention on the plight of other Portuguese opposition figures, and the
increasingly repressive nature of the New State as it entered its fourth decade.
One important case was that of former presidential candidate Arlindo Vicente.
Arrested in September 1961, Vicente was sent to the Aljube prison in Lisbon,
and held in one of its infamous curros (pens): tiny cells, 2 meters long by 75
centimeters wide. He immediately began to feel ill, but was largely neglected by
the authorities; he requested medical assistance from the outside, and the
provision of a pillow. Vicente was finally seen by his doctor on 18 October,
and an electrocardiogram was carried out five days later. The test revealed that
Vicente had suffered a heart attack while in jail. Instead of being released to a
hospital, however, Vicente was moved to another prison, the fort of Caxias.
The British newspaper Observer carried an interview with Neville Vincent, a
barrister who had helped to found Amnesty International—an organization
whose founding was intimately related to the situation in Portugal. According
to Vincent,
The outside world has no conception of what is going on in the name of Salazar
[…] Portugal is not a music-hall joke but a police State every bit as brutal and
corrupt as Nazi Germany […] I met over thirty responsible Portuguese, including
former prisoners, during my stay, usually in secrecy—in a park, a field, the back of
a car with the lights off. The secret police are everywhere, often in the guise of
taxi-drivers, guides, barmen and so on.
Vincent then went on to describe conditions for political prisoners:
There must be at least 1,000 people jammed into Lisbon’s two political prisons,
Caxias and Ajube [sic]. The ‘statue’ torture is widely employed […] Another torture
is to be put into a dark and filthy cell and after a few days moved to a cell where
the lower part is painted yellow, the upper blue. Many prisoners believe the blue is
the sky and take crazed running-jumps at it.105
The Observer became an important mouthpiece for concern over the fate of
Portuguese prisoners. On 22 April 1962 it published an appeal by the Movimento
Nacional Independente, made up of Portuguese exiles, to Prime Minister
Macmillan and President Kennedy, asking them to intervene to save fifty-six-
year-old Arlindo Vicente’s life: ‘Dr Vicente is lying critically ill in Caxias prison,
near Lisbon. He suffers from heart disease, which imprisonment has aggra-
vated, for he was active when arrested early last October. Opposition candi-
dates have complained that he was denied essential drugs.’
In the face of mounting criticism from all quarters regarding the PIDE and
its actions, the Portuguese government invited a British jurist, Lord Russell of
Liverpool, to conduct a rigorous inquiry into the condition of prisoners. Liver-
pool wrote a report which imposed a number of reforms, which were accepted
by the Lisbon government.106 Its impact, however, was limited. On 11
February 1964, The Times published news of the release of Manuel Rodrigues
da Silva, in jail since 1950 despite his original sentence for subversion and
belonging to the PCP having been eight years’ imprisonment. He was the
longest-serving political prisoner in Portugal, according to British Committee
for Portuguese Amnesty.
105. On 8 April 1962 the Observer (London) published the following letter from the press counsellor of the
Portuguese embassy in London, A. Potier: ‘[…] As for the thousand people who, according to Mr. Vincent,
must be “jammed into Lisbon’s two political prisons”, this is not only a wildly inflated estimate, but fails to
take into account the amnesty promulgated in November, 1960, which covered a wide range of offences
including illegal acts of a political nature.
The official figures of the total of those under one or other form of detention in Portugal to-day—i.e.,
following the attempted Beja coup on New Year’s Day in which a member of the Government was killed
and several people wounded are: serving sentences, 90; awaiting trial or under preventive detention, 141; held
on security grounds, 109.”
One of the factors that made the increased repression of the 1960s
possible was the unhealthy relationship between the government and the
judiciary. On 20 October 1964 Justice Minister João Antunes Varela wrote to
Salazar, explaining that the officers punished as a result of the loss of Goa had
appealed to Supremo Tribunal Administrativo (Supreme Administrative Court),
and that there was, in some quarters, genuine fear that the court would find the
ministerial decree that punished them unconstitutional. As a result Varela had
spoken to the President of the Court, who seemed more certain that the appeal
would be rejected. Varela added, ‘it seems to me that you might make Mr Trigo
de Negreiros, as President of the Court, aware of the grave inconvenience of
the overturning of the Army Minister’s decision, the inevitable result of the
pending appeal’s victory.’107 Varela would complain to Salazar, on 23 February
1965, of the pusillanimity of the legal profession, whose Order’s General
Council had unanimously approved a request for an inquiry into police
violence.108
On 11 February 1965 Humberto Delgado and his Brazilian secretary,
Arajaryr de Campos, arrived in mainland Spain from Morocco, having passed
through Ceuta. The following day the two arrived in the border town of
Badajoz. Delgado spent some time around the train station, and then left. He
purchased two bus tickets to Seville for the 15th, and sent a number of post-
cards. At the end of that same day, however, a PIDE squad left Portugal to
intercept him, led by inspector Rosa Casaco, an agent very well known to
Salazar. Three other men—Agostinho Tienza, Ernesto Lopes Ramos, and
Casimiro Monteiro—made up the unit. They carried false passports, and had
false license plates on their two cars. The four agents entered Spain at Villa-
nueva del Fresno at the dawn of 13th, having been introduced to the Spanish
border guards by the PIDE agent at the border. The Spanish authorities were
told by this agent, whom they knew, that the four were colleagues of his on
their way to Seville for a week-end. One of these men—Lopes Ramos—was
the man Delgado had come to Spain to meet. Acting undercover, he had con-
vinced Delgado that he was an opposition lawyer, part of a large civilian-
military network ready to act against Salazar. In reality, of course, he was part
of a trap to lure Delgado close to the Portuguese border.
Lopes Ramos and Delgado met in Badajoz on the afternoon of the 13th.
Lopes Ramos was surprised to see that Arajaryr de Campos was present, and
tried to send her away, but she insisted on staying with Delgado. All three thus
107. AOS CP 274, letter, 20 October 1964, João de Matos Antunes Varela to António de Oliveira Salazar.
108. Ibid., 23 Februart 1965, João de Matos Antunes Varela to António de Oliveira Salazar. Joaquim Trigo
de Negreiros (1900–1973) graduated with a degree in Law from the University of Coimbra in 1923. He first
served in the government as Undersecretary of State for Corporations and Social Welfare in 1940. In 1950 he
became Minister of the Interior, a position he held until the aftermath of the Delgado election in 1958.
boarded a car, and headed towards Villanueva del Fresno, supposedly to meet
some of the Portuguese officers attached to the ‘plot’. Along the way, as
planned, Lopes Ramos met the other agents, in the second car. Delgado
realized what was happening. There is a suggestion that he reached for his gun,
but this is impossible to ascertain. In any case he was shot a number of times
by Casimiro Monteiro; his body was also bludgeoned, before or after his death.
A similar violent fate awaited his secretary. The four agents then attempted to
dispose of the two bodies. Tellingly, graves had already been dug in advance,
facilitating the process. The four murderers then returned to Portugal on 14
February, through the town of Rosal. Once in Portugal, evidence of their crime
was systematically destroyed, including the automobiles employed by the
PIDE, and Humberto Delgado’s private documents. On his return to Lisbon,
Rosa Casaco informed his superiors of the events in Spain, this information
traveling all the way up to the ’s director, Silva Pais.
On 23 February one of Humberto Delgado’s collaborators, Henrique
Cerqueira, announced that the general was missing. In doing so, he was acting
on Delgado’s previously set-out instructions. Given the importance it attached
to Portuguese affairs, the Observer was quick to report that the opposition
leader was missing, doing so on 28 February 1965. According to this report,
filed by a correspondent in Rabat, Delgado was gone missing in Spain ‘while
on a secret mission aimed at starting an armed revolt to overthrow the Salazar
regime in Portugal.’ On 7 March 1965 the Observer reported that Delgado’s dis-
appearance had led to faction fighting between liberals and communists in the
Portuguese opposition, and on 25 April it announced that the first, private,
investigation into the matter was coming to a close:
An international commission of lawyers, privately set up to investigate the dis-

appearance of General Delgado in Spain on February 13, is expected to announce
that it was a classic case of political kidnapping.
They remain uncertain about his subsequent fate and whether he is still alive.
This mission had been established by the International League of Human

Rights; the lawyers in question were British, French, and Italian, and they were
accompanied by Professor Emídio Guerreiro, Delgado’s spokesman in Paris.
According to the British newspaper, ‘the Professor shares the view that
Delgado might have been betrayed to the by members of a rival opposition to
organization, the communist-led “Patriotic Front for National Liberation”,
with whom Delgado angrily split in 1964.’ This organization, meanwhile,
through its Voz da Liberdade radio station, was saying that the disappearance
was a publicity stunt.109
On the same day that this story was published in the Observer, the Spanish
police announced that two bodies had been found near Villanueva del Fresno,
100 meters apart, buried in hastily dug holes not too far from a path. One was
of a woman, who had been strangled; the other was of a man who had been, it
seemed, beaten to death, after which he had been covered with quick lime,
wrapped up in a blanket, and tied up with ropes. Among this figure’s remains
was found a ring, with the initials HD on it. Spanish police knew all along who
had been found—in fact, they had been keeping an eye on Delgado while he
had been in Spain, under the false identity of Lorenzo Ibañez, a supposedly
Brazilian citizen. When he went missing, on 13 February, they informed the
PIDE of the fact—and Delgado’s remains were actually found at the start of
April, three weeks before the “discovery” was announced on 24 April.
According to The Economist, on 1 May 1965, one of the two bodies found
appeared to be that of Delgado. This magazine, like the Observer, chose to
emphasize the divided nature of the Portuguese opposition:
The general was […] at odds with the strongest of the movements of exiled
revolutionaries as well as with Dr Salazar’s regime. Inevitably, there were as many
interpretations of his disappearance as there were interested parties. The
commonest view was either that he was kidnapped by the Portuguese political
police in Spain, or that he was handed over to them by their Spanish counterparts.
It was also rumored that the Delgado case was one of the main subjects talked
about when Spain’s vice-president visited Portugal in March.
One thing that the might not have expected was that the Spanish police,
backed by Franco’s government, would take the investigation seriously. They
appear to have done so out of anger that another country’s police force should
have operated so brazenly on Spanish soil, and because no help in the investi-
gation seemed forthcoming from the Portuguese side. Spanish pleas for infor-
mation were met only with silence and equivocation. The announcement of the
bodies’ discovery anticipated the release of the international commission’s
findings, for the simple reason that Spanish authorities wanted to deflect atten-
tion onto the Portuguese. There was considerable confusion in Portugal and
beyond over what had happened. One foreign diplomat based in Lisbon wrote,
on 4 May 1965, ‘at first rumors of all sorts were rife as to the authors of the
crime. Some sympathizers with the opposition here seemed to try to involve
the Portuguese and even the Spanish government, but now nobody believes
109. João Madeira, ‘Mortes violentas’ in Madeira (ed.) et al., Vítimas de Salazar, p. 391.
that either government had anything to do with it.’110 This was far from the
truth. On 16 May Salazar received a telegram from Jânio Quadros, ex-President
of Brazil, demanding that Portugal allow a full investigation, to be carried out
under the aegis of the United Nations, into the murder of Delgado. Failure to
do so would be a tacit acceptance of responsibility.111
In Portugal, the opposition attempted to attribute Delgado’s death to the
regime. Mário Soares, who had left the PCP behind, having founded, with
others, the Acção Socialista Portuguesa (Portuguese Socialist Action), was chosen
by Delgado’s family to represent their interests; he would be arrested for his
efforts, but his prestige, at home and abroad, would increase considerably. The
news from Spain remained serious. On 7 June 1965 a letter was sent by the
Portuguese military attaché in Madrid to the Minister of Defense, conveying
information received privately from a contact in the Guardia Civil. According to
this Spanish officer, the overall situation was improving thanks to the Portu-
guese ambassador’s efforts. An Algerian connection was now being explored
by the Spanish police, since the death had occurred in lands owned by a
Spanish doctor very close to Algerian embassy. Could it have been the case
that Algerian agents had acted in order to please USSR, since many saw
Humberto Delgado—the ‘Coca-Cola General’ as the PCP had called him—as
an American agent? As for the PIDE, it was suspected by the Spanish of
knowing what had happened, and of having said nothing to Spanish police—a
behavior which had upset the Spaniards. A week later, matters took a turn for
the worse. The Portuguese ambassador at Madrid, Luís Pinto Coelho, wrote to
Salazar on 15 June 1965, detailing a conversation between the military attaché,
Lieutenant Colonel Castro de Ascenção, and the head of the Second Bureau of
the Spanish Army’s General Staff.112 The Spanish were now sure that four
people had entered Spain through Villanueva del Fresno on the morning of 13
February, with the help of the PIDE agent in S. Leonardo, who told the
Spanish authorities that the men were headed for Seville. The four men,
however, had taken the road to Badajoz. The same four men entered Portugal
the following day, through the border at Rosal de la Frontera. The Spanish
accepted that it was possible that communist agents had been responsible for
Delgado’s death, or that he had been robbed by someone who believed him to
be collecting funds: but they thought it more likely that someone lower down
in the Portuguese administration had decided to carry out justice through
private means. The ambassador wrote, ‘given the relative gravity of this
110. Ribeiro de Meneses, Correspondência diplomática, doc. 357, report, Lisbon, 4 March 1961, O’Kelly de
Gallagh to Secretary, Department of External Affairs, Dublin, pp. 502–3.
111. AOS COE 1, telegram, 16 May 1965, Jânio Quadros to António de Oliveira Salazar.
112. AOS CD1, letter, Madrid, 15 June 1965, Luís Pinto Coelho to António de Oliveira Salazar.
possibility, I ask you to note that my sole intention is to reproduce my memory
of the attaché’s report, not to reproduce verbatim what the attaché told me.’
The crisis would not go away. On 23 August 1965, Minister of Justice
Antunes Varela informed Salazar that an official request from the Spanish
investigating magistrate in Badajoz had reached the Polícia Judiciária, and that in
three days the required information would be gathered and sent via the MNE:
‘A meeting has been scheduled for tomorrow between myself and the ministers
of the Interior and of Foreign Affairs in order to exchange views about this
matter.’113 Salazar, after a long delay, finally addressed the issue publicly. In
November, at the conclusion of that year’s legislative election campaign,
Salazar made a broadcast speech. According to The Economist, ‘his longest
passage was supposed to be a reply to opposition complaints at the delay in
investigating General Delgado’s murder […] “We have acted honestly and
swiftly,” Dr Salazar claimed.’114 In fact, it was not until late October that the
government responded to Spanish judicial inquiries. Salazar neither admitted
the delay nor explained it. He preferred to suggest that Delgado was killed to
stop him “confessing” to the Portuguese authorities; the general’s mind, he
added, had been poisoned by his admiration for American political methods.
At the end of March 1966, Antunes Varela informed Salazar that the
situation in Spain over the Delgado affair remained ‘pretty ugly’: ‘The PIDE is
going to be left with its name and reputation in the mud in a country where so
many crises, much worse than the one now involving the Portuguese police,
occurred with impunity, be it during the war, be it afterwards.’115 Two days
later, Varela sent another letter, now pointing out that the situation was, if
anything, worse: A Spanish judge wanted to hear an agent, by the name of
António Gonçalves Semedo (the agent who had introduced his four colleagues
to the Spanish border guards). Varela wrote, ‘to me it seems that, since agent
Semedo should not appear in Madrid, it will be more convenient, on all counts,
that his non-appearance should be attributable to a free and spontaneous
decision by him rather than to difficulties, hurdles, or restrictions imposed by
the administration.’116 While the MNE complained about the tone of the
Spanish judge in question at a press conference, Varela complained that he had
not been consulted by the Spanish authorities.
The shadow of Delgado, perhaps more than that of any other figure killed,
or allowed to die, by the regime, hangs heavy over Salazar’s reputation.
Salazar’s defenders stand by the view that he did nothing wrong, not having
113. AOS CP 274, calling card, 23 August 1965, João de Matos Antunes Varela to António de Oliveira
Salazar.
114. ‘Portugal: Regrets Shared’ in The Economist (London), 13 November 1965.
115. AOS CP 274, letter, 30 March 1966, João de Matos Antunes Varela to António de Oliveira Salazar.
116. Ibid., 1 April 1966, João de Matos Antunes Varela to António de Oliveira Salazar.
been consulted on the affair. Two lines of explanation are usually advanced in
this regard: that murder was not Salazar’s style, and that, in any case, Delgado
was finished as a political threat. Jaime Nogueira Pinto, for example, writes,
‘the accounts of events that we have from people close to Salazar—such as
Luís Supico Pinto, Franco Nogueira, Paulo Rodrigues—reveal enormous sur-
prise and anger of the head of government when Silva Pais, in a panic, told him
of what had happened.’117 While most accounts speak of a trap set up by the
PIDE, Nogueira Pinto writes that the secret police members who met Delgado
in Spain were convinced that he was coming to give himself up, since Delgado
no longer had ‘political value for the opposition’, and he might be ‘useful to the
regime’.118 According to Nogueira Pinto, Delgado, once he realized that he was
dealing with officers and not opposition figures, reached first for his gun,
sealing his fate and that of Arajaryr de Campos. Moreover, Nogueira Pinto
leaves an air of mystery clearly intended to absolve the regime, and the secret
police: ‘it would be interesting to know who really convinced Delgado to go to
Badajoz and that he would be awaited there by opposition figures.’119 This is
somewhat disingenuous. Delgado had never stopped being seen as a threat, his
every movement shadowed, and on 6 December 1963 Silva Pais wrote Salazar
to the effect that ‘we must strike hard, without delay, against the elements of
the “patriotic juntas” and others who were preparing—with the almost certain
coming of Delgado to Europe and Algeria—to provoke agitation […]’120 When
the Delgado murder was finally investigated in Portugal, after the 1974 revolu-
tion, Silva Pais stated that he had informed Salazar that an operation to seize
Delgado would shortly be launched, to which Salazar merely replied to ‘take
great care’.121 There is a leap of faith here on the part of anyone investigating
this crime, since it is impossible to demonstrate conclusively what Salazar knew
and when. In a recent work detailing the regime’s violence, the authors simply
state that
“Operation Autumn”, as it was designated by the PIDE, was hatched at the

PIDE’s highest levels, and had Salazar’s approval.122
There is no reference given, and no supporting evidence. More convincing is

their claim that
117. Jaime Nogueira Pinto, Salazar: O outro retrato (Lisbon: A Esfera dos Livros, 2007), p. 212.
118. Nogueira Pinto, Salazar, p. 212.
119. Ibid., p. 213.
120. ‘Silva Pais prometeu a Salazar “pancada forte” em Delgado’ in Expresso (Lisbon), 13 December 2003.
The article’s claim that this document proves that Salazar discussed Delgado’s murder with Silva Pais is not,
however, credible. This does not mean that the document is unimportant.
121. ‘O que Salazar soube e não soube’ in Expresso (Lisbon), 14 February 1998.
122. Madeira (ed.) et al., Vítimas de Salazar, p. 402.
Its objective—the annihilation of Delgado—ranged from kidnapping and deten-
tion in Portugal to his physical elimination; of this, the main thing to keep in mind
is the criminal intent with which it was engendered, sanctioned, and executed.
In its preparation all possibilities were envisaged, including murder. Hence the
blanket, the rope, and the lime carried in the trunk of Agostinho Tienza’s auto-
mobile. Hence the inclusion in the squad of Casimiro Monteiro, an agent with a
brutal past who had no inhibitions when it came to drawing his firearm […]
Hence Rosa Casaco’s preoccupation with finding an alternative spot to that of the
meeting with Delgado, where the bodies were buried.123
Against the accounts of ministers close to Salazar, who sought to absolve

him of any responsibility, can be counted the latter’s customary and long-
standing indifference to the fate political opponents. As we have seen, condi-
tions in Tarrafal were widely known in Portugal, and Salazar did not investigate
them, if indeed he was ever surprised by them. There are, however, other
examples. On 4 July 1942, for example, one of the more renowned PVDE
agents, António Roquete, with two colleagues, killed a communist party
member, António Ferreira Soares, who lived in a house in the hamlet of
Nogueira da Regedoura, in the district of Aveiro. Ferreira Soares, a doctor by
profession, was well known in the area, since he charged no fees to the im-
poverished patients who flocked to his surgery. The scandal caused by his
murder was considerable, so much so that Marcelo Caetano wrote to Salazar
asking for information. The reply came on 28 September:
A certain amount of speculation has surrounded, it is true, the case. The matter is
now before the court, which will adjudicate with independence, although it seems
that the agent shot in order not to be killed. The murdered man [‘o assassinado’]
was a notorious communist, convicted, at large by virtue of local protection. A
man of some merit, who benefited from the great devotion of the people.124
Salazar did nothing, however, to ascertain why Ferreira Soares had been
killed. In relation to Arlindo Vicente, moreover, Salazar, when informed of the
deficient medical treatment being received by this former candidate for the
Presidency, limited his action to asking the PIDE what was happening, and was
satisfied with the explanation he received.125 Whether or not Salazar knew that
Delgado might be, or would be, murdered by the PIDE, two things are un-
123. Ibid.
124. Freire Antunes (ed.), Salazar e Caetano, doc. S 11, letter Lisbon, 28 September 1942, António de Oliveira
Salazar to Marcelo Caetano, p. 106.
125. AOS PC 65, memorandum on the situation of Arlindo Vicente, bearing the following minute: ‘Con-
firmation or correction of the allegation is requested. 6. XII.961 Oliveira Salazar’. This request led to a letter,
dated 12 December 1961, from the Director of the PIDE to the Minister of the Interior, refuting all
allegations. This was passed on to Salazar the following day.
deniable: that he created in a regime in which a secret police believed that it
could act in this manner without suffering consequences, and that, once it had
become obvious to all that the had indeed murdered Humberto Delgado, no
heads rolled within the PIDE. In any case the affair fizzled out in Spain, since
the investigating magistrate, in the face of the Portuguese refusal to cooperate
with the process, and bereft of political support in Madrid, was unable to bring
anyone to trial.
It was not just the PIDE that Salazar allowed to grow unchecked in
Portugal. Corruption was also a major factor affecting the working life of the
New State as its leader entered his inevitable decline. The Observer wrote of
Salazar, on 21 January 1962, that ‘himself incorruptible, he has sometimes
helped to corrupt his subordinates by allowing them to secure rich material
rewards—and by making it plain that he despises their greed.’ This was a highly
insightful statement, one which encapsulated Salazar’s stance perfectly. Salazar
hoped to lead by example, but few in positions of power saw in his austere life
anything but an eccentricity. Accusations against ministers and others in
leading positions for enriching themselves at the public’s expense had been
attached to the New State from its infancy, and Salazar had never acted to
investigate such accusations, preferring instead to give ministers enough rope
with which to hang themselves—and then quietly dismissing them, no refer-
ence being made in the act of dismissal to any scandal or lack of probity.
Corruption in wartime became even more damaging in the eyes of public
opinion, but still nothing was done. The Observer reported, on 30 June 1963,
some flagrant examples of corruption: industrialists, with government bodies’
help, were exporting sardines in adulterated olive oil; the roof in a Lisbon rail-
way station collapsed because ‘jerry-builders’ had been employed, with fifty
people killed. The most notorious case of corruption was to emerge in the final
years of Salazar’s career: a sex scandal known as ballet rose, which gained inter-
national notoriety. The Sunday Telegraph, on 10 December 1967, and the Daily
Telegraph the following day, detailed a scandal linking a ‘Minister, prominent
bankers and aristocrats with teen-age call-girls in a vice ring’:126
Portugal’s 76-year-old dictator is accused in the reports of personally suppressing

the prosecution of at least one Minister and other “establishment” figures charged
with corruption for fear of the consequences to his regime of the scandal became
public knowledge.
Mário Soares was accused of providing this information to the foreign

press, as a result of which he was arrested, his residence being fixed on São
126. ‘Lisbon Purge Feared After Vice Scandal Leak’ in Daily Telegraph (London), 11 December 1967.
Tomé Island, where he would stay for nearly a year.127 The scandal was to cost
the head of the Minister of Justice, Antunes Varela; his resignation was
shrouded in mystery, but in effect it occurred because Varela wanted prosecu-
tions of the ringleaders to go ahead. Inaction on this matter sullied the reputa-
tion of the regime and its men, including Salazar, and made it the laughing
stock of Europe.128 A União Nacional communiqué was distributed to the move-
ment’s cadres in January 1968: ‘Against calumny we advance the truth’. The
ballet rose scandal was part of a generalized foreign offensive against Portugal,
bringing together a scandal-mongering press and the communist movement to
exploit politically the Justice Minister’s resignation:
Salazar embodies the nation’s honor; by inventing what they did, the calumny’s
authors have gone too far and missed their target. Is there really anyone who
believes that the head of government would want to cover up such immorality?129
The communiqué continued by pointing out that there had indeed been
cases brought up for the abuse of minors, and that four had reached the courts
before the Minister resigned. Four people had been tried; in none of the cases
was there any mention of a member of the cabinet, or of anyone with political
responsibilities.
What were the practical implications of the scandals and controversies of
the 1960s? How did they affect Salazar’s style of government? Despite the war,
it was increasingly difficult to rally public opinion, and the government, for all
of its influence over the media, had only limited means to address it directly.
The União Nacional was at best lethargic, at worse comatose. Castro Fernandes,
president of its Executive Commission, wrote to Salazar, explaining that a
congress of the movement had been announced for 1966, but had proved im-
possible to organize, due to lack of interest. The União Nacional’s activity since
the last Congress—held in 1956—had been ‘minimal’. The best that could be
hoped for in 1967 was an annual meeting of the higher echelons of the
organization, which would prepare the Congress for the following year.130 The
Legião had lost its reason for existence, and membership of the organization
was generally frowned upon socially; the Mocidade had been stripped of its ideo-
127. Silva Pais recommended special caution with Soares, deemed to be ‘an individual with a special talent
for fooling those who do not keep up their guard’. AOS CP 208, letter, Lisbon, 25 March 1968, Silva Pais to
inspector Nogueira Branco. Reports on Soares’ activities, including bugged telephone conversations with his
family, in Lisbon, regularly made their way to Salazar’s desk.
128. AOS CO PC 76A, ‘Caccia alla lolita nel giardino del ministro’ in ABC, January 1968.
129. AOS CP 108, calling card, 25 January 1968, António Júlio de Castro Fernandes to António de Oliveira
Salazar, accompanied by “À calúnia opõe-se a verdade’, ‘Confidential’ communiqué by the Executive
Commission of the União Nacional.
130. AOS CP 108, letter, Lisbon, 26 December 1966, A. J. Castro Fernandes to António de Oliveira Salazar.
logical content and was generally under fire. No-one read the Diário da Manhã.
Salazar was increasingly alone, surrounded by a handful of loyal men, and by
those who craved power, whatever the consequences. As he aged, the New
State became increasingly what it had always denied being: a personal dictator-
ship upheld, in the final instance, by force, and both ignorant and contemp-
tuous of the people’s wishes.
The Vexing Issue of Succession
As far as Salazar was concerned, one use of the New State, whatever the
realities that governed its existence, was that it surrounded him with organs and
institutions that created the idea of permanence. The comparison with Spain is
both useful and striking. For all of his personal power, Francisco Franco was
never able to create the impression that the regime could continue to exist as
before once he had died. Having proclaimed Spain to be a kingdom and given
himself the right to nominate the king, Franco, quite aside from proclaiming
his indispensability, was also making the issue of succession a concrete political
reality in which he had to involve himself. Appointing a successor did not
mean a weakening of his position, because he retained the right to change his
mind over the putative monarch. For Salazar, however, the designation of a
successor would entail the beginning of the end—but the country’s constitu-
tional arrangements meant that succession was one less thing to worry about.
There was a President of the Republic who appointed a President of the
Council. As it turned out, since 1932 the three men to hold the Presidency of
the Republic had asked Salazar to lead the government: but should the Head of
State change his mind, or should something happen to Salazar, then the regime
could and should, continue. A Council of State would advise the President and
the President would decide. There was nothing that Salazar could or should do.
The Botelho Moniz coup failed to get off the ground, but it did reawake
talk of what should happen once Salazar, for whatever reason, had departed
the political scene. The Observer, on 21 January 1962, detailed the possible
successors:
There are a few men of brilliance in Salazar’s entourage, notably Adriano Moreira,
his Minister of Overseas Territories. But more often than not those who have
retained the dictator’s favor are crude and tough-minded characters like Mario
Silva, the Army Minister who promised no quarter to the rebels in Angola; the
arch-fascist General Santos Costa of the General Staff, who cultivates British
friends; and the smoothly-accommodating Admiral Henriques Tenreiro, who
makes up for the inadequacies of his service pay by holding forty-six other posts
of various kinds.
It is hard to conceive of a serious discussion on a successor to Salazar
when so much of Portuguese life still passed, literally, through his hands. In a
letter dated 25 June 1963, Finance Minister Pinto Barbosa presented Salazar
with the proposed new 5 and 2.5 escudos coins, the design of which now in-
cluded the alterations suggested by Salazar.131 He might not have the time and
the energy to keep an eye on all aspects of national life, but when he chose to
intervene on a given matter he could not be overruled. In this sense, ministers
were, more than ever, technicians, devoid of political will and initiative.
Another factor that dampened speculation on Salazar’s departure from the
Presidency of the Council was the change made to the election of the President
of the Republic. Since this was now carried out within a small electorate, totally
subservient to Salazar, there could be no question of Salazar being asked to
stand. Moreover, he was entirely at ease with President Américo Tomás, who
had served him as Navy Minister for so long. Finally, as the many crises of the
1950s had demonstrated, Salazar might talk of retirement, but no-one should
engage with him on the issue other than to say that he should not do so.
That Salazar viewed the issue of succession as a closed one was demon-
strated by the government’s reaction to the appearance in Portugal of the Opus
Dei movement, whose power in neighboring Spain was growing constantly,
notably within financial circles and the economic/financial portfolios in the
cabinet. Silva Pais reported on the growth of Opus Dei in Portugal, 31 May
1963: The order had been active in Portugal for a decade, and had established
university residences in Lisbon, Oporto, and Coimbra. Its position in Portu-
guese financial and business circles was also being secured through links with
some well known personalities, including Daniel Barbosa. More worrying,
however, was a rumor doing the rounds: ‘It is also said that “OPUS DEI” is
worried with political events in post-Salazar Portugal’: To this end the order
had attempted to attract Marcelo Caetano into its orbit, initially with success,
but ultimately with no result: Caetano had allowed relations to cool when he
found out that Manuel Gonçalves Cavaleiro Ferreira, Salazar’s former Minister
of Justice, and Guilherme Braga da Cruz, had joined.132 The Apostolic Nuncio,
meanwhile, was also worried about who might succeed Salazar, and was busy
keeping the peace between Opus Dei and the Jesuits, whom the PIDE con-
sidered to be sworn enemies. Now Opus Dei were banking on Adriano
Moreira, ‘although they know he is not a Catholic’. He was, however, suffi-
131. AOS CP 21, letter, Lisbon, 25 June 1963, António M. Pinto Barbosa to António de Oliveira Salazar.
132. Guilherme Braga da Cruz (1916–1977) graduated with a degree in Law from the University of Coimbra,
having been involved, as per family tradition, in monarchist and Catholic politics, notably in the CADC. He
joined the lecturing staff of the University, and was later its rector. Braga da Cruz led Portugal’s action
against the Indian Union against the International Court at The Hague, over access to the disputed enclaves
of Dadra and Nagar Aveli. He also served as procurador in the Corporative Chamber and in the União Nacional.
ciently intelligent to defend the Church and its interests. A later report, dated
23 January 1964, stated that Opus Dei was making a concerted effort to
influence the sons of influential financiers, politicians, and other public figures
in Portugal—and its influence was growing as well in military circles. More-
over, in paragraphs which Salazar underlined, the report’s author stated that in
its secret meetings Opus Dei defended a form of Iberian union which, un-
equivocally commanded from Spain, could more readily defeat any possible
communist challenge. As for possible successors to Salazar, the Opus Dei
leadership had moved on to another academic figure, a Professor Leitão Pinto,
who had the support of many military figures, much of the university, and a
number of foreign entities, including the Spanish ambassador.133
A third report, dated 9 November 1965, concentrated on the figure of a
Spaniard, Gregorio Ortega Pardo, who headed Opus Dei in Portugal. Ortega
enjoyed an expensive lifestyle, and liked to be called ‘Professor’. He hosted
expensive dinner parties, drank the finest wines, and evidently had good links
with the Spanish embassy—the ambassador was suspected of being a
member.134 A week later, another report on the same figure stated that Ortega
Pardo had been arrested in Venezuela. The Spanish ambassador in Lisbon was
now trying to reassure everyone that Ortega Pardo had been on Opus Dei
business, and the money he was transporting would be used to found a new
house in the Latin American republic: as for the jewels found on him, they
were his medals. Other Spanish diplomats publicly aired their doubts about this
explanation. Rumors circulated that Ortega Pardo was involved in jewel
smuggling. The went on to detail the difficulties now being encountered with
by the order in Spain. Many groups were attacking it, including the Falange: ‘it
is denounced as a dark force which has taken control of important financial
institutions.’ Moreover, ‘its lack of popularity is due to the view that it acts
against family ties, taking into its ‘houses’ a large number of scholars, especially
those with the highest marks.’135
Monarchists continued to dream of a restoration of the old regime as a
way of giving continuity to Salazar’s work. This was especially true of the royal
family itself, in the shape, first of all, of Dona Filipa de Bragança but also of her
brother, the Pretender, Dom Duarte. The latter wrote, on 27 May 1966, ‘Given
that tomorrow, for the fortieth time, the most important date for Portugal will
be repeated, I do not want to see this 28 May pass without letting you know
that I, and all other Portuguese, should congratulate ourselves, for God having
133. AOS CO PC 77A, PIDE report, ‘Tentativas de penetração do “Opus Dei” na política interna portu-
guesa’, 23 January 1964.
134. Ibid., ‘Secret’ PIDE report, 9 November 1965.
135. AOS CP 208, report, 15 November 1965.
preserved our great Salazar.’136 In August of that year, Dona Filipa wrote of the
inauguration of the Salazar bridge, ‘I saw the inauguration ceremony on tele-
vision at some friends’ house. I was not there in person because it seemed to
me that the Family’s representation was already too numerous—my Brother,
my Sister-in-Law and the three children. Brother was so satisfied and happy to
have been able to express to you, our Friend, and in person, his sentiments of
thanks and of admiration!’137 She went on to provide details of the eldest
nephew’s ongoing trip to Africa. Upon his return, the following month, Dona
Filipa de Bragança hurried to inform Salazar, and to request an audience for
the future Pretender, who would like to discuss what he had seen with Salazar.
Dona Filipa wrote of Dom Duarte Pio, ‘This young man whom God gifted us,
the Family, and us, Portuguese, is truly, with each day that passes, “increasing
in age, grace and wisdom, before God and men alike.”’138
As a gesture towards monarchists, Salazar allowed the remains of King
Miguel and his wife to be buried in Portugal; since the current Pretender
descended directly from Dom Miguel, who had been proscribed, they were
especially pleased.139 But monarchists—if not potential monarchs—were ex-
pressing severe doubts about the fate of the regime’s future in much the same
way as Catholics: One wrote, ‘Portuguese politics continues to orbit around a
sole man who, thanks to his strong personality, is the nexus with which the
army and some other elements attempt to preserve a “status quo” which, since
it is not institutionalized, will crumble like a pack of cards before a breath of
adversity.’140 However, as the years passed the possibility of Salazar seeking to
enshrine the New State through a restoration of the monarchy became less and
less likely. It was a solution to a problem he did not admit existed, and it was
one which would take years to prepare. It was now too late to start.
Finally, and as might be expected, Salazar was increasingly alone. The men
of his generation—those whose political awakening had taken place in
response to the Republic, who had witnessed World War I, and risen to power
in its wake, were now retiring or passing away. The new generation was moved
by passions and ideals he no longer understood, even when those ideals led
them to support him. Ministerial renovations, still necessary, were more than
ever a chore, since appointments to all significant positions still had to pass
through his hands. More and more Salazar relied on close collaborators, such
as Supico Pinto, President of the Corporative Chamber, to provide candidates
136. Ibid., letter, 27 May 1966, Dom Duarte Nuno de Bragança to António de Oliveira Salazar.
137. Ibid., letter, Lisbon, 11 August 1966, Dona Filipa de Bragança to António de Oliveira Salazar.
138. Ibid., letter, 23 September 1966, Dona Filipa de Bragança to António de Oliveira Salazar.
139. See AOS CP 38, letter, 20 May 1967, Dom Duarte Nuno de Bragança to António de Oliveira Salazar.
140. AOS CO PC 63A, Conde de Carla, ‘A situação interna do país’, in Causa Monárquica: Circular Informativa
n. 8, Lisbon, 28 February 1962.
for the various portfolios; the aged dictator no longer knew young people on
the way up, and not all of these wanted to burn their bridges by twinning their
fates to someone so old, whose stay in power could not, all things being equal,
last much longer. His own generation was passing from political life. One of
his oldest political allies, Albino dos Reis, was dropped from the presidency of
the National Assembly. This was an interesting case: Albino dos Reis wrote
Salazar, on 25 November 1961, explaining that he had been informed by
Ulisses Cortês that some of the recently elected deputies wanted replace him as
President, and that Salazar had authorized them to do it. ‘I deduce from this
that Dr Salazar is leaving it to the Assembly to choose its President. Such neu-
trality represents, in my case, the indication that my replacement in the presi-
dency has been deemed convenient.’141 Salazar replied, that same day,
The news that has reached me is that this is no simple maneuver, but rather a very
strong current expressing itself in the sense of the renewal of the presidency of the
Assembly. It did not seem to me that the government should intervene, since it
would risk either being considered overbearing in relation to the majority opinion
in the Chamber, or being defeated in a contest.142
The idea of Salazar being defeated in the National Assembly is ludicrous.

Still, Salazar—after claiming not to want to interfere to save Albino dos Reis—
then went on to ask his life-long collaborator for help in ensuring that another
regime stalwart, Mário de Figueiredo, replaced him: and for this to occur,
Albino dos Reis had to let it be known that he no longer wanted to serve as
President. In 1962 Júlio Dantas died; early in 1963, Caeiro da Mata passed
away.
141. AOS CP 236, letter, Lisbon, 25 November 1961, Albino dos Reis to António de Oliveira Salazar.
142. AAR, letter, Lisbon, 25 November 1961, António de Oliveira Salazar to Albino dos Reis.
Chapter XII
Illness, Retirement, and Death
E ver since the end of World War II, and his period of exhaustion which
followed it, Salazar had been seen regularly by a doctor, Eduardo Coelho,
recommended to him by his old Coimbra friend, Serras e Silva. Salazar’s
medical records and prescriptions, preserved in the Salazar archive, do not indi-
cate anything out of the ordinary for a man of his age; there was a tendency
towards respiratory problems, and an ongoing battle with insomnia, but it was
rare for Salazar’s work to come to a halt because of illness. His walks provided
some exercise, and his was a frugal and healthy diet. Nevertheless, the passing
years and the constant tension eventually took their toll. Franco Nogueira, in
the final volume of his biography of Salazar, recounts a chilling moment that
signaled, to all present, that the Salazar years were coming to an end, and soon.
On 12 June 1968 Salazar, presiding over the second day of a long Council of
Ministers, went, in great detail, over the exact same subject matter that he had
gone over the day before: the decision to kick Maurice Béjart out of the
country. Franco Nogueira, who witnessed this event, wrote,
Around the Council table there hovers a chill of embarrassment, anxiety, and
drama: their heads down, eyes fixed on the papers they hold before them, the
ministers have understood that a serious disturbance is afflicting Oliveira Salazar:
Illness, Retirement, and Death 599
but no other member of the Council makes a sound, or meets the gaze of a
colleague.1
Coincidentally or not, the following month a long telegram from the

American ambassador in Lisbon, W. Tapley Bennett, to the State Department,
dated 24 July, was entitled ‘The twilight of the Salazar Era’, and one of its sub-
titles asked ‘Is Salazar senile?’2 The American diplomat’s speculation was based
on the content of an interview granted by Salazar to ‘an obscure Argentine
publication’, Extra, published in late April. Bennett wrote that it was not the
crass anti-American sentiments on display that had alarmed public opinion in
Portugal about Salazar’s mental health, but rather ‘his extreme defensiveness
about his own record and about Portuguese policies and postures in general.
His statements and strictures in this area were both petulant and unyielding—
rigid to the point of rigor mortis.’ Bennett did not believe Salazar to be senile,
as some in the diplomatic corps now thought, seeing him rather as ‘a very old
man who is steeped in his self-righteousness and bulwarked in his convictions
through his success in manipulating the local power levers firmly for 40 years.’
In any case, there was a perceptibly anxious mood in Portugal, a realization that
Salazar would not just go on forever, and the May 68 events in France had
played a part in this changed understanding of the perennial nature of political
power.
For a time nothing happened, and Salazar continued his routine; the
following month a further two-day Council of Ministers was held, to decide on
the future of the Cabora-Bassa dam, an enormously ambitious project which
represented a commitment to the future of not only Portuguese Africa, but of
white-rule southern Africa, since South Africa and Rhodesia would be the prin-
cipal customers of the electricity produced by Cabora-Bassa. It was opposed, as
already discussed, by the Economy Minister, Correia de Oliveira, backed up by
Ulisses Cortês, Finance Minister. Cabora-Bassa and the hundreds of miles of
power-lines that would connect it to South Africa would be a magnet for
Frelimo fighters, and would have to be guarded around the clock. Franco
Nogueira and Gomes de Araújo, the Defense Minister, were in favor. Salazar
waited until the arguments ran out, and then, in what proved to be his last
major decision, he opted for construction: to not build Cabora-Bassa meant
forcing South Africa into the search for an alternative source of energy, with
1. Franco Nogueira, O último combate, p. 360.

2. FRUS 1964–1968, vol. 12, doc. 171, Lisbon, 24 July 1968, from the embassy in Portugal (Bennett) to the
the subsequent loss of revenue for Mozambique;3 a French-German-South
African consortium would carry out the project.
That summer another issue weighed heavily on Salazar, a cabinet reshuffle
that most now assumed was unavoidable. While this matter was being resolved
in the usual laborious manner, Salazar moved, at the end of the month, to the
Estoril fort that had become his summer residence. Days later, on Saturday, 3
August, or the next day,4 Salazar, his eyes scanning the Diário de Notícias, sat
heavily down on a light director’s chair,5 which toppled over, the back of his
head crashing on the old fort’s stone floor. After some disorientation, he
seemed fine, and urged those who helped him up not to make to great a deal
out of the affair. Soon he was back at work, and the following day held a two-
hour-long conference with Américo Tomás, discussing, among other things,
the forthcoming reshuffle. It was only on 6 August that, for a scheduled check-
up, Salazar met his regular doctor, Eduardo Coelho, informing him of his
earlier accident. Coelho noticed nothing strange, but insisted on being called
should Salazar have the slightest headache, since the symptoms of a cranial clot
might take weeks, or even longer, to surface, and might require surgery to
correct.
The meetings and conversations related to the reshuffle continued. Letters
were sent out to ministers either confirming them in their place or informing
them that they were relieved of their post. Ulisses Cortês was one of those
asked to leave the cabinet; he dutifully replied, ‘it was only two days ago that,
upon my return to Lisbon, I became aware of your letter […] I pledge to you
my dedication and unwavering loyalty.’6 It is hard to discern, from Franco
Nogueira’s account, any obvious ideological line that guided the cabinet’s
reconstitution. Competence and loyalty continued to be the main publicly
acknowledged criteria for ministers, who were essentially being asked to lend
their names and reputations to the task of demonstrating that the regime could
still count on the best and the brightest to do its bidding. Many in the new
cabinet were seen as supporters of Marcelo Caetano, which led to some appre-
hension in more conservative circles. On 11 August, Salazar again visited
Tomás, this time to inform him of the make-up of the new cabinet; Tomás’s
3. Franco Nogueira, O último combate, pp. 372–73.

4. The date of this accident is open to question. Paulo Otero has brought together all accounts of the
accident and is more inclined towards 4 August. Paulo Otero, Os últimos meses de Salazar: Agosto de 1968 a Julho
de 1970 (Lisbon: Almedina, 2008), pp. 30–37. The neurosurgeon who examined Salazar, Dr António
Vasconcelos Marques, expressed his doubts whether a simple fall from a chair could have caused the damage
encountered. On the basis of this opinion, and of conflicting details in the various accounts of the fall, Otero
suggests that Salazar actually fell more than once. Otero, Os últimos meses, pp. 36–37.
5. According to Américo Tomás, Salazar had the habit of letting himself drop on chairs, rather than actually
sitting down. Tomás, Últimas décadas, vol. 3, p. 293.
6. AOS CP 73, letter, Lisbon, undated (received 8 August 1968), Ulisses Cortês to António de Oliveira
Salazar.
displeasure with some choices was overruled (and he would complain
vigorously about this to his immediate circle, noting in his memoirs that
Salazar’s stubbornness had been most unusual)7; on 15 August, Salazar
received Christine Garnier and her latest husband, who stayed for a number of
days; according to her memoirs, Salazar was in good spirits, and his routine was
unchanged, although he did mention his death on a number of occasions,
which he had not done before.8 On 19 August, Salazar was present at the
swearing in of the new ministers, who, as a cabinet, failed to enthuse the
country and the wider regime.9 On 26 August, Salazar wrote to a Biafran
leader, assuring him that his government would do all it could to encourage
and support international humanitarian aid for Biafra: ‘I share in the indigna-
tion and horror which this massacre of a Christian people provokes in all con-
sciences.’10 According to Franco Nogueira, the following day, 27 August, when
the government ‘crisis’ was done and dusted, a headache did come, but an
aspirin took care of it, and Salazar refused to call his doctor. Micas, in her
account, based on a conversation with Dona Maria, suggests, however, that
these headaches had become frequent.11 On 31 August Micas and her husband,
on their way to the Algarve, on holidays, stopped in at the fort to pick up their
son. Dona Maria was unusually sulky, but Salazar waved away Micas’ concern:
‘Don’t mind her. She’s been very nervous lately.’12 The following day, at their
regular meeting, Américo Tomás did not notice anything unusual about
Salazar.13 Two more days came and went; on 3 September the first Council of
Ministers of the new government took place in Lisbon. Salazar barely inter-
vened, looking tired and ill,14 an impression reinforced the next day, by which
time his handwriting had become badly affected, as his diary attests. That
evening, the headaches returned, and could not be ignored; brushing aside
Salazar’s instructions (he wanted to wait for his regular meeting with Eduardo
Coelho), Dona Maria finally called the doctor.15 Having examined Salazar,
whose right leg was dragging behind him, and whose memory was clearly

8. Garnier, Jusqu’ou, pp. 346–47.
9. One exception was the recently appointed governor of Portuguese Guinea, brigadier Spínola, who cabled,
that very day, ‘as a Portuguese and as a military man I congratulate the nation in your person for the choice
of the new Ministers of the Army and the Navy, which constitutes new encouragement for those who fight
for the Pátria in this sacred part of Portugal.’ AOS CP 261, telegram, Bissau, 19 August 1968, Brigadier
António Spínola to António de Oliveira Salazar.
10. AOS CP 246, draft of a letter, Lisbon 26 August 1968, António de Oliveira Salazar to an unknown
addressee.
11. Melo Rita & Vieira, Os meus 35 anos, p. 185.
12. Ibid., p. 184.
13. Tomás, Últimas décadas, p. 292.
15. According to Coelho, the call was made on 5 September, at 11 a.m. Coelho & Macieira Coelho, Salazar,
p. 19.
affected, Coelho immediately attempted to contact a neurosurgeon to examine
Salazar. After some inquiries regarding the whereabouts of other specialists,
Coelho settled on Dr António de Vasconcelos Marques, the two men speaking
at the close of 5 September, and an examination of Salazar being scheduled for
the afternoon of the 6th.16 Over a month had gone by since the fall, and
Vasconcelos Marques, after an initial examination, was sure that the illness was
serious. Word soon spread within the government and the PIDE of the situa-
tion. An increasingly befuddled Salazar was driven to a number of hospitals for
further testing, in the company of the two doctors and Silva Pais, eventually
being taken to the Red Cross clinic in the suburb of Benfica, where a whole
wing of the sixth floor had been quickly reserved and he spent the night.
There, visiting dignitaries, including cabinet ministers, Américo Tomás, and
Bissaia Barreto, Coelho’s Professor at Coimbra, began a vigil, and more
doctors were brought into the secret and asked for advice. While Coelho was
sure that the current symptoms were linked to the earlier fall, Vasconcelos
Marques tended, in his diagnosis, towards a stroke, which meant that no opera-
tion was needed. No test was conclusive, and the medical professionals, after a
heated argument which impressed the politicians present,17 resolved to operate
in order to establish precisely what the situation was. The operation was carried
out in the early hours of 7 September, after a brief argument over whether or
not Salazar should be allowed to make a political will: he was not. For all those
present at the Casa de Saúde da Cruz Vermelha, it was clear that what was at stake
was no longer the life of Salazar, but rather the survival of the New State. The
secret could not be kept for much longer, even with the aid of censorship;
measures had to be taken to ensure order. Key military units were placed on
alert, as was the police.
The operation, carried out by a member of Vasconcelos Marques’ team,
confirmed the opinion of Coelho: a subdural intracranial blood clot in the left
hemisphere was Salazar’s sole affliction, and it was promptly removed. All
things being equal, Salazar could recover from this, and President Américo
Tomás and the government breathed a sigh of relief; news of the operation,
slightly altered to make it seem less dramatic, was allowed to be broadcast. The
feeling of relief did not last long, however, and by the end of 7 September
Vasconcelos Marques informed Tomás, who had returned to Benfica, that
16. According to Coelho, Salazar agreed to be examined by any doctor recommended by Coelho, although
Dona Maria told him ‘take care not to bring someone who is against the situação!’. Coelho & Macieira Coelho,
Salazar, p. 21.
17. Franco Nogueira’s account does not include any sense of disunity among the doctors, as if national
dignity depended on presenting an image of unanimity among such professionals. He attributes the delay to
the political implications of the surgery, since this involved the risk of death or incapacity. But Coelho con-
firms that those assembled waited until President Tomás arrived from a society ball to make the final
decision.
anything might happen, given a sudden deterioration in the condition of the
still President of the Council. But the worst did not occur, and Salazar began to
improve slowly; medical bulletins kept the country informed of the recovery.
One diplomat informed his government that ‘there seems to be no doubt that
he is making excellent progress, and the speculation now is when he is likely to
leave the hospital.’18 His sisters visited him, and ever larger crowds began to
descend on the hospital to leave cards and messages of support. A week after
the operation, on 15 September, the medical bulletin stated that ‘the President
of the Council is now fully convalescing and will shortly return to his Lisbon
residence. This will be the last medical bulletin.’19 Américo Tomás, who visited
Salazar that day, spoke to him for a few minutes, and was, he later claimed,
certain that Salazar could return to work;20 whether the rest of the regime
would accept such a solution, however, was another matter.
It was not to be. On the morning of 16 September, after a light meal and a
conversation with Eduardo Coelho, Salazar again felt indisposed, this time
more seriously than before. Raising his hand to his forehead, he said ‘I don’t
feel at all well…oh my good Jesus’, only to collapse into a coma.21 Another
intracranial hemorrhage had occurred, this time in the right hemisphere.
Nothing had led the doctors to suspect it was coming. Cerejeira, who was due
to meet Salazar that day, performed the Last Rites. The situation was now
moving quickly, and Tomás acted accordingly, convening the Council of State
for that same afternoon. Some names that had largely disappeared from
political life were now, through their membership of the Council, given a say.
Santos Costa was there, as were former Navy Minister Ortins de Bettencourt
and Pedro Teotónio Pereira: these last two were, Tomás would write, quite ill
themselves.22 Marcelo Caetano was equally present. Even Antunes Varela, dis-
missed because of his independent attitude during the ballet rose scandal, was
present. The possibility of an interim nomination was discussed, reserving the
possibility of a return by Salazar to power. Others opted for an immediate
successor, with full powers.
Meanwhile, the U.S. ambassador offered to bring to Lisbon Dr Houston
Merritt, head of the New York Neurological Institute, to advise the Portuguese
medical team caring for Salazar, and the offer was accepted. After seeing
Salazar on 18 September, Merritt reported that the second intracranial hem-
orrhage was not linked to the first, being rather the result of an arterial rup-
18. Ribeiro de Meneses (ed.), Correspondência diplomática, doc. 377, report, Lisbon, 12 September 1968, Denis
O’Sullivan to Secretary of Department of External Affairs, p. 525.
21. Franco Nogueira, O ultimo combate, p. 404.
ture.23 Merritt did believe that Salazar had a good chance of survival, but to the
assembled doctors it was clear that Salazar’s political career was over; the time
to find a definitive successor had at last come. Tomás, after hearing this news
from the medical team, which had not overcome its earlier divisions (if any-
thing, these had become more acrimonious), began the search for a successor.
This was no easy task. As one foreign journalist put it, ‘any successor will have
to be approved by the armed forces, and he will hardly be able to embark on
any spectacular innovations before he has consolidated his position, even if he
wants to.’24 Over forty people were interviewed by Tomás, who now found
himself centre-stage for the first time in his long political career.25 Many
thought that he, and indeed the whole formal apparatus of the New State, to
which the country now turned in expectation, was not up to the task of, first,
replacing Salazar, and, later, governing without him. As the New York Times put
it, these were institutions ‘to which they [the Portuguese] have paid little
attention for the last 40 years.’26 Although far from being a unanimous choice
(others mentioned were, according to the New York Times, General Kaulza de
Arriaga and former Justice Minister Antunes Varela;27 Américo Tomás men-
tioned Antunes Varela and Franco Nogueira28), Marcelo Caetano emerged as
the strongest candidate for the job.29 Opposition was intense, and manifested
in circles close to Américo Tomás, including his family.30 Tension mounted
23. Coelho & Macieira Coelho, Salazar, p. 29.

24. ‘Portugal’s Chance to Change Course’ in The Times (London), 18 September 1968.
25. Tomás was now in his seventies. A previously cited telegram from the United States embassy in Lisbon
described him as ‘a man who always looks like his feet hurt him, but there is no local festival, commercial
inauguration of educational happening too minor to merit his presence.’ FRUS 1964–1968, vol. 12, doc. 171,
Lisbon, 24 July 1968, from the embassy in Portugal (Bennett) to the Department of State.
26. ‘Elements of a Power Struggle in Portugal Still Appear to be Quite Muted’ in New York Times, 21 Septem-
ber 1968. Richard Eder, the author, went on to explain that while ‘in theory, the Salazar state rests in a
complex, corporative structure which reflects the premise that the interests of groups […] are fundamentally
united under the state’, in practice ‘the actual running of the Portuguese state has depended less on this
institutional structure than on the dominance of a military-economic oligarchy, surmounted by the
commanding presence of Dr Salazar and his associates.’
27. In his article ‘Portugal’s Chance to Change Course’ in The Times (London), journalist Peter Strafford
added a few more names to the mix—Correia de Oliveira and Franco Nogueira.
28. Tomás, Últimas décadas, p. 298.
29. Some observers believed that a younger generation of current or former ministers—Antunes Varela,
Franco Nogueira, and Adriano Moreira—were biding their time, letting Marcelo Caetano move first in the
expectation that he would not last long in power. ‘Army View Crucial in Salazar Crisis’ in The Times
(London), 20 September 1968. Franco Nogueira was one of those interviewed by Tomás, and subsequently
claimed to have warned the Head of State of the dangers of Marcelo Caetano as President of the Council:
‘one had to face up to the most serious problems facing the country, and these were defense, overseas, and
foreign policy; in all of these areas, the ideas of that Professor [Caetano] had been and continued to be the
opposite of all that had been done; his nomination might well be a prelude to the loss of the Overseas
Provinces.’ Franco Nogueira, Um politico confessa-se, p. 314. It is impossible not to read into such words a bid
for his own promotion to the Presidency of the Council.
30. José Soares da Fonseca, an excellent friend of Américo Tomás, seems to have been the ringleader of the
anti-Caetano faction. Tomás threatened to name him President of the Council in order to make him desist
from his campaign to halt Caetano. Tomás, Últimas décadas, vol. 3, p. 297.
while the President, weighed down by the sudden responsibility, hesitated over
what to do. During these days, moreover, Salazar’s life hung by a thread. In his
memoirs, Tomás wrote that his natural inclination was to offer the position to
Teotónio Pereira, but that he was now too ill to take on the job. He mentioned
as well his belief that Salazar’s immediate successor would be forced to relin-
quish power quickly, given the weight of the past. Still, Caetano seemed to be
‘the sole option that public opinion would accept without reaction.’31 Tomás
offered him the position of President of the Council on 25 September, going
on television the following day to inform the nation that Salazar’s career was
finished: he had exonerated him from his position, in accordance with article
81 of the Constitution, and appointed Marcelo Caetano. On 27 September
1968, Marcelo Caetano took over from Salazar, only the second prime minister
Portugal had known since July 1932.
His political career may have been over, but Salazar recovered from the
second hemorrhage. The extent to which he recovered is indeed a matter of
some controversy. According to Coelho, this recovery was undeniable, but it
was politically inconvenient for Caetano, and for Tomás, who had made the
most significant decision of his life and was now worried that he had made the
wrong one. According to Coelho, Caetano, visiting Salazar in hospital on 30
September, told the staff,
Do not sacrifice the services staffed by the regular doctors on their shifts in order
to stand guard over a patient who might very well die. Saving emergency cases that
arrive should be the priority.32
Without a job, and with no savings to speak of, Salazar could not look
after himself; legislation had to be passed by the government to alter this cir-
cumstance. It was also decided that the State would pay for the continued in-
ternment of the now common citizen António de Oliveira Salazar, still in a
coma in Benfica. He would only emerge from it, to the surprise of many, at the
end of October, after a number of serious incidents that threatened his life. By
then members of the diplomatic corps in Lisbon, at a regular meeting, had
already discussed funeral arrangements and the difficulties involved in ‘getting
definite information on certain points from the Protocol at the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs.’33 After another downturn in November, a further recovery

32. Coelho & Macieira Coelho, Salazar, p. 32. Coelho went on to add that Vasconcelos Marques continued to
appear regularly at Salazar’s bedside, although he no longer had anything to offer to the treatment of the
patient. For Coelho, Vasconcelos Marques was acting as Tomás’s spy.
33. Ribeiro de Meneses (ed.), Correspondência diplomática, doc. 382, report, Lisbon 30 October 1968, Denis B.
O’Sullivan to Secretary, Department External Affairs, Dublin, pp. 530–31.
began later in that month: on 29 November Salazar began to breathe unaided
and then to eat.34 By then Mário de Figueiredo had also taken ill, being interned
some rooms down the hall. The conflicts among doctors continued, as did
Tomás’s interference with the recovery process. Even now, in his weakened
state, Salazar was surrounded by intrigue and professions of damaged pride.
Coelho won the battle to keep watch on Salazar, aided by a team of respected
specialists on whom he could call if needed; Tomás, as can be expected, won
the political battle, so that news of Salazar’s recovery was largely censored,
while the pretense, around his person, that he was still in charge developed.
The report that in mid-December Salazar had discussed with Jorge Jardim the
state of relations with Malawi created a mini-panic in government circles.35 On
Tomás’s order, Salazar, once he had emerged from his coma, was not informed
that he had been replaced by Caetano. In May 1969 Tomás asked Salazar’s
physician friend, Bissaia Barreto, to inform Salazar of the change; Bissaia asked
Dona Maria to do it; and she, in tears, confided in Eduardo Coelho that she
could do no such thing. He agreed with her, and the pretense continued.36
In January 1969, Christine Garnier visited Salazar in hospital; she would do
so eight times. He recognized her, and spoke in impeccable French, com-
plaining that he was never left alone. On 5 February 1969, Salazar returned to
the official residence of the President of the Council, in São Bento, where he
would continue to reside as a guest of the nation. Three days later, having
spoken to him for an hour, Cerejeira exclaimed, ‘what a difference! What a
recovery! Had I not seen him as I did, as ill as he was, I simply would not
believe it! We discussed the current problems facing the Church; what good
advice he gave me.’37 By April, he was receiving two to three visitors daily, in
the evening. On 11 April he was again seen by Houston Merritt. To Eduardo
Coelho’s annoyance, Merritt interviewed Salazar for some seventy minutes: ‘no
humane doctor would act in this manner’, Coelho wrote.38 Coelho took solace
from Salazar’s anti-Americanism:
“What do you think of President Johnson?”

“That he is a good man. For a country that seeks to direct all of international
politics being a good man is not enough. One must know in depth the history, the
34 Coelho & Macieira Coelho, Salazar, p. 34.

35. Otero, Os últimos meses, pp. 78–79.
36. Coelho & Macieira Coelho, Salazar, pp. 67-68. According to Coelho, on 22 July 1969 Salazar overheard a
small child referring to Marcelo Caetano as prime minister, and promptly ‘fell into great sadness.’ This was
made worse by the long delay since the last visit by Américo Tomás. On 19 November 1969, Salazar wrote
Tomás, asking him to call together a meeting of the Council of Ministers. Ibid., p. 74.
37. Ibid., p. 43
38. Ibid., p. 52.
culture, the politics of Europe, of Asia, of Africa. The presidents of the United
States do not know them.”39
Merritt’s report seemed out of kilter with reality to Coelho, and unduly
pessimistic. He attributed it to the ongoing conflict with Tomás, and took
solace from a news story published in the French newspaper Le Monde, which
detailed the fact that his bulletins on the subject of Salazar were not being pub-
lished in the press by order of the Presidency of the Republic. When, on his
80th birthday, Salazar made a short, pre-recorded, television address, Coelho
became sure that the images, and the sound, had been manipulated to reinforce
the appearance of incapacity. From São Bento Salazar emerged regularly on
automobile jaunts in and around Lisbon. A newspaper was read to him, which
meant that a sort of censorship had to be exercised, since Caetano’s appoint-
ment had to be kept secret. He could surprise his visitors by the strength of his
memory, the precision of his language, and his diction; he was still a master of
the language, but only in fits. These outbursts of lucidity served to fuel rumors
of a full recovery, spread by those who disliked Marcelo Caetano and sought to
discredit him. Dona Maria, her fate tied to that of the ailing Salazar, also strove
to preserve the illusion of his recovery.40 Meeting the French journalist Roland
Faure, of L’Aurore, who had interviewed him a number of times before, Salazar
was still able to express himself in good French.41 Although warned by Dona
Maria—who had allowed the interview to go ahead—not to mention political
developments in Portugal, Faure asked a number of pointed questions to
determine exactly what Salazar knew or did not know. He knew that Pompidou
had replaced de Gaulle in the Elysée palace, and that American astronauts had
walked on the moon. More importantly, however, Salazar believed himself still
to be President of the Council, and to be resting in order to return to work; the
President of the Republic and ministers kept him abreast of developments. Of
Marcelo Caetano, Salazar said that he was an intelligent and courageous man,
who dared to criticize him, but who did not understand that in order to make a
difference he had to be in the cabinet.42 Not surprisingly, the interview was
never published in Portugal. More was to follow. In its 19 December 1969
issue, Time magazine presented the pathetic scenes being played out in Lisbon
to a wider audience in considerable detail:
39. Ibid., p. 53. Asked by Merritt to move his leg as if to give a kick, Salazar joked, ‘in truth, the United States
have been receiving quite a few kicks. And they’ll receive many more!’
40. Otero, Os últimos meses, p. 102.
41. Faure wrote, ‘Doctor Salazar spoke slowly, in a hushed tone, but with a mastery over his words—in
French—which dissipates more than one legend.’
42. The Faure article was summarized in English in ‘Respecting Portuguese Leader’s Last Dream: Salazar
thinks he is still in control’ in The Times (London), 8 September 1969.
Austere old Dictator António de Oliveira Salazar is still unaware that he was
replaced 15 months ago […] and he may never find out. No-one in Portugal has
so far been able to summon up the nerve to tell the old man that his 36-year reign
is over. The task of preventing Salazar from finding out has fallen chiefly to his
housekeeper, Dona Maria de Jesus Caetano Freire, and his physician […] On
several occasions, Rear Admiral Américo de Deus Rodrigues Tomás, Portugal’s
figurehead President since 1958, has tried to break the news gently to Salazar, who
at 80 is lucid but semi-paralyzed. Each time, Dona Maria recently told a friend,
Tomás approached the old Premier’s Lisbon quarters “with the firm intention of
telling the truth. But he can’t find the words.”43
He would never find them, if indeed he ever looked for them.44 On 26

October 1969, Salazar voted, from within his automobile, in legislative
elections. The end would come nearly a year later. On 26 June 1970, reflecting
on his position one month before his death, Salazar showed that he under-
stood what had happened. Speaking to Dona Maria, he stated, ‘I was brutally
swept aside. No-one speaks to me of politics, they say nothing to me.’ When
she asked why he did not complain to the President, Salazar replied, ‘No, I will
say nothing. I don’t want him to think that I am attached to power and State
affairs. But they swept me aside brutally. If they used the excuse of my illness
to be rid of me…well, that’s not nice; that’s not how one should go about
things.’45 Coelho’s, however, is not the sole testimony; others contradict his
view of Salazar’s recovery, and suggest that these bursts of lucidity were few
and increasingly far between. Micas, in her memoirs, casts much doubt on
those who ‘made up many things about [Salazar’s] behavior, which bore no
relationship with reality.’46 Only in 1970, according to her account, did Salazar
improve slightly. Tomás also dedicated some pages to this question in his own
diaries, writing that
The way in which he spoke at length about events prior to 16 September 1968 and
his extraordinary memory gave his listeners a false idea about the true state of his
mind. He was, it must be repeated, a man with an extraordinary will power and a
43. ‘State Secret’, in Time, 19 December 1969.

44. Micas makes no mention of this conflict between Eduardo Coelho and the President of the Republic: she
states simply that after a long period in hospital, Salazar returned to São Bento ‘to lead a life of a virtual
President of the Council-for-life (even being visited by President Américo Tomás), as a special favor by his
successor’. Melo Rita & Vieira, Os meus 35 anos, p. 188. Christine Garnier’s account further muddied the
water, since she attributed the secrecy to the doctors’ policy: it was fear of a relapse, foretold by the doctors
in case of Salazar learning the truth, that led everyone around Salazar to pretend he was still in charge.
Garnier wrote also that Dona Maria was the strict enforcer of this policy. Garnier, Jusqu’ou, p. 349.
45. Coelho & Macieira Coelho, Salazar, p. 82.
46. Melo Rita & Vieira, Os meus 35 anos, p. 189.
great intelligence, and this helped to fool others, especially those who were
fanatically predisposed to believe that he might return to his old self.47
Salazar, some say, was partially paralyzed, partially blind, and probably in-
continent. He sometimes went days without speaking, or barely acknowledged
those around him.48
On 15 July 1970, according to Franco Nogueira, Salazar again took ill, this
time with a kidney infection, which quickly spread; dialysis began on 21 July,
and the patient resisted, and again seemed to recover, to the surprise of his
doctors. He would, however, die on the morning of 27 July, 1970, aged eighty-
one years. Coelho wrote, movingly,
Salazar, in the midst of the lies that surrounded him, waited for his day to come.
The day of his death? No. The day of his integration into political thought, the day
when he reassumed control of public affairs, the day when he returned to work,
when he returned to power. Of this he was convinced until his eyes shut. He was
made an exile of himself.
This was the great tragedy of Salazar’s life.
Ultimately, though, this debate mattered little, serving only to satisfy some
opponents, who might rejoice in the thought that, finally, Salazar was no longer
in control and that he might be being held against his will by a still unsure
Marcelo Caetano.
Upon Salazar’s death the government declared a period of national
mourning, to last until after the funeral. ‘Offices, shops and non-essential
services were asked to close on Thursday, at least for the duration of the
funeral, and in general banks and most offices and shops closed for the day.
Radio and television stations replaced their usual programs with classical or
religious music and recordings of Dr Salazar’s speeches, summaries of his life
and particular events.’49 Salazar was buried in borrowed academic garb.
Américo Tomás returned hurriedly from São Tomé, while the Council of
Ministers decreed three days’ official mourning. A State funeral was organized
on 30 July, with Mass said in the Jerónimos monastery, in Lisbon, where
Salazar had lain in state for two days. The diplomatic corps aside, a number of
47. Américo Tomás, Últimas décadas de Portugal vol. 4 (Lisbon: Edições Fernando Pereira, n.d.), 124. Tomás
did not mention having ordered that Salazar be kept in the dark about his position. While he did mention
that Salazar did not know he was no longer President of the Council, he described this as an opinion that he,
Tomás, had (rather than an actual fact): in other words he, Tomás, believed that Salazar no longer knew that
he was in charge of the country. Tomás, Últimas décadas, vol. 4, p. 124. This does not, of course, ring true.
48. Otero, Os últimos meses, pp. 103–6.
49. Ribeiro de Meneses (ed.), Correspondência diplomática, doc. 391, report, Lisbon, 31 July 1970, Denis B.
O’Sullivan to Secretary, Department of External Affairs, pp. 538–40.
countries sent special delegations: Spain, Brazil, the United States and the
United Kingdom, South Africa, France, and Germany. The official mourners
vastly outnumbered Salazar’s few relations: ‘On the opposite side were relatives
of the deceased Premier (one of two surviving sisters, and families, and his two
adopted daughters) and his housekeeper of fifty years, who wept silently and
uninterruptedly during the service.’50 His remains, and 400 mourners, were
then transported by train to Santa Comba Dão, and thence to Vimiero’s small
cemetery, where he was buried, a stone’s throw from the church where he had
been baptized, the house he had spent his childhood in, and the house and
farm he had managed as an escape from the cares of office, but to which he
had never retired.
50. Ibid.
Chapter XIII
Conclusion
S peaking on television to the Portuguese on 30 July 1970, immediately after

Salazar’s death, his successor, Marcelo Caetano, informed his audience that
in order to evaluate Salazar’s work one must compare the Portugal he received,
upon entering government, with the Portugal he passed on. He received a bank-
rupt, divided, convulsed, and disorientated country, a country which no longer
believed in its destiny, a country intoxicated by sterile politics. He passed on an
orderly country, united, conscious, sure about its objectives and able to meet
them.1
Whatever about the state of Portugal in 1928—and it would be difficult to

argue against Caetano’s description of Portugal when Salazar became Minister
of Finance—the picture painted by Caetano of the country he inherited in 1968
was much more problematic. A much more insightful picture of Portugal in
the wake of Salazar’s retirement is to be found in French journalist Christian
Rudel’s Le Portugal et Salazar. Rudel pointed out that forty years of Salazar in
government had brought about little change to Portuguese agriculture, and to
the deep structural problems that affected it. Industry, meanwhile, was
growing, but not sufficiently to attract all who wanted a job, and on the back of
workers, whose salaries were low and whose living conditions were poor.
Moreover, much of the industrialization of the country was the result of
foreign investment, whose importance had grown throughout the decade.

What attracted foreign capital was precisely the cheap and abundant labor.
With little research and development of its own, Portugal’s economic future
was out of its hands.
What motivated, for Rudel, this sudden opening of the national economy,
and that of overseas Portugal, to foreign capital? In one word, war. Portugal
could not pay for both its economic development and the war in Africa. The
result was the pragmatic abandonment of the nationalist economic principles,
and, to a lesser extent, of the financial orthodoxy, that had long guided
Salazar’s policy. Paradoxically, Rudel pointed out, a war of national defense, as
it was described, was leading to Portugal’s economic colonization by foreign
companies.
Emigration, a problem which, as we have seen, left Salazar untroubled—
despite the disquiet it provoked in nationalist ranks—was the most obvious
symptom of malaise afflicting the country. Men of working age leaving a
country at a time of war was not a vote of confidence in the country’s future,
or even its present. Pervading Rudel’s work was the sense of a growing
exasperation in Portugal with a situation unchanged for forty years:
Hockey, regattas, and bullfights do not interest the young economists, the young
sociologists, the young researchers, whose findings point to a backward country,
underdeveloped, at the margins of Europe and the world, a country they would
like to see restoring a direct link with its epoch.
They say, “for forty years now Dr Salazar has been leading Portugal: forty years in
which to develop the country in accordance with his ideas, since the opposition
has been powerless. What have we seen? Nothing, or almost nothing.”2
Order in the street and in the nation’s finances was no longer enough—if it
had ever been. The democracies of the increasingly secure Western Europe
were forging ahead, despite—or, some suggested, because—of decolonization.
Salazar was increasingly lost in the modern world, and had no idea of the
reality beyond Portugal’s borders:
No foreign trips, save for a few meetings with Franco in Extremadura. No trips
within Portugal. No trips to the overseas provinces: he left these to the President
of the Republic. No participation in international conferences.
[…] Once, this way of governing might have sufficed. Today, this is no longer the
case, which was why Salazar, at the end of his reign, was every day more
criticized.3
2. Christian Rudel, Portugal y Salazar (Madrid: Guadiana Publicaciones, 1969) (originally published as Le
Portugal et Salazar [Paris: Les Éditions Ouvrières, 1968]), p. 75.
3. Rudel, Portugal, p. 77.
Conclusion 613
Empire—real or imagined—was supposedly part of Portuguese national
identity, part of what the people saw as the reason for their independence:
‘Portugal, it has already been said, is a creation of the will, as is its continued
survival.’ Salazar had preserved the torch of Portuguese independence for forty
years, but refused to pass it on to another generation, being incapable of under-
standing an alternative path for the country. Rudel wrote,
What was the way out? A new role within Spain, or within Europe,
allowing Portugal to cleanse itself of the dreams of imperial greatness, and
to start concentrating on the wellbeing of its people.
Such a u-turn was beyond the whole of the New State, and not just Salazar, as
the next six years would show. By the start of the 1960s, as we have seen, there
was no longer any question of a change of course for Portugal. In March 1961,
not long before his seventy-second birthday, Salazar received a document en-
titled ‘List of the various matters which, according to public opinion, provoke
disturbances or perturb the Portuguese’.4 It cannot have made for pleasant
reading, containing as it did page after page of complaints. These ranged from
the general—‘a certain weariness with the peace and quiet enjoyed for so
long’—to very specific complaints about individual events (for example the
famous ‘Guincho murder’, later immortalized by novelist José Cardoso Pires in
the novel Ballad of Dogs’ Beach: Dossier of a Crime) and government measures. It
seems unlikely that any entity other than the PIDE would have produced such
a list for Salazar (an assumption more or less confirmed by the fact that the
PIDE’s existence and methods were not listed among the causes of complaint),
and it is unlikely also that any other entity would have had the audacity to
include the very last item: ‘the seventy-one years of age of the President of the
Council’. Despite this long list of complaints, there was no turning back for
Salazar.
If any year of the forty spent running his country tried Salazar’s patience
and desire to remain in power it was precisely 1961. During it he faced the
hijacking by the escaped political prisoner Henrique Galvão of the cruise liner
Santa Maria; the bloody and demoralizing outbreak of war in Angola; a coup
attempt by his own Minister of Defence, General Júlio Botelho Moniz; and,
perhaps most painful of all to Salazar, the invasion of Portuguese India: the
violent (but not as violent as Salazar hoped, since Portuguese resistance was
not carried out to the last bullet) culmination of a diplomatic battle waged
between Lisbon and New Delhi since 1947. There were hostile Presidents in
4. AOS CO PC 65, ‘Relação de vários assuntos que, segundo a opinião corrente, causam inquietação ou
perturbam os portugueses’.
the United States of America (and the links between the American embassy
and Botelho Moniz were well known) and Brazil; Charles de Gaulle’s commit-
ment to French Algeria was waning; the decolonization of Sub-Saharan Africa
was well under way. But Salazar chose to stay on, as he had done every single
time the subject of his retirement, or his move to the Presidency of the
Republic, was brought up.
Given that Salazar was to rule Portugal for some forty years, and that for
most of those forty years his main priority was to remain in power, seeing off
challenges from all sectors of Portuguese society, the most important task for
his biographer is to identify why Salazar wanted to govern, and why he
believed himself to be the sole Portuguese in a position to identify, and pursue,
Portugal’s true national interest, against the advice, at times, of the rest of the
world. In this respect, at least, a biographer cannot avoid trying to reconstruct
what went on inside Salazar’s mind. Salazar’s motivations, because intimate and
private, are not as immediately obvious as those of other European dictators of
the twentieth century, notably the one with whom he is most commonly com-
pared, Francisco Franco: there was no ‘Pact of Blood’ in Portugal, for example,
uniting the victors of a civil war against the vanquished. Salazar did not enrich
himself and his family while in power, and was notoriously scrupulous with
State funds. Judging by the preceding chapters, what were the reasons for
Salazar’s desire to remain in power? It is our conclusion, with due deference to
all who have written before on this subject, that there were, at least until 1961,
two essential reasons underpinning this desire for power. The most significant
of these were, firstly, a belief in himself as a providential agent; secondly, the
sense that without him at its centre the regime, an alliance of carefully balanced
conservative forces, would collapse. After 1961, and the outbreak of war in
Angola, a third motivation was added: hanging on in Africa until the West
regained its senses and began once again to defend its vital strategic interests.
Salazar was guided primarily by the conviction that Portugal, by following
another path—the path of decolonization and parliamentary democracy—was
ultimately dooming itself.
An appetite for power is the obvious starting point for any examination of
Salazar. His oft-stated readiness—or, rather, desire—to abandon power was a
feature of his political tactics, especially in the first decades of his government.
Salazar used Coimbra, and his attachment to a reclusive and contemplative
academic life, as a device to signal that his political existence was a burden to
him, a sacrifice he renewed daily—a Calvary. It seems that much of the life of
the political leader was distasteful to him. Not having to subject himself to
public scrutiny at election time, Salazar did not have to be liked. In truth, he
never really tried. This refusal to engage with the people, to be seen, to be
Conclusion 615
heard, or even to be understood, was not the result of social snobbery, since
that would have been greatly misplaced, but rather of shyness, and an awk-
wardness around strangers, which was mentioned by all who knew him.
Devoted followers and competent collaborators were often left puzzled, if not
fuming, by the distance he maintained around his person. Salazar’s distaste for
populist politics was matched only by his belief in his abilities, a belief nurtured
in youth. Once at Coimbra University, Salazar, slightly older than most of his
classmates, was able to attract the attention of the faculty in a very short space
of time, simultaneously engaging in considerable political activity. From
finishing his degree to being a full member of the teaching staff—at a time
when this was limited to a handful of revered men—was merely a matter of
years; and it was on the basis of his academic competence that he was first
called to government. But many had made the road from Coimbra to the
Terreiro do Paço, the river-side square which housed most of Portugal’s
government machinery, without believing themselves indispensable—and
many more would do so after Salazar, again without seeing themselves as irre-
placeable. There was something else in Salazar’s estimate of himself. In
Vacances avec Salazar, the President of the Council told Christine Garnier, ‘“I do
not believe in destiny […] I believe in Providence. It is Providence which, for
many years now, has chained me to a labor contrary to my tastes.”’5
The view that Salazar had a personal, religious, sense of mission, is un-
popular both with historians and political commentators (friendly or un-
friendly) since it clashes with the undoubted fact that Salazar, over the course
of his career, and as a result of its twists and turns, left behind his earlier
political Catholicism, governing in accordance with what to him was the
national, and not the Church’s, interest. Moreover, a belief in Providence, and
his appointed role as a result of its designs, runs counter to the generally
accepted depiction of Salazar engaging in a rational and cerebral, or simply cal-
culating and cynical, appraisal of most situations. Those who write in praise of
Salazar, and those who write to bury him, are usually in agreement as far as his
intelligence and his foresight are concerned. However, friends and foes alike
are then unable to account for some undoubtedly catastrophic decisions, which
seem to clash directly with the intelligence they have ascribed to Salazar. His
stance on the preservation of Portugal’s colonies—a topic which did not
exercise him much in his youth—is one such area. It is also the case that a
belief in a providential mission need not be placed in the wider category of
Church-State relations. Certainly the head of the Catholic Church in Portugal at
the time, the Patriarch of Lisbon, Cardinal Manuel Cerejeira, who, had for a
5. Garnier, Férias com Salazar, p. 44.

long time been Salazar’s closest friend, referred again and again to such a
mission, evoking no complaint or denial by Salazar. A few examples suffice
here. On 28 April 1944 (Salazar’s birthday), Cerejeira wrote,
Many today will utter words of friendship; I want to be counted among them. My
Mass was said for you, with praise given to God for the exceptional gifts he
bestowed on you, for the historical mission he assigned you and for all the good
you have carried out, and a request made for the graces of light, of strength, of
humility and of consolation that you need in order to stay true to everything that
God and men expect from you.6
The letter continued, significantly, ‘think, in this happy day, of what Fr Mateo
would have said were he to be with us (as he was, sixteen years ago, in
Coimbra)’. An earlier biographer of Salazar has suggested that Fr Mateo not
only had a deep understanding of Salazar’s psyche and repressed ambitions, but
had also played a crucial role in convincing a hesitant Salazar to accept the invi-
tation made, in April 1928, to become Minister of Finance.7
On 26 May 1945, Cerejeira wrote, after requesting a thorough reform of
religious education in secondary schools,
But I already meant to write you to congratulate you on seeing crowned with
success and national applause your work for the defense of Portugal from the
scourge of war. The fact that our peace was a favor from Heaven predicted since
the start of the war, does not diminish your merit. On the contrary, it has made
you a chosen one, almost God’s anointed. It was you, among all Portuguese, that
he chose to carry out the miracle. God gave you prudence, power and the genius
with which to accomplish one of the greatest tasks in all of our history. You know
well that God accomplishes the plans of his Providence through the men he
chooses. And you were the chosen one! He has been preparing you for so long,
and with such care!
On 13 November 1945, with the regime shaking under a concerted, and

unforeseeable, attack from all opposition forces, Cerejeira, in a well-known
missive, again referred to Salazar’s mission, this time invoking another religious
authority, sister Lúcia, the last remaining survivor of the Fátima children:
In this hour of so many worries, disappointments and doubts, I send you this
extract from a letter by sister Lúcia, the Fátima seer, which I have just received. It
should bring you much consolation and faith. And were you to read all of it, more
6. AOS CP 47, letter, 28 April 1944, Cardinal-Patriarch Manuel Cerejeira to António de Oliveira Salazar.
7. Franco Nogueira, A Mocidade, p. 329.
Conclusion 617
consoled still would you be. I need not bother to say that these words are said of
her own volition, but rather through divine indication (as she herself suggests). I
am hurrying to make sure they reach your hands: […]
“Salazar is the person chosen by Him to continue to govern our Fatherland ... to
him will be conceded the light and the grace to guide our people through the paths
of peace and prosperity.
The people must be made to understand that the privations and sufferings of the
past years have not been the fault of Salazar, but rather trials assigned to us as a
result of our sins. The Good Lord, when he promised our nation the grace of
peace, also announced some suffering, since we too were guilty. And if we gaze on
the tribulations and anxieties of other peoples, it is true that very little was asked
of us.”
Letters such as this continued to be written throughout the 1950s, as

Cerejeira jockeyed for position against other political pressure groups wishing
to influence Salazar, and even into the 1960s. On 27 April 1961 (the thirty-
third anniversary of Salazar’s definitive entrance into government), amidst the
political fallout from the outbreak of fighting in Angola, an aborted military
coup, and Salazar’s self-appointment to the National Defence portfolio,
Cerejeira wrote,
I write you, the one chosen by God to accomplish your great destiny, on this day.
And I do not forget that just recently you made resolutions of such greatness that
they exceed (or so it seems to me) all others taken over the past thirty-three years.
You have taken Portugal in your hands, against the World.
The extent to which this mystical dimension of the relationship between

Cerejeira and Salazar is significant, in the sense of revealing Salazar’s view of
himself and his role, is, of course, difficult to measure. Cerejeira’s reminders of
Salazar’s appointed role were, it is clear, a tactical ploy which the former used
to bridge the gap that increasingly separated the two: but they seem to refer to
a time when both men understood each other fully. The memory of Fr Mateo,
frequently mentioned in this correspondence, was revived in the hope of
awakening in Salazar a calling once understood but now increasingly forgotten.
To deny the importance of this spiritual dimension to Salazar’s life is to argue
implicitly that Salazar, from a very early age, hid his innermost thoughts and
ambitions from Cerejeira and other Coimbra associates and friends, engaging
in a long and complex campaign of dissimulation.
This line of exploration, tenuous and unsatisfactory though it might be,
might also shed some light on the frustration felt by Salazar over the changes
taking place, after World War II, in the Catholic Church. The Vatican’s
growing indifference—if not hostility—to Portugal’s colonial concerns exas-
perated him. In this the question of Portugal’s religious role in the East,
through the institution of the Patriarcado, played a vital part. As we saw in
Chapter 8, relations between Lisbon and the Holy See fell to their all-time low
after it was announced, in the fall of 1964, that the Pope would be attending a
Eucharistical Congress in Bombay—a mere three years after the Indian
invasion of Goa. Salazar’s government protested furiously, and he himself
wrote a harsh letter to Cerejeira, in which he stated that he was quite ready to
allow Church-State relations in Portugal to return to what they had been during
the First Republic. A worried Cerejeira replied from Rome, in an already cited
document,
I think most of all about you, the Friend, the Christian, and the creator of the New
State. I beseech God with all my soul that the dangerous path you are considering
following not take you where you do not want to go. I believe that God chose you
for the immense work you have carried out, restoring a nation and rebuilding a
Church, not to mention your extraordinary international, diplomatic, action. And
with tears I recall your feelings and aims as you left Coimbra, to the prophetic
words of Fr Mateo that you were on your way to save Portugal. Back then, you
thought first of serving God.8
The difficulties posed by the Church’s newfound willingness to deal directly

with African and Asian governments on matters of religion, which undercut
one of the Portuguese justifications for its colonial mission, could thus be seen
as cutting across Salazar’s putative mission both to preserve Portugal’s territory
and spiritual character and to restore its greatness. To this was added the
Church’s refusal to denounce and chastise so-called ‘progressive’ Catholics,
who in Portugal were openly denouncing the New State and collaborating with
leftist opponents. Instead of a mere clash of policies, the conflict with the
Church that burst into the open in the 1960s might profitably be interpreted as
a matter for deep personal anxiety, a questioning of the very reason for
Salazar’s actions, as he had hitherto understood them.
The second of the outlined reasons for Salazar’s decision to hang on to
power—the idea that Salazar felt he could not move to the Presidency of the
Republic, or retire altogether, because without him in the premiership the
delicate balance of the New State would be undone—is more in keeping with
the dominant view of the New State and its founder. The main spokesman of
the ‘delicate balance’ argument is the historian Fernando Rosas, who writes,
8. AOS CO NE 30A, letter, Rome, 2 November 1964, Cardinal-Patriarch Manuel Cerejeira to António de
Oliveira Salazar.
Conclusion 619
Salazarism can thus be seen as a compromise between different rightwing political

currents and the various economic special interests, built on a common basis of
rejection of the liberalism inherited from the First Republic and admiration for a
strong and politically, economically, and socially interventionist State—the sole
capable, as the 1920s gave way to the 1930s, of providing a response to the crisis
that was consensual among the dominant groups [...] The safeguarding, reconstitu-
tion, and negotiated handling of the equilibrium that made the regime possible will
become the final ratio in the salazarist choices in the field of politics or economics.
Equilibrium becomes a political value in and of itself.9
Equilibrium was necessary, thus, between Catholics and non-Catholics,

and between republicans and monarchists. Equilibrium was also needed
between economic modernizers, who worked towards an industrially devel-
oped Portugal, and their direct opponents, who believed that Portugal would
always be a rural nation, as a result of which it was towards the development of
agriculture, and not industry, that State resources should be channeled. Equilib-
rium was needed, finally, between civilians and military officers. Should Salazar
have vacated the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, allowing himself to be
‘promoted’ to the Presidency of the Republic, as was often mooted, or simply
retiring, all of these careful balances might be broken, with unforeseeable con-
sequences. A changing of the guard might spell a different approach to the
colonies and their preservation, or a less conservative approach to the nation’s
financial and economic position. It was certainly the case that the most often
discussed successor to Salazar, Marcelo Caetano, and his supporters, notably
one-time Economy Minister Daniel Barbosa, were associated with a brand of
politics that subordinated the State’s finances to economic necessity and not, as
had been the case since 1928, the reverse. By sacrificing, even if in part, the
colonial empire, or just by calling into question the carefully managed financial
stability, cornerstone of Salazar’s policy since 1928, a putative successor might
drive a wedge between the various economic forces that underpinned the
regime—agriculture, industry, banking and finance, and commerce—sowing
disorder and forcing these groups to consider political alternatives to the New
State.
We have seen, over the course of the preceding chapters, how cautious
Salazar could be in relation to certain matters (relations with the army, the
restoration of the monarchy, the evolution of the National Assembly as part of
a move towards a ‘purer’ for of corporatism); this caution confirms the im-
9. José Matoso (Director), História de Portugal, vol. 7 (Fernando Rosas, ed.), O Estado Novo (Lisbon, Editorial
Estampa, 1998), p. 169.
portance to Salazar of preserving the existing equilibrium. The regime’s in-
creasingly repressive nature in the 1960s reinforces this impression. Caution,
however, is required. Was the New State really ossified, or petrified, as its
detractors alleged? Was it incapable of adjusting itself to a changing world in
any meaningful way? To argue against such a view is not, of course, to argue
that it was not oppressive, often corrupt, and capable of violence, cynicism,
and hypocrisy. But heavily dependent as it was on the international scene, the
New State, it might be argued, did not stand still, and frequently changed tack:
the Portugal of the 1950s, with its planned economy and the emphasis on
economic growth, was very different from that of the 1930s, when the fascist
tide was rising everywhere in Europe. There was also a regular turnover in the
New State’s ministerial elite, Salazar being concerned always to demonstrate
that he could attract the best and the brightest to his side. If anything, it seems
to us that Salazar wished for a wider pool from which to draw his collabora-
tors; one of his frequent complaints revolved around the notion of Portugal’s
small elite. Access to education at all levels had been considerably expanded by
the 1960s; economic opportunities had as well. A substantial middle class had
developed, grateful for the order and stability provided by the regime, but in-
creasingly troubled by conditions in Africa. Rather than simply equating the
New State with stasis, it is probably more helpful to view it, until 1961, as an
attempt—failed ultimately, but nevertheless serious—to allow Portugal to
move forward, and to be modernized, without sacrificing certain characteristics
which were deemed by Salazar to be essential. Salazar believed that such a diffi-
cult task required calm, order, and a unified leadership—and that only he was
in a position to deliver it.
The outbreak of war in Portugal’s ‘Overseas Provinces’ changed Salazar,
and added a new reason for wanting to stay in power. After 1961, despite his
advancing age, he began to act in a more reckless fashion, being willing, for the
first time, to fly in the face of international opinion. He threw his still con-
siderable energy into the task of preserving Portugal’s colonial possessions, and
showed himself willing to sacrifice many of his principles in order to secure the
means through which to wage war. Old allies were abandoned and new ones
sought; Portugal and the colonies were opened up to foreign investment; the
primacy of agriculture and the moral ascendancy of the rural over the urban
were forgotten about; hordes of sun-seeking tourists on cheap package-holi-
days began to be welcomed into the country. Total war was not engaged in,
because, ultimately, Salazar did not believe in a simple military solution to the
conflict: but the change in direction was disconcerting to many. The New
State, or what was left of it (economic technocrats and the security services)
embraced modernity unquestioningly in the 1960s. Salazar believed that his
Conclusion 621
successors would bow to international pressure and agree to decolonize. The
moment they did so, they would be sealing Portugal’s fate. With nowhere else
to turn to but an increasingly integrated Europe, Portugal, economically fragile,
would first lose its voice and then its independence. The tension between the
lure of modernity (and, as part of it, membership of the EEC) and the ultra-
nationalist approach to the ‘Overseas Provinces’ would tear the New State
apart—but not during Salazar’s lifetime.
Can one, lastly, divine a plan that Salazar struggled to implement, or a goal
he strived to reach, believing it essential for Portugal? Was there a vision that
guided him through forty years of governance? Answering this question is an
extremely hard task, considering the changes undergone by Portugal, and of
course Europe and the wider world, over the course of those four decades.
What might have been desirable (according to his standards, of course) in the
1930s might be harder to justify in the 1960s, even for someone as con-
servative as Salazar. One must also remember that the course of international
events meant that from 1936 onwards, the very survival of Portugal seemed to
be at risk, even if, for Salazar, his survival in power was the first condition for
Portugal’s own survival. He was brought into government by the army in 1928
as a financial expert, someone who might right Portuguese finances without
surrendering sovereignty to the League of Nations. Until that moment, his
stated political convictions, and his political aims, had been bound up with his
Catholicism. It was as a Catholic candidate that he was elected to parliament in
1921; his aim, as a Catholic politician, was to free the Church from State-im-
posed restrictions and allow it to flourish in a historically Catholic country.
Over the course of the next four years, Salazar would press his claims to the
premiership of the country, doing so not by advancing a vision of the country,
but rather by uncovering, bit by bit, the outline of a new regime: how it would
be governed, whose support it would attract, whom it would suppress. This bid
for the leadership of Portugal was successful, but ideological indoctrination and
popular mobilization were not to Salazar’s taste. Creating a new regime, it
seems, was enough for him; Salazar felt no need to make it popular. If there is
one complaint that hounded the New State from within, across the whole of its
existence, it was that not enough was being done to provide a coherent doc-
trine, and to instill that doctrine into every Portuguese, especially the young.
Even in the late 1930s and early 1940s, the time in which the regime modeled
itself most closely on its Italian and German counterparts, the leadership of
‘fascist’ organizations, such as the Legião Portuguesa and the Mocidade Portuguesa
complained of the lack of funds and of clear guidance. Salazar had many ways
of rendering irrelevant those parts of the regime which no longer suited him.
Corporatism, the principal economic and social doctrine of the New State,
remained always subordinated to government needs, corporative bodies never
severing their ties with the State.
Keeping all of this in mind, was there a plan, an overall strategy, for which
the New State was a vehicle? One might cautiously advance the following,
without, of course, defending it, and acknowledging in advance that it is riddled
with what, in hindsight, are terrible contradictions: To create the conditions necessary
for the survival of Portugal and its empire, allowing it to develop in peace and in an orderly
fashion its material and human resources while retaining its national character and spiritual
dimension. In other words, to allow Portugal, or a certain vision of it, to live on
for as long as possible. Such a goal was of necessity a long-term, even open-
ended goal.
‘I can never be happy’, answers Salazar, shaking his head—‘a government’s work
is never done. There is so much left to do! And life is beginning to escape us, the
years go by so fast...’10
Such a quotation indicates a blurring of the line between the life of the nation
and the work of the government. For Salazar, they were the same thing.
According to Franco Nogueira, biographer and Foreign Minister of Salazar,
this need to accomplish was a constant preoccupation, accompanied by the fear
of leaving nothing—a monument, a giant public works project, an accomplish-
ment (realização)—by which he would be remembered. Nogueira describes the
President of the Council’s ultimate preoccupations in the following fashion:
Salazar takes stock of his accomplishments, and opens up to some of his con-
fidants: ‘The country had nothing; we had to build everything up from nothing in
almost all fields. And since we have had to live within our means, we pulverized
these over a thousand small projects, indispensable and useful to the whole, but
small nonetheless. We will leave nothing that is great.’11
According to Nogueira, in his published diary Um político confessa-se, the bridge

over the Tagus in Lisbon (inaugurated in 1966) went some way towards
relieving him of this last anxiety, but not completely. Still, accomplishing could
not come at any price. Material progress had to be subordinated to the financial
orthodoxy of the regime, to the nationalist principle of Portuguese control over
Portuguese resources (eventually compromised in the colonies, opened up to
foreign investment as part of the wider political strategy of ensuring their
retention), and to order in the streets and in politics. Material progress, lastly,
10. Garnier, Férias, p. 42

11. Franco Nogueira, O Ataque, p. 324.
Conclusion 623
could not imply the spread of destabilizing ideologies throughout the quiet and
rural Portugal which Salazar idealized. Turning again to Garnier’s book, we
find the following, revealing thoughts, uttered, or written down, before the
wave of emigration of the 1960s called the view of Portugal as a rural idyll into
question:
‘Many foreigners feel at peace when they arrive in our country. Why is that? It
might be because of very long memories, perfectly developed customs, the
existence of stable borders, ethnic unity, safeguarded throughout the centuries. I
ardently hope that our people never lose this serenity, which comes from a distant
past. I still think that, even taking into account possible disorders, certain small
countries will, in the future, escape being devoured by the colossal global blocs, if
they know how to preserve their precious spiritual capital.’12
And, later,
‘Experience teaches us’, he goes on, ‘that a more intense economic activity, greater
technical improvements, and the most profound social reforms, can leave intact
the qualities of our people if, by exercising the necessary care, we might keep our
hearts pure and our thoughts healthy. It is because of this that we place the spirit
above all else.’13
Marcelo Caetano, who would try in vain to square the circle left behind by
Salazar, had to wait a long time before he succeeded Salazar: twenty years
longer, in fact, than he and many within the regime’s higher echelons had
initially wanted to wait. It is not surprising, thus, that in his memoirs he should
place so much emphasis on Salazar’s ‘jealousy of all those whom he saw being
esteemed by the public, and in whom he divined real or imagined rivals.’14 This
motive, for the historian, is the hardest to demonstrate: it is never written
down, never uttered, never convincingly accounted for. It is undeniably
possible—indeed, it is highly probable—that Caetano was absolutely correct.
Salazar’s intellectual arrogance made him unwilling to embrace the public, but
it could not and did not protect him from his jealousy of potential rivals
(indeed, it may well have heightened such jealousy). This reason does not rule
out the others already laid out in this brief Conclusion; it can co-exist har-
moniously alongside any, or more than one, of the suggested motives for
Salazar’s unwillingness to relinquish power. To abandon power while still able
to act and to decide would be to admit he had been wrong in the past, and that
others might do his job better. This he was not willing to countenance.
12. Garnier, Férias, p. 71

13. Ibid., p. 133.
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Index
Abreu, Augusto Cancela de, 114, 344, 385 Bedoya, Javier Martínez de, 185
Acheson, Dean, 353, 488–90, 529 Beirão, Augusto Manuel Farinha, 121, 169
Aguiar, João Namorado de, 142–43 Beires, José Manuel Sarmento, 153–54
Almeida, Diogo de, 233–34 Beires, Rodrigo Sarmento, 154
Almeida, João de, 120 Béjart, Maurice, 580, 598
Alves, Fr José da Felicidade, 578 Bennett, William Tapley, 599, 603
Alves, Vasco Lopes, 469, 472 Bettencourt, Manuel Ortins de, 603
Amaral, Duarte Pinto de Carvalho Freitas Botha, Pieter Willem, 534
do, 432 Bourget, Paul, 18
Amaral, João Mendes da Costa do, 271 Boxer, Charles Ralph, 359
Amorim, Diogo Pacheco de, 17, 233 Braga, Luís de Almeida, 16
Anderson, George W., 492, 494, 528–29 Bragança, Dom Duarte Nuno (Duke of),
Andrade, Joaquim Pinto de, 453 225, 230, 253, 410, 432, 480, 595
Andrade, Manuel Rebelo de, 118 Bragança, Dom Duarte Pio de, 409, 596
Andrade, Mário Coelho Pinto de, 453 Bragança, Dom Luís Filipe de (Crown
Anselmo, Manuel, 448 Prince), 8
Antonescu, Ion, 248 Bragança, Dona Filipa de, 253, 409–10,
Araújo, Manuel Gomes de, 385, 480, 599 481, 500, 595–96
Archer, José Luís, 497 Brochado, Idalino Ferreira da Costa, 141,
Arriaga, Kaúlza Oliveira de, 479 169, 395–96
Ascenção, Lt. Col. Castro de, 587
Assac, Jacques Ploncard d’, 176, 500 Cabalzar, Guido, 170–71
Avelos, Count of, 225 Cabanellas (Ferrer), Miguel, 195
Azaña (Díaz), Manuel, 125, 192, 196–97, Cabeçadas (Júnior), José Mendes, 31–34,
206 147
Cabral, Amílcar, 520
Bainville, Jacques, 83 Cabral, Tasso Miranda, 222
Ball, George, 493–94, 527 Caetano, Marcelo José das Neves Alves,
Banda, Hastings Kamuzu, 530, 537 ix, 16, 128, 139, 304, 317–20, 331–32,
Baptista, António Alçada, 569 336, 340, 342–47, 354, 360, 366, 380–
Barbosa, António Manuel Pinto, 505, 555, 87, 389–93, 400–401, 405, 407–15,
594 418–21, 426–29, 434–35, 439–41, 479,
Barbosa, Daniel Maria Vieira, 341–45, 579, 590, 594, 600, 603–7, 609, 611,
385, 403, 408, 484, 566, 594 623
Barbosa, Rafael, 520 Câmara (de Melo Cabral), Filomeno da,
Barrès, Maurice, 17 96–97
Barreto (Rosa), Fernando Baeta Bissaia, Campbell, Sir Ronald Hugh, 277–83, 295,
26, 82, 134, 150, 169, 373, 436, 602 310, 312–16, 375
Barros, José Augusto Correia de, 345 Campos, Arajaryr de, 584, 589
Bartel, Paul, 175 Campos, Ezequiel de, 54–56, 61, 94
Baruch, Bernard, 330 Carlos (king of Portugal), 13
Baruch, Herman B., 330–31
Index 637
Carmona, António Óscar de Fragoso, 32, Crawley-Boevey, Fr Mateo, 43–45, 616–
35, 45, 51, 63–68, 76–81, 102–5, 110, 18
112, 119–21, 126, 129, 131, 134, 143, Cruz, Guilherme Braga da, 594
150, 151, 163, 170, 172, 184, 193, 228, Cruz, João de Freitas, 540
314, 316, 375, 379, 386, 392–95, 398– Cunha, João de Brito e, 432
400, 412–13, 415, 418, 420 Cunha, Joaquim da Luz, 522, 559, 568
Carvalhais, Esmeraldo, 192, 256, 258, 276, Cunha, Joaquim Moreira da Silva, 535
316 Cunha, Paulo Arsénio Veríssimo, 353,
Carvalho, António Germano Guedes 405, 415
Ribeiro de, 70 Cunhal, Álvaro Barreirinhas, ix, 322–23,
Casaco, António Rosa, 584–85 397, 580
Casqueiro, João, 222
Castanheira, Glória, 28, 181 Damião, Francisco, 216
Castelhano, Mário, 157 Dantas, Francisco Clementino San Tiago,
Castro (Sampaio Côrte Real), Augusto de, 516
234–35, 373, 413 Dantas, Júlio, 187, 364, 597
Castro, Álvaro de, 146 Darlan, François, 279
Cento, Fernando, 446 de Gaulle, Charles, 440, 555, 580, 607,
Cerejeira, Dom Manuel Gonçalves (later, 614
Cardinal), 14, 18–19, 22, 26, 27, 29, 37, de Valera, Eamon, 354
43–45, 134, 160, 161, 182, 183, 327, Delbos, Yves, 208
373, 441, 447, 448, 481, 500, 546, 572– Delgado, Humberto da Silva, 142, 282,
76, 578, 603, 606, 615–18 422–40, 443, 448, 451, 456, 481, 485,
Cértima, António de, 195 545–47, 558, 580–82, 584–91
César, Ângelo, 376 Demolins, Edmond, 9, 11
Churchill, Winston, 277–78, 282, 283, Dennison, Robert L., 548
285, 301–4, 311–15, 359, 360, 502 Derrick, Michael, 183
Coelho, Eduardo, 598, 600–603, 605–9 Desai, M. J., 497
Coelho, Luís da Câmara Pinto, 140, 587 Descamps, Paul, 175
Colaço, João Maria Telo de Magalhães, 25 Deslandes, Venâncio Augusto, 484, 505,
Coolidge, Calvin, viii 510–12
Cordes, João José Sinel de, 32, 34, 36–38, Devane, Richard S., 176
40–41, 47–49, 97 Dias (Júnior), José Nascimento Ferreira,
Cortês, Ulisses Cruz de Aguiar, 388–89, 337–40, 356
401, 429, 559–60, 597, 599–600 Dias, Fernando Quintanilha Mendonça,
Cortesão, Jaime Zuzarte, 192 337–40
Costa, Afonso Augusto da, 13, 14, 59, Dollfuss, Engelbert, 162
146, 149, 174, 197 Du Moulin, Count, 195
Costa, Fernando dos Santos, 124, 125, Duarte, José, 4
226, 276, 322, 331, 340, 342, 378, 381, Duarte, Teófilo, 361, 367, 385–86, 404,
383, 386, 395, 398–400, 407–8, 414– 405, 429
15, 420, 434–35, 441, 470, 476, 478, Duque, Rafael da Silva Neves, 110, 340,
502, 593, 603 401
Costa, Manuel de Oliveira Gomes da, 31– Durão, Ricardo, 140
32, 34
Couceiro, Henrique Mitchell de Paiva, 16, Eden, Anthony, 196–98, 208, 209–13,
100, 222 258, 278, 281, 283–84, 302–4, 313,
315, 352
638 Index
Egerton, Frederick Clement Christie, 29, Freire, Carlos Manuel Lopes da Silva, 484
33, 49, 243 Freire, Maria de Jesus Caetano, 58, 182,
Eisenhower, Dwight D., 473 335, 371, 373, 601, 606–8
Elbrick, Charles Burke, 474–78, 486–87, Freitas, João Albuquerque de, 475, 479
490–92, 498 Freitas, José Vicente de, 45, 51, 63–65,
Eltze, Hans, 307, 310 120, 169
Entwistle, William, 241 Freyre, Gilberto, 358–59
Esteves, Raul Augusto, 122 Funk, Walther, 233, 234
Furstenberg, Maximilien de, 576
Faria, António de, 571–72, 576
Faure, Edgar, 353 Galbraith, John Kenneth, 488, 496–98
Faure, Roland, 607 Gallagh, Count Gerald O’Kelly de, 570,
Felgas, Hélio Esteves, 466 575
Fernandes, Afonso Magalhães de Galvão, Henrique Carlos Malta, 100, 125,
Almeida, 478–79 188, 249, 368, 417, 425, 428–30, 464,
Fernandes, António Júlio de Castro, 345, 481, 545–51, 581–82, 613
592 Garin, Vasco Vieira, 491
Fernandes, Tomás Wylie, 52, 234 Garnier, Christine, 369–74, 606, 615, 623
Ferraz, Artur Ivens, 41, 63–64, 66 Gasperi, Alcide de, 353
Ferraz, José António da Rocha Beleza, Gaxotte, Pierre, 374
469, 476, 481, 547 Gentile, Luigi, 451
Ferreira, António Jacinto, 406 George (duke of Kent), 188
Ferreira, Manuel Gonçalves Cavaleiro, George, David Lloyd, 131
594 Gizenga, Antoine, 464
Ferro, António Joaquim Tavares, 5, 48, Godinho, José Garcia Marques, 398–400
58–60, 84, 107–8, 129, 170, 173–80, Godinho, José Maria Magalhães, 378
183–85, 188, 232, 250, 252, 320–22, Gomes, Dom António Ferreira (Bishop of
369–70 Oporto), 77, 443–50, 571–72, 577
Figueiredo, Amadeu Gomes de, 96 Gomes, Francisco da Costa, 517
Figueiredo, Mário de, 7, 26, 27, 45, 49, 64, Gomes, Rui Luís, 385, 415, 417, 418
76, 78, 96, 114, 161, 228, 370, 372–73, Gonçalves, Bento, 157
401, 407–8, 413, 420, 429, 502, 597, Gonçalves, Horácio de Assis, 36–37
606 Goulart, João Belchior Marques, 516
Fino, Francisco Holbeche, 511 Gracias, Valerian, 442
Fogaça, Júlio de Melo, 322 Grand, Hervé Le, 180
Fonseca, Jaime Filipe da, 582 Grandi, Dino, 208
Fonseca, Joaquim Diniz da, 73 Granjo, António Joaquim, 28
Fonseca, José Soares da, 401 Grasset, Bernard, 369
Fragoso, José Manuel, 509 Grimau, Julián, 555
Franco (Ferreira Pinto Castelo Branco), Groussard, Serge, 501
João, 13 Guardiola, Maria Baptista dos Santos, 160
Franco Bahamonde, Francisco, vii–viii, xi, Guedes, Armando Marques, 61, 66
37, 151, 155, 162, 175, 195, 198, 201, Guedes, Francisco José Nobre, 138, 227–
204, 207, 210–14, 216, 224, 254, 258, 28
263, 265, 291, 312, 352, 353, 377, 411, Guerreiro, Emídio, 585
481, 523, 555, 593, 612, 614 Guimarães, Aníbal de Mesquita, 79
Franco Bahamonde, Nicolás, 203, 215, Guimarães, João Antunes, 134
232, 260, 266–67
Index 639
Habsburg, Archduke Otto von, 238 Lennon, J. W., 569–70, 571
Halifax, Edward Frederick Lindley Wood, Leo XIII, Pope, 10, 14, 18, 66, 82
Earl of, 241 Libório, António Monteiro, 463, 484
Harriman, William Averell, 352, 492, 493 Lima, Fernando Andrade Pires de, 385
Higham, T. F., 241 Lima, Francisco Negrão de, 463, 515
Hitler, Adolf, xi, 37, 105, 155, 164, 191, Lima, Henrique Linhares de, 110–11
201, 223, 229–30, 233–35, 249, 256– Liverpool, Edward Russell (Lord), 583
57, 265, 274, 278, 291, 310 Llano (y Sierra), Gonzalo Queipo de, 195
Hoare, Samuel, 101, 300 Lopes, Francisco Higino Craveiro, 364,
Howard, Leslie, 242 373, 408, 410, 414, 417–21, 430, 437,
Hoyningen-Huene, Oswald von, 235, 440, 480
243–44, 274, 284, 286–87, 306–7, 312, Lopes, Francsico Higino Craveiro, 364
320, 329 Lopes, Norberto, 182
Hull, Cordell, 266 Lourenço, Agostinho, 193, 252
Lucas, Walter Edward, 252
Ibañez-Martín, José, 544
MacDonagh, W. P., 183
Jardim, Jorge Pereira, 366, 453–55, 457, Machado (Guimarães), Bernardino Luís,
467, 471, 474, 517–18, 525, 538–40, 31, 59, 174
542, 606 Machado, Fernando Pais Teles de, 75
Jesus, Quirino Avelino de, 56, 61, 67, 70, Machado, Francisco José Vieira, 96, 267–
79–80, 86, 97 69
John XXIII, Pope, 446 Macmillan, Harold, 498, 583
Johnson, Lyndon B., 542, 606 Maeterlinck, Maurice, 176
Jordana, Conde de. See Jordana, Francisco Maia, António de Sousa, 398
Gómez Jordana Souza conde de Manuel II (king of Portugal), 12–13, 17,
Jordana, Francisco Gómez-Jordana Souza 26, 78, 81, 134
conde de, 264, 285–87 Mário Coelho, 453
Marques, Antero Leal, 78, 138
Kasavubu, Joseph, 456, 462 Marques, António de Vasconcelos, 602
Kennan, George F., 303 Martins, Joaquim Pedro de Oliveira, 187
Kennedy, John F., 473–74, 485–94, 516, Massis, Henri, 83, 176
518, 527, 529, 542, 545–46, 583 Mata, José Caeiro da, 103, 383, 385, 597
Kennedy, Robert F., 492, 580 Mateus, António Lopes, 79, 133–34
Kilpatrick, James J., 509 Matias, Marcelo Gonçalves Nunes
Kroll, Hans, 245 Duarte, 370–71, 375, 385, 441, 542
Kubitschek (de Oliveira), Juscelino, 445, Matos, José Maria Mendes Ribeiro
548 Norton de, 99, 147, 151, 387, 391–97,
415–16, 432, 436
Le Bon, Gustave, 17, 18, 66, 83 Maurras, Charles, 16, 17, 37, 66, 83, 164,
Leal, Francisco Pinto Cunha, 57, 60, 61, 374, 414
66, 70, 95, 99, 147, 151, 169, 387, 417, Medeiros, Armando Cândido de, 346
430 Meireles, Manuel Carlos Quintão, 415–18
Leite (Lumbralles), João Pinto da Costa, Melander, J. A., 355
142–44, 241, 332, 344, 381, 384, 418, Melo, Martinho Nobre de, 76
433, 479 Mendes (do Amaral e Abranches),
Lemaître, Jules, 17 Aristides de Sousa, 224, 237–39
Lemass, Séan, 458
640 Index
Mendes (do Amaral e Abranches), César Norweb, Raymond Henry, 315
de Sousa, 79 Nosolini (Pinto Osório da Silva Leão),
Mendes, Manuel Joaquim, 378 José, 17, 72, 78, 371, 408, 413, 431,
Mendonça, Camilo António de Almeida 441–42
Gama Lemos de, 346 Nunes, Dom José da Costa, 442, 447, 450
Meneses, Francisco de Calheiros e, 245–
46, 291 O’Donnell, Thomas, 180–81
Menon, Krishna, 496 O’Donovan, Colman, 327
Menzies, Robert Gordon, 513 Ochoa, Armando, 31
Merritt, Houston, 603–4, 606–7 Oliveira, António de, 4, 82
Mesquita, Fr Alberto Carneiro de, 17 Oliveira, Domingos Augusto Alves da
Mexia, Joaquim Nunes, 134 Costa de, 67, 73, 77–78, 80, 125
Miguel (king of Portugal), 596 Oliveira, Felismina de, 7–8
Misurata, Count Volpi di, 234 Oliveira, José Gonçalo da Cunha
Mola (y Vidal), Emilio, 193 Sottomayor Correia de, 4, 488, 504,
Mondlane, Eduardo, 492, 518 552–55, 560, 561, 564, 582, 599
Moniz, Jorge Botelho, 139–40, 204–5, 398 Oliveira, Luís Alberto de, 103, 119–21
Moniz, Júlio Botelho, 157, 276, 282, 331–
32, 342, 377, 383, 385, 441, 455, 471– Pabón, Jesús, 258–59
72, 476–81, 484, 485, 512, 580, 613 Pacelli, Cardinal. See Pius XII, Pope
Monteiro, Armindo Rodrigues de Sttau, x, Pacheco, António Faria Carneiro, 25, 137,
67, 73, 76, 77–79, 97, 99–101, 123, 160
134, 155, 171, 178, 191, 196–97, 206– Pacheco, Duarte, 17, 45, 56, 57, 79, 169
12, 220, 227, 243, 253, 258, 280, 281, Pais, Fernando Eduardo da Silva, 533,
283, 284, 288–301, 358, 360, 366, 416, 582, 585, 589, 594, 602
429 Pais, Sidónio Bernardino Cardoso da
Monteiro, Casimiro, 584, 585, 590 Silva, 28, 63, 146
Montesinos, Ramírez, 184 Paiva, Maria Laura Campos, 181
Morais, Jaime Alberto de Castro, 192 Palmela, Domingos de Sousa e Holstein
Morais, Tito Augusto de, 147 Beck (Duke of), 265, 284, 301, 311–16,
Moreira, Adriano José Alves, 399, 472, 331, 349
482, 488, 497, 505–10, 518, 593–94 Papini, Ubaldo Baldi, 171
Mosishima, Morito, 329 Pardo, Gregorio Ortega, 595
Mussolini, Benito, xi, 37, 86, 105, 155, Paul VI, Pope, 572–78
164, 167, 168, 173, 181, 190, 201, 217, Pepper, Claude, 266
323 Pereira, Antonino Raul da Mata Gomes,
103
Nehru, Jawaharlal, 361–62, 364–67, 495– Pereira, José Pacheco, 434
98, 501, 502, 581 Pereira, Pedro Teotónio, 103, 114–18,
Neto, António Lino, 27, 28, 134 140, 169, 194, 201–6, 214–15, 238–39,
Neto, Francisco Lino, 569 256–60, 264, 295, 299, 367, 439–41,
Neves, Fr Manuel Mendes das, 466 488, 493, 504, 545, 547, 603–5
Nkodo, Manuel da Costa, 456 Perestrelo, Júlia, 18, 19, 27
Nogueira, Alberto Marciano Gorjão Perestrelo, Maria de Pina, 4, 18
Franco, 177, 472, 478–79, 484–94, Pimenta, Alfredo Augusto Lopes, 229,
497–99, 516, 524–26, 528–31, 534, 250, 254–55, 267, 274, 321, 409–10
538–39, 546, 552, 555, 560–61, 572, Pimenta, Raul, 216
576, 589, 598–99, 601, 604, 609, 622 Pina, Luís Maria da Câmara, 282, 469, 476
Index 641
Pinnock, Eduardo, 456, 459, 466 Rheinbaben, Werner von (Baron), 235
Pinto, Alberto de Moura, 70, 192 Ribbentrop, Joachim von, 257
Pinto, Alexandre Alberto de Sousa, 103 Ribeiro, Hélder Armando dos Santos, 70
Pinto, Clotário Luís Supico Ribeiro, 332, Riccardi, Raffaello, 234
340–42, 589, 596 Richard, René, 180
Pinto, Luís Maria Teixeira, 555 Rita, Maria da Conceição de Melo
Pires, José Cardoso, 613 (‘Micas’), 182, 335, 369, 601, 608
Pius X, Pope, 13 Rivelli, Cesare, 252
Pius XI, Pope, 31, 159 Rivera, José Antonio Primo de, 544
Pius XII, Pope, 217, 441–42 Rivera, Miguel Primo de, 37, 147, 173
Poncins, Léon de, 176 Roberto, Holden, 474, 489, 492, 527
Ponte (y Manso de Zúñiga), Miguel, 193 Roberts, Frank, 281–83
Portela, Alberto Lelo, 250 Roboredo (e Silva), Armando Júlio, 559
Pratas, Esmeraldo Pais, 156 Rodrigues (Júnior), Manuel, 26, 32, 34, 76,
Preto, Francisco Rolão, 119, 126–30, 146, 79, 131, 134, 161, 169
184 Rodrigues, Manuel Faria Sarmento, 367
Puigdengolas (Ponce de Léon), Ildefonso, Roosevelt, Franklin D., 244, 266–67, 302–
198 3, 330
Roquete, António, 590
Quadros, Jânio da Silva, 546, 548–49, 587 Rosas, Fernando, 618
Queiroga (Chaves), Fernando Gualter de, Ross, Archibald, 497, 539
398 Rudel, Christian, 611, 612
Queiroz, António Eça de, 170–71, 232, Rusk, Dean, 485, 488, 490–93, 527–29
250–51, 480
Quintanar, Marquis of, 193 Sá, Carolina Correia de, 334–35
Salan, Raoul, 512
Raby, D. L., 433, 438 Salazar, António de Oliveira:
Ramires, Sebastião Garcia, 79, 103, 193 achievements at the Ministry of
Ramos, Ernesto Lopes, 584, 585 Finance, 46–52; and ‘Micas’, 182–83;
Ramos, Gustavo Cordeiro, 103–4 and Abyssinia, 191; and Adolf Hitler,
Raposo, José Hipólito Vaz, 102 249; and African nationalism, 358, 452,
Real, António Xavier Perestrelo Corte, 4, 473; and American use of the Azores,
6, 14 302–4; and Amilcar Cabral, 520; and
Rebelo, José Adriano Pequito, 139, 193 Aristides de Sousa Mendes, 224, 237–
Reedman, Harry, 537, 538 40; and Armindo Monteiro, 288–301;
Reis (Júnior), Albino Soares Pinto dos, and Benito Mussolini, 167–68; and
79–80, 103, 134, 169, 345, 390, 402, Brazil, 265, 267; and censorship, 229,
405–7, 410, 412, 472, 597 250–53; and Corporatism, 89–91, 114–
Reis, José Alberto dos, 76, 150 19, 168, 319, 322, 327–28, 400–403,
Reis, Manuel Martins dos, 156, 418 412; and Dom Manuel Gonçalves
Remédios, Joaquim Mendes dos, 26, 32– Cerejeira, 19, 26, 481; and Dona Maria,
33 182–83; and Eamon de Valera, 354;
Resende, Dom Sebastião Soares de and emigration, 566–68; and European
(Bishop of Beira, Mozambique), 455, integration, 348–49, 351, 354, 551–55;
570–71 and Fascism, 162–67, 169; and Fr
Resende, Fernando Pinto, 463 Mateo Crawley-Boevey, 43–44; and
Reynold, comte Gonzague de, 244–47, 288, France, 185; and Freemasons, 150; and
413 Germany, 221, 231, 235, 233–36, 243,
642 Index
245–46, 248; and Goa, 360–66, 497– (CAUR), 170–71; and the Concordat
503; and Great Britain, 196–98, 212– of 1940, 160–62; and the Congo
14, 221–22, 224, 236, 241–43, 245, (Belgian/Independent), 453, 457–60,
247–48, 262, 359–60, 375–76; and 531; and the Constitution of 1933,
Humberto da Silva Delgado, 424–28, 105–10, 113, 392; and the economic
430–33, 588–91; and international boom, 561–63; and the foreign loan,
opinion of the colonial war, 512–16, 49–50; and the Great Depression, 90–
523–24; and Ireland, 176; and João 94; and the Holocaust, 224–25; and the
José Sinel de Cordes, 34–36, 38; and Legião Portuguesa, 139–45; and the
José Gonçalo da Cunha Sottomayor military rebellion in Spain (1936), 191–
Correia de Oliveira, 552–55; and 201; and the Mocidade Portuguesa,
Marcelo José das Neves Alves 138, 145; and the Monarchists, 253–54,
Caetano, 419–20, 579; and Maria 409–12, 595–96; and the National
Antónia, 182; and May 1968, 580; and Assembly, 113–14; and the Partido
military preparations in Africa, 455, Comunista Português (PCP), 321–24;
462–63; and National-Syndicalism, and the presidential election of 1949,
126–30; and NATO, 351–53; and 391–96; and the presidential election of
neutrality, 228–29, 232–33, 240, 249, 1951, 412–18; and the presidential
252, 285, 317, 331, 375–76; and non- election of 1958, 420–21, 432–41; and
intervention in Spain, 208–9, 211; and the Santa Maria hijacking, 545–51; and
Oxford University, 241; and Pedro the secret police (PVDE/PIDE), 150,
Teotónio Pereira, 202; and political 219; and the Secretariado de
tensions in Angola, 510–12; and Propaganda Nacional (SPN), 320–21;
Portugal’s place in the world, 225, 336; and the União Nacional, 133–36, 382–
and Portugal’s war effort, 486, 524–27; 85, 388, 389–91; and the United States
and postwar economic development, of America, 244–48, 266–67, 330, 473–
337–44, 347–48; and postwar 74, 485–94, 527–29; and the West, 274;
propaganda, 371–74; and poverty, 253, and Timor, 269–74, 329; and tungsten,
346; and refugees, 198–99, 237; and 304–16; and war criminals, 331; and
Rhodesia, 531, 535–43; and South Winston Churchill, 240, 312, 359;
Africa, 532–35; and Spain, 192, 195, attempt on his life, 215–17; becomes
204, 215, 231–32, 254–57, 257, 264– Minister of Finance (1928), 45–46;
66, 285–87, 377; and strikes, 322–26; becomes Minister of Foreign Affairs,
and the ‘Viriatos’, 204–6; and the 200; becomes Minister of War, 124,
“policy of truth”, x, 57; and the 1940 220; becomes President of the Council
Centennials, 186–89; and the Acçào of Ministers, 76–79; CDAC speech of
Escolar Vanguarda, 128–29, 136–37; 8 December 1912, 14–16; charges and
and the aftermath of the presidental defense at university (1919), 24–26;
election of 1958, 439–41; and the coup d’état of 1961 (‘Abrilada’), 474–
army, 68, 73, 119–24, 198, 218, 222, 81; cult of personality, 171–74, 177–81,
288, 328, 397–400, 475, 481–82, 503– 183–86; death, 609; dissertation on
4; and the Cabora Bassa Dam, 599– agriculture, 19–21; dissertation on
600; and the Catholic Church, 8–9, 89– gold, 21; domestic arrangements, 58;
90, 158, 441–50, 570–78; and the early newspaper writing, 10–11, 14–15,
Centro Católico Português (CCP), 27– 38–42; early speeches, 6, 11, 15–18, 57,
31, 34–35, 42–43, 133, 134, 158; and 65, 69–74, 86–87, 111–13, 157; early
the colonies, 94–102; and the Comitate writings, 7; economic article at
d’Azione per l’Universalità di Roma university, 22–24; first ministerial
Index 643
experience (1926), 32–34; first trip Santos, Sr Lúcia dos, 44, 616
abroad (1927), 37–38; fosters Sardinha, António Maria de Sousa, 17
economic development as Minister of Schmitter, Philippe, 163
Finance, 52–55, 75; health, 59, 81, Schultz, Arnaldo, 472, 521–22
380–82, 392, 598–609; ideology, 83– Schuman, Robert, 353
87; leaves Ministry of Finance, 241; Scoppa, Renato Bova, 243
leaves Ministry of War, 331; legal Selborne, Roundell Cecil Palmer, Earl of,
defense, 25–26; official residence, 219– 313
20; opposition to, 59–61, 70, 101, 131, Selby, Watford, 230
145–55, 200–201, 221–22; opposition Semedo, António Gonçalves, 588
to (post-WWII), 377–80, 570, 579; Sérgio (de Sousa), António, 430
plots to become President of the Serra, Manuel, 450, 582
Council of Ministers, 62–67, 72–76; Silva, Alfredo da, 55
report to Revenue Commission (1927), Silva, João Serras e, 598
35–36; reshuffles the government, 331, Silva, Manuel António Vassalo e, 499–500
344–45, 377, 385, 403–5, 418, 472, Silva, Manuel Rodrigues da, 583
510, 600; response to the war in Silva, Mário José Pereira da, 593
Angola, 469–72, 482, 484, 506; Second Smith, Allen, 548
Catholic Youth Congress speech of Smith, Ian, 536–41
1914, 17–18; self-criticism, 332; style Soares, António Ferreira, 590
of government, 102–5, 220, 224–28, Soares, Mário Alberto Nobre Lopes, 587,
231, 242, 304, 319, 320, 385–87, 402– 591
4, 405–7, 429, 531–32, 591–93, 596– Solborg, Robert, 330
97; succession, 593–95, 603–8; Sousa, Abel Pais de, 7, 75
university career, 18–31, 422; women, Sousa, Abílio Augusto Valdez de Passos e,
romantic attachments to, 7–8, 18–19, 37, 121, 123–24, 169
181–82, 334–35, 369–72; youth, 3–12 Sousa, Alfredo Botelho de, 282
Salazar, Elisa de Oliveira, 4 Sousa, Daniel Rodrigues de, 80
Salazar, Laura de Oliveira, 4 Sousa, Leovigildo Queimado Franco de,
Salazar, Leopoldina de Oliveira, 4 103
Salazar, Maria do Resgate, 4, 12, 35 Sousa, Mário Pais de, 5–7, 26, 75, 80, 134,
Salazar, Marta de Oliveira, 4–5, 7 156, 169, 324
Samoré, Antonio, 572, 576 Spínola, António Sebastião Ribeiro de,
Sampaio, Luís Teixeira de, 161, 203, 209, 481, 522
212, 213, 222, 226, 228, 230, 270, 271, Staerck, André de, 352
273, 284, 286–88 Stevenson, Adlai, 488–90
Sánchez-Albornoz, Claudio, 192–93, 195, Stohrer, Eberhard von, 262–63
198–99 Strauss, Franz-Josef, 512
Sanjurjo (y Sacanell), José, 193 Suñer, Ramón Serrano, 254–64, 512
Santana, Emídio, 216 Supico, José Luís, 134
Santo, Ricardo Espírito, 373
Santos, Anacleto Domingos dos, 204 Taittinger, Pierre, 176
Santos, Carlos Tavares Afonso dos Tamagnini (de Matos Encarnação),
(Carlos Selvagem), 398 Eusébio, 110
Santos, David dos, 504 Taswell, H. L. T., 533
Santos, Joaquim Trindade dos, 456 Tavares, Álvaro da Silva, 455, 458, 461,
Santos, José Beleza dos, 37 464, 484
Santos, José Domingues dos, 146 Taylor, Maxwell, 489
644 Index
Teixeira, Luís, 29, 376 Varzim (da Cunha e Silva), Fr Abel, 327,
Teles, Casimiro, 143 442
Tenreiro, Henrique Ernesto Serra dos Veale, Douglas, 240
Santos, 593 Verwoerd, Hendrik, 533–34, 541
Thant, U, 498 Vicente, Arlindo Augusto Pires, 582–83,
Thibon, Gustave, 374 590
Tienza, Agostinho, 584, 590 Vieira, Maria Emília, 181, 182
Tomás, Américo de Deus Rodrigues, 332, Vincent, Neville, 582–83
345, 383, 400, 421–23, 435–39, 442, Vital, Domingos Fezas, 25, 161, 167
469, 474, 478–79, 481, 497, 502, 504, Von Hoyningen-Huene, Oswald, 200,
548, 582, 594, 600–609 208, 217
Touré, Sekou, 454, 521 Vorster, John B., 534–35
Tovar (de Lemos), Pedro conde de Tovar,
252, 264, 279, 284, 291 Waugh, Evelyn, 361
Trocado, Josué, 216 Wavell, Archibald, 272
Truman, Harry S., 353 Weaver, J. R. H., 241
Tshombe, Moïse, 531 Welensky, Roy, 535, 538
Welles, Benjamin, 431, 438, 439, 551
Ulrich, José Frederico do Casal Ribeiro, Williams, Gerhard Mennen, 488
385 Wilson, Harold, 531, 539, 541
Winant, John Gilbert, 281, 297
Valéry, Paul, 175 Wingfield, Sir Charles, 210–12
Valois, Georges, 18, 126
Varela, João de Matos Antunes, 22, 575, Yagüe (Blanco), Juan, 203
584, 588, 592, 603–4
Zeeland, Paul van, 238, 352

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Hitler’s Table Talk: 1941–1944

Copyright © 2009 by Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

Publisher’s Cataloging-In-Publication Data

De Meneses, Filipe Ribeiro, 1969–

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Salazar, António de Oliveira, 1889–1970. 2. Prime ministers--Portugal--

DP676.S25 D46 2009

Chapter I From Santa Comba Dão to São Bento 3

Chapter II The New State in the Age of Totalitarianism 83

Chapter III The Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939 190

Chapter IV World War II: The Axis Threat, 1939–1942 223

Chapter V World War II: The Allied Threat, 1943–1945 275

Chapter VI The Postwar World 334

Chapter VII Salazar and the Politics of the New State,

Chapter VIII A New Opposition: Humberto Delgado and

Chapter IX The Colonial Reckoning I: Angola, 1961 451

Chapter X The Colonial Reckoning II: Salazar’s Defiance 495

Chapter XI Portugal at War: The 1960s 544

Chapter XII Illness, Retirement, and Death 598

Chapter XIII Conclusion 611

1. Paul Preston, Franco: A Biography (London: Harper Collins, 1993), xvii.

From Santa Comba Dão to São Bento

Childhood: Santa Comba Dão

Shortly before he turned sixty, António de Oliveira Salazar, in one of his

“I could have earned a distinction”, he repeated as a pained refrain. “Don’t

In Viseu the adolescent Salazar lived up to his earlier academic promise

Upon concluding his theological studies Salazar received minor orders. He

Salazar’s clerical background would henceforth be kept in mind by those who

The following month, addressing the nature of education in Portugal,

Integralismo Lusitano provided this.19 Of all the monarchist tendencies,

As a result of this commitment to the monarchy Integralists were sucked

23. Cabrita, Mulheres, 38–39.

Intriguingly, Salazar claimed to have used World War I as a source of

It seems that when you lectured in Coimbra the students, as a prank,

30. Salazar, ‘A minha resposta’, p. 248.

These early academic writings, in contrast to the Imparcial articles, were

36. Ibid., p. 382.

The investigating magistrate quickly found no proof to substantiate the

44. Salazar, ‘A minha resposta’, pp. 240–41.

50. Franco Nogueira, A mocidade, pp. 229–30.

A similar description of events is to be found in the official sketch of

[…] The Catholic Center should be the organization of Catholics who, in

56. Salazar, ‘Centro Católico Português’, p. 260.

Lisbon: The ‘National Revolution’ Begins

61. Egerton, Salazar, p. 114.

64. Garnier, Férias, p. 23.

66. Barreto, ‘António de Oliveira Salazar’, p. 328.

69. Alexandre, O roubo, p. 43.

This chatty, engaging, tone was preserved throughout, with technical

There were a series of warnings contained in this quick summary, which

Despite the cheerful ending to the article—‘what a foolish idea it is to

To be a good housewife, to save, to mend, to repair, to husband the family’s

A biography of Fr Mateo emphasizes the spiritual nature of the relation-

78. Ibid., p. 293.

Fr Mateo Crawley-Boevey thus seems to have attempted to imbue Salazar

Terreiro do Paço, 1928–1932: National and International Recognition

On 13 March 1935 The Times of London, in a verdict which would be

90. Ferro, Salazar, p. 114.

91. Egerton, Salazar, p. 125.

It might seem incredible that, given the difficulties attached to the