[1820 - 1926] Constitutional Monarchy and the First Republic

The year is 1820. For thirteen years, Portugal has been a kingdom without a king on its soil. The royal court, led by King João VI, had fled Napoleon’s invading armies for the vast colony of Brazil, turning Rio de Janeiro into the glittering capital of a transatlantic empire. Back in the homeland, however, a vacuum festered. The people were weary of war, resentful of the British military presence that had helped expel the French but now lingered, and inspired by the new liberal ideas sweeping across Europe. In the bustling port city of Porto, a revolution ignited. Liberal officers, merchants, and intellectuals demanded the court’s return and, crucially, a written constitution to limit the king’s absolute power.

King João VI, a man perpetually caught between opposing forces, sailed home to a country he barely recognized. He reluctantly swore allegiance to the new constitution in 1822, but his wife, the formidable Spanish princess Carlota Joaquina, and their younger son, Dom Miguel, refused. They became the heart of the absolutist faction, champions of tradition and divine right. The stage was set for a family drama that would tear the nation apart. When João VI died, the conflict erupted into a full-blown civil war. On one side stood Dom Miguel, the absolutist usurper. On the other, his own brother, Dom Pedro, who took the extraordinary step of abdicating his throne as Emperor of Brazil to fight for the liberal cause and the claim of his young daughter, Queen Maria II. The Liberal Wars (1828-1834) were brutal and personal. The defining moment was the Siege of Porto, where Pedro’s liberal forces, outnumbered and surrounded, endured starvation and constant bombardment for over a year in a heroic defense that earned Porto the title of the 'Unvanquished City'. Ultimately, liberalism triumphed, and Miguel was exiled, but peace remained a distant dream.

The decades that followed were a whirlwind of political instability. The victorious liberals splintered into factions, the more conservative 'Chartists' and the more radical 'Setembrists', battling for control through a series of pronunciamentos, or military coups. For the common person, life remained a struggle. Around 80% of the population was rural and illiterate, their lives governed by the harvest cycle and the local landlord, little changed by the political drama in Lisbon. Yet, change was coming. From the 1850s, a period of development known as the 'Regeneration' began, spearheaded by the statesman Fontes Pereira de Melo. A web of iron and wire began to spread across the country. The first railway was inaugurated in 1856, shrinking distances and bringing the promise of modernity. Great iron bridges, engineered by the firm of Gustave Eiffel, spanned the Douro and Tagus rivers, testaments to a new industrial age. In Lisbon and Porto, gas lighting pushed back the night, and a new, wealthy bourgeoisie, who made their fortunes in trade and industry, built grand, tile-adorned homes, their lives a world away from the peasantry.

But this progress papered over deep national anxieties. Portugal’s ambition to forge a continuous belt of territory across Africa, linking Angola and Mozambique in a great 'Pink Map', was arrogantly shattered in 1890. A British Ultimatum demanded a complete Portuguese withdrawal, and with the Royal Navy threatening Lisbon, the government had no choice but to comply. The national humiliation was profound. It fed a growing narrative that the monarchy was weak, subservient to foreign interests, and incapable of defending national honor. The Republican Party, once a fringe movement, found its voice amplified in the cafés and universities. The national anthem itself, with its lyrics about 'heroes of the sea' and a 'noble people', felt like a bitter irony.

The final act of the monarchy was swift and brutal. On February 1st, 1908, King Carlos I and his heir, Luís Filipe, were riding in an open landau through the grand Terreiro do Paço square in Lisbon. The winter sun glinted off the carriage. Suddenly, shots rang out from the crowd. Assassins from a republican secret society opened fire, killing both the king and the crown prince in a hail of bullets. The Queen, Amélie, frantically tried to defend her family with a bouquet of flowers, the only weapon she had. The shock was absolute. The throne passed to the king’s younger son, who became Manuel II, but the institution was mortally wounded. The regicide had exposed its vulnerability, and its end was now only a matter of time.

It came just two years later. On October 5th, 1910, a republican revolution, a messy affair of military mutinies and civilian militias, swept through Lisbon. After minimal bloodshed, the young king was sent into exile, and from the balcony of Lisbon's City Hall, the Portuguese Republic was proclaimed. A new flag, a new anthem, and a new era of hope were born. The Republic’s leaders were idealists, determined to modernize Portugal. Their most significant and controversial reform was a fierce separation of Church and State. Religious orders were expelled, church property was nationalized, and state education was promoted to break the clergy’s hold on the public mind. This created a deep, lasting rift in a profoundly Catholic country.

The Republic's great promise of stability and progress, however, quickly dissolved into chaos. It proved to be one of the most unstable political regimes in European history. In its sixteen short years of existence, Portugal witnessed 45 different governments, numerous violent insurrections, and a revolving door of presidents. Politics became a blood sport. This internal turmoil was catastrophic when Portugal was dragged into the First World War in 1916 on the side of the Allies. The Portuguese Expeditionary Corps was sent to the trenches of the Western Front, where it was decimated in the Battle of La Lys in 1918, suffering thousands of casualties in a single day. At home, the war effort led to food shortages and hyperinflation, making daily life unbearable for the working class. The dream of 1910 had become a nightmare of political paralysis and social misery.

The end arrived on May 28th, 1926. Tired of the chaos, the army, backed by conservative and business interests, launched a coup. There was little resistance. The democratic experiment, born in hope and undone by division and war, was over. As General Gomes da Costa marched his troops into Lisbon, few mourned the fall of the First Republic. They yearned only for order. They had no idea that the man who would soon emerge from the shadows of this new military regime, António de Oliveira Salazar, would give them that order at the cost of their freedom for nearly half a century.