[1926 - 1974] Estado Novo Dictatorship

In the year 1926, Portugal was a nation adrift. The turmoil of its young First Republic, scarred by 45 different governments in just 16 years, had exhausted the people. So when the army marched on Lisbon in a decisive coup, there was less panic than a weary, collective sigh of resignation. The military promised order, but they needed a mastermind, a civilian who could tame the nation’s chaotic finances. They found him in an unlikely figure: António de Oliveira Salazar, a quiet, austere economics professor from the University of Coimbra. Appointed Minister of Finance in 1928, he performed what many considered a miracle, balancing the national budget within a single year through severe austerity. This success became his currency, granting him immense political power. By 1933, he was no longer just a minister; he was the architect and undisputed leader of the 'Estado Novo', the New State, a corporatist, conservative, and authoritarian regime that would grip Portugal for nearly half a century.

The New State was built on a simple, potent motto: 'Deus, Pátria e Família' – God, Fatherland, and Family. This ideology permeated every corner of Portuguese life. The Catholic Church, suppressed during the First Republic, was restored to a place of prominence, its conservative values reinforcing the regime’s social agenda. The 'Fatherland' was not just the small country on the edge of Iberia, but a vast, transcontinental empire stretching across Africa and Asia, a source of immense national pride and a key justification for the regime's existence. The 'Family' was the traditional, patriarchal unit, where a woman’s role was confined to the home; until the late 1960s, a married woman needed her husband’s written permission to get a passport or even take a job in public service. Life was governed by a strict moral code, with an emphasis on modesty, deference, and knowing one's place. For many, especially in the impoverished rural areas where literacy rates hovered below 40% well into the 1950s, this order was a welcome change from the preceding chaos.

But beneath the veneer of stability, a deep and pervasive fear took root. The instrument of this fear was the PIDE (Polícia Internacional e de Defesa do Estado), Salazar’s secret police. The PIDE was everywhere and nowhere at once. Its agents were unseen, but its network of informers, known as 'bufos', could be anyone—your neighbour, your grocer, the man sitting next to you at the café. A carelessly spoken word against the government, a forbidden book, or attending the wrong sort of gathering could lead to a knock on the door in the dead of night. Political prisoners were taken to infamous prisons like Caxias or the Aljube in Lisbon, where they faced interrogation, isolation, and torture. This constant, simmering threat ensured compliance. It silenced dissent and forced opposition underground, creating a society where people learned to speak in whispers and trust only their innermost circle. Life was largely lived in public spaces—the café, the 'tasca', the public garden—but true opinions were saved for the privacy of the home.

To keep the populace pacified, the regime subtly promoted what became known as the 'three Fs': Fado, Fátima, and Futebol (Football). Fado, the uniquely Portuguese style of melancholic music, with its themes of loss and longing, was seen as a safe emotional outlet, fostering a sense of resignation rather than rebellion. The Miracle of Fátima, the 1917 Marian apparition, was elevated to a national symbol, reinforcing the state's alliance with the Church and promoting a narrative of faith and obedience. And football, a national obsession, provided a weekly dose of distraction and tribal passion, diverting energy that might otherwise have turned to political discontent. Meanwhile, Portugal remained frozen in time. While the rest of Europe experienced a post-war economic boom, Salazar’s policy of neutrality and economic isolationism meant Portugal fell further behind. Lisbon saw the grand construction of the bridge across the Tagus River in 1966, a monumental feat of engineering and a symbol of the regime’s power, yet just a few kilometres away in the countryside, many villages still had no electricity or running water, and donkey carts were a more common sight than cars.

The bedrock of the Estado Novo's identity and, ultimately, the cause of its demise, was its colonial empire. Salazar fiercely promoted the myth of a single, pluricontinental Portugal, from the Minho in the north to Timor in the Far East. The African colonies of Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau were not colonies, the doctrine insisted, but 'overseas provinces', integral parts of the nation. This fiction could not hold. Beginning in 1961, inspired by independence movements across the continent, armed liberation struggles erupted in all three territories. The regime’s response was swift and uncompromising: it would fight to hold the empire at any cost. This decision plunged Portugal into thirteen years of brutal, unwinnable colonial wars. An entire generation of young men was conscripted, sent to fight for years in unfamiliar jungles and savannas for a cause many increasingly failed to understand. The wars drained the nation's treasury, consuming up to 50% of the annual state budget, and created deep fissures within the one institution capable of challenging the regime: the armed forces.

In 1968, the architect of it all, António de Oliveira Salazar, suffered a cerebral hemorrhage after reportedly falling from a deck chair. He was quietly removed from power, so insulated that he was allegedly allowed to believe he was still ruling until his death two years later. His successor, Marcelo Caetano, promised a 'renewal in continuity' and a political spring, the 'Primavera Marcelista'. Some censorship was eased, and a degree of political debate was allowed, but it was too little, too late. The fundamental structures of the dictatorship, including the hated secret police (renamed the DGS) and the disastrous colonial wars, remained. The pressure within Portuguese society, and particularly within the military, was building to an unbearable point. Young military captains, radicalized by the endless wars, began to conspire in secret. They knew that the wars could not be won on the battlefield and that the only way to end them was to end the regime itself. As the spring of 1974 approached, the nation held its breath, unaware that the longest-surviving authoritarian regime in Western Europe was about to crumble not with a bang, but with the sound of a song on the radio and a flower placed in the barrel of a gun.