Noite Sangrenta: the night a Portuguese prime minister was hunted down

Late on 19 October 1921, a vehicle pulled up at the gate of the Arsenal da Marinha, the navy dockyard on the Lisbon waterfront. Inside was António Granjo, who that morning had still been prime minister of Portugal. An armed crowd pushed in behind him as the gate opened, jeering.2 sources

His captors took him to a room on the first floor, where he was to be held. According to the reconstruction printed by the Diário de Lisboa on the day of his funeral, Granjo faced the men and spoke his last words. Then they fired.1 source

The same paper reported that one of the killers then drove a sword through the dying man with such force that it stuck in the floorboards. Granjo was 39. By morning at least four more men had been killed, two of them naval officers who had helped bring down the monarchy eleven years before.4 sources

The Portuguese call it the Noite Sangrenta, the Bloody Night. It did not end the First Republic, which lasted until May 1926. But it showed how far the regime had lost control of its own armed men.2 sources

Portugal became a republic on 5 October 1910, after an armed rising in Lisbon. The navy played a large part, though the work fell to a few junior officers, some sergeants and many sailors. The Republic was a parliamentary regime: Parliament elected the president, and the president appointed and dismissed governments.2 sources

Two of the men killed in 1921 were heroes of that revolution. Machado Santos, then a junior officer in the navy's administrative branch, held out at the Rotunda, the circle at the top of the Avenida da Liberdade, with a handful of sergeants, soldiers and civilians, and forced the surrender of the monarchy's headquarters at Rossio. Carlos da Maia, another naval officer, came from the navy barracks at Alcântara and took control of the cruiser Dom Carlos on the night of 4 October.1 source

The new regime never found its balance. In sixteen years voters went to the polls eight times, and presidents appointed 45 governments by the count of the historian A. H. de Oliveira Marques. Half of them lasted less than 93 days. Every year brought monarchist incursions and civil or military revolts.1 source

In December 1917 Sidónio Pais, an army officer and former minister, seized power in a coup. His 'New Republic' lasted about a year. Machado Santos served him as minister of the interior and then of food supply, and Carlos da Maia as navy minister, until both resigned in June 1918. On the night of 14 December 1918 Sidónio was shot dead at the entrance to Rossio station by José Júlio da Costa, a young left-wing veteran.2 sources

In Sidónio's coup the navy had fought on the losing side. After a sailors' revolt in January 1918, hundreds of sailors were arrested and most were shipped off to the colonies. Those grudges lasted. Historians link the violence of 1921 to resentments held, above all in the navy and the GNR, against some leading republicans.1 source

The guard's political weight peaked in November 1920, when President António José de Almeida asked its chief of staff, Lieutenant-Colonel Liberato Pinto, to form a government. Pinto's fall a few months later pushed many GNR officers towards open revolt. A first rising in May 1921 came to nothing.2 sources

António Granjo was a lawyer from Chaves in the far north and a liberal, the leader of a party opposed to the dominant Democratic Party. He had already led a government for four months in 1920. On 10 July 1921 the liberals won the general election, with 76 deputies. It was the only time under the Republic that an opposition party won the most seats. Granjo took office again on 30 August. His government lasted 50 days.5 sources

The revolt began early on 19 October. Its leader was Colonel Manuel Maria Coelho, a veteran of the republican rising of 31 January 1891, with the naval commander Procópio de Freitas and GNR officers including Major Cortês dos Santos and Captain Camilo de Oliveira. At 05:30 the GNR guns at the Rotunda and those of the cruiser Vasco da Gama fired to open the revolt.4 sources

There was little fighting, and no real bombardment of the city was needed. The GNR's commander could not get his men to fire on their comrades, and Coelho won over the sailors' corps and four warships. Granjo resigned, saying he had no means of resisting in Lisbon. President Almeida accepted the resignation but at first refused to appoint the rebels' government.3 sources

Lisbon was left for hours without a government. Warned that guards and sailors were coming for him, Granjo took refuge in the house of his neighbour Francisco Cunha Leal, a political rival. During the revolt about 300 armed men freed José Júlio da Costa, Sidónio's assassin, from the Miguel Bombarda mental hospital.3 sources

The exact order and times of the killings are uncertain. The newspaper A Capital reported on 20 October that Granjo and Carlos da Maia were brought to the Arsenal together; other accounts have Granjo arriving with Cunha Leal and Carlos da Maia fetched later in the lorry. Luís Farinha, a historian of the period, puts Granjo's death a few hours before the lorry's rounds. Cunha Leal, hit three times, was saved by Lieutenant Agatão Lança.3 sources

The vehicle that gave the night its legend was an ordinary army lorry. Observador reports that a lieutenant, Bento Mergulhão, handed it over, formally under the orders of a midshipman of the navy's administrative branch, Benjamim Pereira. It carried soldiers, sailors, GNR men and civilian revolutionaries, led by Corporal Abel Olímpio, nicknamed 'o Dente de Ouro', the Gold Tooth.3 sources

Abel Olímpio is the one name everyone remembers. Parliament's account calls him a navy corporal, a cabo marinheiro, and a confidential government letter of December 1920, cited by the historian João Freire, names him as artillery corporal no. 2470, a conspirators' contact inside the navy. Some later accounts, such as Jaime Nogueira Pinto's, make him a GNR man. He commanded the lorry and its crew, and at his trial he offered clues about who was behind it.4 sources

The new government arrested the main suspects on 24, 26 and 27 October. A Special Military Court heard the case in 1922 and 1923, with the army officer Óscar Carmona as prosecutor. The men who did the killing received heavy sentences of prison and degredo, exile to the colonies. Abel Olímpio stayed in prison until February 1946, as did some of his companions.4 sources

Besides Abel Olímpio, Observador names another corporal, Manuel José Carlos, and a sergeant, Heitor Gilman, among the men who did the killing, and doubts they were the only ones. It also reports a scene at the sentencing: Abel Olímpio turned on one of the officers present, José de Freitas Ribeiro, and asked what moral authority he had to condemn them: had he not, in the revolt of May 1915, ordered Olímpio to murder a ship's captain?1 source

The coup leaders fared differently. Coelho, Procópio de Freitas and Camilo de Oliveira were charged with negligence and acquitted, and charges against other officers were dropped. Carmona tried to contest the acquittals in 1923 and failed. Only on 2 September 1936 did a court give Benjamim Pereira, the midshipman nominally in charge of the lorry, one year in prison, for taking part in the crimes 'without criminal intent'.2 sources

Who sent the killers is still unknown. The press and later court testimony spoke of a 'cleansing list' of 180 politicians, senior officials and financiers, said to have been discussed in radical clubs. Farinha accepts that lists of this kind guided the killers; who drew them up is not known. Other names on the lists, such as the politicians António Maria da Silva and Álvaro de Castro, had to hide, and Silva fled the country.2 sources

All six dead had some link to Sidónio's regime, Farinha notes, which suggests revenge. Granjo's offence in radical eyes was to have beaten the Democratic Party at the polls; extremists had branded him a reactionary. Other theories pointed the opposite way. Supporters of the regime blamed a monarchist, clerical and business plot meant to discredit the Republic, and one 1929 account named a monarchist, a priest and 'money from Spain'.3 sources

Corporal Manuel José Carlos always maintained that officers had given the orders, and named them in court. In May 1926 Abel Olímpio gave Carlos da Maia's widow, Berta Maia, a revised confession blaming the priest, Padre Lima, but the case was not reopened. Freire could confirm only one documentary trace: the December 1920 letter names both Padre Lima and Abel Olímpio among men preparing a revolt.4 sources

Historians today stress the wider climate. Farinha finds no recognisable chain of command, arguing that would-be instigators existed in every political camp, and places the political responsibility on the coup leaders who created a power vacuum and on the authorities who failed to act. Observador's José Luís Andrade blames the rage of the mob, fed by the sailors' humiliation under Sidónio and stirred up by newspapers and agitators.2 sources

The killings horrified opinion at home and abroad. Several men named to Coelho's cabinet refused to take office rather than be associated with the killers. Britain, France and Spain each sent a warship to the Tagus to protect their nationals, and the ships stayed 25 days. At Granjo's funeral on 24 October, Cunha Leal shared out the blame.3 sources

Coelho's government lasted until 5 November 1921. Carlos Maia Pinto and then Cunha Leal followed, before António Maria da Silva took office on 6 February 1922 and stayed, through reshuffles, until November 1923.1 source

In the review Seara Nova, the essayist Raul Proença wrote that 'once again the most dangerous of utopias has driven this country into the epilepsy of disorder'.2 sources

On 2 March 1922 both chambers of Parliament honoured the dead and demanded the truth. The president of the Chamber of Deputies, Domingos Leite Pereira, told members that 'all of us bear some guilt'. Cunha Leal called for the death penalty to be restored; António Maria da Silva refused, saying it would answer the Gold Tooth's crime with another crime.1 source

Silva's government also moved against the GNR. Army units were posted around Lisbon, and in the end troops marched into the city and disarmed the guard. A decree of 13 March 1922 abolished its artillery, cut its planned strength and reduced its Lisbon force from more than 11,000 planned men to fewer than 4,000.1 source

The Republic lasted four and a half more years. On 28 May 1926 a military coup ended the parliamentary regime and opened a dictatorship. The prosecutor of 1923, Óscar Carmona, was head of government by July 1926.3 sources

After 1926 the dictatorship used the Bloody Night as proof that the parliamentary Republic had meant chaos and that strong rule was needed. The argument came back during the 1945 election campaign. That year the priest Joaquim Alves Correia, who had heard Berta Maia's account of Abel Olímpio's testimony, wrote a newspaper article attacking the regime's use of the massacre; he was forced into exile in 1946.2 sources

The story has stayed in public memory. In 2010 a drama series about the night was filmed for RTP, based on Berta Maia's book, with Gonçalo Waddington as Abel Olímpio. At the centenary of the killings in 2021, newspapers again noted that the people who gave the orders were never identified.3 sources

The night also changed the GNR. A police force given artillery and a political mission had become one of the actors that made and unmade governments, and when its men and the sailors broke loose, neither the president nor the coup leaders stopped them. The 1922 reform set out to turn it into a rural police force.4 sources