Latest news and stories about dictatorship in Portugal for expats and residents.
In recent weeks, there has been a debate over whether it is legitimate to compare the number of political prisoners from the Estado Novo regime with those held between September 28 and November 25, 1975. This is our response.
Inside a Chaimite armoured vehicle locked with iron bars, surrounded by a furious crowd, Portuguese history was made in “absolute silence”. On one side, the man who had governed a country under a dictatorship; on the other, a 23-year-old sergeant, anonymous until then, with a clear order to ensure that no one would take justice into their own hands. Amidst shouts of “death” and fists pounding on the metal, the fate of a regime was decided and the path to freedom was opened. This is the living memory of someone who was at the centre of the 25th of April - where fear and courage walked side by side to change Portugal forever.
When the students made the dictatorship tremble.
When and how did the dictatorship finally begin to reveal itself? In this episode of 'Tempo ao Tempo', Rui Tavares selects the moments that heralded the collapse of the First Republic and traces the construction of the resistance to the dictatorship, both inside and outside the country. He also revisits important figures such as Jaime Cortesão, Raul Proença, Afonso Costa, Mário Castelhano, Elina Guimarães, and Hélder Ribeiro.
He openly opposed the regime in the barracks. He was elected to decide how Portugal would be from 1976 onwards. Carlos Lage is one of the deputies of the Constituent Assembly.
Miguel Sousa Tavares was part of the commission for the extinction of the PIDE/DGS after the 25th of April, where he came face-to-face with inspector Sacchetti, who had interrogated his mother, Sophia de Mello Breyner, during the dictatorship.
Author of “Deus, Pátria e Família” and “Revolução”, two novels in which he delves into the reality of the Portuguese dictatorship, Hugo Gonçalves highlights that it is difficult to produce crime fiction in authoritarian regimes. “There is something subversive about the crime genre; it is someone looking for the truth. If you place a detective looking for the truth, when what matters most to propaganda is the lie, and the control of the population is almost total, there is something subversive,” he says in another episode of the podcast “Aqui Há Crime”, with Júlia Pinheiro and Expresso journalist Marta Gonçalves.
1926: the year that buried the First Portuguese Republic and inaugurated 48 years of dictatorship. Four presidents in rapid rotation, political chaos, and coup after coup. Rui Tavares presents José Mendes Cabeçadas Júnior (1883–1965), the paradoxical Algarvian who was an agent in the implementation of two regimes: a republican hero of the 5th of October 1910, a plotter of the 28th of May 1926, president for 17 days, and, later, a regretful remnant.
For those who work on the history of the dictatorship and consult many original documents, this is a widespread and distressing reality for those who confront it. Opinion by José Pacheco Pereira
