Palácio da Independência – headquarters of the Portuguese Youth (Mocidade Portuguesa)

The palace of the Counts of Almada, in Largo de São Domingos, next to the Rossio, is a national monument. It is called the Palace of Independence or of the Restoration because it was in this house that D. Antão de Almada and the conspirators planned the uprising of 1 December 1640.¹

A decree of 30 May 1939 authorised the purchase of the palace, to house the headquarters of the Portuguese Youth (Mocidade Portuguesa), the Museum of the Restoration and the Historical Society of the Independence of Portugal; on 24 November 1940 it passed into the care of the Historical Society. Until 1974 the Portuguese Youth, its League of Former Graduates and other associations of the Estado Novo (“New State”) had their headquarters here.¹ The Portuguese Youth and the Women’s Portuguese Youth (Mocidade Portuguesa Feminina) had been created by a law of 11 April 1936.⁴ Humberto Delgado held senior posts in the Mocidade, as he did in the Portuguese Legion; from the 1940s he gradually drew away from the regime until, in 1958, he emerged as “the Fearless General” (o general sem medo).²

On 25 April 1974 itself, the National Salvation Junta’s Decree-Law no. 171/74 abolished the Portuguese Youth and the Women’s Portuguese Youth, along with the DGS and the Portuguese Legion.⁴ The palace was then occupied, at the insistence of the Armed Forces Movement, to house the Association of the Disabled of the Armed Forces. Only in 1983 did it return in full to the Historical Society, and the association stayed on here, in part, until 1993.¹