The Estado Novo, explained

The stops

1. 1

   Stop 1: The leader

   Rua da Imprensa à Estrela, 1200-684 Lisboa (nas traseiras do Palácio de São Bento)

   Today: Official residence of the Prime Minister

   

   António de Oliveira Salazar, a professor of Economics and Finance at Coimbra, was called in by the military to put the public accounts in order: he took office as Minister of Finance on 27 April 1928, with a reputation as a “financial wizard”, and in his inaugural speech he said that he knew very well what he wanted and where he was going.³⁴ On 5 July 1932 he became President of the Council, the head of government, and so he remained for 36 years.⁴⁵ With a small group of collaborators he devised the 1933 Constitution, which gave him power: ministers answered to the President of the Council, and he answered only to the President of the Republic; the Assembly had no power at all over the Government.²

   In 1937, the year in which Salazar escaped a bomb on Avenida Barbosa du Bocage, the State expropriated this mansion, behind Parliament, as the official residence of the President of the Council.⁶⁷ Salazar moved in in May 1938. During the works, the architect Cristino da Silva designed a monumental staircase linking the residence’s grounds to Parliament, to make communication between the two buildings easier.⁷

   In 1968, a fall from a chair left him unable to govern, and Marcelo Caetano replaced him. Salazar went on living here until July 1970, the month in which he died — “without ever suspecting that he was no longer President of the Council”, wrote the Diário de Notícias.⁵⁷⁸ After 25 April, the mansion remained the official residence of heads of government — in 1979–1980, that of the first woman to head one, Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo, who did not, however, live here.⁷⁹

   • 27 Apr 1928Salazar takes office as Minister of Finance
   • 5 Jul 1932Salazar becomes President of the Council of Ministers
   • 4 Jul 1937Bomb attack on Salazar on Avenida Barbosa du Bocage
   • 27 Sep 1968Marcelo Caetano succeeds Salazar as head of government
   • 27 Jul 1970Salazar dies
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2. 2

   Stop 2: The façade

   Palácio de São Bento, Largo das Cortes, Lisboa

   Today: Assembly of the Republic

   

   Right after the coup of 28 May 1926, a military force commanded by Lieutenant Vilhena closed this Parliament.⁴ It did not meet again until January 1935, as the National Assembly of the Estado Novo. The 1933 Constitution was put to a plebiscite on 19 March: abstentions and blank votes counted as “yes”, and a “no” had to be written on the ballot paper.² It incorporated the Colonial Act of 1930, for which it was “of the organic essence of the Portuguese Nation to fulfil the historic function of possessing and colonising overseas domains”.¹⁰ The empire has its own route, From the Padrão to the quay.

   The National Assembly had a single chamber and little power. All its deputies came from the list of the National Union, the single party, and in practice the laws were made by the Government, by decree-law: in 1945, an opinion of the Corporative Chamber — the consultative body in which economic and local interests carried weight — acknowledged that “the Government is the normal legislative body and the Assembly the exceptional legislative body”.² The National Assembly met for the last time on the morning of 25 April 1974, without a quorum. A year later, the Constituent Assembly, elected in freedom, was sitting here — it is the end of the route The days of freedom.²

   It was this façade of a parliament that took in the first women. In the 1934 election, the only women who could vote were those with a special, secondary or higher education; for men it was enough, as a rule, to be able to read and write.²¹¹ In January 1935 the first three women deputies took their seats here — Domitila de Carvalho, Maria Cândida Parreira and Maria Guardiola, all of them university graduates; the regime’s women deputies sat mainly on the committees for labour, welfare and education, matters thought to be “more closely linked to women’s interests”.¹² In 1946, the deputy Maria Luísa van Zeller supported the vote for married women, but without “absolute equality” with men, which would run counter to “the spirit of the policy of women’s return to the home”.¹³

   What you can see today

   Busts of two women deputies: Maria Alda Nogueira, in the cloister (CIG; sculptor António Trindade, according to Wikipedia), and Natália Correia (according to Wikipedia, the only two women deputies with a bust in the Assembly).

   • 28 May 1926Military coup of 28 May ends the First Republic
   • 11 Apr 1933The Estado Novo Constitution comes into force
   • 8 Jul 1930Salazar has the Colonial Act enacted
   • 16 Dec 1934The first three Portuguese women deputies are elected
   • 11 Jan 1935The National Assembly opens, with the first three women deputies
   • 28 May 1946Law No. 2015 extends the vote to some married women
   • 25 Apr 1974A Assembleia Nacional reúne pela última vez, sem quórum

   As mulheres na Constituinte (Cápsula do Tempo)Assembleia da República · 15 December 2020 · 02:39

   RTP Arquivos · Video · broadcast on 2 June 1975 · 28 minAbertura solene da Assembleia ConstituinteThe opening session of the Constituent Assembly, at São Bento, opened by Henrique de Barros. President Costa Gomes reads a message to the deputies, who give him a standing ovation.Open in the archive
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3. 3

   Stop 3: Two ideas of womanhood

   Rua de O Século, 63, 1200-433 Lisboa

   Today: Palácio Lançada, Rua de O Século

   

   For the regime, a woman’s place was the home. In 1936 it gave statutes to the Mothers’ Work for National Education, to “guide Portuguese mothers” in bringing up their children and to “defend good morals, namely as regards dress, reading and entertainment”.¹⁴ It spread the role the Estado Novo assigned to women: mothers devoted to the family and to housework, wives obedient to their husbands, the “head” of the family.¹⁵

   Maria Lamas, who edited Modas & Bordados (Fashions and Embroidery), the supplement of O Século (The Century), had another idea of womanhood. In 1947, as president of the National Council of Portuguese Women, she organised an exhibition of books written by women from thirty countries; the regime did not like it, and she was forced to choose between the magazine and the Council. She chose the Council, which the police closed down in June.¹⁶¹⁷ In 1952 the Portuguese Women’s Association for Peace, which Lamas had also chaired, was dissolved.¹⁸¹⁹

   After the Council was closed, Maria Lamas travelled the country for two years and published, in instalments, to get round the censors, As Mulheres do Meu País (The Women of My Country, 1948–1950): a great work of reportage on the life and work of peasant women, women of the sea, factory workers, housewives and employees.²⁰

   • 15 Aug 1936Statutes of the Mothers’ Work for National Education approved
   • 4 Jan 1947Exhibition of Books Written by Women
   • 28 Jun 1947The police close down the National Council of Portuguese Women
   • 21 Mar 1952Dissolution of the Portuguese Women’s Association for Peace
   • May 1948Publication of Maria Lamas’s “As Mulheres do Meu País” (The Women of My Country)
   RTP Arquivos · Video · broadcast on 31 August 1974 · 50 minMaria LamasA portrait of Maria Lamas in the series “Nome Mulher” (Name: Woman), by Maria Antónia Palla and Antónia de Sousa, with interviews in Torres Novas and in the newsroom of “Modas e Bordados” (Fashions and Embroidery) at “O Século”, and footage of Caxias prison. She talks about presiding over the National Council of Portuguese Women and its closure, about prison and about what 25 April meant.Open in the archive
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4. 4

   Stop 4: The single party and its newspaper

   Rua da Misericórdia, 95, 1200-271 Lisboa

   Today: 25 April Association

   From 1931 to 1971, the Diário da Manhã (Morning Daily) was produced here. Its first editorial called it a “republican newspaper”, but it was the semi-official organ and indoctrination vehicle of the National Union, the single party, and it gradually became a newspaper devoted to the cult of Salazar.²¹ The regime was “anti-party, anti-liberal and anti-parliamentary”: opposition parties were outlawed, and only the National Union put up candidates.²

   Until 1945 there was never another list. In the 1942 elections, for example, ballot papers reached people’s homes by post or were delivered by the police and by the National Union itself, polling stations were open from 09:00 to 14:00, and voters could only cross names out, without replacing them; fraud served above all to inflate the number of voters.²² Opposite stood República, the opposition newspaper; and, from 1969, further up the same street, at no. 125, the censorship office, which cut with its “blue pencil” what the newspapers could say — the story is told in the route The machinery of repression.²³²⁴

   Under Marcelo Caetano, the National Union was renamed National Popular Action, and in 1971 the Diário da Manhã gave way to Época (Epoch).²²¹ On 26 April 1974, the people wrecked the headquarters of Época, of National Popular Action and of the censorship office.²⁵ Since 2001 this building has been the headquarters of the 25 April Association, which brings together the great majority of the military who made the revolution.²⁶

   • 4 Apr 1931First issue of “Diário da Manhã”, the National Union’s newspaper
   • 26 Apr 1974Assalto popular à sede da censura
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5. 5

   Stop 5: 1968–1974 — Caetano, to the end

   Largo do Carmo, Lisboa

   Today: GNR General Command and the National Republican Guard Museum

   

   When he replaced Salazar, in September 1968, Marcelo Caetano — who in the 1940s had been national commissioner of the Portuguese Youth (Mocidade Portuguesa) — brought a “timid opening”.²⁷²⁸ Some changes touched women’s lives: in 1968, the law began to require the same of men and women in order to vote — being able to read and write, at a time when, in the early 1970s, one woman in three could not; in 1969, married women no longer needed their husband’s authorisation to have a passport, and women primary teachers no longer needed the minister’s permission to marry; in 1970, Maria Teresa Cárcomo Lobo became the first woman in a government.^2930313233

   Other things only changed their name: the PIDE became the DGS, the National Union became National Popular Action, and censorship became “Prior Examination” — Caetano kept it, citing the colonial war.³⁴²³⁵ For the Assembly of the Republic, the attempts at change in the 1969 elections “exposed the rigidity of the regime and its inability to open up and renew itself”.²

   It was here, in the GNR barracks, that Caetano took refuge in the early hours of 25 April 1974. Late in the afternoon, surrounded by Salgueiro Maia’s column and by thousands of people, he handed power to General Spínola — “so that power does not fall into the street” (assim o poder não cai na rua).³⁶³⁷ The regime ended in the same barracks where, in June 1926, censorship had been set up.²⁴ The whole day is told in the route The first day.

   What you can see today

   One of the “Lugares de Abril” (Places of April) plaques, by Lisbon City Council and the 25 April Association, marks the square.³⁶

   • 27 Sep 1968Marcelo Caetano succeeds Salazar as head of government
   • 26 Dec 1968A law sets the same voting requirements for women and men for the first time
   • 25 Oct 1969Married women no longer need their husband’s permission to have a passport
   • 27 Dec 1969Women primary school teachers no longer need permission to marry
   • Aug 1970Maria Teresa Lobo, the first woman in a Portuguese government
   • 24 Nov 1969The PIDE is renamed the Directorate-General of Security
   • 25 Apr 1974Silva Pais avisa Caetano: «a Revolução está na rua»
   • 25 Apr 1974Spínola no Carmo; Caetano sai na chaimite «Bula»

   25 placas que contam a história da RevoluçãoCâmara Municipal de Lisboa · 27 March 2024 · 00:40

   RTP Arquivos · Video · broadcast on 25 April 1974 · 13 minAcontecimentos no Largo do CarmoFialho Gouveia reports from the besieged Largo do Carmo: Lieutenant Alfredo Assunção receives Feytor Pinto and Nuno Távora, the Chaimite armoured car “Bula” arrives, Salgueiro Maia waits for Spínola, and Francisco Sousa Tavares calls for calm through a megaphone. At the end, the Chaimite takes away Marcelo Caetano and two ministers.Open in the archive
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6. 6

   Stop 6: God, Fatherland, Family (Deus, Pátria, Família)

   Largo de São Domingos, 10, 1169-060 Lisboa

   Today: Palácio da Independência (Historical Society of the Independence of Portugal)

   

   From 1936, boys and girls were regimented by the Portuguese Youth (Mocidade Portuguesa), which had its headquarters in this palace until 1974.³⁸³⁹ In primary school, enrolment was compulsory and was entered in the pupil’s school record book.⁴⁰ There was physical exercise in a militaristic spirit, and discipline and respect for hierarchy were learned.¹⁵ In 1938, for the tenth anniversary of Salazar’s arrival at the Ministry of Finance, seven panels were made that served as propaganda in schools. A poster from that year, “A lição de Salazar” (Salazar’s Lesson), designed by Martins Barata, summed up the programme: “God, Fatherland, Family — the trilogy of national education” (Deus, Pátria, Família — a trilogia da educação nacional).³⁴¹

   Girls had their own organisation, the Women’s Portuguese Youth (Mocidade Portuguesa Feminina), which came under the Mothers’ Work and sought to form a “new woman” through “moral, civic, physical and social education”; its members gave the Roman salute. In 1940 it covered 93% of the girls in secondary schools (liceus) and technical schools, but only 5.2% of those in primary school. From 1938 to 1968 its national commissioner was Maria Guardiola, headmistress of the Liceu Maria Amália Vaz de Carvalho and a deputy; Maria Luísa van Zeller was assistant commissioner. The commissariat was on Praça Marquês de Pombal.²⁷

   The Church gave its blessing: on 13 May 1939, at Fátima, the Cardinal Patriarch of Lisbon, Manuel Gonçalves Cerejeira — a former professor at Coimbra, like Salazar — blessed the flags of the Women’s Portuguese Youth.²⁷⁴²⁴ The following year, the Concordat with the Holy See took away the right to divorce from those who married in church.⁴³ On 25 April 1974 itself, Decree-Law No. 171/74 abolished both youth organisations, and the palace was occupied, at the insistence of the Armed Forces Movement (MFA), by the Association of the Disabled of the Armed Forces.³⁸³⁹

   • 11 Apr 1936Law No. 1941 creates the Portuguese Youth (Mocidade Portuguesa)
   • 15 Aug 1936Statutes of the Mothers’ Work for National Education approved
   • 7 May 1940Concordat with the Holy See bans divorce for Catholic marriages
   • 25 Apr 1974Decreto-Lei n.º 171/74 extingue a DGS, a Legião e a Mocidade Portuguesa
   RTP Arquivos · Video · broadcast on 25 April 1974 · 36 minAcontecimentos da Revolução de 25 de Abril de 1974Footage of the day of the revolution and the early hours of the next: the Palácio da Independência occupied by the Democratic Electoral Commission (CDE), soldiers and civilians in the Rossio, soldiers at the gate of Caxias prison, from which Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho emerges, and Largo do Carmo. It ends with the National Salvation Junta on television.Open in the archive
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7. 7

   Stop 7: The corporative State

   Calçada de Sant'Ana, 180, 1169-062 Lisboa

   Today: Headquarters of the INATEL Foundation

   On the same day in September 1933, the Government published the National Labour Statute and the laws on the employers’ guilds (grémios), the national syndicates and the Casas do Povo (People’s Houses).⁴⁴ “The Portuguese State is a unitary and corporative republic”, said the Statute: property, capital and labour were to cooperate, and strikes and lockouts became punishable.⁴⁴ Trade unions became “national”: only one per profession, with statutes that repudiated “class struggle” and leaderships that the Government had to ratify.⁴⁵ The workers’ answer was the general strike of 18 January 1934.⁴⁶

   For leisure time, the regime created in 1935 the National Foundation for Joy at Work (FNAT), which was to “strengthen, educate and entertain the body and spirit of those who work”; its beneficiaries had to be members of a national syndicate, a Casa do Povo or a Casa de Pescadores (Fishermen’s House).⁴⁷⁴⁸ In 1946 the FNAT set up its headquarters here, in the former Palácio Camarido; it organised excursions, holiday camps, sport and shows.⁴⁹⁴⁸ Another poster from “A lição de Salazar” (Salazar’s Lesson), also from 1938, promised: “with the Corporative Estado Novo begins an era of dignity for labour and of social justice” (com o Estado Novo Corporativo inicia-se uma era de dignificação de trabalho e de justiça social).⁵⁰

   The Statute also said where women belonged: their work outside the home, and that of minors, would be regulated “according to the demands of morality, physical protection, motherhood, domestic life, education and the social good”.⁴⁴ After 25 April, the FNAT stadium was renamed Estádio 1.º de Maio (May Day Stadium), strikes became a right once more and, in 1975, the FNAT gave way to INATEL, today the INATEL Foundation, which still has its headquarters in this palace.^37514849

   • 23 Sep 1933National Labour Statute bans strikes
   • 18 Jan 1934The revolutionary general strike of 18 January 1934
   • 13 Jun 1935The FNAT, the National Foundation for Joy at Work, is created
   • 1 May 1974Primeiro 1.º de Maio em liberdade
   • 27 Aug 1974Decreto-Lei n.º 392/74 regula o direito à greve

   «25 de Abril de 1974, Quinta-feira», de Alfredo Cunha — capítulo 3: «Depois de Abril»Comissão Comemorativa 50 Anos 25 de Abril · 1974 · 14:22

   RTP Arquivos · Video · broadcast on 1 May 1974 · 27 minComício do 1º de Maio em LisboaThe rally of the first May Day (1 May) in freedom, at the Estádio 1.º de Maio (May Day Stadium), opened by the journalist Adelino Gomes. Francisco Pereira de Moura, Nuno Teotónio Pereira and Mário Soares speak, and Soares embraces Álvaro Cunhal.Open in the archive
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8. 8

   Stop 8: The nurses who could not marry

   Rua José António Serrano, 1150-199 Lisboa

   Today: São José Hospital

   

   In 1938, a decree that reorganised the Lisbon Civil Hospitals, to which this hospital belonged, ordered that nursing and domestic service posts held by women should be filled only by “single women and widows, without children, who shall be replaced as soon as these conditions cease to be met”: a nurse who married lost her post.⁵² So began the nurses’ 25 years of struggle.⁵³ In the National Assembly, the deputy Maria Luísa van Zeller argued in 1947 that nursing should be entrusted to women — “No one knows as well as a woman how to bend delicately over pain” — and a deputy later recounted that some nurses married and, so as not to be dismissed, did not record their new status on their identity cards.⁵⁴

   The ban only fell in March 1963, and even then the decree recalled that a married woman’s place was the home, “where the noblest mission is reserved for her”.⁵⁵ Women primary teachers went through something similar: from 1936, they could only marry with the authorisation of the Minister of National Education, granted if the bridegroom had “good moral and civil conduct” and an income “in keeping with the teacher’s salary”. The requirement only ended in December 1969, with a decree of Marcelo Caetano’s that called it a “bureaucratic formality”.⁴⁰³²

   And the 1966 Civil Code still said: “The husband is the head of the family, and it falls to him in that capacity to represent it and to decide on all acts of common married life.” Outside the liberal professions and the civil service, if he had not given his consent, a husband could end his wife’s employment contract at any time.⁵⁶¹¹ The “head of the family” only disappeared with the 1976 Constitution and the 1977 revision of the Civil Code.⁵⁷

   • 1 Jul 1938Decree-law requires nurses to be single or widowed
   • 18 Mar 1963End of the ban on nurses marrying
   • 24 Nov 1936Women primary teachers may only marry with the minister’s authorisation
   • 27 Dec 1969Women primary school teachers no longer need permission to marry
   • 25 Nov 1966New Civil Code keeps the husband as “head of the family”
   • Nov 1977Revisão do Código Civil acaba com o «chefe de família»

   As mulheres e a revisão do Código Civil de 1977Assembleia da República · 1 April 2020 · 03:14

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9. 9

   Stop 9: Propaganda

   Praça dos Restauradores, 25, Lisboa (fachada posterior na Calçada da Glória)

   Today: Palácio Foz: public services and the National Sports Museum

   

   In 1933 the regime created the National Propaganda Secretariat in order, among other things, “to combat by every means within its reach the penetration into our Country of any ideas that disturb and dissolve national unity and interest”.⁵⁸ It was headed until 1949 by the journalist António Ferro, who called his programme the “Policy of the Spirit” (Política do Espírito): re-educating the Portuguese according to the official ideology, with posters, radio, cinema, exhibitions and prizes, combining a modern language with the regime’s conservatism and ruralism.⁵⁹ In 1940 the State bought this palace to house it; in 1944 the National Information Secretariat, which succeeded it, brought propaganda, tourism, the press and censorship together in the same hands.⁶⁰⁶¹

   Propaganda also spoke to women. A National Information Secretariat poster, from 1945 or 1946, said: “Portuguese woman, thanks to the Estado Novo you have the stability of the family, religious freedom…: you owe it to Salazar” (Mulher portuguesa, graças ao Estado Novo tens a estabilidade da família, a liberdade religiosa…: a Salazar o deves) — and urged: “mothers, wives, brides-to-be of Portugal, vote for Salazar” (mães, espôsas, noivas de Portugal votai por Salazar).⁶²

   On 28 May 1974, the 48th anniversary of the 1926 coup, around a hundred artists entered the courtyard of this palace and covered the statue of Salazar that stood there with a black cloth and a green and red banner. They wanted it put away in a museum: “Fascist art is bad for the eyes” (A arte fascista faz mal à vista), said the painter Vespeira.⁶³

   • 25 Sep 1933Creation of the National Propaganda Secretariat
   • 28 May 1974Artistas tapam a estátua de Salazar no Palácio Foz
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