From Ruptured Transition to Politics of Silence: the Case of Portugal

Summary

THE ANTECEDENTS: THE AUTHORITARIAN REGIME

Portugal experienced a right-wing dictatorship that lasted from 1926, the year in which a military coup d'etat overthrew the First Republic, until 25 April 1974, when the dictatorship was overthrown by another military coup. There were two different political regimes during this long experience of authoritarianism. Crises and movements calling for the restoration of liberal order blighted the Military Dictatorship established in 1926. Having failed to institutionalise itself, in the beginning of the 1930s, the Military Dictatorship gave way to Salazar's “New State”. António de Oliveira Salazar was a conservative Catholic politician and university professor who remained Portugal's dictator until he was incapacitated in 1968. His replacement was one of his disciples, the law professor Marcello Caetano. After a brief period of “liberalisation”, the New State was overthrown by the military coup that set Portugal on the path to democracy.

With the restoration of democracy, political scientists found themselves divided between those who classed the New State as “authoritarian”, based in the typology developed by Juan J. Linz, or as a type of “fascism without a fascist movement”. The Salazarist institutions, created by the 1933 Constitution, formally maintained fundamental freedoms; however, they were successively eliminated by decree. The Constitution retained a directly elected head of state and a parliament (AN – Assembleia Nacional) to which deputies were elected from a single list prepared by the single-party, the National Union (UN – Uniao Nacional), as well as a corporatist chamber (Camara Corporativa).

According to the 1933 constitution, political crimes were excepted from the prohibition of imprisonment without trial (Article 8); it also permitted “security measures”, that is, the extension of prison sentences by administrative decision. With the dictatorship's consolidation, political repression came under the auspices of the regime's political police, the Vigilance and State Defense Police (PVDE – Policia de Vigilancia e Defesa do Estado), which was created in 1933 out of the unification of police forces inherited from the Military Dictatorship. Despite two name changes, Salazar's political police maintained a constant presence, and was not abolished until the restoration of democracy in 1974. While formally under the control of the Interior Ministry, its independence increased, dominating throughout the investigation and presentation of cases to the political courts. The PVDE became the spine of the system of repression, arresting, torturing and, occasionally, murdering opponents of the regime.