Controlled Repression in Salazar's Portugal

Abstract

The first of Portugal's two experiments with liberal democratic forms ended in 1926 when the civilian right, the landed oligarchy, and the military joined forces in a counter-revolutionary movement that seized power and laid the ground for Europe's lengthiest dictatorship of the right. For the next forty-eight years, organized opposition to Portuguese authoritarianism was miniscule and ultimately it was contradictions within the apparatus of state that caused the regime to topple in 1974. This was a sudden demise, but over the long term, the regime's dependence on the capability of a single individual Professor Ant6nio d'Oliveira Salazar had been a fatal weakness. At no time did the dictator virtually a reclusive personality encourage internal debate or establish mechanisms for choosing a successor. His was an informal personalist regime that might have come under sustained challenge sooner but for a key mitigating circumstance. Portuguese authoritarianism consistently displayed a high degree of rationality in the area of internal security. For many years, an extremely efficient undercover police apparatus kept down opposition without resorting to total repression: over four decades, political murders committed in metropolitan Portugal amounted to less than 500. However, opposition forces remained continually diffuse and inactive in a country where, after the first few years, the governing elite was not popular, to say the least.