Dinero y oro para el “ejército salvador”: campañas de auxilio popular al franquismo en Portugal durante la Guerra Civil Española

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Spanish Civil War had important political, social and economic consequences for Portugal, whose government, led by the dictator António de Oliveira Salazar, acted politically as if the Spanish war were a national affair. Diplomacy, the propaganda services, as well as several thousand combatants and the Portuguese territory itself served the interests of General Franco during the war, in a context of media agitation that especially stimulated the organization of popular aid campaigns by Portuguese society and Spanish immigrants in aid of the army that rebelled against the legal Spanish government. Within this framework of study, the aim of this work, which uses original documentary and newspaper sources, is to rescue and analyze the most paradigmatic episodes of collaboration between the Spanish rebel government and various Portuguese institutions or media, among them were the newspaper A Voz and the Rádio Club Português, to raise funds, material goods and food between the Portuguese and the Spanish colony in Portugal, which served to finance and legitimize the factional side, especially during the first year of the battle, between July 1936 and June 1937. In conclusion, the research shows that, through a process of political instrumentalization, Franco’s agents and his allies in Portugal spread alarmist messages and speeches that appealed to humanitarian feelings in order to move and mobilize the Portuguese population and Spanish residents in aid of the rebel side, which managed to raise considerable amounts of money.