In search of a new society: an intellectual between modernism and Salazar

Abstract

This article examines the ideological journey taken by the Portuguese intellectual and writer, António Ferro, during his early years. It follows Ferro from his participation in the modernist movement to his adhesion to Salazar’s Estado Novo (New State) as its director of propaganda. Like so many modernists of his time, Ferro was vocal in his admiration for the dynamism and vitality that epitomized fascism, and called for the creation of a new society that could recreate Portugal. The author analyses the process of Ferro’s inner intellectual evolution, which led to both the taming of his modernism and his adoption of a more conventional, traditionalist approach to politics and life. However, the author argues that Ferro’s modernist upbringing was never fully buried, and that his desire for a more radical and ‘total’ project for Portugal was still possible, at least until his appointment as head of propaganda in 1933.