“Mensaje del verdadero Portugal”. Los intelectuales portugueses, la IIª República española y el fascismo ibérico: prensa y propaganda

Abstract

This article takes a closer look at some of the unexplored facets of Portuguese intellectuals’ political role in the beginning of Salazar’s dictatorship in the 1930s. Many prestigious Portuguese intellectuals, like Julio Dantas, Jose de Figueiredo or the Propaganda Ministry director and the “spirit policy” creator, the modernist writer Antonio Ferro, accepted the new ideas of Salazar’s regime and themselves became Iberian fascist propagandists. A paradigmatic case of their fascism activism, on which this research is based, was the international campaign run by some of them in favour of the new Spain of general Franco. This campaign caused a reaction by Portuguese intellectuals exiled in Spain, who published a manifesto entitled “Message of the true Portugal” in October 1936, which lambasted the alliance between the Portuguese government and the Spanish fascist movement.