Ditadura de antonio salazar biography

Prime Minister of Portugal from to

His Excellency António de Oliveira Salazar GCTEGCSEGColIHGCIC
Official portrait, c.&#;
In office 5 July &#;– 27 September [1]
President
Preceded by	Domingos Oliveira
Succeeded by	Marcelo Caetano
In office 13 April &#;– 4 December
Prime Minister	Himself
Preceded by	Júlio Botelho Moniz
Succeeded by	Manuel Gomes de Araújo
Acting 6 November &#;– 6 November [2]
Prime Minister	Himself
Preceded by	Armindo Monteiro
Succeeded by	José Caeiro da Mata
Acting 11 May &#;– 6 September
Prime Minister	Himself
Preceded by	Abílio Passos e Sousa
Succeeded by	Fernando Santos Costa
In office 27 April &#;– 28 August [2]
Prime Minister
Preceded by	José Vicente de Freitas
Succeeded by	João Pinto da Costa Leite
In office 3 June &#;– 19 June
Prime Minister	José Mendes Cabeçadas
Preceded by	José Mendes Cabeçadas
Succeeded by	Filomeno da Câmara de Melo Cabral
In office July &#;– September
Constituency	Guimarães
Offices held ad interim Acting 18 April &#;– 9 August Prime Minister Himself Preceded by Óscar Carmona Succeeded by Francisco Craveiro Lopes Acting 15 April &#;– 26 April Prime Minister Himself Preceded by Óscar Carmona Succeeded by Óscar Carmona Acting 30 January &#;– 2 February Prime Minister Himself Preceded by Manuel Ortins de Bettencourt Succeeded by Manuel Ortins de Bettencourt Acting 25 January &#;– 5 February Prime Minister Himself Preceded by Manuel Ortins de Bettencourt Succeeded by Manuel Ortins de Bettencourt Acting 5 July &#;– 6 July Prime Minister Himself Preceded by António Lopes Mateus Succeeded by Daniel Rodrigues de Sousa Acting 3 November &#;– 6 November Prime Minister Domingos Oliveira Preceded by Eduardo Marques Succeeded by Eduardo Marques Acting 21 January &#;– 20 July Prime Minister Domingos Oliveira Preceded by Eduardo Marques Succeeded by Eduardo Marques
Born	()28 April Vimieiro, Santa Comba Dão, Portugal
Died	27 July () (aged&#;81) Lisbon, Portugal
Political party	National Union (–)
Other political affiliations	Portuguese Catholic Centre (–)
Height	&#;m (5&#;ft 9&#;in)
Alma mater	University of Coimbra (PhD)
Profession	Economics professor
Signature

António de Oliveira Salazar^[a]GCTEGCSEGColIHGCIC (28 April – 27 July ) was a Portuguese statesman, academic, and economist who served as Portugal's President of the Council of Ministers from to Having come to power under the Ditadura Nacional ("National Dictatorship"), he reframed the regime as the corporatistEstado Novo ("New State"), with himself as a dictator.

The regime he created lasted until , making it one of the longest-lived authoritarian regimes in modern Europe.

A political economy professor at the University of Coimbra, Salazar entered public life as finance minister with the support of President Óscar Carmona after the 28 May coup d'état.

The military of saw themselves as the guardians of the nation in the wake of the instability and perceived failure of the First Republic, but they had no idea how to address the critical challenges of the hour. Within one year, armed with special powers, Salazar balanced the budget and stabilised Portugal's currency.

Salazar produced the first of many budgetary surpluses. He promoted civilian administration in the authoritarian regime when the politics of more and more countries were becoming militarised. Salazar's aim was the de-politicisation of society, rather than the mobilisation of the populace.

Opposed to communism, socialism, syndicalism and liberalism, Salazar's rule was conservative, corporatist and nationalist in nature; it was also capitalist to some extent although in a very conditioned way until the beginning of the final stage of his rule, in the s.^[5] Salazar distanced himself from Nazism and fascism, which he described as a "pagan Caesarism" that did not recognise legal, religious or moral limits.

The "Catholic dictator" of Portugal, Antonio de Oliveira Salazar led one of the longest dictatorships in twentieth-century Europe. In after he suffered a cardiovascular attack, he was removed from power. He died two years later. The son of a modest rural family from Vimieiro, a village in core Portugal, Salazar had a traditional Catholic upbringing and completed most of his intellectual and political education before the First Nature War.

Throughout his life Salazar avoided populist rhetoric. He was generally opposed to the principle of political parties when, in , he created the National Union. Salazar described and promoted the party as a "non-party", and announced that the National Union would be the antithesis of a political party.

He promoted Catholicism but argued that the role of the Church was social, not political, and negotiated the Concordat of that kept the church at arm's length. One of the mottos of the Salazar regime was Deus, Pátria e Família ("God, Fatherland and Family"), although he never turned Portugal into a confessional state.

Salazar supported Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War and played a key role in keeping Portugal and Spain neutral during World War II while still providing aid and assistance to the Allies.^[11] Despite being a dictatorship, Portugal under his rule took part in the founding of some international organisations.

The country was one of the 12 founding members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in , linked the European Payments Union in and was one of the founding members of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) in ; it was also a founding member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Growth in Under Salazar's rule, Portugal also joined the General Consent on Tariffs and Trade in and began the Portuguese Colonial War.

The years between the conclusion of World War II and represented the best period of economic expansion for Portugal in the 20th century. During this era, growth rates reached unprecedented levels and sustained this momentum over an extended period.

Following over a century of either economic stagnation or divergence from wealthier global economies, Portugal's economy began to consistently converge, particularly accelerating during the s.^[14] Portugal's GDP per capita in relation to the EU reached 66% in , falling afterwards to below 65% in ^[15]

The doctrine of pluricontinentalism was the basis of Salazar's territorial policy, a conception of the Portuguese Empire as a unified mention that spanned multiple continents.

After Salazar fell into a coma in , President Américo Tomás dismissed him from the position of prime minister.

With the Estado Novo enabling him to activity vast political powers, Salazar used censorship and the PIDE classified police to quell opposition.

One opposition leader, Humberto Delgado, who openly challenged Salazar's regime in the presidential election, was first exiled and became involved in several violent actions aimed at overthrowing the regime, including the Portuguese cruise liner Santa Maria hijacking and the Beja Revolt ultimately leading to his assassination by the regime's secret police, the PIDE, in

The Estado Novo collapsed during the Carnation Revolution of , four years after Salazar's death.

In recent decades, "new sources and methods are being employed by Portuguese historians in an attempt to come to grips with the dictatorship, which lasted forty-eight years."

Background

Family

Salazar was born in Vimieiro, nearby Santa Comba Dão (Viseu District), to a family of incremental income on 28 April His father, a small landowner, had started as an agricultural labourer and became the manager for the Perestrelos, a wealthy family of rural landowners of the region of Santa Comba Dão who possessed lands and other assets scattered between Viseu and Coimbra.

He was the only male child of two fifth cousins, António de Oliveira (–) and his wife Maria do Resgate Salazar (–).

According to Portuguese naming customs, which place the mother's surname first, Salazar's specify would have been "António Salazar de Oliveira" – a pattern followed by his four sisters – but, for reasons that remain unclear,^[b] the order of his surnames was reversed, and he thus became "António de Oliveira Salazar".

His four older sisters were Maria do Resgate Salazar de Oliveira, an elementary school teacher; Elisa Salazar de Oliveira; Maria Leopoldina Salazar de Oliveira; and Laura Salazar de Oliveira, who in married Abel Pais de Sousa, brother of Mário Pais de Sousa&#;[pt], who served as Salazar's Interior Minister.

Education

Salazar attended the primary academy in his small village and later went to another first school in Viseu. At age 11, he won a free place at Viseu's seminary, where he studied for eight years, from to Salazar considered becoming a priest, but like many who entered the seminary very young, he decided not to proceed to the priesthood after receiving holy orders.

He went to Coimbra in during the first years of the Portuguese First Republic to study rule at the University of Coimbra. During these student years in Coimbra, he developed a particular interest in finance and graduated in law with distinction, specialising in finance and economic policy.

He graduated in , with 19 points out of 20, and in the meantime, became an assistant professor of economic policy at the Law Academy.

António de Oliveira Salazar - Wikipedia: António de Oliveira Salazar [a] GCTE GCSE GColIH GCIC (28 April – 27 July ) was a Portuguese statesman, academic, and economist who served as Portugal's President of the Council of Ministers from to

In , he assumed the chairs of economic policy and finance at the university by appointment of professor José Alberto dos Reis. In the following year, Salazar was awarded his doctorate.

Politics and Estado Novo

Background

Further information: First Portuguese Republic

Salazar was twenty-one years old at the time of the revolution of 5 October , which overthrew the Portuguese monarchy and instituted the First Portuguese Republic.

The political institutions of the First Republic lasted until , when it was replaced by a military dictatorship. This was first known as the "Ditadura Militar" (Military Dictatorship) and then, from , as the "Ditadura Nacional" (National Dictatorship).

The era of the First Republic has been described as one of "continual anarchy, government corruption, rioting and pillage, assassinations, arbitrary imprisonment and religious persecution". It witnessed the inauguration of eight presidents, 44 cabinet re-organisations and 21 revolutions.

The first government of the Republic lasted less than 10 weeks and the longest-ruling government lasted little over a year. Revolution in Portugal became a byword in Europe. The price of living increased twenty-fivefold, while the currency fell to a 1&#;33 part of its gold value.

Portugal's public finances entered a critical phase, having been under imminent threat of default since at least the s.^[28] The gaps between the prosperous and the poor continued to widen. The regime led Portugal to enter World War I in , a move that only aggravated the perilous articulate of affairs in the land.

Concurrently, the Catholic Church was hounded by the anti-clerical Freemasons of the Republic and political assassination and terrorism became commonplace.

Alguns haveriam de colaborar nos seus governos. Acompanha Cerejeira em palestras e debates. Salazar esteve apenas dois dias de estadia em Lisboa, instalado no Hotel Borges. Salazar respondeu ao arcebispo passadas duas semanas.

Between and , according to official police figures, bombs were detonated in the streets of Lisbon. The British diplomat Sir George Rendel said that he could not describe the "political background as anything but deplorable&#; very distinct from the orderly, prosperous and well-managed country that it later became under the government of Senhor Salazar".

Salazar would hold in mind the political chaos of this time when he later ruled Portugal.

Public discontent led to the 28 May coup d'état, which was welcomed by most civilian classes. At the time, the prevailing view in Portugal was that political parties were elements of division and that parliamentarianism was in crisis.

This led to general support, or at least tolerance, of an authoritarian regime.

Early path

Further information: Ditadura Nacional

As a immature man, Salazar's involvement in politics stemmed from his Catholic views, which were aroused by the new anti-clerical stance of the First Republic.

He became a member of the non-politically affiliated Catholic movement Centro Académico de Democracia Cristã&#;[pt] (Academic Centre for Christian Democracy). Salazar rejected the monarchists because he felt that they were opposed to the social doctrines espoused by Pope Leo XIII to which it is said he was very sympathetic, despite the fact that they were contrary to his actions.

He was a frequent contributor to journals concerned with social studies, especially the weekly O Imparcial, which was directed by his friend (and later Cardinal Patriarch of Lisbon) Manuel Gonçalves Cerejeira. Local press described him as "one of the most powerful minds of the new generation".

In , Salazar was persuaded to stand as a candidate for election to parliament, though he did so reluctantly.

He appeared once in the chamber and never returned, struck by the disorder he witnessed and a feeling of futility. Salazar was convinced that liberal individualism had led to fragmentation of society and a perversion of the democratic process. After the coup d'état of 28 May which established the Ditadura Nacional regime, Salazar briefly united the government of José Mendes Cabeçadas as Minister of Finance.

On 11 June, a petty group of officers drove from Lisbon to Santa Comba Dão to persuade him to be Minister of Finance. Salazar spent five days in Lisbon. The conditions he proposed to rule spending were refused, he adv resigned, and in two hours he was on a coach back to Coimbra University, explaining that because of the frequent disputes and general disorder in the government, he could not do his work properly.

Portugal's overriding problem in was its gigantic public debt, much of which was owed to foreign entities.

Several times between and , Salazar turned down appointment to the finance ministry. He pleaded ill-health, devotion to his aged parents and a preference for the academic cloisters. In , under the ministry of Sinel de Cordes, the public deficit kept on growing.

The government tried to obtain loans from Baring Brothers under the auspices of the League of Nations, but the conditions were considered unacceptable. With Portugal under the threat of an imminent financial collapse, Salazar finally agreed to become its 81st Finance Minister on 26 April after the republican and Freemason Óscar Carmona was elected president.

However, before accepting the position, he personally secured from Carmona a categorical assurance that as finance minister he would have a free hand to veto expenditure in all government departments, not just his own. Salazar was the financial czar virtually from the day he took office.^{[citation needed]} Within one year, armed with special powers, Salazar balanced the budget and stabilised Portugal's currency.

Salazar produced the first of many budgetary surpluses in Portugal.

In July , Salazar again presented his resignation. His friend Mário de Figueiredo&#;[pt], Minister of Justice, passed new legislation that facilitated the organisation of religious processions.

The new law outraged the republicans, triggered a cabinet crisis, and Figueiredo threatened to resign. Salazar advised Figueiredo against resigning, but told his friend he would join him in his decision. Figueiredo did resign, and Salazar – at that moment hospitalised due to a broken leg – followed suit on 3 July.

Carmona went personally to the hospital on the 4th and asked Salazar to change his mind. Prime Minister José Vicente de Freitas, who took issue with Carmona's policies, left the cabinet. Salazar remained in the cabinet as Minister of Finance, but with additional powers.

Salazar stayed on as finance minister while military prime ministers came and went.

He was the President of the Republic inas interim. He started and led the Estado Novo "New State"the authoritarianright-wing government that dictated Portugal from to His father had been a farm worker who became the farm manager for the Perestrelos family. His great grandfather had been a landowner and nobleman.

From his first successful year in office, he gradually came to embody the financial and political fix to the turmoil of the military dictatorship, which had not produced a clear leader. Finally, on 5 July , President Carmona appointed Salazar as the th prime minister of Portugal, after which he began to operate closer to the mainstream of political sentiment in his country.

The authoritarian government consisted of a right-wing coalition, and he was able to co-opt the moderates of each political current with the aid of censorship and repression directed against those outside of it. Those perceived to be genuine fascists were jailed or exiled.

Conservative Catholics were Salazar's earliest and most loyal supporters, whereas conservative republicans who could not be co-opted became his most deadly opponents during the early period. They attempted several coups, but never presented a united front, consequently these attempts were easily repressed.

Never a true monarchist, Salazar nevertheless gained most of the monarchists' support, as Manuel II of Portugal, the exiled and deposed last king of Portugal, always endorsed Salazar. Later, in , it was due to Salazar's actions that the deposed king was given a state funeral.

António de Oliveira Salazar (born April 28, , Vimieiro, Port.—died July 27, , Lisbon) was a Portuguese economist, who served as prime minister of Portugal for 36 years (–68). Salazar, the son of an estate manager at Santa Comba Dão, was educated at the seminary at Viseu and at the University of Coimbra.

The National Syndicalists were torn between supporting the regime and denouncing it as bourgeois. They were granted enough symbolic concessions for Salazar to win over the moderates, but the lie down were repressed by the political police.

Prime Minister (–)

Formation of the Estado Novo

Further information: Estado Novo (Portugal)

Salazar based his political philosophy on a close meaning of the Catholic social doctrine,much like the contemporary regime of Engelbert Dollfuss in Austria.

The economic system, known as corporatism, was alleged to be based on similar interpretations of the papal encyclicals Rerum novarum (Leo XIII, ) and Quadragesimo anno (Pius XI, ), which were meant to prevent class strife and transform economic concerns secondary to social values.

Rerum novarum argued that labor associations were part of the natural arrange, like the family. The right of men to organise into trade unions and to occupy in collective bargaining, was thus inherent and could not be denied by employers or the state.

Quadragesimo anno provided the blue print for the erection of the corporatist system. But the practice was that stability of the regime was maintained by suppressing human rights and liberties.

A new constitution was drafted by a group of lawyers, businessmen, clerics and university professors, with Salazar the leading soul and Marcelo Caetano also playing a major role.

The constitution created the Estado Novo ("New State"), in theory a corporatist state representing interest groups rather than individuals. He wanted a system in which the people would be represented through corporations, rather than through political parties, and where national interest was given priority over sectional claims.

Salazar thought that the party system had failed irrevocably in Portugal.

Unlike Mussolini or Hitler, Salazar never had the intention to create a party-state. Salazar was against the whole-party concept and in he created the National Union a single-party, which he marketed as a "non-party", announcing that the National Union would be the antithesis of a political party.

The National Union became an ancillary body, not a source of political authority. The National Union was establish up to control and restrain public opinion rather than to mobilize it, the goal was to strengthen and preserve traditional values rather than to induce a new social order.

At no stage did it emerge that Salazar wished it to fulfill the central role the Fascist Party had acquired in Mussolini's Italy, in fact it was meant to be a platform of conservatism, not a revolutionary vanguard. Ministers, diplomats and civil servants were never compelled to join the National Union.

Portuguese historian Ernesto C.

Leal described Salazar's ideology as eclectic and syncretic, and primarily representing a combination of authoritarian nationalist, conservative and anti-liberal tendencies. According to Leal, the most unique distinctive of Salazar's political thinking was Christian corporatism and social corporatism as well as his inclusion of both reformist and traditionalist currents.^[50]

The legislature, called the Assembleia Nacional&#;[pt], was restricted to members of the National Union.

It could initiate legislation, but only concerning matters that did not require government expenditures. The parallel Corporative Chamber included representatives of municipalities, religious, cultural and professional groups and of the official workers' syndicates that replaced free trade unions.

The new constitution introduced by Salazar established an anti-parliamentarian and authoritarian government that would last until The president was to be elected by accepted vote for a period of seven years.

On paper, the new document vested sweeping, almost dictatorial powers in the hands of the president, including the power to appoint and ignore the prime minister. The president was elevated to a position of preeminence as the "balance wheel", the defender and ultimate arbiter of national politics.^[c] President Carmona, however, had allowed Salazar more or less a free hand since appointing him prime minister and continued to perform so; Carmona and his successors would largely be figureheads as he wielded the true might.

Howard J. Wiarda argues that Salazar achieved his position of power not just because of constitutional stipulations, but also because of his character: domineering, absolutist, ambitious, hardworking and intellectually brilliant.

The corporatist constitution was approved in the national Portuguese constitutional referendum of 19 March A draft had been published one year before, and the public was invited to state any objections in the press.

These tended to stay in the realm of generalities and only a handful of people, less than 6,, voted against the fresh constitution. The new constitution was approved with % of the vote, but with , abstentions (in a registered electorate of 1,,) counting as "yes".^[56] Hugh Kay points out that the large number of abstentions might be attributable to the evidence that voters were presented with a package deal to which they had to say "yes" or "no" with no opportunity to accept one clause and reject another.

In this referendum, women were allowed to vote for the first time in Portugal. Their right to vote had not been obtained during the First Republic, despite feminist efforts, and even in the referendum vote, secondary education was a requirement for female voters, whereas males only needed to be able to read and write.^[57]

The year marked a watershed in Portuguese history.

Under Salazar's supervision, Teotónio Pereira, the Sub-Secretary of State of Corporations and Social Welfare, reporting directly to Salazar, enacted extensive legislation that shaped the corporatist structure and initiated a comprehensive social welfare system.

This system was equally anti-capitalist and anti-socialist. The corporatisation of the working class was accompanied by strict legislation regulating business. Workers' organisations were subordinated to state control, but granted a legitimacy that they had never before enjoyed and were made beneficiaries of a variety of new social programs.

Nevertheless, it is important to write down that even in the enthusiastic early years, corporatist agencies were not at the centre of power and therefore corporatism was not the true base of the whole system.

Relationship with fascism

In , Salazar exiled Francisco Rolão Preto as a part of a purge of the governance of the Portuguese National Syndicalists, also known as the Camisas-azuis&#;[pt] ("Blue Shirts").

Salazar denounced the National Syndicalists as "inspired by certain foreign models" (meaning German Nazism) and condemned their "exaltation of youth, the cult of force through direct action, the principle of the superiority of state political power in social life, [and] the propensity for organising masses behind a unattached leader" as fundamental differences between fascism and the Catholic corporatism of the Estado Novo.

After an academic career as professor of political economy and finance, he founded and led the Estado Novo "New State"the authoritarian, right-wing government that presided over and controlled Portugal's socialeconomic, cultural and political life from to Salazar crushed opposition and isolated Portugal from the world people. The regime was overthrown by the military due to the protracted war against independence movement across the Portuguese Empire. After decades of authoritarian, dictatorial dictate during which the poor became poorer and the rich richer, Portugal restored democracy in

Salazar's own party, the National Union, was formed as a subservient umbrella organisation to support the regime itself, and therefore did not have its own philosophy. At the time, according to Kay, many European countries feared what he described as "the destructive potential of communism".

Salazar not only forbade Marxist parties, but also revolutionary fascist-syndicalist parties. One overriding criticism of his regime is that stability was bought and maintained at the expense of suppression of human rights and liberties.

The corporatist state had some similarities to Italian fascism and the authentic corporativismo of Benito Mussolini, but considerable differences in its moral approach to governing.

Although Salazar admired Mussolini and was influenced by his Labour Charter of , he distanced himself from fascist dictatorship, which he considered a pagan Caesarist political system that recognised neither legal nor moral limits. Salazar also viewed German Nazism as espousing pagan elements that he considered repugnant.

Just before World War II, Salazar made this declaration:

We are opposed to all forms of Internationalism, Communism, Socialism, Syndicalism and everything that may partition or minimise, or break up the family. We are against class warfare, irreligion and disloyalty to one's country; against serfdom, a materialistic conception of existence, and might over right.

Scholars such as Stanley G.

Payne, Thomas Gerard Gallagher, Juan José Linz, António Costa Pinto, Roger Griffin, Robert Paxton and Howard J. Wiarda, prefer to evaluate the Portuguese Estado Novo as conservative authoritarian rather than fascist. On the other hand, some Portuguese scholars like Fernando Rosas, Manuel Villaverde Cabral, Manuel de Lucena and Manuel Loff ponder that the Estado Novo should be considered fascist.^[63]Stanley G.

Payne wrote that, "Salazar's system might best be described as one of Authoritarian Corporatism or even authoritarian corporative liberalism", rather than fascism.^[64] Historian Juan José Linz says that fascism never took roots in Salazar' Portugal^[65] The Estado Novo of Portugal differed from fascism even more profoundly than Franco's Spain.

Salazar was, in effect, the dictator of Portugal, but he preferred a passive public and a limited state where social power remained in the hands of the Church, the army, and the big landowners.^[66]Samuel Hoare, the British Ambassador in Madrid during the war, stated that Salazar detested Hitler and all his works.

However, he said that "Europe owes him the great service of having pushed back the frontiers of communism with astonishing energy and exciting muscle.

António de Oliveira Salazar was the prime minister of Portugal from to He also held the ministries of defense (April 13, –December 4, ) and finance (April 28, –August 28, ). Salazar is remembered for his reformative financial policies and for establishing the 'Estado Novo.'.

I only fear that he will go too far in the economic and social field." And talking to a Romanian diplomat: " in spite of everything, Hitler was a political genius, who had realized a colossal work."

Historian Robert Paxton observes that one of the main problems in defining fascism is that it was widely mimicked.

He wrote, "In fascism's heyday, in the s, many regimes that were not functionally fascist borrowed elements of fascist decor in order to lend themselves an aura of force, vitality, and mass mobilization." He went on to observe that Salazar "crushed Portuguese fascism after he had copied some of its techniques of popular mobilization".^[70]

Political scientists Manuel Braga da Cruz and Philippe Schmitter argue that Salazar's regime was not fascist as it lacked most aspects of fascism&#;&#; unlike fascism, Salazarism had no anti-bourgeois or anti-capitalist motivations, there was no determination of the express apparatus by an armed party, and loyalty to Salazar "was more a case of condescending obedience than enthusiastic support on the part of subordinates".

Da Cruz and Schmitter also write down that Salazarism was marked by nationalist and conservative policies rather than expansionist ambitions.^[71] Additionally, Howard J. Wiarda