28 May Coup and the End of the First Republic
The First Portuguese Republic, founded in 1910 after the overthrow of the monarchy, had proved chronically unstable: sixteen years produced forty-five governments, recurring military revolts, the trauma of participation in the First World War, post-war economic dislocation, and violent suppression of labour movements. On 28 May 1926, a military coup launched from Braga and Lisbon ended the Republic without serious resistance and installed the Ditadura Nacional — a military directorate without civilian government. The new regime faced the same fiscal crisis that had destabilised the Republic. Unable to balance the budget through any orthodox means, the military turned in 1928 to António de Oliveira Salazar, a Catholic corporatist economics professor at Coimbra University, and gave him sweeping budgetary powers as Finance Minister. Salazar achieved a balanced budget within his first year through severe austerity and quickly became indispensable. He was appointed Prime Minister in 1932 and formalised his authoritarian system in the Estado Novo constitution of 1933, which established a conservative Catholic-corporatist one-party state modelled partly on Mussolini's Italy. The 1926 coup was thus the hinge between parliamentary chaos and the Estado Novo that would govern Portugal until 1974 — one of the longest-lasting authoritarian regimes in twentieth-century Europe.
- Year: 1926 CE
- Category: Political
