Founding of the Estado Novo
António de Oliveira Salazar promulgated the Estado Novo constitution in 1933, formalising the authoritarian system he had been constructing since becoming Finance Minister in 1928. The constitution established a nominally corporatist order: trade unions were replaced by state-controlled syndicates, political parties were replaced by the single União Nacional, and electoral forms were maintained without competitive content. The PVDE secret police (later renamed PIDE) enforced political conformity through surveillance, arrest, and the notorious long-term imprisonment of political opponents at the Tarrafal concentration camp in Cape Verde. Salazar fused Catholic social doctrine, anti-communism, and imperial nationalism into a coherent conservative ideology he called 'organic democracy': the family, the parish, and the guild as the natural units of society, in contrast to what he presented as the atomising individualism of liberalism and the class warfare of socialism. The propaganda campaign binding metropolitan identity to the African empire — 'Portugal is not a small country,' the famous map overlay showing the colonies across Europe — was central to regime legitimacy. Salazar lent material support to Franco in the Spanish Civil War and aligned loosely with the fascist powers, while carefully maintaining Portuguese neutrality and British alliance during the Second World War. The Estado Novo survived until the Carnation Revolution of 25 April 1974.
- Year: 1933 CE
- Category: Political
