António de Oliveira Salazar

He was born in 1889 in Vimieiro, in the municipality of Santa Comba Dão.¹ A professor of Economics and Finance at the University of Coimbra and a leading figure in the Catholic Centre, he was called in by the Military Dictatorship, which had emerged from the coup of 28 May 1926, to resolve the crisis in the public accounts. He took office as Minister of Finance on 27 April 1928, with a reputation as a “financial wizard”, and in his inaugural speech he stated that he knew very well what he wanted and where he was going.²³ As Minister of Finance and, on an interim basis, of the Colonies, in 1930 he had the Colonial Act enacted, which subordinated the interests of the colonies to those of the metropole.⁴

On 5 July 1932 he became President of the Council, the head of government.² With a small group of collaborators he devised the 1933 Constitution, which instituted the Estado Novo (“New State”): a regime with no party other than the National Union, with freedom of expression, assembly and association left to “special laws”, and power concentrated in the President of the Council, who answered only to the President of the Republic.⁵ The political police, censorship and organisations that regimented young people, women and workers sustained the regime and the cult of the leader, which was fed by the propaganda of António Ferro, housed from 1940 in the Palácio Foz.⁶⁷

On 4 July 1937 he escaped a bomb attack on Avenida Barbosa du Bocage, on his way to Mass.⁸ In May 1938 he moved into the Palacete de São Bento, which the State had expropriated as the official residence of the President of the Council and which a monumental staircase linked to Parliament.⁹

In 1968, a fall from a chair left him unable to govern, and Marcelo Caetano replaced him.¹⁰⁵ He went on living at São Bento until July 1970 and died in Lisbon on 27 July, aged 81 — “without ever suspecting that he was no longer President of the Council”, wrote the Diário de Notícias.⁹¹⁰¹¹