History of Portugal

Aroeira 3 skull of 400,000 year old Homo heidelbergensis.
The oldest trace of human history in Portugal.

The region of present-day Portugal has been inhabited by humans since circa 400,000 years ago, when Homo heidelbergensis entered the area. The oldest human fossil found in Portugal is the 400,000-year-old Aroeira 3 H. Heidelbergensis skull discovered in the Cave of Aroeira in 2014.[9] Later Neanderthals roamed the northern Iberian peninsula and a tooth has been found at Nova da Columbeira cave in Estremadura.[10] Homo sapiens sapiens arrived in Portugal around 35,000 years ago and spread rapidly throughout the country.[11]

Pre-Celtic tribes inhabited Portugal leaving a remarkable cultural footprint. The Cynetes developed a written language, leaving many stelae, which are mainly found in the south of Portugal.

Early in the first millennium BC, several waves of Celts invaded Portugal from Central Europe and intermarried with the local populations to form several different ethnic groups, with many tribes. The Celtic presence in Portugal is traceable, in broad outline, through archaeological and linguistic evidence. They dominated much of northern and central Portugal; but in the south, they were unable to establish their stronghold, which retained its non-Indo-European character until the Roman conquest.[12] In southern Portugal, some small, semi-permanent commercial coastal settlements were also founded by Phoenician-Carthaginians.

The main language areas in Iberia, circa 300 BC.

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  Dolmen of Cerqueira, Sever do Vouga
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  Archaeological artifact from the work developed in the area of Citânia de Briteiros
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  Cross or cruzado in Citânia de Briteiros
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  Megalithic spirals, cromlech near Évora
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  Another artifact from Citânia de Briteiros
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  A pedra formosa Celtic triskelion motifs

Numerous pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula inhabited the territory when a Roman invasion occurred in the 3rd century BC. The Romanization of Hispania took several centuries. The Roman provinces that covered present-day Portugal were Lusitania in the south and Gallaecia in the north.

Numerous Roman sites are scattered around present-day Portugal. Some of the urban remains are quite large, such as Conímbriga and Miróbriga. Several works of engineering, such as baths, temples, bridges, roads, circuses, theatres, and layman's homes are preserved throughout the country. Coins, sarcophagi, and ceramics are also numerous.

Following the fall of Rome, the Kingdom of the Suebi and the Visigothic Kingdom controlled the territory between the 5th and 8th centuries.

At the end of the 9th century, a small minor county based in the area of Portus Cale was established by Vímara Peres on the orders of King Alfonso III of León, Galicia and Asturias. After annexing the County of Portugal into one of the several counties that made up its realms, King Alfonso III named Vímara Peres as its first count. Since the rule of Count Diogo Fernandes, the county increased in size and importance and, from the 10th century onward, with Count Gonçalo Mendes as Magnus Dux Portucalensium (Grand Duke of the Portuguese), the Portuguese counts started using the title of duke, indicating even larger importance and territory. The region became known simultaneously as Portucale, Portugale, and Portugalia—the County of Portugal.[27] The Kingdom of Asturias was later divided as a result of dynastic disputes; the northern region of Portugal became part of the Kingdom of Galicia and later part of the Kingdom of León.

Suebi-Visigothic arts and architecture, in particular sculpture, had shown a natural continuity with the Roman period. With the Reconquista, new artistic trends took hold, with Galician-Asturian influences more visible than the Leonese. The Portuguese group was characterized by a general return to classicism. The county courts of Viseu and Coimbra played a very important role in this process. Mozarabic architecture was found in the south, in Lisbon and beyond, while in the Christian realms Galician-Portuguese and Asturian architecture prevailed.[26]

As a vassal of the Kingdom of León, Portugal grew in power and territory and occasionally gained de facto independence during weak Leonese reigns; Count Mendo Gonçalves even became regent of the Kingdom of Leon between 999 and 1008. In 1070, the Portuguese Count Nuno Mendes desired the Portuguese title and fought the Battle of Pedroso on 18 February 1071 with Garcia II of Galicia, who gained the Galician title, which included Portugal, after the 1065 partition of the Leonese realms. The battle resulted in Nuno Mendes' death and the declaration of Garcia as King of Portugal, the first person to claim this title.[28] Garcia styled himself as "King of Portugal and Galicia" (Garcia Rex Portugallie et Galleciae). Garcia's brothers, Sancho II of Castile and Alfonso VI of Leon, united and annexed Garcia's kingdom in 1071 as well. They agreed to split it among themselves; however, Sancho was killed by a noble the next year. Alfonso took Castile for himself and Garcia recovered his kingdom of Portugal and Galicia. In 1073, Alfonso VI gathered all power, and beginning in 1077, styled himself Imperator totius Hispaniæ (Emperor of All Hispania). When the emperor died, the Crown was left to his daughter Urraca, while his illegitimate daughter Teresa inherited the County of Portugal; in 1095, Portugal broke away from the Kingdom of Galicia. Its territories, consisting largely of mountains, moorland and forests, were bounded on the north by the Minho River, and on the south by the Mondego River.

At the end of the 11th century, the Burgundian knight Henry became count of Portugal and defended its independence by merging the County of Portugal and the County of Coimbra. His efforts were assisted by a civil war that raged between León and Castile and distracted his enemies. Henry's son Afonso Henriques took control of the county upon his death. The city of Braga, the unofficial Catholic centre of the Iberian Peninsula, faced new competition from other regions. Lords of the cities of Coimbra and Porto fought with Braga's clergy and demanded the independence of the reconstituted county.

Portugal traces its national origin to 24 June 1128, the date of the Battle of São Mamede. Afonso proclaimed himself Prince of Portugal after this battle and in 1139, he assumed the title King of Portugal. In 1143, the Kingdom of León recognised him as King of Portugal by the Treaty of Zamora. In 1179, the papal bull Manifestis Probatum of Pope Alexander III officially recognised Afonso I as king. After the Battle of São Mamede, the first capital of Portugal was Guimarães, from which the first king ruled. Later, when Portugal was already officially independent, he ruled from Coimbra.

The Algarve, the southernmost region of Portugal, was finally conquered from the Moors in 1249, and in 1255 the capital shifted to Lisbon.[29] Spain finally completed its Reconquista until 1492, almost 250 years later.[30] Portugal's land boundaries have been notably stable for the rest of the country's history. The border with Spain has remained almost unchanged since the 13th century. The Treaty of Windsor (1386) created an alliance between Portugal and England that remains in effect to this day. Since early times, fishing and overseas commerce have been the main economic activities.

Vasco da Gama landing in Kerala, India.

In 1484, Portugal officially rejected Columbus' idea of reaching India from the west, because it was seen as unfeasible. Some historians have claimed that the Portuguese had already performed fairly accurate calculations concerning the size of the world and therefore knew that sailing west to reach the Indies would require a far longer journey than navigating to the east. However, this continues to be debated. Thus began a long-lasting dispute that eventually resulted in the signing of the Treaty of Tordesillas with Castile in 1494. The treaty divided the (largely undiscovered) New World equally between the Portuguese and the Castilians, along a north–south meridian line 370 leagues (1770 km/1100 miles) west of the Cape Verde islands, with all lands to the east belonging to Portugal and all lands to the west to Castile.

Map of Brazil issued by Portuguese explorers in 1519.

With the expedition beyond the Cape of Good Hope by Bartolomeu Dias in 1487,[37] the richness of India was now accessible. Indeed, the cape takes its name from the promise of rich trade with the east. Between 1498 and 1501, Pêro de Barcelos and João Fernandes Lavrador explored North America. At the same time, Pêro da Covilhã reached Ethiopia by land. Vasco da Gama sailed for India and arrived at Calicut on 20 May 1498, returning in glory to Portugal the next year.[36] The Monastery of Jerónimos was built, dedicated to the discovery of the route to India.

At the end of the 15th century, Portugal expelled some local Sephardic Jews, along with those refugees who had come from Castile and Aragon after 1492. In addition, many Jews were forcibly converted to Catholicism and remained as conversos. Many Jews remained secretly Jewish, in danger of persecution by the Portuguese Inquisition. In 1506, 3,000 New Christians were massacred in Lisbon.[38]

In the spring of 1500, Pedro Álvares Cabral set sail from Cape Verde with 13 ships and crews and nobles such as Nicolau Coelho; the explorer Bartolomeu Dias and his brother Diogo; Duarte Pacheco Pereira (author of the Esmeraldo); nine chaplains; and some 1,200 men.[39] From Cape Verde, they sailed southwest across the Atlantic. On 22 April 1500, they caught sight of land in the distance.[39] They disembarked and claimed this new land for Portugal. This was the coast of what later became the Portuguese colony of Brazil.[39]

The real goal of the expedition, however, was to open sea trade to the empires of the east. Trade with the east had effectively been cut off since the Conquest of Constantinople in 1453. Accordingly, Cabral turned away from exploring the coast of the new land of Brazil and sailed southeast, back across the Atlantic and around the Cape of Good Hope. Cabral reached Sofala on the east coast of Africa in July 1500.[39] In 1505, a Portuguese fort was established here and the land around the fort later formed the Portuguese colony of Mozambique.[40]

Cabral's fleet then sailed east and landed in Calicut in India in September 1500.[41] Here they traded for pepper and, more significantly, opened European sea trade with the empires of the east. No longer would the Muslim Ottoman occupation of Constantinople form a barrier between Europe and the east. Ten years later, in 1510, Afonso de Albuquerque, after attempting and failing to capture and occupy Zamorin's Calicut militarily, conquered Goa on the west coast of India.[42]

João da Nova discovered Ascension Island in 1501 and Saint Helena in 1502; Tristão da Cunha was the first to sight the archipelago still known by his name in 1506. In 1505, Francisco de Almeida was engaged to improve Portuguese trade with the far east. Accordingly, he sailed to East Africa. Several small Islamic states along the coast of Mozambique—Kilwa, Brava and Mombasa—were destroyed or became subjects or allies of Portugal.[43] Almeida then sailed on to Cochin, made peace with the ruler and built a stone fort there.[43]

The arrival of the Portuguese in Japan, the first Europeans who managed to reach it, initiating the Nanban ("southern barbarian") period of active commercial and cultural exchange between Japan and the West.

By the 16th century, the two million people who lived in the original Portuguese lands ruled a vast empire with many millions of inhabitants in the Americas, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. From 1514, the Portuguese had reached China and Japan. In the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea, one of Cabral's ships discovered Madagascar (1501), which was partly explored by Tristão da Cunha (1507); Mauritius was discovered in 1507, Socotra occupied in 1506, and in the same year, Lourenço de Almeida visited Ceylon.

In the Red Sea, Massawa was the most northerly point frequented by the Portuguese until 1541, when a fleet under Estevão da Gama penetrated as far as Suez. Hormuz, in the Persian Gulf, was seized by Afonso de Albuquerque in 1515, who also entered into diplomatic relations with Persia. In 1521, a force under Antonio Correia conquered Bahrain and ushered in a period of almost 80 years of Portuguese rule of the Persian Gulf archipelago[44]

Ferdinand Magellan (Fernão de Magalhães)

On the Asiatic mainland, the first trading stations were established by Pedro Álvares Cabral at Cochin and Calicut (1501). More important were the conquests of Goa (1510) and Malacca (1511) by Afonso de Albuquerque, and the acquisition of Diu (1535) by Martim Afonso de Sousa. East of Malacca, Albuquerque sent Duarte Fernandes as envoy to Siam (now Thailand) in 1511 and dispatched to the Moluccas two expeditions (1512, 1514), which founded the Portuguese dominion in Maritime Southeast Asia.[45] The Portuguese established their base in the Spice Islands on the island of Ambon.[46] Fernão Pires de Andrade visited Canton in 1517 and opened up trade with China, where, in 1557, the Portuguese were permitted to occupy Macau. Japan, accidentally reached by three Portuguese traders in 1542, soon attracted large numbers of merchants and missionaries. In 1522, one of the ships in the expedition that Ferdinand Magellan organized in the Spanish service completed the first circumnavigation of the globe.

The Battle of Guararapes

After the 16th century, Portugal gradually saw its wealth and influence decrease. Portugal was officially an autonomous state, but in actuality, the country was in a personal union with the Spanish crown from 1580 to 1640.[60] The Council of Portugal remained independent inasmuch as it was one of the key administrative units of the Castilian monarchy, legally on equal terms with the Council of the Indies.[61] The joining of the two crowns deprived Portugal of a separate foreign policy, and the enemies of Spain became the enemies of Portugal. England had been an ally of Portugal since the Treaty of Windsor in 1386, but war between Spain and England led to a deterioration of the relations with Portugal's oldest ally and the loss of Hormuz in 1622. From 1595 to 1663, the Dutch–Portuguese War led to invasions of many countries in Asia and competition for commercial interests in Japan, Africa and South America. In 1624, the Dutch seized Salvador, the capital of Brazil;[62] in 1630, they seized Pernambuco in northern Brazil.[62] A treaty of 1654 returned Pernambuco to Portuguese control, however.[63] Both the English and the Dutch continued to aspire to dominate both the Atlantic slave trade and the spice trade with the Far East.

The Dutch intrusion into Brazil was long-lasting and troublesome to Portugal. The Dutch captured the entire coast except that of Bahia and much of the interior of the contemporary Northeastern Brazilian states of Bahia, Sergipe, Alagoas, Pernambuco, Paraíba, Rio Grande do Norte and Ceará, while Dutch privateers sacked Portuguese ships in both the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Beginning with a major Spanish–Portuguese military operation in 1625, this trend was reversed, and it laid the foundations for the recovery of remaining Dutch-controlled areas. The other smaller, less developed areas were recovered in stages and relieved of Dutch piracy in the next two decades by local resistance and Portuguese expeditions. After the dissolution of the Iberian Union in 1640, Portugal would re-establish its authority over some lost territories of the Portuguese Empire.

In 1707, as part of the War of the Spanish Succession, a joint Portuguese, Dutch, and British army, led by the Marquis of Minas, António Luís de Sousa, conquered Madrid and acclaimed the Archduke Charles of Austria as King Charles III of Spain. Along the route to Madrid, the army led by the Marquis of Minas was successful in conquering Ciudad Rodrigo and Salamanca. Later in the following year, Madrid was reconquered by Spanish troops loyal to the Bourbons.[66]

In 1762, France and Spain tried to urge Portugal to join the Bourbon Family Compact by claiming that Great Britain had become too powerful due to its successes in the Seven Years' War. Joseph refused to accept and maintained that his 1704 alliance with Britain was no threat.

In spring 1762, Spanish and French troops invaded Portugal from the north as far as the Douro, while a second column sponsored the Siege of Almeida, captured the city, and threatened to advance on Lisbon. The arrival of a force of British troops helped the Portuguese army commanded by the Count of Lippe by blocking the Franco-Spanish advance and driving them back across the border following the Battle of Valencia de Alcántara. At the Treaty of Paris in 1763, Spain agreed to hand Almeida back to Portugal.

The First Republic was intensely anti-clerical. It was secularist and followed the liberal tradition of disestablishing the powerful role that the Catholic Church once held. Historian Stanley Payne points out, "The majority of Republicans took the position that Catholicism was the number one enemy of individualistic middle-class radicalism and must be completely broken as a source of influence in Portugal."[74] Under the leadership of Afonso Costa, the justice minister, the revolution immediately targeted the Catholic Church: churches were plundered, convents were attacked and clergy were harassed. Scarcely had the provisional government been installed when it began devoting its entire attention to an anti-religious policy, in spite of the disastrous economic situation. On 10 October—five days after the inauguration of the Republic—the new government decreed that all convents, monasteries and religious orders were to be suppressed. All residents of religious institutions were expelled and their goods confiscated. The Jesuits were forced to forfeit their Portuguese citizenship.

A series of anti-Catholic laws and decrees followed each other in rapid succession. On 3 November, a law legalizing divorce was passed and then there were laws to recognize the legitimacy of children born outside wedlock, authorize cremation, secularize cemeteries, suppress religious teaching in the schools and prohibit the wearing of the cassock. In addition, the ringing of church bells to signal times of worship was subjected to certain restraints, and the public celebration of religious feasts was suppressed. The government also interfered in the running of seminaries, reserving the right to appoint professors and determine curricula. This whole series of laws authored by Afonso Costa culminated in the law of Separation of Church and State, which was passed on 20 April 1911.

A republican constitution was approved in 1911, inaugurating a parliamentary regime with reduced presidential powers and two chambers of parliament.[75] The Republic provoked important fractures within Portuguese society, notably among the essentially monarchist rural population, in the trade unions, and in the Church. Even the PRP had to endure the secession of its more moderate elements, who formed conservative republican parties like the Evolutionist Party and the Republican Union. In spite of these splits, the PRP, led by Afonso Costa, preserved its dominance, largely due to a brand of clientelist politics inherited from the monarchy.[76] In view of these tactics, a number of opposition forces were forced to resort to violence in order to enjoy the fruits of power. There are few recent studies of this period of the Republic's existence, known as the 'old' Republic. Nevertheless, an essay by Vasco Pulido Valente should be consulted (1997a), as should the attempt to establish the political, social, and economic context made by M. Villaverde Cabral (1988).

The PRP viewed the outbreak of the First World War as a unique opportunity to achieve a number of goals: putting an end to the twin threats of a Spanish invasion of Portugal and of foreign occupation of the African colonies and, at the internal level, creating a national consensus around the regime and even around the party.[77] These domestic objectives were not met, since participation in the conflict was not the subject of a national consensus and since it did not therefore serve to mobilise the population. Quite the opposite occurred: existing lines of political and ideological fracture were deepened by Portugal's intervention in the First World War.[78] The lack of consensus around Portugal's intervention in turn made possible the appearance of two dictatorships, led by General Pimenta de Castro (January–May 1915) and Sidónio Pais (December 1917 – December 1918).

Sidonismo, also known as Dezembrismo ("Decemberism"), aroused a strong interest among historians, largely as a result of the elements of modernity that it contained.[79][80][81][82][83][84] António José Telo has made clear the way in which this regime predated some of the political solutions invented by the totalitarian and fascist dictatorships of the 1920s and 1930s.[85] Sidónio Pais undertook the rescue of traditional values, notably the Pátria ("Homeland"), and attempted to rule in a charismatic fashion.

A move was made to abolish traditional political parties and to alter the existing mode of national representation in parliament (which, it was claimed, exacerbated divisions within the Pátria) through the creation of a corporative Senate, the founding of a single-party (the National Republican Party), and the attribution of a mobilising function to the leader. The state carved out an economically interventionist role for itself while, at the same time, repressing working-class movements and leftist republicans. Sidónio Pais also attempted to restore public order and to overcome some of the rifts of the recent past, making the republic more acceptable to monarchists and Catholics.

Monarchist counter-revolutionary soldiers holding the flag of the monarchy after the capture of Porto in 1919.

The vacuum of power created by Sidónio Pais's murder[86] on 14 December 1918 led the country to a brief civil war. The monarchy's restoration was proclaimed in the north of Portugal (known as the Monarchy of the North) on 19 January 1919, and four days later a monarchist insurrection broke out in Lisbon. A republican coalition government, led by José Relvas, coordinated the struggle against the monarchists by loyal army units and armed civilians. After a series of clashes the monarchists were definitively chased from Oporto on 13 February 1919. This military victory allowed the PRP to return to government and to emerge triumphant from the elections held later that year, having won the usual absolute majority.

It was during this restoration of the 'old' republic that an attempted reform was carried out in order to provide the regime with greater stability. In August 1919 a conservative president was elected – António José de Almeida (whose Evolutionist party had come together in wartime with the PRP to form a flawed, because incomplete, Sacred Union) – and his office was given the power to dissolve parliament. Relations with the Holy See, restored by Sidónio Pais, were preserved. The president used his new power to resolve a crisis of government in May 1921, naming a Liberal government (the Liberal party being the result of the postwar fusion of Evolutionists and Unionists) to prepare the forthcoming elections.

These were held on 10 July 1921, with victory going, as was usually the case, to the party in power. However, Liberal government did not last long. On 19 October a military pronunciamento was carried out during which – and apparently against the wishes of the coup's leaders – a number of prominent conservative figures, including Prime Minister António Granjo, were assassinated. This event, known as the 'night of blood'[87] left a deep wound among political elites and public opinion. There could be no greater demonstration of the essential fragility of the Republic's institutions and proof that the regime was democratic in name only, since it did not even admit the possibility of the rotation in power characteristic of the elitist regimes of the nineteenth century.

A new round of elections on 29 January 1922 inaugurated a fresh period of stability: the PRP once again emerged from the contest with an absolute majority. Discontent with this situation had not, however, disappeared. Numerous accusations of corruption, and the manifest failure to resolve pressing social concerns wore down the more visible PRP leaders while making the opposition's attacks more deadly. At the same time, moreover, all political parties suffered from growing internal factionalism, especially the PRP itself. The party system was fractured and discredited.[76][88]

This is clearly shown by the fact that regular PRP victories at the ballot box did not lead to stable government. Between 1910 and 1926, there were forty-five governments. The opposition of presidents to single-party governments, internal dissent within the PRP, the party's almost non-existent internal discipline, and its desire to group together and lead all republican forces made any government's task practically impossible. Many different formulas were attempted, including single-party governments, coalitions, and presidential executives, but none succeeded. Force was clearly the sole means open to the opposition if the PRP wanted to enjoy the fruits of power.[89][90]

Historians have emphasized the failure and collapse of the republican dream by the 1920s. Sardica summarizes the consensus of historians:

within a few years, large parts of the key economic forces, intellectuals, opinion-makers and middle classes changed from left to right, trading the unfulfilled utopia of a developing and civic republicanism for notions of "order," "stability" and "security". For many who had helped, supported or simply cheered the Republic in 1910, hoping that the new political situation would repair the monarchy's flaws (government instability, financial crisis, economic backwardness and civic anomie), the conclusion to be drawn, in the 1920s, was that the remedy for national maladies called for much more than the simple removal of the king....The First Republic collapsed and died as a result of the confrontation between raised hopes and meager deeds.[91]

Sardica, however, also points out the permanent impact of the republican experiment:

Despite its overall failure, the First Republic endowed twentieth-century Portugal with an insurpassable and enduring legacy—a renewed civil law, the basis for an educational revolution, the principle of separation between State and Church, the overseas empire (only brought to an end in 1975), and a strong symbolic culture whose materializations (the national flag, the national anthem and the naming of streets) nobody has dared to alter and which still define the present-day collective identity of the Portuguese. The Republic's prime legacy was indeed that of memory.[92]

Gomes da Costa and his troops march victorious into Lisbon on 6 June 1926.

By the mid-1920s the domestic and international scenes began to favour another authoritarian solution, wherein a strengthened executive might restore political and social order. Since the opposition's constitutional route to power was blocked by the various means deployed by the PRP to protect itself, it turned to the army for support. The political awareness of the armed forces had grown during the war, and many of their leaders had not forgiven the PRP for sending them to a war they did not want to fight.[93]

They seemed to represent, to conservative forces, the last bastion of 'order' against the 'chaos' that was taking over the country. Links were established between conservative figures and military officers, who added their own political and corporative demands to the already complex equation. The 28 May 1926 coup d'état enjoyed the support of most army units and even of most political parties. As had been the case in December 1917, the population of Lisbon did not rise to defend the Republic, leaving it at the mercy of the army.[93]

There are few global and up-to-date studies of this turbulent third phase of the Republic's existence.[94][95][96] Nevertheless, much has been written about the crisis and fall of the regime and the 28 May movement.[90][97][98][99][100][101] The First Republic continues to be the subject of an intense debate. A historiographical balance sheet by Armando Malheiro da Silva (2000) identifies three main interpretations. For some historians the First Republic was a progressive and increasingly democratic regime. For others it was essentially a prolongation of the liberal and elitist regimes of the 19th century. A third group chooses to highlight the regime's revolutionary, Jacobin and dictatorial nature.

Portuguese colonies in Africa by the time of the Colonial War.

Political chaos, several strikes, harsh relations with the Church, and considerable economic problems aggravated by a disastrous military intervention in the First World War led to the military 28 May 1926 coup d'état. This coup installed the "Second Republic", which started as the Ditadura Nacional (National Dictatorship) and became the Estado Novo (New State) in 1933, led by economist António de Oliveira Salazar. He transformed Portugal into a sort of Fascist regime that evolved into a single-party corporative regime. Portugal, although neutral, informally aided the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War (1936–39).

Salazar's policy after the war was to provide a certain level of liberalization in politics, in terms of organized opposition with more freedom of the press. Opposition parties were tolerated to an extent, but they were also controlled, limited, and manipulated, with the result that they split into factions and never formed a united opposition.[102]

Portugal was officially neutral in World War II, but in practice Salazar collaborated with the British and sold them rubber and tungsten.[103] In late 1943, he allowed the Allies to establish air bases in the Azores to fight German U-boats. Moreover, Salazar helped Spain avoid German control. However, as tungsten was a major product of Portugal, it was also sold to Germany until June 1944, when the threat of a German attack on Portugal was minimal.[104] Salazar worked to regain control of East Timor after the Japanese had seized it.[105] Also, he admitted several thousand Jewish refugees during the war. Lisbon, maintaining air connections with Britain and the U.S., became a hotbed of spies of several war parties and served as the base for the International Red Cross in its distribution of relief supplies to POWs.

In 1961, the Portuguese army was involved in armed action in its colony in Goa against an Indian invasion (see Operation Vijay). The operations resulted in a Portuguese defeat and the loss of the colonies in India. Independence movements also became active in Portuguese Angola, Portuguese Mozambique and Portuguese Guinea; the Portuguese Colonial War started. Some 122,000 Africans died in the conflict.[106] Portugal, during this period, was never an outcast, and was a founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).

After the death of Salazar in 1970, his replacement by Marcelo Caetano offered a certain hope that the regime would open up, the primavera marcelista (Marcelist spring). However the colonial wars in Africa continued, political prisoners remained incarcerated, freedom of association was not restored, censorship was only slightly eased and the elections remained tightly controlled.

The regime retained its characteristic traits: censorship, corporateness, with a market economy dominated by a handful of economical groups, continuous surveillance and intimidation of several sectors of society through the use of a political police and techniques instilling fear (such as arbitrary imprisonment, systematic political persecution and even assassination of anti-regime insurgents).

The Processo Revolucionário Em Curso (Ongoing Revolutionary Process) was the tumultuous period during the Portuguese transition to democracy. It started after a failed right-wing coup d'état on March 11, 1975, and ended after a failed left-wing coup d'état on November 25, 1975. This period was marked by political turmoil, violence, and instability, and the nationalization of industries. Portugal was polarized between the conservative north, with its many independent small farmers, and the radical south, where communists helped peasants seize control of large estates. Finally, in the 1976 legislative election, the Socialist Party came in first in elections and its leader Mário Soares formed Portugal's first democratically elected government in nearly a half century.[107]

The Social Democratic Party and its center-right allies under Prime Minister Aníbal Cavaco Silva gained control of parliament in 1987 and 1991 while the Socialist Party and its allies succeeded in the 1991 presidential election to retain the presidency for its popular leader Mario Soares.[108]

In 1975, Portugal granted independence to its Overseas Provinces (Províncias Ultramarinas in Portuguese) in Africa (Portuguese Mozambique, Portuguese Angola, Portuguese Guinea, Portuguese Cape Verde and Portuguese São Tomé and Príncipe). Nearly 1 million Portuguese or persons of Portuguese descent left these former colonies as refugees.[109] In 1975 Indonesia invaded and annexed the Portuguese province of Portuguese Timor (Timor Leste) in Asia before independence could be granted. The massive exodus of the Portuguese military and citizens from Angola and Mozambique, would prompt an era of chaos and severe destruction in those territories after independence from Portugal in 1975. From May 1974 to the end of the 1970s, over a million Portuguese citizens from Portugal's African territories (mostly from Portuguese Angola and Mozambique) left those territories as destitute refugees – the retornados.[110][111]

The newly independent countries were ravaged by brutal civil wars in the following decades—the Angolan Civil War (1975–2002) and Mozambican Civil War (1977–1992)—responsible for millions of deaths and refugees. The Asian dependency of Macau, after an agreement in 1986, was returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1999. Portugal applied international pressure to secure East Timor's independence from Indonesia, as East Timor was still legally a Portuguese dependency, and recognized as such by the United Nations. After a referendum in 1999, East Timor voted for independence, which Portugal recognized in 2002.

Portuguese rejoice during the 1975 Carnation Revolution.

With the 1975–1976 independence of its colonies (apart from Macau), the 560-year-old Portuguese Empire effectively ended. Simultaneously, 15 years of war effort also came to an end; many Portuguese returned from the colonies (the retornados) and came to comprise a sizeable proportion of the population: approximately 580,000 of Portugal's 9.8 million citizens in 1981.[112] This opened new paths for the country's future just as others closed. In 1986, Portugal entered the European Economic Community and left the European Free Trade Association which had been founded by Portugal and its partners in 1960. The country joined the euro in 1999. The Portuguese Empire ended de facto in 1999 when Macau was returned to China, and de jure in 2002 when East Timor became independent.

Economic development was one of the major objectives of the Carnation Revolution and it was widely perceived that the new democracy would have the same unfortunate fate of the previous democratic regimes in Portugal (Constitutional Monarchy and First Republic) if, like them, it failed to provide economic development and decent standards of living to its citizens.[113] Relative to Western Europe, Portugal remained stagnant (and thus poor and underdeveloped) for most of the Estado Novo regime (particularly in the first 30 years), but the modernization of the economy and development of the country still started in the last years of the regime, with a period of strong growth from 1961 to 1973. However, the gap between Portugal and most of Western Europe was still abysmal by the mid-1970s. Overall, the Third Republic gave continuity to the growth started in the 1960s and was marked by a major socio-economic development (particularly until the early 2000s).[114] GDP per capita rose from 50% of EC-12 average in 1970[115] to 70% in 2000,[115][114] which nonetheless represented an approach to the Western European standards of living without precedents in the previous centuries. Concurrent with the economic development, the Third Republic also witnessed major improvements in health, education, infrastructure, housing and welfare.[116][113] However, as of 2019, Portugal still has not converged with the most advanced economies of Central and Northern Europe, as the economy has been stagnant since the early 2000s.

The Portuguese economy declined in the centuries following the end of the Age of Discoveries[117] and neither the Constitutional Monarchy (1834–1910) nor the First Republic (1910–1926) were able to put the country in the path to industrialization and development. While António de Oliveira Salazar managed to discipline the Portuguese public finances in the 1930s, the first three decades of the Estado Novo regime were also marked by a relative stagnation and underdevelopment. While Western world enjoyed strong economic growth, Portugal remained behind.[118] As such, by 1960 the Portuguese GDP per capita was only 38% of the EC-12 average,[119] and Portugal was one of the most backward countries in Europe.[120] However, things started to change in the late Estado Novo: starting in the early 1960s, Portugal entered in a period of robust economic growth and structural modernization, owing to a liberalization of the economy and the rise of a new elite (which was developmental, technocratic and politically liberal).[121][122] As an expression of such economic opening, in 1960 Portugal was one of the EFTA founding member states. Such remarkable growth period allowed the Portuguese GDP per capita to reach 56% of the EC-12 average by 1973.[119]

In the early 1970s, the government of Marcelo Caetano paved some foundations for a welfare state (which actually was only built after the April 25, 1974, revolution), with reforms in health (Gonçalves Ferreira reform) and education (Veiga Simão reform). However, the new wealth acquired from the 1960–73 growth was unevenly distributed, and the 1960s were also marked by mass emigration.[123] The April 25, 1974, revolution happened when this growth period was fading, owing to the 1973 oil crisis. However, the political turmoil following the April 25, 1974, coup (mainly from March to November 1975) definitively led to the end of such economic growth period. Portugal lost suddenly and chaotically its African possessions and from May 1974 to the end of the 1970s, over a million Portuguese citizens from Portugal's African territories (mostly from Portuguese Angola and Mozambique) left those territories and arrived at metropolitan Portugal as destitute refugees – the retornados.[110][111]

The neighborhood of Parque das Nações, in Lisbon, where was held the 1998 World Exposition, is a symbol of the economic modernization and development of Portugal in the late 20th century.[124]

The first 10 years of the Third Republic, in the context of the transition to democracy, were years of economic troubles, during which Portugal received two IMF-monitored bailouts (from 1977–1979 and from 1983–1985). However, despite an overall crisis from 1973 to 1985, there were some years of very high economic growth, and reforms were enacted that allowed to improve standards of living and level of development, such as the construction of a true Social Security scheme, universal health coverage and the continuation of the process of increasing access to education.[125] In 1985 Portugal left the second IMF bailout and in 1986 the country entered the European Economic Community (and left the EFTA). Strong economic growth resumed. The growth of many of Portugal's main exporting companies[126] and the European Union's structural and cohesion funds were leading forces in a new period of robust economic growth and socio-economic development which would last (though with a short crisis around 1992–1994) to the early 2000s. In 1991, GDP per capita surpassed the 1973 level[119] (relative to EEC) and by 2000 it had achieved 70% of the EU-12 average, which nonetheless constituted an approach to the Western European standards of living without precedents in the centuries before.[127] However, the economy has been stagnant since the early 2000s (around the accession to Euro) and was hit hard by the effects of the Great Recession: public debt (historically below or in average to that of Europe[113] and Germany[128]) shot up from 68% of GDP in 2007 to 126% in 2012,[129] which was one of the factors that led to a 78-billion-euro IMF/EU-monitored bailout from 2011 to 2014. Economic growth has resumed in the mid-2010s.

Some indicators can be provided to illustrate the major socio-economic development Portugal endured in the Third Republic. Portuguese GDP per capita was at 54% of the average of Northern and Central European countries in 1975[130] (up from 38% in 1960,[119] owing to the remarkable growth in the 1960s and early 1970s) more or less the same level it was 10 years later (owing to the crisis), from when it rose from 55% in 1985[131] to a virtually unprecedented 70% in 2000.[127][114] In 1970, there were 94 physicians by 100,000 inhabitants, while in 1990 there were 281, and in 2011 there were 405.[132][113] In 1970, infant mortality rate in Portugal was 55.5 per 1,000 live births (in France it was 18.2).[133] Infant mortality rate declined to 10.9 in 1990 and 2.5 in 2010 (by which time, it was one of lowest in the world).[133] In 1970, only 37% of deliveries were held in official health facilities, while by 1985 such number had risen to 96% and by 2000 it was close to 100%.[134][113][116] According to a political analyst, "almost all health data transport Portugal from the Third World to the First in two decades".[113] In 1970, only 3.8% of teenagers were enrolled in high school; such number rose to 28% in 1990, 59% in 2000 and 71% in 2010.[135] The illiteracy rate was 26% in 1970 (by comparison, in Spain it was 9%s[113]) and declined to 11% in 1990 and 5% in 2010.[136] In housing, major improvements happened: in 1970 only 47% of households had piped water supply and 68% had access to electricity.[113] Historical data shows that in 1991, 86% of households had piped water supply and 98% had access to electricity.[113]

By 2021, Portugal had the 4th lowest GDP per capita (PPP) of the eurozone.[137]

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