How many Salazars do we really need?

1. Evolution and genetics, in their neo-Darwinian version, along with some supposed free will, dictated that I was born precisely one week before April 25th. As such, the events before and after that date completely escaped me. I did not suffer the hardships of the regime nor did I ride the revolutionary wave of the following years. I was born apolitical. Today, looking back, I would say that I was born free. A freedom a priori , in which one lives in ignorance of past mistakes and rhetorical devices, absolved from the eternal and decisive question – where were you on April 25th?

I was born in the provinces. A town too close to Porto to gain independence and too far from the capital to be granted importance. According to what I've heard, the upheavals of the PREC (Processo Revolucionário em Curso - Ongoing Revolutionary Process) didn't reach there. Bearded soldiers and weapons remained strange and didn't disturb the natural apathy of Gondomar's inhabitants. At home and at school, the emotions and upheaval of the times were not mentioned. Salazar, Cunhal, Marx remained in the shadows of my academic studies and, as a natural consequence of being born into a depoliticized family, anonymous. It was much later that, through a self-taught process, I embarked on the study of political matters.

I then realized that we can be born rich and defend the poor, or be born poor and defend the rich. At least, that's what the media portrayed, and in truth, no one dared to contradict it. The dialectic seemed unstoppable to me, and, coming from a financially middle-class family, I was pleased that people better positioned paid attention to me. It seemed clear that on one side were the good guys and on the other were the bad guys. To be or call oneself interclassist sounded to me like sitting on the fence – and that was, by all accounts, reprehensible.

So, only years later did I ask myself – where is the Right? Because it was evident that there was neither a party, nor a movement, nor an individual who identified themselves as belonging to or seeing themselves reflected in that part of the political spectrum. It was necessary to rescue the past, the historical past, another world from another era, one might say Jurassic, to glimpse its profile. There was no one who could speak for it in the present. A certain bitter taste remained when trying to hear or read about the subject, too many reticences, behind-the-scenes maneuvers and excuses. The most sympathetic and generous smiled heavily at the topic; the most gloomy hurled insults – but all avoided the subject.

At the institutional and party level, especially from a certain left wing, when they wanted to attack a particularly inconvenient position or personality, they would hear someone call them a Salazar supporter or a reactionary . Little more.

Thus, we were in a limbo of slander and ill repute, tinged with wickedness. There could be no doubt: the Estado Novo was evil. This notion was reinforced and further exposed during the commemorations of the regime's founding event, a time when the wounds were revealed and cries of indignation grew louder. There, torture, violence, the PIDE (secret police), censorship – fascism – all appeared. However, an unwelcome silence remained regarding the doctrine, ideology, axiology, and governance of Salazarism. Was it fear, I wondered.

It took decades for the veil to begin to be lifted. The resurgence of the CDS as the PP of Manuel Monteiro and Paulo Portas, some publications and titles, and authors, out of fear or censorship, were still scarce. Anyone who dared to stick their head out was accused of being a fascist. The country was politically rotten, with all the civil consequences that entailed. A significant part of the Portuguese population was silenced. Themes, issues, programs, and ideas were simply stifled because they weren't on the right side of history.

2. Salazar, a professor at Coimbra, initiated into politics from a Catholic perspective, defined himself as a centrist. Christian democracy, in the version of Leo XIII, shaped his doctrine. Once in power, due to the involvement of the most radical military and ideological factions, both left and right, he veered towards the latter for a purely Machiavellian reason: to maintain power. Accused and surrounded by an integralist and national-syndicalist far-right on one side, and by liberalizing republicans on the other, he was soon forced to maneuver through mines and traps. While today he seems to have behaved like an absolute ruler, the truth is that only relatively late did he show signs of adequately dominating the political landscape.

In his early career, he suffered attacks from the radical right, who, under the accusation of being a "white Bolshevik," relegated him to the most serious term in their political lexicon. Pessimistic by nature, averse due to distrust of the people and the pathos of the masses, he never embraced fascism and its violent, revolutionary, and futuristic movement. Above all, he was a conservative, and a Catholic conservative. Reactionary would also be an appropriate description. Besides being distrustful, he was reserved, peaceful, and family-oriented. More Spartan than humble, he boasted of his academic abilities and achievements from Coimbra. He constructed a unique authoritarianism, based on Portuguese history and faith, giving theoretical substance to the non-democratic national right.

It is within this uniquely Portuguese vision, completely averse to internationalism and ideological adventures, that Salazar built his power and doctrine. A doctrine with the necessary flexibility to mitigate the impacts of the international scene, first in the Second World War and later in the struggles for independence in the colonies.

Unlike fascist and communist totalitarian regimes, the statesman of Vimieiro always valued a certain reserve regarding the privacy and conscience of citizens. Not allowing them room for political liberties, he tolerated various dissents and, while in some cases he responded with exile, on most occasions he did not give them too much importance, opting instead to deny them access to the means of power. There were no mass graves and, while the conditions in Tarrafal were harsh and unsanitary, neither the number of convicts nor the sentences were comparable to those of the gulags.

Indeed, when his left-wing adversaries currently denounce those years and their persecutory practices without restraint, the most they can manage to assert is a timid attempt to even resort to assassination. Obviously, such actions are to be condemned; however, if we compare them – and we must compare them – with the torture and slaughter carried out by Lenin, Stalin – and, at least in the expressed will of Trotsky, and, why not say it, of Othello and company – they can be seen as last resorts. Even when relations with the Church of Cerejeira cooled, his Catholic conviction and faith did not allow him to ruthlessly abuse the power he had meanwhile gained at the helm of the country's destiny. His political and moral flexibility, however, did not grant him any truce in relation to communists and communism. Elected as the greatest danger to the regime and to the nation, his preaching of God, Fatherland, and Family compelled him to consider Marxism as political and ethical anathema.

In several publications abroad at the time, he was described as a moral dictator, a statesman who only knew numbers and God.

3. The topic obviously stirs passions. After all, how many Salazars will Portugal need? Or, in a more measured version, does the country need a Salazar? And for what purpose, to what end?

The controversy arose from a response by the leader of Chega, André Ventura, in an interview, followed by a rebuttal in Parliament, in which he, again regarding corruption in the country, allegedly invoked the figure, in a triple version, of the former Prime Minister. The political establishment and its commentators rose up, and once again, calls – and demands – for the party's dissolution emerged. Prata Roque, Garcia Pereira, among other figures more or less associated with a more or less radical left, publicly condemned, and before the Constitutional Court, the seriousness of the markedly fascist comments. Completing the scenario, downstream, were the posters recently placed on the national streets. I will remain silent about these in this article.

(André Ventura, like myself, did not experience the rigors of Salazarism. However, when some point out the contradictory situation that, living under the Estado Novo regime, he could not freely express such comments in plenary sessions or on television, that is, he would not have the freedom to do so, then, in my view, a contradiction arises. The National Union would certainly welcome Ventura's expressed desire . Besides not sharing the Nazi and Bolshevik concept of a single-party system , that entity would view Ventura's preaching as politically normal.)

The invoked constitutional norm, falling short of the outraged morality and virginity of certain ideological currents, is due to a politically biased Constitution: while condemning fascism, it permits various forms of communism. The path to a socialist society , an unmistakable sign of a long past on the right, and a hard and authoritarian right, but above all, due to the sympathy, militancy, passivity, and permissiveness of the April Captains and a significant part of the MFA (as well as the complicity of many politicians), totally conditioned democracy and its regime, imposed, moreover, with the known difficulties and obstacles. Today it is evident to any minimally neutral and equidistant mind that the rebels of the coup d'état and, later, many of them, revolutionaries during the PREC (Processo Revolucionário em Curso - Ongoing Revolutionary Process), never desired for Portugal a democracy in its Western version, that is, a liberal democracy. In other words, they were anti-democratic (even resorting, years later, to pure and simple terrorism).

One cannot and should not cleanse the image of the far-left while simultaneously denouncing and belittling the (supposed) far-right. Not long ago, the then leader of the Left Bloc, Francisco Louçã, paralyzed parliamentary activity because he was not granted a seat on the left side of the PCP (Portuguese Communist Party). At the time, the economist proudly stated that he belonged to and positioned himself on the far left of the political spectrum. His ideological references were not exactly medieval saints and knights. This difference in treatment came to the fore in this controversy, fueled, moreover, by Chega's most ardent enemies. Balancing the scales seems to be Ventura's manifest destiny. This is very difficult for certain ideologies, accustomed to dominating the public and media space.

Ventura may shield himself with a supposed popular and familiar saying from his youth. One thing is certain: he is not a nostalgic person , given his youth. What did he mean, what is the meaning of the expression used? Only he will know. We may see his words as part of a pre-election campaign context for the presidential elections, a way to stir up the electorate and rally the troops. Or simply to gain an audience – a tactic quite common for the leader of Chega. Whether this is the best or most correct way to do it obviously raises serious doubts.

History and Political Science deal with Salazar. We, his contemporaries, knowing the past, must take care of the present with a view to the viability of the future. A return to Salazar and Salazarism is not only impossible, but absurd. Times and the country are different, the political actors and citizens are different. The world has changed. We live in a democracy (liberal version) and we must remain in democracy. However, the regime knows and has available several versions, both practically and institutionally. Each people has the right to choose its own. That is what elections are for, free and fair, reflecting the will of the people. Backroom victories, of which the previous regime is rightly accused, are inadmissible.

To answer the question directly, Portugal and the Portuguese people do not need a Salazar. They need a modern and fearless leader and leadership that will face contemporary challenges with a firm hand. But this is a cliché.