Elites and Economic Modernization in Portugal (1945-1995).pdf

8/11/2019 Elites and Economic Modernization in Portugal (1945-1995).pdf

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Elites and Economic Modernization in Portugal (1945-1995): Authoritarianism,

Revolution and Liberalism 12

Manuel Loff

Portuguese transition from authoritarian rule to democracy, in the 1970s, set a significantlyexceptional example in European political transitional processes of the second half of the20th century. What could have been expected to be a plain military coup putting an end to a48-years reactionary colonialist dictatorship at a very definite breaking point (a 13-yearsColonial War in three different African territories), evolved into a revolutionary process, both politically and socially, described as the last socialist revolution in Europe. Between April

1974 and November 1975, Portugal seemed to be slipping away from the capitalisticeconomical paradigm and the politico-military West of the 15 final years of Cold War. Aswift rupture was operated at both political and (to a lesser extent) institutional level, whilethe state intervened in private enterprise in order either to take into the public sector, or atleast control, most of the financial sector and what had become self-managed industrieswhose owners had left the country.After a complex and extremely intense political and social process, which developed from

April 1974 to the end of November 1975, those who described themselves as therevolutionary Left (communists and all components of the far-Left: Maoists, Trotskyists,radicalized progressive Catholics), including an important military segment, were ousted from power by an amalgamated coalition of moderate socialists, all right-wing parties, catholichierarchy, and a hardly compatible variety of military commanders, ranging from moderateleft-wing to ultra-right neo-Salazarists, internationally supported by Western European andAmerican governments. By then, decolonization of the Portuguese African colonies was

finally carried out, during the politically extremelyhot summer and autumn of 19753

, underthe Cold War complex circumstances. A new Constitution was passed in April 1976, parliamentary elections were held a few weeks later, and were won by the Socialist Party, led by Mrio Soares, and general Ramalho Eanes, one of the military commanders of the 25 Novembercoup , was subsequently elected President in July, supported by socialists and the

1 InChristoph Boyer, Friederike Sattler (Eds.),European Business Elites between the Emergenceof a New Spirit of Capitalism and the Erosion of State Socialism, forthcoming. 2 I have to thank for Bruno Monteiros generous and persistent help in finding some of the bibliographical sources which I found essential to this research.3 The expressionVero quente [hot summer] is currently used to describe that period of political andsocial confrontation.


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republicans and monarchists could meet5, (iv) attracting catholic hierarchy to a renewedalliance with the state adapted to 20thcenturys social and political conditions. Salazar was formally appointed President of the Council of Ministers in 1932 and remained inoffice for the following 36 years, until September 1968, when, at 79, a cerebral hmorrhageincapacitated him and forced an uni-personal dictatorship to find a substitute in MarcelloCaetano (1906-80, former Minister of Colonies and, in some way, in the 1950s, avice-

president , briefly mistaken for an appointed-successor, driven out of Government by Salazarhimself in 1958) for those which would be the final six years of the Estado Novo . Salazarssharp ability to bring together all segments of the Portuguese ruling class at a crucial historicalstage, as it was mentioned earlier, assured him a long-term adhesion built upon anunprecedented charismatic government, leading an essentially conservative and progress-fearful elite through a complex path made of key economic options between a state-protectedeconomy based on large property agriculture and strong trading lobbies (prevailing from the beginning of the dictatorship until the end of World War II and a state-coordinatedindustrialization (launched in 1945-50) which could hardly prevent its inevitable socialconsequences (urbanization, growing implosion of an until then sturdy rural society), in spiteof all the corporative system rhetoric.Fundamentally, Salazarism meant, for Portuguese elites of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, a

clear and safe, self-described as specifically Portuguese , response to the process of social and political massification which in Portugal was maturing in a relatively belatedly form a precocious political evolution towards a Republican form of government (1910) and aresultant strict separation between state and church, with no correspondence in its socialfoundations: no universal suffrage was passed until 1975;6 no undeniably massive politicaland social movements pre-existed the creation of Salazarist single-party, militia, compulsorylabor unions and youth organizations; no massive schooling covered the whole territory and

the lower classes until the 1940s. In this sense, the expressionSalazarism condenses moreaccurately than Estado Novo the historical meaning of the whole political system dominatingPortugal between 1926-74, covering not only Salazars years (1932 -68) but the wholedictatorships historical experience, fundamentally shaped to the dictators persona.

5 The republic vs. monarchy debate mobilized Portuguese elites political discussions, at least since the1890 crisis over colonial conflict with Britain, until 1933, when Salazar forced upon the monarchists thecontinuity of a Republican form of government in order to secure right-wing republican support to the newregime.6 Male universal suffrage was passed in 1918, under the charismatic military rule of Sidnio Pais, andenforced for a single election, before being immediately revoked in 1919, when the constitution of 1911 wasrestored. See: Manuel Loff , Electoral Proceedings in Salazarist Portugal (1926-1974): Formalism and Fraud in a150-year old Context of Elitarian Franchise, in: Raffaele Romanelli (ed.), How Did They Become Voters? TheHistory of Franchise in Modern European Representation, The Hague/London/Boston 1998, pp. 227-250.


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Accordingly, historical legacy of what was a wide social elite consensus over the characterand over its political paradigm still plays a central role in what may be described as the present day Portuguese dominant social grou ps obvious ambiguity towards the memory ofthe dictatorship and of their own course throughout the final 15 years of the regime (1960-74).Obvious continuity (family ties, class sociability) of a very significant part of pre- and post-1974 social, economic and cultural elites in fact, a widespread phenomenon of post-dictatorial societies is an important factor to consider when assessing discourses over thedictatorship years produced in the upper-classes, not only of those who feel close to theideological nature of the elapsed regime, but more importantly of those who make clear theirhostility to it and, at the same time, tend to bail out, so to speak, their own relatives or next ofkin by and large, their class from the negative core of the past experience.

II. A traditionally elitist society

Socio-culturally speaking, and in broad terms, the Portuguese special case in WesternEuropean context is based upon a clearly distorted social access to cultural modern practicesand forms. Schooling, scientific and technical qualification and press reading levels remaineduntil the mid-20th century phenomena as limited as political rights were. A fundamentally broad-minded intellectual elite read, heard or dressed what Paris, London, and even Berlinand Rome, produced in the second half of the 19th and the first third of the 20th centuries, butlooked upon the masses they were surrounded by in quite obviously derisive terms.The 1910-26 republican experience, in which the state concentrated most of its efforts to break the spine of catholic hegemony over education and cultural Bildung , replacing it, withscarce results, by a liberal rationalistic educational philosophy, was soon replaced by a half-century hard cultural and moral repression, exerted both by the state apparatuses and CatholicChurch, leaving very heavy consequences on mass culture representations. One of those, infact, has specifically to do with the core of this essay: a recurrent discourse on state prestigeand symbolic hegemony in society, on legitimatization forms of power exercise througheconomic wealth, traditional social forms of prestige and professional qualification throughschooling.Studies made on the 1960 population census help to perceive an already modern societyheavily polarized between an upper layer , gathering great landowners and employers,technically and scientifically highly qualified professionals, and large enterprise (over 100workers) executives representing not more than 1 percent of male active population, and ahuge 61 percent composed of unskilled workers (21 percent), autonomous peasants and


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fishermen (9 percent) and wage -earning and family workers in agriculture and fishery(31 percent). At that turning-point of Portuguese social history, again, not more than 1 percentof all active male Portuguese had a higher education, and only 5 percent had completedsecondary education.7 The first generation of Portuguesetrue sociologists (a scientific domain deliberately bannedfrom Portuguese Acadmia by Salazarism) who had the chance to work with these social data

were relatively surprised with the oligarchic character of this high bourgeoisie, nearer to a

group unified through multiple family ties and education rather than to an abstract elite

whose members merely share leading positions. 8 The dictatorship led by Salazar took over power after a century of liberal modern state- building which have never compromised the high-bourgeoisie grasp of social and economic power, not even in the last 16 years of this historical cycle, the Portuguese First Republicyears (1910-26). Salazarist authoritarianism proved to be able to develop an intrinsicallyeffective way to seduce and control different segments of a national bourgeoisie frightenedwith social unrest, representing such contradictory interests as the ones which could besatisfied by a simultaneous exploit of both traditionalist and modernizing discourses. This

particular sort of hegemonic elite had been allowed to decades of undisputed power, affected

by both bureaucratization, i. e. parasitic use of political-administrative structures with some

cleptocratic shades, and aristocratization, i. e. a mimetic adoption of ostentatious attitudesand behaviour distinctive of an idle aristocracy. 9 From a strict political and institutional point of view, an economically poor Estado Novo (whole public expenditure amounted to 21 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in1951-52, 20 percent in 1960-61, 26.1 percent in 1972-73)10 would offer comparatively fewopportunities to a modern European elite, although those were probably proportional to thestatistically minuscule Portuguese elites of the 1930s and 1940s. A sequential analysis of the

authoritarian regimes strategy to recruit political elites and of the elite s/state relation shows athree-component coalition, gathering military, political direct representatives of the upper-classes and catholic scholars, controling state apparatus all throughout the 48 years

7 See Manuel Villaverde Cabral , Classes sociais [Social Classes], in: Antnio Barreto / Maria Filomena Mnica (eds.), Dicionrio de Histria de Portugal [Dictionary of the History of Portugal], Suplemento [Supplement](Vol. VII), Oporto 1999, pp. 328-337, here pp. 330f. 8 Hermnio Martins, quoted fromCabral , Classes sociais (fn. 6), p. 336. 9 Ibid. 10 See Alfredo Marques , Poltica econmica e desenvolvimento em Portugal (1926-1959). As duasestratgias do Estado Novo no perodo de isolamento nacional [Economic Policy and Development in Portugal(1926-1959). The two Strategies of the Estado Novo in the Period of National Isolation], Lisbon 1988, p. 184(table 6).


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dictatorship, in four different stages:i) From the fall of the liberal regime (1926) until the end of WW II (1945), i. e. during thecontinuing and clear process of fascistization, the military kept an important and inevitablerole while political repression fell more heavily over dissidence, bringing intothe regimesinstitutional ranks a representation of a relatively significant variety of social and regionalsegments of the bourgeoisie.11 This was the stage in which the more reactionary componentsof the high-bourgeoisie (wealthy landowners and colonial merchants) kept inside of theadministration apparatus a more significant number of direct representatives.ii) Postwar years paved the path to an actual industrial revolution: Portugal knew its first realand intense modernizing boost only in the aftermath of WW II, while the rest of Europe wasengaged in reconstruction, a process which had inevitable consequences also in thePortuguese case. Urbanization, intensive private and public investment in new productiveinfrastructures, slow economic internationalization, and mainly state new planning policiesopened the gates to the apparent triumph of a first technocratic elite inside Salazarism. The

Development Plans ( Planos de Fomento ) [implemented by the dictatorship] after WW II,12 industrial growth (), ex pansion of the education system, particularly post-secondarytechnical and scientific (), all these trends converged towards a higher level of social and

political participation, though merely illusive in some cases, of a social segment whose main

characteristics were higher education, being an active part of the Public AdministrationsTechnical Departments, of big corporations and liberal professions 13. Not only economic planning, with all its complex bureaucratic organization, offered a vast range of opportunitiesto a new generation of qualified Salazarist technicians. The post-WW II process ofmodernizing Portuguese Colonial Administration, adapting in order to resist to the world-wide impact of decolonization, offered a variety of professional, political and businessopportunities. As for elite composition, both military and traditional bourgeoisie lost a

significant amount of power in favor of these bureaucrats representing the more modernfractions of urban bourgeoisie, namely those connected to industrial capital. Catholicreactionary scholars, essentially close to the dictators profile, remained, nevertheless, in

11 See Maria Carrilho , Foras Armadas e mudana poltica em Portugal no sc. XX. Para uma explicaosociolgica do papel dos militares [Armed Forces and Political Change in Portugal in the 20th century. Towards aSociological Explanation of the Role of the Military], Lisboa 1985. 12 Four Planos de Fomento [development plans] were adopted by the Estado Novo regime: 1953-58;1959-64; 1965-67 ( Plano Intercalar Intermediate Plan) and 1968-73; a fifth (the fourth Plan excluding the1965-67 one) was ready to be implemented for the 1974-79 period when the 25

th April 1974 revolutionsuspended its application.

13 Jos Manuel Leite Viegas , Elites e cultura poltica na histria recente de Portugal [Elites and PoliticalCulture in Portuguese Recent History], Oeiras 1996, pp. 85f.


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control of most political higher decision-making posts.iii) Armed guerrilla activity of national liberation movements in Portuguese African coloniesopened a 13-year war cycle (1961-74) that changed the whole course of Portuguese modernHistory. Salazars decision to hold on! ( Aguentar! Aguentar! ), to resist to any politicalchange processes, compromised the future of his regime. All state policies had to endorse thewar effort, which inevitably jeopardized the impact of the embryonic social policies theregime had been forced to consider when it realized how potentially explosive were the vastand hasty series of social and economic changes. Again, during this period, military elite tookcontrol of a very significant part of national resources: all defence policies consumed48 percent of all ordinary tax revenue in 1973, the last complete year of war; 15 years earlier, before war in Africa started, they were responsible for 36 percent; during this same period,social expenditure in policies such as education and health rose from 18 percent to 28 percent, but they were unbearably insufficient and ineffective; on the whole, defence absorbed133 billion Escudos from 1961 to 1973, while all public economic investment along the same period did not exceed 62 billion.14 Nevertheless, we were dealing here with a broader militaryelite, representing a wider range of social groups: from 4.850 officers existing in 1960 in theArmy, Navy and Air Force (plus 342 of the Complementary Rank Quadro Complementar of the Air Force), the Portuguese Armed Forces had 6.884 officers in 1973-74 (plus circa

1.800-2.000 more of the same Complementary Rank of the Air Force), i. e. plus 42 percent(plus 69 percent considering these latter).15 Alongside the military, that technocratic segmentof the civil elite which were socially rising since the postwar period kept their expectationsintact, hoping the regime would have to grant them more visibility to produce the necessarymeasures to contain social and political unrest.iv) The 1968 Government re-shufflement, with perceived-as-reformer Marcello Caetanoreplacing a physically incapable Salazar, opens a final six-year stage of this 1961-74 war

period. Caetano would soon proved impotent to change the political course of the war presuming he had ever wanted to change it but he did try to go beyond the modernization project of the 1945-68 period, an autarkicindustrialism based upon imports substitution,searching instead for (in vain, as recent history is still proving) a specialization line of

national production in areas in which Portugal had comparative advantage, articulating it withforeign markets, especially European, granting, on the other hand, greater importance to

14 See: Amrico Ramos dos Santos , Abertura e bloqueamento da economia portuguesa [Opening andHindrance of Portuguese Economy], in: Antnio Reis (ed.), Portugal Contemporneo [Portugal Today], Vol. V,Lisbon 1989, pp. 109-150; Eugnio Rosa , A economia portuguesa em nmeros [The Portuguese Economy inStatistics], Lisbon 1975. 15 See:Carrilho , Foras Armadas (fn. 10), pp. 440-442.


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social factors education, social welfare, health disregarding the effective conditionswhich may have allowed or prevented such aims to be accomplished. In this sense, Caetano

and the politicians who were close to him, recruited amidst that technocratic elite made ofthose social segments of higher scientific and technical qualification, seem to point out

towards a social state subtle form to change the primary meaning of the corporative state but evading the regimes democratization and liberalization problem 16. In literature, it isoften discussed about connections between what has been described as the modernizingundercurrent embodied by the Marcelist group inside Salazarism, close to which we will find,in the 1968-74 years, a reformist sector who, after the 1971 -72 breakup with Marcello,retrieved their political autonomy, and the so -called modern capitalist interests. To JosManuel Leite Viegas, it is an unacceptable simplification to mechanically identify theeconomic liberal thought conveyed by modernizers and the industrial, finance and tradingcapital interests, committed to develop and modernize its connections with the democratic

industrialized countrieseconomy. The fact remains that expansion of this politico -social

thought was reinforced because it did not collide, and partly adjusted to 17 such interests.Additionally, it has been pointed out that the highest representatives of thosemodern capital lobby, the owners of the strongest Portuguese industrial corporation,CUF (Companhia Unio

Fabril ), the Mello family, have surely had some influence in [president] Amrico Toms

who paid them much attention decision to appoint Marcelo Caetano 18, a close friend of theMello, to succeed to Salazar, in the Autumn 1969.In this final dictatorial stage, the Marcelist period, so evidently full of contradictions andgrowingly uncontrolled tension, the authoritarian regime proved its inability to eventuallyintegrate and articulate all these politically pragmatic technocrats, although they were franklyelitist as far as their governance framework was concerned. Politically speaking, the liberal

group of Members of the National Assembly, the Estado Novo parliament, known as the

Liberal Wing(Ala Liberal ) most of whose members would converge in the creation of theright-wing Peoples Democratic Party ( Partido Popular Democrtico, PPD )19 in 1974 ,integrating the 1969 single party (theUnio Nacional , UN ) electoral ticket by a specialinvitation of Caetano himself, was virtually the political nucleus publicly recognized as best

16 Viegas , Elites (fn. 12), pp. 101f.17 Op. cit., p. 102.18 Fernando Rosas , O Marcelismo ou a falncia da poltica de transio no Estado Novo [ Marcelismo orthe Failure of Transitional Policy in the Estado Novo ], in: J. M. Brando de Brito (ed.), Do Marcelismo ao fimdo Imprio. Revoluo e democracia [From Marcelismo to the End of Empire. Revolution and Democracy],Lisbon 1999, p. 15-59, here p. 45. 19 Francisco S Carneiro and Francisco Pinto Balsemo were the two first right-wing Prime-Ministers(1980-83) in the democratic period and had been members of the Ala Liberal under Caetano.


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those involved in these consecutive Academic crisis 23 (expression through which literaturedescribes all sorts of strike movements, symbolicmournings and other forms of students protest), although perceived as politically subversive, inevitably took hold of their share ofleading positions in private enterprise, and even in state administration, namely in areas inwhich the modernization process required technical skills and a new attitude employers andstate were obviously unable to find outside the university.These men mostly, although a few women were already opening their way through the political and entrepreneurial elites were young enough (25-40 years old) when in 1974, thedemocratic revolution came to expect to live most of their adult years ahead of them participating quite freely in public affairs, and the few of them who fought dictatorship in itsfinal years legitimately took credit for public relevance earned in it. Taking the wideideological range of political activists of the revolutionary period of 1974-76 intoconsideration, a significant number of the leading personalities of the Socialist and far-LeftParties (namely the very prolific Maoist), and a less significant part of those of the PortugueseCommunist Party ( Partido Comunista Portugus, PCP) , had fought, one way or the other, theirfirst political struggle (and, most of the times, single one under the dictatorial regime) asstudent activists in the 1960s and 1970s. After the 1976 so-called democraticnormalization ,they sat on a large number of parliamentary and governmental seats ever since. After severely

shifting rightwards their ideological views, frequently from Maoist to clearly liberal andconservative positions for instance, former Prime-Minister (2002-04) Jos Manuel DuroBarroso, presently president of the European Commission , they won university chairs,managed to edit the most popular media and were called to executive positions in some of thelarger corporations operating in Portugal.In fact, as it could be expected, all those who became either Head of Government (elevenPrime-Ministers) or of State (four Presidents of the Republic, two of them having been Prime-

Minister before) under the 1976 constitution (thus, excluding the two presidents and threePrime-Ministers of the Provisional Governments under military rule during the 1974-76revolutionary process) were members of this post-1945 modern bourgeois elite, university produced, except for the last three Prime-Ministers J. M. Duro Barroso, 2002-04, PedroSantana Lopes, 2004-05, and Jos Scrates, 2005-today, all three were born in 1956-57 and

23 In spring 1962 (Lisbon and Coimbra: demonstrations, police raids, student strikes), in 1965 (Lisbon andOporto: student strikes, more than 60 student leaders were expelled from university, arrested, tortured, and somesent to African war fronts), in 1967 (two thousand students volunteered, facing a government ban, to help peopleaffected by tragic floods in the Lisbon area), in 1969 (Coimbra: student leaders facing up to the president andmembers of government were imprisoned, a student general strike, the university was closed down by thegovernment for two months). After 1969, students protest became permanent until the fall of the dictatorship.


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about to start their degree in 1974, even if the first of these had started his political activitystill under the dictatorship.

Table 1: Portuguese statespersons under the 1976 constitution

with political/professional activity before 1974

PersonalitiesYear of birth

Political posts Other relevant activities

Mrio Soares 1924

Min. Foreign Affairs,1974-75; Min. of State,1975; PM, 1976-78 and1983-85; President ofRepublic, 1986-1996

Historian and lawyer; opposition activist, first PCP (until1952), then Liberal-Republican (1952-64), finally Socialist(Socialist Action and PS, 1964-); secretary PS, 1973-85; seriesof arrests, deportation to S. Tom (Africa, 1968), exile inFrance (1970-74); Member of national and EuropeanParliament (1999-2004); creates Mrio Soares Foundation,1991.

Antnio RamalhoEanes 1942

President Republic,1976-86

Military officer; several missions of war in African colonies;head of Program Department national Television (RTP), 1974-75; head of operations in 25th November 1975 military coup;President of Democratic Renovator Party ( PRD , 1986-87)

Nobre da Costa 1923

Min. Industry andTechnology, 1976-77;PM, 1978

Engineer; Companhia Portuguesa de Siderurgia, 1953;EFACEC, 1969.

Carlos Mota Pinto 1936

Min. Trade andTourism, 1976-77; PM,1978-79; Deputy PMand Min. NationalDefence, 1983-85

Lawyer; professor at Law School, University of Coimbra;Member of Constitutional Assembly, 1975-76; President of

PSD , 1984-85

Maria de LourdesPintasilgo 1930

Min. Social Affairs,1974-75; PM, 1979-80

Engineer;CUF (Head of Project Dep.), 1954-1960; youngCatholic leader, 1956-58; Corporative Chamber, 1969-1974;Executive Council UNESCO, 1976-1980; Presidential candidate1986 (7 percent of the votes); Member of European Parliament(with PS), 1987-89.

Francisco SCarneiro 1934

Assistant Min. PM,1974; PM, 1980

Lawyer; Member of National Assembly ( Liberal Wing), 1969-73; President of PSD , 1974-75 and 1976-80.

Francisco PintoBalsemo 1937

Assistant Min. PM,1980; PM, 1980-83

Lawyer; press and (after 1992) TV businessman; Member of National Assembly ( Liberal Wing), 1969-73; Member ofParliament (1979-87); President PSD , 1981-83.

Anbal CavacoSilva 1939

Min. Finance and Plan,1980; PM, 1985-95;President of Republic,2006-

Economist; Professor of Economics and Finance Institute atTechnical University Lisbon, then Catholic University, 1966- ;President PSD , 1985-95.

Jorge Sampaio 1939

Under-Sec. StateInternationalCooperation, 1975;President Republic,1996-2006

Lawyer; student leader, 1960-62; opposition activist until1974; Left Socialist Movement ( MES , far-Left) activist, 1974-78; Member of Parliament, 1979-89; Secretary PS , 1989-91;Mayor of Lisbon, 1989-96.

Antnio Guterres 1949

PM, 1995-2002 Engineer; young Catholic non-anti-Salazarist militant;Assistant Professor at Technical High Institute Lisbon;Member of Parliament, 1976-83 and 1985-95; Secretary PS ,1992-2002; Vice-President, then President of SocialistInternational, 1992-2002; UN High-Commissioner forRefugees, 2005- .


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of the Eastern North-to-South strip of Portugal, and (sub)urbanized a conspicuous part of thePortuguese. After 150 years of systematically unsucceeded socio-economic modernizationexpectations (more than actual planning, virtually absent from the political culture of thePortuguese elites until the 1950s), rural Portugal, a deeply conservative, mostly (Northern andCentral areas) religious, educationally unqualified society, who had embodied until then thecore of Portuguese historical identity, and had severely played down the countrys rhythm of

change that Portugal was irrevocably disappearing, mostly through sheer de-population.Until then, over-dimensioned agricultural Portugal would not represent, in 1973, more than afourth of the active population (around 800.000 people), producing not more than one eighthof the GDP, whilst thirteen years earlier, in 1960, they were still almost 45 percent of theactive population, producing twice (25 percent) of that part of the GDP. It had been, in fact, alow-technology and low-productivity industrialization which, after the 1950s, propelled sucha significant change, finally paving its way through Portuguese economy, bringing togetherhalf of the GDP in the mid 1970s, at the moment in which democracy replaced theauthoritarian regime. The service sector was already, nevertheless, the one generating moreemployment in Portugal (27.7 percent in 1960, 37.3 percent in 1970, almost 1.2 million people, a little bit ahead of the industrial sector), but its scarce productivity (still attractingmostly unskilled workers to unqualified jobs, offering mostly a sort of services coherent with

a still very traditional and servile society) provided a comparatively low share of the nationalwealth (38.4 percent of the GDP in 1960, 36.1 percent in 1970). Nevertheless, a change had started before the 1960s. Salazar had already introduced or wasforced into it by a whole complex of circumstances a significant change in his economic policies in the 1950s. At the end of WW II, a number of factors concurred to push the regimeinto a significant change in its economic policies, with all the obvious consequencesdeductible from an authoritarian regime context:

i) A significant amount of capital had been amassed by different social groups all throughoutthe war, especially by those few who could benefit from the neutrality status of Portugal,eventually profiting from its geographical position and political ambiguity of its Government(formally stuck to an old diplomatic alliance with Britain, thus, attracting some benevolencefrom the Anglo-Americans; ideologically perceived as pro-Axis until 1943, developing aswift and economically efficient trade-relationship with Nazi Germany).ii) Defeat of Nazi Germany and the Allied victory under an antifascist coalition flag

strengthened the most emblematic and lasting united opposition movement assembled


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under the Portuguese dictatorship.25 A clearly radicalized relevant fraction of a new urbanworking class, growingly impressed and mobilized by the Communist Party ( PCP ), had, thus,to be, from the dictatorships point of view, disciplined and tamed through a different set ofeconomic and social policies.iii) A new stage was opening in international economy, especially in the West, whereeconomic international co-operation and planning procedures were keynesianly being laiddown has the best remedies to face both reconstruction and competition, at least ideological,from the socialist bloc led by the Soviet Union.

After WWII, as Alfredo Marques underlines, a second strategy pops into the [regimes]

agenda. Its configuration takes place, mainly, during the 1950s and it culminates in the lastyears of the decade, the moment the Second Development Plan ( Plano de Fomento ) isenacted. According to Marques, the global aim to which [this stra tegy] points out is theconstitution of adeveloped and autonomous capitalism (), aiming to economic growth and

structural transformation . Its driving force lies, nevertheless and contrary to the extroversionstrategy emerging in the 1960s Salazarist economic policys third stage in the internalmarket, thus an endogenous dynamic being predominant over the external impulse of capitalaccumulation. This all happens in a context of national autonomy. Such a strategy was based

on active support to the constitution of anew industrial capital , mainly through capitalconcentration and centralization, in which, naturally, State plays a new and decisive role.

Interestingly enough, and reversing the trend in all other political and symbolic features of the Estado Novo s evolution, in the whole history of the Portuguese dictatorship, this set of

economic policy measures are those which remind, in some of its aspects, the

interventionism of paradigmatic European dictatorships (German and Italian). Any way, thewhole process of carrying out this strategy soon headed to a total failure. 26

What could be described as what had become an inevitable industrialization process understate control developed along three parallel lines through which Salazars regi me tried torespond to a new stage in Portuguese history:i) An intense state intervention in economy through central planning, attracting to a new alliance

25 Fernando Rosas , Unidade antifascista [Antifacist Unity], in: Fernando Rosas / Jos Maria Brando de Brito (eds.), Dicionrio de Histria do Estado Novo [Dictionary of the History of the Estado Novo ], Vol. 2, [No placespecified] 1996, p. 991-996, here p. 992. Sequentially, it brought to life the National Unity Anti-Fascist Movement( Movimento de Unidade Nacional Anti-Fascista, MUNAF) in 1943-45. Then it reunited in the Democratic UnityMovement ( Movimento de Unidade Democrtica , MUD, 1945-48) and its youth association ( MUDJ , 1946-48),finally created a broad movement supporting the very first presidential opposition candidate (General Norton deMatos, 1948-49).26 Marques , Poltica (fn. 9), pp. 25f.


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new sections of the bourgeoisie on the grounds of economic nationalist rhetoric, trying to makesure they would be as state-dependent as had been the Agrarian -Industrial Alliance mentioned

by Alfredo Marques who both supported and was intimately connected to the regime,

emerging in the last years [of the 1920s], its apogee [being] achieved at the e nd of the 1930sand during the next decade. 27 ii) A new gasp of the corporative system in the mid -1950s 28 the 1956 second corporativelegislation impulse, paving the way to new corporations created between 1957 and 196629 offered Salazar, not only the bureaucratic means to control social and economic change, andto try to promote the one pattern of change admitted by the regime, but also the possibility torenovate the bureaucratic elites, attracting a whole series of catholic intellectuals and

academics 30 who would be, together with Salazarist young technocrats, the nucleus of a new Estado Novo leading generation, committed to economic modernization without questioning political authoritarianism. In addition, this new corporative discourse that spread all the waythrough every sectorial policy represented another Salazarist attempt to smarten the 1930stypically fascistThird Way (anti-liberal capitalist, anti-socialist) rhetoric, and to claim a paternalistic social concern from above towards growingly anxious and dissatisfied workingclasses. The whole logic under which Salazar himself overlooked the most massive process ofsocial change the country underwent was still completely reactionary. At the very moment in

which thousands were starting to abandon rural Portugal and flooding into Lisbon and Oportosuburbs and soon after into Paris or the Rheinlands, for instance , the dictator praisedagriculture in opposition to industry, because of its greater stability, its natural roots in the

soil and closer connection with food production, constituting a basic assurance of life itself

and, due to the moral values it impresses into the soul, an endless source of social resistance

of those who will not let themselves be obsessed with illusions of getti ng rich throughindefinite means, but aspire, above all, for a sufficient life, healthy, deep-rooted to the earth,

although modest. 31

27 Op. cit., p. 24.28 Howard Wiarda , Corporativismo [Corporatism], in: Baretto / Mnica , Dicionrio (fn. 6), p. 421-425,here p. 423.29 Six in 1957, two in 1959, three in 1966; after twenty years of a halt to which the evolution of ourcorporative system was brought to, as Adrito Sedas Nunes puts it in 1954 (see: Adrito Sedas Nunes , Situaes eProblemas do Corporativismo [Condition and Problems of Corporatism], Lisbon 1954, p. 38). The first corporativewave spread throughout the 1930s, under a clear Fascistspell: after the 1933 constitution establishing a Corporativestate, instating the Cmara Corporativa as its second chamber, Salazar passed the National Labour Statute ( Estatutodo Trabalho Nacional , a clear Portuguese adaptation of Mussolinis Carta del Lavoro - see DL No. 23,048 and23,050, 23.09.1933).30 Wiarda , Corporativismo (fn. 27), p. 423.31 Salazar, 1953, quote in: Fernando Rosas , O Estado Novo (1926-1974) [The Estado Novo ], in: Jos

Mattoso (ed.), Histria de Portugal [History of Portugal], Vol. 7, [No place specified] 1994, here p. 457.


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iii) A slow, controlled, often contradictory32 but steady choice for what a probably toocondescending view would describeas an opening to Europe in the 1960s, abandoning the1940s-1950s project of a nationalistic and autarkic development in favour of economicliberalization and European integration. 33 The fact that Salazar chose to concede to theeconomic managers inside his administration and to accept Portuguese status as a foundingmember of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), in 1960, as well as his Governmentsigning (April 1962) the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), more than astarting point of a significant change process, should be read as a result of that contradictory

process initiated with Salazars similar concession in the 1947 -48 process of adhesion to theOrganization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC, turned into Organization forEconomic Cooperation and Development, OECD, in 1960), tardily benefiting from the

Marshall Plan funds. According to Rollo, the OEEC integration has represented not only oneof the first steps towards [economic] opening, and moreover to Portuguese economysinternationalization, but the Marshall aid, through mechanisms it put into motion, ()

concurred to what was still an incipient industrialization process, () paving the way to new

forms to look at economic policies through economic planning materialized in a series ofdevelopment plans [ Planos de Fomento ], promoting a new technical elite formed in contactwith and working inside a number of international institutions (first of them all, the OEEC),

an additional knowledge on the workings of international trade and an intensive learning onhow to deal with the new instruments of the international monetary and financial system thatcame out from Bretton Woods 34. From this point of view, the formal creation of a

Portuguese Economic Area ( Espao Econmico Portugus )35, although reinforcing the sametrend towards bureaucratic planning and economic rationalization, offering, again, a numberof opportunities to a new generation of qualified bureaucrats recruited into the ranks of agrowingly agonizing regime, was never an effective alternative to a clear Europeanization of

Portuguese foreign trade, while the relative position of the trade with former colonies is notonly weak but it suffers an expressive cut: in 1958 and 1968 it represented 20 percent of

32 See details in Fernanda Rollo , Salazar e a Construo Europeia [Salazar and the European Building],in: Antnio Costa Pinto / Nuno Severiano Teixeira (eds.), Portugal e a Unificao Europeia, [Portugal and theUnification of Europe], revista Penlope No. 18, Lisbon 1999, pp. 51-76.33 David Corkill , O desenvolvimento econmico portugus no fim do Estado Novo [PortugueseEconomic Development at the End of the Estado Novo ], in: Fernando Rosas / Pedro Aires Oliveira (eds.), Atransio falhada. O Marcelismo e o fim do Estado Novo (1968-1974) [Failed Transition. Marcelismo and theEnd of the Estado Novo ], [No place specified] 2004, pp. 213-232, here p. 215.34 Rollo , Salazar (fn. 31), p. 64.35 See Decree-Law ( Decreto-Lei, DL) No. 44,016, 08.11.1961. Manuel Ennes Ferreira , EspaoEconmico Portugus/Mercado nico Portugus [Portuguese Economic Area/Integrated Portuguese Market], in:

Fernando Rosas / J. M. Brando de Brito (eds.), Dicionrio de Histria do Estado Novo [Dictionary of the History ofthe Estado Novo ], Vol. I (A-L), [No place specified] 1996, pp. 312-315.


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[Metropolitan Portugal] foreign trade, while in 1973 it could no longer exceed 12 percent 36.

Table 2: GDP growth rate (1960-80)

Period GDP growth rate (%) 1960-65 6.441965-70 6.201970-75 4.371975-80 5.061960-70 6.321970-80 4.72

Source: Antnio Barreto (ed.), A situao social em Portugal, 1960/1995 [The Social Situation inPortugal], Lisbon 1996, table 5.05.

Table 3: Portuguese GDP per capita/EU 15 GDP per capita (1970-90)

Year Portugal/EU 15 (GDP per capita) (%) 1970 53.21973 61.21975 60.61980 58.51985 55.71990 64.2

Calculations according to data in: OECD Factbook 2006: Economic, Environmental and SocialStatistics.

Table 4: Labor/Gross National Income (1960-90)

Year Labour/Gross National Income (%) 1960 44.841965 43.801970 44.511973 43.711975 59.301976 57.791980 44.521990 41.82

Source: Antnio Barreto (ed.), A situao social em Portugal, 1960/1995 [The Social Situation inPortugal], Lisbon 1996, table 5.09.

Social and economic change was obvious at the end of the 1960s, while the war was pushing thedictatorship into a blind alley, and a highly contradictory one: economy was growing, emigrationand military draft was opening new job opportunities for women, education rates were finallyheading up, but political dissatisfaction and social unrest had never been so evident since 1945.Additionally, Caetanos short period in power was a stage of strong expansion of a

36 Santos , Abertura (fn. 13), pp. 140f.


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monopolistic nucleus of the larger capital corporations, the Magnificent Seven 37:

Table 5: Portuguese main financial corporations (the Magnificent Seven) (1973)

Corporation CUF EspritoSanto

Champa- limaud

BPA Borges BNU Burnay

Companiesunder control 112 20 14 70 40 22 22 Share ofBankingSystem(commercial)

10.6% 15.1% 14.4% 13.2% 4% 11.8% 5%

Share ofInsurancemarket

22% 11.4% 12.9% 1.8% 1.5% 3.7% 1.6%

Colonialinvestment

bankingtradeshipping

sugarcoffeeoilinsurance banking

bankinginsurancecementchemicals

banking beercotton

bankingoil beer

bankinginsuranceagriculturesugarcellulosecashewmining

bankingdiamonds

Connectionto foreigncapital

Billerud Pedriney UK R. Noled Rn-Schelde-Verone

Brocades Ludlow ICI

F.N. Kity Bank FirestoneSchlumberger

Rockefeller ITTSTAB

Interfood

(Negotiatingconnections inLatinAmerica)

W. MoreiraSales

MitsuiYtongSt. Gobain

G. Tireand

Rubber

Launoit Lon Levy Anglo-Ame-rican Corp. Danishcapital

Soc. Gn. Bel- gique IT ChryslerCETECWestinghouse

Source:Santos , Abertura (fn. 13), p. 119.40

Inescapably described as an oligarchy, intrinsically associated to an authoritarian state who, inthe words of the post-1974 period largest individual fortune in the country, Belmiro de Azevedo,solved Labour Relations troubles for us 41, and who conceived most of its post-WW IIeconomic policies counting on their actual support and allegiance, these Magnificent Seven wereenormously favored by the 1945-60 autarkical industrialization, preparing themselves to face thecontrolled internationalization Portuguese economy underwent along the 1960s and 1970s,carefully choosing their foreign partners (British, French, German, some Belgian and U.S.).

Foreign investment, central to processes of technological transfer, was now attracted throughdifferent sorts of administrative, tax and bureaucratic means right from the beginning ofCaetanos rule, at the end of the 1960s. Strategy outlined in that period focused on a double

association: one between national and foreign capital who jointly played the role of the

[economic] systems engine; another between [national capital] and a net of small and middle

37 Op. cit., pp. 116-120.38 Banco Portugus do Atlntico .39 Banco Nacional Ultramarino .40 A monographic description of these financial corporations and their industrial investments in: Maria

Belmira Martins , Sociedades e grupos em Portugal [Societies and Groups in Portugal], Lisbon 1973.41 Interview to Mnica, in: Maria Filomena Mnica , Os grandes patres da indstria portuguesa [BigEntrepreneurs of Portuguese Industry], Lisbon 1990, p. 138.


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companies, (...) who on the whole would build up the main branch of the national capital 42. Nevertheless, the foreign investments role in Portuguese economy modernization process

should not be overrated: so clearly scarce until 1968, although having increasedsignificantly as soon as the war started in Africa, in 1961, it did not get, according to Ramos

dos Santos, globally speaking, a strategic control over Portuguese economy 43. At any rate,foreign direct investment amounted at the beginning of the 1960s to around 10 percent of private capital middle- and long-term investment, but it would rise to almost a fourth of itin 1973. Thus, Lus Salgado de Matos considers the penetration of foreign comp anies in the[Portuguese] economic web to be very strong: out of the 100 largest Portuguese industrial

companies, 42 had foreign capital participation, and the same happened with 16 out of the 50

biggest commercial companies 44.These Magnificent Seven economic groups have initially developed an industrial expansionstrategy, creating or buying companies in productive sectors, [but] from 1968 -1969 onwardsthey point out to new directions: service, real estate and tourism companies, investment andstock market management societies. In the final years [of the dictatorship] there was also agrowing presence in trading business and media 45. Each of them, at any rate, evolveddifferently: in an industrial/financial capital equation, (i) the older (and also two of the threelargest) corporations (CUF, Champalimaud ) had rooted in industry their starting point andaccumulation ground, extending later their activity towards finance; (ii) the reverse course,

from finance towards industry and services, was followed by prototypically state-well-connected Esprito Santo corporation (the third of the three biggest), as well as one of the bestexamples of Oporto area financial tycoons, Pinto de Magalhes, one of the second league coroporation leaders, though deeply interconnected with the Magnificent Seven ; (iii) hybridexpansion processes were developed by BPA or the Borges group. Corporation strategiestowards internal and colonial markets and their relation with foreign capital was also

diversified: (i) Esprito Santo and Burnay were solidly articulated with foreign capital,followed, after 1968-69, byCUF ; (ii) BNU , Esprito Santo and Champalimaud were deeplyrooted or articulated with colonial exploitation and openly lobbied for the prosecution of the

war effort in Africa; (iii) on the contrary,CUF and Borges based their expansion process

42 Amrico Ramos dos Santos , Grupos econmicos/Conglomerados [Economic Groups/Conglomerates],in: Rosas / Brito , Dicionrio (fn. 34), pp. 406-409, here pp. 406f.43 Santos , Abertura (fn. 13), p. 119.44 Lus Salgado de Matos , Investimento estrangeiro [Foreign Investment], in: Rosas / Brito , Dicionrio(fn. 34), pp. 491-495. Santos mentions around 270 companies [at the end of 1973] participated or controlled bymultinational companies: 150 focused on mining or imports substitution; 95 on the exports market, taking profitfrom local low costs; 14 on pharmaceutical and chemical imports and distribution; 20 on real estate speculation, see:Santos , Abertura (fn. 13), pp. 118f.45 Op. cit., p. 118.


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essentially on protected metropolitan economy, relatively independent from foreign capital 46.Capitalistic concentration, together with a financial system huge expansion, was, thus, themotdordre under Marcello Caetanos rule 1968 -74: bank deposits grew from 132 millionEscudos in 1968 to 328 million in 1973, two-thirds of which were under control of the

Magnificent Seven , an amount which had tripled in those five years; a growing proportion ofthe financial system gains came from stock-market speculation, without which it would beimpossible to understand the great monopolistic acceleration of that period; in 1972,

16.5 percent of the industrial companies produced 73 percent of all industrial goods.47 Eventually, grosso modo , in April 1974 Portuguese economy was dominated by 44 families,most of which controlled [these] seven large financial groups, and through them holding control

over two-thirds of private investment, 75 percent of the banking system, 55 percent of theinsurance market, four of the most important industrial activities concerning productivity, profit

rate and technology (beer, tobacco, paper and cement); (...) all industrial basic activities (iron andsteel, chemicals, shipbuilding and maintenance, heavy metalworks and mechanics); (...) most of

shipping; on the whole, these included the largest eight industrial companies and five of the

main export companies 48.These speedily growing financial corporations became a strategic standpoint for professional,as well as political, opportunities to the younger members of the urban bourgeois elite of the

1960s and 1970s. In the first place, they were the natural field of operation for all those 44families, 14 of which were the dynamic basis of the monopolistic nucleus 49. But furthermore,there was a growing interpenetration of [these financial corporations] and the state, in which

a new technocracy becomes predominant, circulating between different executive positions

inside the corporations, and in some cases between corporations and the state apparatus 50.In fact, some of the most characteristic features of the institutional and social role of this newtechnocratic elite, emerging in modernizing Portugal in the second half of the century, is that

it obviously benefited from both capitalistic concentration and state intervention, and had acentral role both under Salazars and Caetanos authoritarian state and during the

revolutionary 1974-76 period and, when the revolutionary experience was brought to an end,to what hegemonic ideology describes as thenormalization process of the late 1970s and1980s. Tracking down individual itineraries of some of these elite members throughout the

46 Santos , Grupos econmicos (fn. 41), p. 408.47 Op. cit., p. 407.48 Santos , Abertura (fn. 13), pp. 116, 118.49 SeeSantos , Grupos econmicos (fn. 41), p. 408. These were: Mello; Esprito Santo; Champalimaud;Quina; Mendes de Almeida; Queirs Pereira; Figueiredo (Burnay); Feteiras; Bordalo; Vinhas; Albano deMagalhes; Domingos Barreiro; Pinto de Magalhes; Brando de Miranda.50 Santos , Abertura (fn. 13), p. 118.


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final 15 years of the dictatorship and the first 20 of the democratic regime, it is quite evident,the pragmatism of choices and strategies of both individuals and these corporations, and evenof the authoritarian state in its final stage. Apparently, one could have opposed the regime inuniversity rallies, then get a job at some planning or strategy department in a corporationwhose interests and policies were interdependent from the states, and finally be appointed to

some second-rank economic policy-design administration department before the 1974revolution. If this professional and institutional tour and an obviously political one, althoughmany would deny it would have been successful, and not too compromising, it would behighly probable to find these same individuals in socialist, right-wing or so-calledtechnical administrations after 1976.

IV. Elites and Revolution

After 13 years of war fought in three African territories, almost a whole generation of youngArmy captains in his late twenties-early thirties organized themselves in an Armed Forces

Movement Movimento das Foras Armadas (MFA) while carrying, in fact, most of the

military efforts burden, and engaged on a conspiracy, initially on professional grounds,

which evolved through the Autumn 1973, Winter 1973-74 and, becoming impossible torefrain by either military hierarchy or the political police, got definitely politically menacingto the regime in February 1974. On 25th April 1974, with almost not a single shot fired by therebel forces (only the political police resisted by force and shot dead four civilians whoapproached its Lisbon headquarters), the regime fell into the hands of politicallyinexperienced young officers who, simultaneously, called two of the most graduated Armygenerals (Antnio de Spnola, immediately appointed president by his fellow high-rankingofficers, and Francisco da Costa Gomes, who became Chief-Commander of the Armed Forcesand replaced Spnola as president in October 1974) to get hold of power, asked democraticopposition leaders to participate in government and, most of all, opened wide the gates for political participation, improvising a transitional process to democracy which turned fastlyinto a social, political and cultural Revolution.The previously prepared MFA programme was soon most evidently surpassed by asurprisingly strong popular movement, shaping a revolutionary experience apparentlyastonishing in Western Europe since the beginning of Cold War. Massive political participation became an identifiable sign of the revolutionary period (1974-76), historicallyunimpaired before and after it. This political mobilization would prove to be substantiallyephemeral in the long run, but the truth remains that no other electoral process in Portugal


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attained the participation level (91.2 percent) of the 1975 election of the ConstitutionalAssembly when, for the very first time in Portuguese history, universal suffrage wasintroduced, allowing every citizen over 18 to vote. The two years that separate the 1974military coup from the 1976 approval of the democratic constitutional text opened inPortuguese modern history the most complete and archetypical revolutionary cycle,historically [representing] the deepest and most threatening shake suffered by an oligarchy

which had always ruled in Portugal, undamaged and self-assured 51. Inside this chronologicalspecific stage, an even more intense revolutionary period may be drawn between the abortedSpnolas right -wing coup of 11th March 1975 and the victorious anti-communist one of25th November that same year, following which an important number of left-wing militaryofficers were arrested for some months and all major military and political departments stillled by left-of-socialists were taken into the hands of right-wing or moderate socialist officersand civil leaders.From a semantic point of view, social reality was now described with very different wordsand metaphors, fastly dyeing all public discourse with clearly Marxist and radical-democraticshades, produced in almost every level and instance of society and culture, coming fromalmost all sorts of legal political forces, right-wing ( PPD , liberal, andCDS , conservativechristian-democratic) included. Mass mobilization was soon achieved mainly by social and

political movements of the revolutionary Left (communists and far-Left, more effectiveachieving it than the socialists until the Summer of 1975), forcing, under what became anevident left-wing cultural and ideological hegemony, to use Gramscis concept, all activeleading characters of political change (military necessarily included) to define as a Revolution the historical process launched by the military coup. Thus, nationalist, colonial rhetoric,confessional and ultraconservative imagery from the Estado Novo s half-century, as well astechnocratic modernization discourses, were substituted in political discourse by

revolutionary vocabulary opposing Revolution to Reaction or calling out for Peoples Power ,a Popular Unity of Chilean shades, demanding lands ownership for those who work it ( ATerra a quem a trabalha! ), soon amplified to the principle of political and social organizationof all power to the workers (O Poder aos trabalhadores! ). In the specific field of PCP vs.Maoist organizations dispute, the latter recuperat ed Stalinist concepts of the 1930s such asSocial fascism or Social imperialism to designate PCP strategy at a national and internationallevel.

An antiauthoritarian military coup as was the MFA s 25th

April 1974 promptly converted into51 Fernando Rosas , Portugal sculo XX (1890-1976). Pensamento e aco poltica [20th Century Portugal.Political Thought and Political Action], Lisbon 2004, p. 138.


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a revolutionary political break with the past and inevitably produced an almost general political and institutional elite replacement. First of all, the new political order was probablyexpected to act very severely against those responsible for repressive action under thedictatorship. It became soon quite evident that it was not going to be the case. The mainconsequences, from this point of view, were not massive imprisonment and/or legal prosecution against political leaders or police and military chiefs. It all came to what in thosedays was called the purging (saneamento ) of the state apparatus, a lustration process. At the

beginning, the military authorities decided the purging of the Armed Forces ranks, both of

military52 and civil servants,53 and of state administrat ion, corporative and economiccoordination bodies, 54 as well as of all public services and companies, local administrationsand all other public right entities. 55 Heavily pressed by the resentful masses, ProvisionalGovernment, the first of which was exceptionally led by a civilian (Palma Carlos, May-July1974), soon replaced by a military (left-wing general Vasco Gonalves, August 1974-August1975), strove for formal procedures, supervised by Ministerial Committees of Purging(Comisses Ministeriais de Saneamento )56 and a General-Directorate for Reclassification andPurging ( Direco-Geral de Reclassificao e Saneamento ) created within the General-Staffof the Armed Forces.57 A whole new decree was passed a few days before Spnolas and hisultra-right-wing allies 11th March 1975 attempted putsch , clearly specifying four kinds of civil

servants who should be immediately considered dismissed from Civil Service: (i) Presidents

of the Republic and Heads of Government between 1926 and 1974 (among which remainedalive only the last two in office: Amrico Thomaz and Marcello Caetano); (ii) members of the political police and all those who had taught in its schools; (iii) informers of the political police58, or all those who voluntarily contributed to assist in its repressive action; and (iv)the so-called former vigilant agents working inside universities and every civil servant oragent responsible for any sort of information service for repressive purposes, and members

of special forces of the militia 59, the Portuguese Legion ( Legio Portuguesa ).60 As for the purging of the armed forces, the military authorities made public in the months

52 DL No. 190/74, 30.04.1974.53 DL No. 775/74, 31.12.1974 and No. 497/75, 12.09.1975.54 DL No. 193/74, 09.05.1974.55 DL No. 277/74, 25.06.1974.56 DL No. 366/74, 19.08.1974.57 DL No. 36/75, 31.01.1975.58 Lists of almost all those active in 1974 were burnt by DGS chiefs [Direco-Geral de Segurana,General-Directorate for Security] in the first hours of the 25th April coup.59 DL No. 123/75, 11.03.1975.60 For all these documents see: Jos-Pedro Gonalves (compiler), Dossier 2 Repblica, Vol.1: 25/4/1974 -25/4/1975, pp. 417f., 420-423, 429-434, 440-445, 448-455, and Vol.2: 25/4/1975 -25/11/1975, pp. 1056-1062,Lisbon 1976 respectively 1977.


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following to the deposition of the dictatorial regime that until October 1974 the Navy [had

been] purged of 103 officers and, in the end of that year, 300 different ranks officers had beendismissed 61. In fact, probably more have been removed from the ranks after the political andmilitary anti-communist change of direction in the end of 1975, a process which underwentfor several years, until, at least, the constitutional reform of 1982 which suppressed theCouncil of the Revolution (Conselho da Revoluo ). In the Ministry of Justice, not more than

42 in a group of 500 magistrates had been punished until mid -1975, 28 of which for having participated in decisions over political crimes and the rest for having worked with thecensorship [department] and the political police, or having been members of the Governmentduring the previous regime. () At the end of 1974, eight month s after thecoup , around

4.300 civil servants had been submitted to procedures of purging 62, which does not mean,obviously, that they were expelled or even merely suspended from Civil Service.On the whole, however, huge delays in the legal purging proce dures reduced its effect andmade possible speedy reintegration after a short number of years. () Most of these high

officials, including former political police agents, would be reintegrated between 1976 and

1980, though most of them did not return tothe strategic positions they formerly held. 63 Even more revealing is the fact that no hard stance was taken in the case of the highest-rankleaders of the authoritarian regime. By the end of the 1970s, they were made to know that the

authorities would not raise any impediment to their return to the country. Former presidentThomaz did so and quickly around him rose the idea of publishing in the early 1980s hisautobiography with the provocative title of Last Decades of Portugal 64, as if the nation he hadformally presided over had ceased to exist. The former Head of the Government, MarcelloCaetano, refused to return and, having regained his academic career in Rio de Janeiro, died inBrazil in 1980, not before having published two self-explanatory autobiographicaltestimonies.65 Almost every other former political leader, government member or high

61 Antnio Costa Pinto , Enfrentando o legado autoritrio na transio para a democracia (1974-1976)[Confronting Authoritarian Legacy through Transition to Democracy], in: J. M. Brando de Brito (coordinator), O pas em revoluo. Revoluo e democracia [Country in Revolution. Revolution and Democracy], Lisboa 2001, pp. 359-384, here p. 367.62 Op. cit., p. 368, quoting data fromO Sculo (Lisbon), 19.04 and 27.02.1975.63 Pinto , Enfrentando (fn. 60), pp.369f. The author quotes the 1976 -1977-1978 report of the above -mentioned Commission. See Antnio Costa Pinto , O legado do autoritarismo e a transio portuguesa para ademocracia (1974-2004) [The Legacy of Authoritarianism and Portuguese Transition to Democracy, 1974-2004], in: Manuel Loff / Maria da Conceio Pereira (eds.), Portugal: 30 anos de Democracia [Portugal: 30 Yearsof Democracy], Oporto 2006, pp. 57-70, for some details on its proceedings.64 Amrico Thomaz , ltimas dcadas de Portugal [Last Decades of Portugal], 2 Vols., Lisbon 1980-1983. 65 Marcello Caetano , Depoimento [Biography], Rio de Janeiro 1974, and Marcello Caetano (1977),Minhas memrias de Salazar [My Memories of Salazar], Lisbon 1977. See also: Joaquim Verssimo Serro ,Marcello Caetano. Confidncias no exlio [Marcello Caetano. Revelations in Exile], 10th ed., Lisbon/So Paulo1985.


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official, if having left the country in the 1974-75 period, returned freely to Portugal in the late1970s or early 1980s. Practically all of them were reintegrated in the higher ranks of the CivilService and were generously repaired for having been submitted to the purging procedures.Very few of them were actually arrested in the tensest moments of the revolutionary periodand a single one sent to court and sentenced.66 As far as Marcello Caetanos Cabinets are concerned, eight of their members regained some

governmental office sometime after the first years of democracy, both in socialist and right-wing cabinets, revealingly. A ninth member of the last dictatorial government, CaetanosSecretary of State for Budget, became president of the Supreme Court 14 years after theRevolution (1988-90). Finally, a former Secretary and Minister under Salazar, AdrianoMoreira (Overseas, 1960-62) was frequently elected as Member of the Parliament for theCDS , and eventually became its leader (1986-87).67 The same party was able to elect toParliament a former Caetanos Secretary (Housing), Nogueira de Brito. Most importantly, a

very significant number of all these were either founders or administrators of the main

Portuguese industrialists association, the Confederao da Indstria Portuguesa , an

institution which owes largely to thecadres of Marcellos period 68.The first eleven months of the revolutionary period (April 1974-March 1975) have been aclassical case of clash between different political projects to build up a new political and

social order in the aftermath of the fall of a dictatorship. All sorts of conservatives, includingformerliberal elites of the Marcelismo , were being pushed to the right by the radicalization ofthe political process, and especially almost every relevant member of the business elites,amalgamated behind general Spnola, appointed provisional President right after 25th April1974, and tried to refuse to accept a self-determination process for the colonies (a political battle they lost in July 1974) and structural changes in economic policies. A first militaryclash was avoided on 28th September 1974, when the spinolistas prepared a series of public

demonstrations associated with military mobilization, but Spnola was forced to resign twodays later. Radicalization to the left was intensified, namely through property occupation andsocialization, following workers movements demanding for new rights, higher wages,69 but

66 According to a research led by two journalists in 1993: Jos Pedro Castanheira /Valentina Marcelino , Oshomens de Marcello: onde esto e o que fazem [Marcellos Men. Where Are Are and What Are They Doing], in

Expresso-Revista (Lisbon), 24.04.1993, pp. 22-29), out of 36 ministers, Secretaries of State and Under-secretaries ofState, only 5 (Marcello Caetano and the ministers for Defence, Home Affairs and Army, and the Under-Secretary ofthe Army) were arrested for some time, leaving the country soon after being released to, together with 17 others.67 He kept some relevant institutional offices thereafter, especially in academic activities.68 Castanheira / Marcelino , Os homens (fn. 65), p. 27.69 Real wages grew 12 percent in 1974, 9 percent in 1975, see: Emanuel Reis Leo , Das transformaesrevolucionrias dinmica europeia [From Revolutionary Transformations to European Dynamics], in: Antnio Reis (ed.), Portugal Contemporneo [Portugal Today], Vol. VI, Lisbon 1992, pp. 173-224, here p. 177. See table 1 for


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prepare the 28th September 1974 and 11th March 1975 conspiracies to reverse therevolutionary social changes. When the whole political process seemed lost from their pointof view, in Spring 1975, those who have led the Magnificent Seven , together with arepresentative section of Northern Portuguese middle-range businessmen, became activesupporters of those few armed movements organized from within and out of Portugal tocounteract the revolutionary experience,74 as well as of legal right-wing parties and, under

those specific circumstances, Soares Socialist Party. The most relevant characters amongst them used all sorts of business and class connections torebuild their fortunes. The case of two of the Magnificent Seven was recently described bytwo journalists, Filipe Fernandes and Hermnio Santos who, 30 years after, wanted to narrate

the wild li fe of businessmen and mangers in the hot years following 25th April 1974 75. Thecore managers [ ncleo duro ] of the Esprito Santo corporation who had fled the country thefirst semester of 1975 met that summer in Toledo (Spain) to follow a business plan conceived and drawn by those who had been arrested. First task was to lobby amongst the

international community on the situation of arrested businessmen in Portugal, including

contacts with President Giscard dEstaing, banker David Rockefeller or Princ e Bernard of the Netherlands. Secondly, they tried to disperse their activities throughout Brazil, London,Lausanne and Luxemburg, relying on a large support from international banking, offering

credit lines to the [ Esprito Santo ] family. They were soon back to business in London underCitibanks protection, got hold of a Brazilian bank more than legislation allowed them to, benefiting from special Government exemptions, created a fortune management society inSwitzerland and a Esprito Santo International Holding in Luxemburg. Most of them went back to Portugal already in 1976.Of the two brothers who held control overCUF , Jos Manuel de Mello, the moment heunderstood where the Revolution was heading to, decided to (...) consider emigration with

some of his direct associates. Two different groups left the country for Brazil and

74 Portuguese Liberation Army ( Exrcito de Libertao de Portugal ), Democratic Movement for theLiberation of Portugal ( Movimento Democrtico de Libertao de Portugal , led by Antnio de Spnola),operational Maria da Fonte Plan ( Plano Maria da Fonte ). Filipe S. Fernandes / Hermnio Santos , Excomungadosde Abril. Os empresrios na Revoluo [Excommunicated From April. Entrepreneurs during the Revolution],Lisboa 2005. Dom Quixote, gathers some information on the financing role of these exiled industrialists and bankers. On the ultra-right anti-revolutionary terrorism in 1975 and 1976, see: Josep Snchez Cervell , Arevoluo portuguesa e a sua influncia na transio espanhola (1961-1974) [Portuguese Revolution and its Influenceon the Spanish Transition], Port. ed., Lisbon 1993; Eduardo Dmaso , A invaso spinolista [The Spinolist Invasion],Lisbon 1999. 75 The whole of Fernandes and Santos book is a journalistic manifesto against those two years ofcollective drunkenness (according to corporation lawyer Daniel Proena de Carvalho), i. e. the revolutionary1974 and 1975 years, praising those representatives of some of the most respected families in the country( Fernandes /Santos , Excomungados [fn. 73], pp. 15, 56) who felt it better to leave the country.


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Switzerland, creating in both countries, with local capital connections (including Arab capitalin the latter), technology, shipbuilding and trading companies. Mello boasted to Fernandesand Santos about being at the time in good relations with Margaret Thatcher. Although he

never lost touch with remarkable Portuguese who were in the political struggle frontlineagainst left-wing forces, one of whom was Mrio Soares, Mello w aited for 1979 to returndefinitely to Portugal.76 When 15 years later, sociologist Maria Filomena Mnica interviewed some of them, togetherwith the more prominent new Northern Portuguese industrialists and some of the members ofwhat was speculated to have turned out as a new Portuguese entrepeneurial class,

practically unknown men before 1974, whose companies remained fundamentally

untouched by revolutionary legislation and took advantage from the destruction of theoligarchic Magnificent Seven , they all blamed harshly the revolutionary excesses of 1975for all sorts of harm done to Portuguese economy, although none ever believed a communistregime could or would be imposed on Portugal. According to one of the younger

interviewees, Portuguese are ve ry individualistic: they all want their piece of land and theirhouse 77. Virtually all shared globally positive (undoubtedly, the greatest character of the

present century, Antnio Raposo de Magalhes), or at least condescending (Salazar had

some liberal aspects, I have never thought Salazar was, in fact, a execrable dictator becausein this country people always had some freedom of speech, Belmiro de Magalhes) 78 viewson Salazarist dictatorship. Nevertheless, those who had not been members of the very strict Magnificent Seven corporation oligarchy would naturally point the finger out at the regimes economic

restrictions to a free competition market they apparently would give preference to: State policies of industrial restraint [ condicionamento industrial ] asphyxiated everything. Therewas always trouble to the new ones who wanted to do something productive (Amrico

Amorim). But in some cases there was a clear perception of what themarcelist period meant:while under Salazarism one would still have some reliability, so to speak, because,

although there were some special advantages for certain people, at least they were not

flagrant, marcelismo favoured very few people. (...) Marcello yielded to pressure exerted bycertain economic groups, the only ones who eventually got advantage (Francisco de Almeida

76 See further details in Fernandes /Santos , Excomungados (fn. 73), pp. 109-114, here p. 131. Englishexpressions in Italic.77 Jos Antnio Barros, interviewed by Mnica, in: Mnica , Os grandes patres (fn. 40), p. 260; see alsoopinions by Amrico Amorim, Queiroz e Mello and Belmiro de Azevedo: Op. cit., pp. 63-65, 91, 122.78 Op. cit., pp. 104, 119.


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Garrett).79 Unsurprisingly enough, according to Jorge de Mello (brother of Jos Manuel), theonly representative of the pre-1974 Magnificent Seven (one of the main owners of Mellofamily controlledCUF ) interviewed by Mnica in the late 1980s, it was not the mostadvanced [evoludos ] businessmen who needed protection from political power, it was

political power who needed to keep businessmen dependent from politicians decisions;

these state industrial policies, more than an economic demand, were convenient to political power to exert a permanent control over economy. Amidst the late 1980s industrialists, nothing could be further away from Amrico Amorims

explanation for the 1975 nationalization process we will soon look upon. Those groups, theso-called Magnificent Seven , were not dynamic, they did not earn money all by themselves.They needed protection from the system, i. e. the authoritarian state. From the point of viewof one of the two Portuguese individual largest fortunes since the 1980s until the present day,the way this whole thing was taken by assault in 1975 was a result of the fact that these

people had left the country. If ours had not been a 15 to 20 families [controlled by] country, but of 50.000 businessmen, scattered throughout several geographical areas, I assure you thatit would not have happened. (...) It was their own wealth which scared them and pushed themout of the country 80.Finally, Mnica heard some of them (Belmiro de Azevedo and Jorge de Mello) praise the

Spanish transitional model as a superior form of negotiating a gradual liberalization process,81 an attitude which would become absolutely consensual in all conservative and liberalPortuguese elites in the turn of century.An interesting phenomenon took place inside the state economic departments: one fraction ofthat same University-produced elite of the 1960s and 1970s, intimately associated with themarcelist project of economic modernization without political change, was substantially (butonly temporarily) wiped out of the state apparatus and replaced by another fraction, clearly

more to the left (communists, socialists, progressive Catholics), most of whom would leadeconomic departments in future socialist administrations (1976-78, 1983-85, 1995-2002).These left-wingers would, nevertheless, work together with a number of pragmatictechnocrats who were kept in place, people who had obviously subscribed to Caetanos

economic policies but would not object significantly to the Provisional Governmentseconomic policies while the revolutionary period lasted, and would soon be heading the samedepartments, both in right-wing administrations ( PSD/CDS administrations, 1980-83, 1985-

79 Op. cit., pp. 65, 166.80 Mello and Amorim interviewed by Mnica, in: Op. cit., pp. 206f., 66.81 Op. cit., pp. 121, 211, for instance.


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95, 2002-05) and in those of the so-called presidential initiative (three cabinets directlyappointed by President Eanes, 1978-80).Another relevant change resulted from the sudden immigration of the so-calledretornados ,i. e. the Portuguese settlers and some of the so-calledassimilated Africans who fled from thenewly independent states (a significant part of whom Capeverdian and of Hindustani origin)in 1974-76. Mostly politically conservative and deeply resentful against the decolonization process, they represented themselves as more liberal and open-minded and their businesselites would claim a significant role in right-wing administrations in the 1980s and 1990s.Literature on the Portuguese elites political culture along the modernization process which

extended from the last 1940s to the 1970s tend to identify a wide consensus in the economicsphere of both opposition forces (communists but also socialists and moderates who

gravitated around the latter) and liberal reformers who participated in the economic policy-conception of Marcelism : to dismantle the corporative area, towards which official policywas aiming already in the final years of the dictatorship, to control and to stimulate

productive activities, economic and social planning, and to increase salaries. In contras t,deeper reforms aiming to change the overall structure of private ownership and [to promote]

state direct intervention in goods and services production remained clearly a matter of

conflict. Political conditions under the dictatorship not always allowed these differences

among opposition and reformist forces to become visible, but they were inevitably

aggravated after 25 th April 1974 and were the cause of intense political clash 82.With the democratic revolution, a new political actor rushed decisively into the politicalarena: the MFA , who militarily prepared the fall of the dictatorship, was led by a generation of

young petit -bourgeois captains, with their vague and contradictory ideology, their appeal to anabstract people and their attempt to overcome political parties and to build a revolutionarydemocracy sustained on peoples power and their leaders charisma 83, and soon (June 1974)

refused to dissolve as was demanded by all right-wing forces (former regime supporters, the spinolistas aggregated around the provisional President and most of the Liberal reformistswho had collaborated and then got disappointed with Caetano and had converged towards thenewly formed PPD ). Alongside the opposition movements who occupied most of the politicaldebate once the dictatorship came to an end communists, socialists, progressive Catholics,and far-left Maoists and Guevarists , the MFA emerged asa metamorphosis of the military

82 Viegas , Elites (fn. 12), p. 104.83 Dawn Linda Raby , A resistncia antifascista em Portugal. Comunistas, democratas e militares em oposioa Salazar, 1941-1974 [Antifascist Resistance in Portugal. Communists, Democrats and Military in OppositionAgainst Salazar], Port. ed., Lisbon 1990, p. 284.


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interpretation of the state action during this revolutionary period as if it had been the outcome ofa standard political choice procedure, as if its actors could have used their state prerogatives in acontext in which popular movements had not been as central in the whole social process ashistory shows they were. Again, as Fernando Rosas reminds us, that was the deepest and most

threatening shake suffered by an oligarchy which had always ruled in Portugal, undamaged andself-assured 86.Finally, when social tension produced inevitable politico-military consequences such as the28th September 1974 and mostly the 11th March 1975 armed attempts to stop revolutionarychange, a radical step forward was taken in economic policies: three days after the latter ofthese two unsuccessful military right-wing coups, the newly institutionalized Council of theRevolution (Conselho da Revoluo , CR) passed a resolution pressing the ProvisionalGovernment to adopt a series of legal measures87 through which, from March to December1975, 244 companies were nationalized. Two main objectives were aimed with such a

policy: the destruction of the main economic and financial groups the Magnificent Seven

and centralization into state hands of t he key-areas of Portuguese economy 88.Consequently, all non-foreign capital banks and insurance companies were nationalized inMarch 1975, thus, achieving an indirect nationalization of quite a number of industrial andservice companies. The same logic (avoid international problems, not touching any foreign

company) was to be followed in the months to come, when the Provisional Governmentdecided to proceed with the nationalization of major companies operating in the oil (April),shipping, harbours and transportation (April, June and December), steel (April), electric power (April), cement (May), paper manufacture (May), tobacco (May), glass (August),mining (August), heavy chemicals (August), beer (August), ship building (September),agriculture (November), radio and television (December) businesses. At the end of the process, the Portuguese State held a productive public sector in national economy globally

similar to the French, West-German or British, but clearly less prominent than the Italian:

86 Op. cit., pp. 138.87 List of all nationalization decrees on inViegas , Elites (fn. 12), p. 123, table 4.1.88 Leo , Das transformaes revolucionrias (fn. 68), p. 174.


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Table 7: Public companies in some European national economies (1978)

Country GVA public companies/GDP

GFCF public companies/National economy GFCF

Public companies workers/ Active population

Portugal 19.8% 30.0% * 6.5% Italy 24.7% 47.1% * 25.4% France 12.9% 30.7% --- F.R.G. 10.4% 11.9% 9.1% U.K. 11.4% 20.8% 8.0%

GVA = Gross Value Added; GFCF = Gross Fixed Capital Formation* InvestmentSource: Maria Manuela Antnio et al., O sector empresarial do Estado em Portugal e nos pases da CEE[State Owned Business in Portugal and the Countries of the EEC], Lisbon 1983, p. 178.

In fact, only in the financial system area Portuguese public propertys weight (83 percent ofall banking, insurance and real estate operations in 1979) was clearly higher than in any other

Western European case (63.1 percent of bank deposits in Italy, 46.8 percent of bankemployees in France). The proportion of Portuguese public owned companies operating in power industries (71.4 percent in Portugal vs. 100 percent in Greece, 94 percent in France,92.5 percent in Italy or 84 percent in the U.K.) and transforming goods industries (9.3 percentin Portugal vs. 13.1 percent in Italy, 6.5 percent in France) was either inferior or quite similarto other European cases.A strong left swing in governmental and MFA leadership eventually produced an economic

model based upon the nationalization of big corporations, an agrarian reform which wasalready in progress through the occupation by peasants of the huge land properties of thesouthern part of thecountry (Alentejo and some Ribatejo and Beira Baixa areas), a statistcentralization of economic planning, a social distributive policy operating upon salaries,

prices, social security, credit and public investment 89.

V. Post-Revolution (new?) elites

In spite of most political and media discourse produced after 1976, there was at least,apparently a wide consensus in 1975, as far as the nationalizations were concerned, among allsegments of the 1950s and 1960s newly qualified elite we have been talking about, from whichall socialist and liberal ( PPD/PSD ) leading economists and, generally speaking, economic policy-makers had been recruited, as well as most of Communist Party ones. From a moderate orconservative point of view, it was clearly preferable state intervention in private companieswhose owners were being systematically questioned and even harassed by relentless workers

movements, than to leave it in the hands of the workers committees who usually took charge of

89 Viegas , Elites (fn. 12), p. 139.


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the management the moment the owners fled the country, taking money and equipment awaywith them. In fact, as Jos M. L. Viegas sustains, when socialists and liberals started confrontingthe 1975 MFA revolutionary stance, they were questioning what they perceived as a threat tothe democratic- parliamentary model and to political pluralism, rather than nationalizations,which were actually comparable with similar processes that had taken place in other Western

European countries, except as the financial sector was concerned 90.In fact, communists, socialists and the more radical wing of liberal reformists of the

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