Abstract
In this article we propose a problematizing overview of daily life under the Salazarist dictatorship (1926–1974), linking the corporative, educational and propagandistic contexts. We examine how institutionalized, controlled, negotiated and/or repressed leisure was spread throughout the smallest interstices of daily life in Portugal. We also analyse the dichotomous realities and policies for the people and elites (in education and reading, cultural production, circulation and consumption), for women and men (social and cultural roles), etc., and compromises with an expanded mass culture. The article directs attention to specific examples of sociocultural negotiations between civil society and the state, as happened in sports (para-)folkloristic festivities and parades (e.g. the ‘popular marches’) and in certain mass culture productions (e.g. revue theatre, cinema, broadcasting and television). Similarly, our ‘bottom-up’ approach focuses on evidence of subversive or alternative sociability and cultural achievements, demonstrating that, in some areas, elements of civil society were able to express open resistance and/or alternative views to the dictatorship.
For almost half a century, from 1926 to 1974, Portuguese society lived under a dictatorial regime, first led by military juntas, then by Salazar, and in its twilight by Marcelo Caetano. This longevity was largely due to the ability of different political and social currents to negotiate and interact with one another, as well as to ideological inculcation by the regime. The daily life of Portuguese people was thus deeply pervaded by these influences. In this article we propose to look first at how this affected the representations, relations and practices of ‘ordinary’ people under Salazar, with the focus being on political-ideological and sociocultural dimensions. At its core, the article investigates processes of negotiation, resistance and alternative capacity-building by civil society, groups and individuals, and how these related to the official apparatus of the dictatorship and its institutional longevity in daily life. In addition, the article seeks to verify the presence of those categories (and others such as consent and consensus) in behaviours and attitudes, and to determine how and how far these influenced social and cultural relations in Portugal.
In the case of Salazarism, taking a bottom-up approach articulating the history of everyday life and nationalism (especially banal nationalism) helps us to reflect on the place of underestimated, silenced and/or persecuted worldviews, from workers to women, taking in ‘ordinary’ people and disaffected or resistant citizens. 1 Through this approach, it is possible to perceive the expectations and life options of once-silenced ‘ordinary’ people through the examination of indicators such as the sociocultural and civic practices they most adhered to (detectable in statistics, in various speeches, in the media, in memorialism, etc.), or through studies (or incursions) of a local or sectoral scope, which illuminate local everyday experiences through the detailed reconstruction of various dimensions. 2 This has been the case with studies on the aforementioned groups, or on sociocultural practices. For example, some authors point to the crucial importance of studying the repertoire of resources, relationships and behaviours mobilized by disadvantaged social groups regarding issues as relevant as colonialism, emigration, particular forms of popular sociability or consumption; others have highlighted distinctive and/or emancipatory itineraries on the part of different groups of women at various levels, domestic, professional, civic, artistic, etc. 3 Nery, for his part, revealed how fado as a sociocultural practice had distinct individual, micro-local and national appropriations. 4 Finally, it remains important to continue to study what was ‘exceptional’ in the dictatorship (for example, the grand nationalist gatherings and events) and to analyse the everyday contexts in which they were reproduced and updated, as these put into effect a continual process whereby the regime's nationalist worldview was made material and naturalized. 5 In this context, national identity is the mediating (dialogical) element that allows the circulation of ideas, norms, practices and influences between elite, popular and traditional cultures. 6 National culture does not exist without a continual interaction with local cultures, themselves always in movement, resulting in crossings, contamination and transformations that create tension between uniformity and local and individual creativity, autonomy and plasticity. 7 In this sense, the official visions promoted by dictatorships such as Salazarism were compelled to continually compromise with the visions of local collective identities and individual identities, experiences that are echoed under similar regimes. 8
Ideological Genealogies: Convergences, Plasticity and Hybridity
The Salazar dictatorship was able to take root because its ideology was initially formed by elements of differing origins, creating a composite and variable profile. 9 This heterogeneity and adaptive capacity cultivated a broader social base of support for the regime, but also caused tensions due to clashing interests between these currents. However, the doctrinal hard core (summed up as ‘God, Fatherland, Family and Work’) remained uncompromised; rather, the regime's ideological heterogeneity and adaptability provided it with an escape valve in social and media terms, and greater institutional plasticity. This base was also empowered by the ability to develop public programmes that reached the most varied spheres of Portuguese society. 10 The conjunction between different reactionary forces and modernizing impetus implies collaboration and clash, bearing similarities and interconnections with projects undertaken in Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and Francoist Spain. 11
This drive derived from a broad agreement on building a ‘new state’ that would prioritize the nationalist ideal and build a new society, based on corporatism, the rejection of class struggle and the nationalization of the masses. In this basic framework, Salazarism was united with other ‘third way’ regimes, which were positioned between capitalism and communism. 12 This solution, an explicit modern reaction to the processes of modernization taking place in the Western world, found favour in a number of countries, including fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Francoist Spain and Vichy France, just to mention the nearest, until it became dominant within Europe.
The ideological currents that nurtured the Portuguese dictatorship fought for a strong interventionist state that met the interests of the bourgeoisie and controlled worker demands. Its ideological hard core inculcated a corporate dynamic that was anti-liberal, anti-democratic, anti-parliamentary, anti-communist and ultra-nationalist. The tension lay in the relationship between conservatism and modernization: its pillars of fundamentalist Catholic and Lusitanian integralism offered a conservative vision of society, based on the restoration of traditionalism and its values (order, hierarchy, authority, obedience, etc.) and the alliance between the Catholic Church and the state (ideally a monarchy), and with ‘natural’ social bodies. The fascist pillar advocated a ‘new’ and thus revolutionary ‘order’, which would incorporate industrial workers and peasantry into the corpus of the nation (while promoting industrialization, largely at the expense of those social groups) and spread a new worldview to the entire social body, formed from a combination of ‘tradition’ and ‘vanguard’, ‘national’ and ‘modern’. 13 The concern with the aggrandizement of the nation through major public works, industrial consolidation and agribusiness – to strengthen vital economic foundations and enable the domestic market to expand – would bring fascist and developmentalist currents into closer alignment. 14
This precarious and contradictory linkage of influences and interests was used by Salazar to establish himself as a congregating and unifying dictator, mediating desires and composing balances in favour of a higher national(ist) politics. His ultra-Catholic and ruralist outlook (shared by many) and his extreme attachment to one-person power led him to have considerable influence over the official worldview. One of his most striking contributions was his advocacy of ‘living normally’, that is, people should live exclusively by preserving and reproducing the shared habits and values handed down by previous generations, now ‘contaminated’ by official intervention, social alternatives and mass culture. An apparently conservative approach but above all an ambiguous one, since it was not clearly defined. He brought about a vacillation in official discourse and practices over those decades, but this inevitably implies choices. First and foremost of these was the retrieval or (re)invention of so-called popular traditions in keeping with the fundamentalist Catholic mother church, with the ultranationalist cult and the rationale of mass mobilization in conformist cultural activities, appealing to ruralist and traditionalist nostalgia and/or those already enshrined in mass culture, from the emergence of cultural and entertainment industries. 15
In this context, the defence of rurality and catholicity served the restoration of a supposedly ancient, mythical order, rooted not only in the idiosyncrasies of the dictator but also in a diffuse reaction to the recent path taken by society. This discourse was simultaneously anti-First Republic (1910–1926) and averse to urban worldviews and cosmopolitanism, replacing citizenship and the right to be one's own master and master of one's future with the ordering of the world and social time through corporatism. The people would identify themselves with the nation itself, as part of an anonymous, subordinated and conservative collective. But the culture to be retrieved would have to be guided from above: it would be up to the ruling elites to lead the people back to so-called authentic culture, in the meantime purged (‘nationalized’) and cleansed of supposed ‘degenerate’ additions in order to yield a manipulated and transformed culture. This was inspired by fascist cultural policy in Italy, especially its folklorization process and some aspects of its nationalization of mass culture, such as cinema and publishing. 16
This ideological dimension of the dictatorship, imposed on Portuguese society for decades, naturally had practical implications, feeding public policies that enshrined the daily mobilization of individuals in the service of official values, representations and practices. The most important of these for most of Portuguese society were cultural, educational and corporate policies.
The Corporate Capillary Network
The arena of official popular culture, that is political activity directed at shaping the mentalities, practices and beliefs of most of the population, was a key component of the regime's wider assertion of its political-ideological presence, itself a crucial contributor to its ambition to achieve all-encompassing rule. This ambition was clearly stated at the very beginning of the institutionalization of corporatism in the early 1930s, when the dictatorship was constitutionalized and declared itself as a ‘new state’ [Estado novo], in other words, a strong, interventionist state that would transform society and culture.
Thus, in the countryside, the corporatist organization linked together a network of multi-purpose community centres (the casas do povo). The casas do povo systematized the regime's provision of basic social assistance services (healthcare and minimum social security), education (adult literacy, training courses in traditional crafts) and leisure activities for workers, emulating the fascist Dopolavoro model. There were sociocultural specialized units within the casas do povo, the first category of them being called centros de alegria no trabalho, or ‘joy at work centres’). They were implemented steadily from 1941 and coordinated by umbrella organizations (such as the National Foundation for Joy at Work [FNAT]). Their potential range of action encompassed the country's rural space entirely, including the suburbs of some provincial towns and cities. This network, which also came to have hundreds of units spread around metropolitan areas (in the colonies they were few and late in coming), promoted a prescribed daily cultural experience through its programme content disseminated via a series of cultural outlets: libraries, cinema, radio broadcasts and collective reading sessions, theatre, rural ethnographic museums, handicrafts, folk and choral groups, games, sports, etc. Of these, the folklore groups deserve especial attention. They were the lifeblood of a particular national network and became key elements in the reinvention of popular traditions directed towards symbolic recreation, artistic-cultural standardization and social conformation. 17 In addition, the corporate network was rolled out in fishing areas through the ‘fishermen's houses’ and its own coordinating body, with greater autonomy in relation to leisure activities.
As for other wage-earners (industry and services), they were provided with ‘national trade unions’, following the abolition or conversion of the pre-existing free trade unions. These offered a more hybrid programme as a concession to the greater uptake of the classical arts and mass culture in urban areas, seeking to reconcile cinema (in its commercial, historicist and propagandistic aspects) with ‘varieties’, fado, and light and folkloric music. A significant part of this cultural production was offered by centralized bodies, via regular programmes of open-air cinema, FNAT ‘evenings for workers’, official radio, the Ópera do Trindade, etc. Another relevant area here was physical education and corporate sports, with their own championships, where football, a core sport since the 1940s, was all important. 18 The popularity of these forms of cultural and recreational activity and their gradual intertwining with mass consumer culture made them central to everyday life. In this context, the regime had only to undertake to imbue these with banal nationalism, through the combination of nationalist props, invitations to sympathetic authors or more escapist works. 19
From Countryside to City
Despite the ruralist rhetoric, pro-social immobility and anti-city ethos, Portugal's urban population grew significantly during the half-century of dictatorship. According to official data, it rose from 31.75% of the total population in 1926 to 59.60% in 1970. The daily leisure activities of these increasingly urbanized Portuguese were marked by an important set of official cultural activities which, whether these rejected or combined with mass culture, acquired a powerful spirit of the spectacular and of irresistible sensory attraction.
Inspired by fascist and Nazi events, Salazarism became entangled in the regular production of festivals, historical and/or folkloric parades, displays of folk music, songs and dancing, and ethnographic, historicist and/or monumental exhibitions, the most sumptuous of these in Lisbon, ‘capital of the Empire’. In addition, many Catholic religious events were officially sponsored, such as the pilgrimages related to Fatima.
Some festivals had a local basis, but they were quickly nationalized and defined by the authorities as instruments of social conformism, consensus, disciplining bodies and ideological or symbolic indoctrination. It was an efficient way of instigating nationalism through banal elements. One of the most influential festivals was the marchas populares [‘popular marches’] staged in Lisbon, which dominated the city festival from 1934. This date is the marker from when a vaguely folklorizing improvised double show was recreated. The format was a meeting point of a mini-pageant, cultural industry product, ethnographic idea, and urban traditional popular inspiration, held on the ‘Portuguese Broadway’, the Parque Mayer, and it became an ‘invented tradition’. 20 In other words, the capital city appropriated this hugely popular event in order to officially contain it, launching it as a showy pageant-parade with supposedly ethnographic value, combining urban and rural, local and national elements. In addition to this event in the centre of the city, popular festivals were encouraged over a relatively long period of the year (approximately three weeks in June), covering the June group of Christian saints (St Peter, St John and St Anthony, the latter also already appropriated and ‘nationalized’). It was linked with the nationalist celebrations of ‘Homeland Day’, itself renamed ‘Day of the [Portuguese] Race’. The popular marches in Lisbon were often interrupted, sometimes for understandable political-social or other reasons (e.g. World War II). Among the reasons for disruption, it is worth mentioning the presence of pluralism in neighbourhood representations (which led to the immediate official framing of the 1934 festivity, requiring only one representation per neighbourhood), and conflicts between neighbourhoods, due to antagonism towards or controversial decisions made by the jury appointed to evaluate the parade against officially-regulated criteria including the parade's ‘picturesque’, ‘joyful’, ‘distinctive’ and ‘upstanding’ qualities, which caused micro-local and institutional tensions and forced the suspension of the 1970 event. However, the formula was so appealing that it was replicated in many towns and cities around the country. It thus came to be set in the cultural imaginary of the country, thus giving it a key status.
Another reinvention of a supposedly ethnographic tradition was the projection of folk groups (most of them linked to the casas de povo). These groups conformed to regulations and other disciplinary criteria and were incorporated into the format of the pageant. This inevitably meant that they became removed from the supposed original model that, in official terms, they were seeking to recapture, that is, groups formed cyclically and spontaneously in rural contexts for folk activities. The original purpose of those groups was to enliven celebrations linked to the traditional popular calendar, such as harvest time, or some secular or religious festival, imitating what happened in Fascist Italy. 21
Culture as Indoctrination, Control and Repression
Although ideological indoctrination permeated all official bodies, the SPN/SNI (Secretariat for National Propaganda/National Secretariat for Information, Popular Culture and Tourism) is particularly notable for its ability to engage the Portuguese in forming a nationalistic view of themselves. Created in the image of Nazi and fascist propaganda agencies and led by António Ferro until 1949, it was jointly responsible for a great many exhibitions (of handicrafts, visual arts, history, etc.), festivals (folkloric, historical) and performances that beguiled the eyes of both Portuguese and outsiders. The exhibitions were held at the Museum of Popular Art (1948), as presaged in the Portuguese World Exhibition (PWE). This was part of the Double Centennial Celebrations (establishment and restoration of national independence), which unfolded in a series of historical, religious and cultural events throughout 1940 and in various cities around the country. The PWE, with almost 3 million tickets sold in a country with a population of 7.7 million, was a great live display of imperial Portugal, an orderly and immobilized oasis in the heroic time of the Lusitanian ‘race’, as opposed to a world torn apart by war and ‘secular ideologies’. The activities for a wider public that should be noted encompassed state radio, travelling theatre and cinema, propaganda films (see below), and a contest to determine the most Portuguese Village of Portugal (in 1938).
The all-embracing ambition of the ultranationalist recovery programme that Salazar led implied a policy of conservation (or redemption) and of the production and circulation of goods and cultural activities aimed at all spheres of culture. This is how the fight against dissent or objection was understood, through political censorship of the printed word and cultural activity (theatre, cinema, radio and television), repression of cultural dissent, selective support for certain authors and topics, and ideological control of the stock in public and other libraries. This helps to explain both the difficulties in affirming public space, critical spirit and debate, and the greater endurance of nineteenth-century Portuguese literature and certain (sub)genres. Another outcome was the greater projection of nationalist literature, past and present, which had repercussions not only on supply but also on demand itself. It is therefore useful to briefly present its modus operandi.
The censorship services, which exercised censorship a priori (press, films, theatre, radio and television) and a posteriori (most books, by gradual official concession), were perfected over the decades, under the logic of the greatest deterrent effect at the lowest political and resource cost. They were complemented by ad hominem censorship applied to recalcitrant undesirables and spread to the media to be applied in the public sphere, or to certain books. Social censorship was another weapon, keenly practised by religious and lay fundamentalists (and informers), as was self-censorship. This was the pinnacle of censorship performance, since it meant incorporating interdicts and the logic of conveying official messages by those who might well disobey it, i.e. playwrights, writers, journalists, publishers and administrators of the theatre, press, radio, etc. When censorship red lines were crossed, there was an array of other repressive measures, like fines, suspensions, administrative control and the forced closure of journals, printing companies, publishers and cultural associations that involved publications, the seizure of books and magazines, and detention and/or imprisonment for questioning the regime. 22 Some cases still came to court, politically instigated. Censorship and information policy were interlinked, as borne out by the action of other higher bodies.
The Plural but Watched World of Readings
In the world of reading, censorship and propaganda became decisive factors in the daily choices of the Portuguese.
The press was battered the most, especially the daily, progressive, and cultural and scientific journals. Besides extensive official surveys to control the political position of the daily press, the ‘reading of and commenting on all periodicals’ by censors averaged 31,000 copies a year. This produced ‘daily and weekly reports’ of something like 4000 documents for different administrative bodies each year. At the same time, the central propaganda body distributed 41,000 news items to the press up to 1957. 23
For reasons of persecution, much of the progressive press, such as the republican and anarchist press, went into decline, and another part was driven underground, including the communist press. Progressive Catholic sectors were also targeted.
The topics most persecuted (communism and questioning of the official ideology and praxis), and the content considered subversive (above all religion, morality, sexuality and women's emancipation) were the most sought after in the semi-legal or clandestine circulation routes of printed matter. These included the Portuguese Communist Party network and those of other opposition parties and fronts, a plethora of associations linked to the working world and the opposition, such as cultural and recreational societies, student associations, film clubs, cultural cooperatives, etc. Another relevant circuit was that of emigration and exile, reaching the million Portuguese who fled the country (deserters, draft evaders, exiles and other political refugees) or emigrated (the majority) since the 1960s, and generating new exchanges and trends and reshaping Portuguese society.
As for the cultural and scientific journals, official persecution in the 1930s led to them being uprooted from vast areas of the country and to their withdrawal in proportion to the total number of nationally circulated periodicals. The sharp fall in reading publications of this type contributed to a structural cultural deficit, officially stimulated and linked to Portuguese people's low level of cultural education, which declined until the 1950s and was aggravated by the ageing of the literate population. 24
Even so, the daily press continued to record significant print runs for a country where illiteracy was widespread. This was due to the pervasiveness of a shared reading and written culture in urban environments, where literacy rates were well above the national average, and in the case of the two main cities (Lisbon and Porto) at the level of the most developed western cities. In addition, these cities were involved in circulation networks of printed matter across the Atlantic, connecting to France, Spain, England, Brazil, etc. 25
This meant that, despite illiteracy, reading newspapers, magazines and books became part of daily life for an important strata of the population, particularly among the literate middle classes, the petty bourgeoisie, segments of the working class and students. Commercial publishing continued, ranging from sentimental, popular fiction (from crime to westerns) and historical novels, and some informative and technical books, to the eruption of militant publishers and their literature engagée. 26 All areas were permeated by a notable proportion of translations, especially Spanish, English and French works, competing with national(ist) literature, despite more than 10,000 censorship readers’ reports. 27 Even so, reading was controlled and unequal, with the dictatorship cultivating a segregationist policy, by gender and age, but above all by class. Given the low purchasing power of most people, their access to reading was largely through libraries. The public libraries now had to exercise vigilance, but selective vigilance, which focused mainly on popular demand: ‘in all popular and mobile libraries, it is absolutely forbidden to provide books, magazines and pamphlets that contain insults to morals and religions, or doctrines contrary to state security’ (from Decree 19952 of 1931). This surveillance was carried out by many librarians, for fear of reprisals and/or for their adherence to social censorship.
The territorial distribution of libraries was very asymmetrical, with huge areas of the country lacking a basic supply, despite the advances made in the rural world via the establishing of libraries in community centres, primary schools, and so on. Even so, libraries, their collections, variety and demand became consolidated, partly due to civil society developments, the most important being the libraries of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (FCG), a nationwide project (excluding the colonies) which established a network of fixed and mobile units and incorporated a reading committee to select proposed books. 28
Much of the success of this project was due to its interaction with local authorities and free associations. This link facilitated the gradual spread of its library network, reduced the glaring geographical asymmetries and helped to stem the social and political resistance and persecution of books that could be considered more polemical or even subversive, which occurred mainly when the first mobile libraries appeared in more conservative areas. The collections were built up in accordance with a certain commitment, to avoid official retaliation. Although originally intended for an adult public with basic literacy, children and adolescents always took precedence. Demand intensified supply trends in these libraries, i.e. the importance of works of fiction, with gradual growth in other areas, especially those more related to philosophy and sciences. But both aspects (i.e., works related to literature and to philosophy and sciences) had an innovative degree of diversity and renewal, until then inaccessible to most people and breaking with the official concepts and screens used to select works for distribution. The Gulbenkian libraries resulted in a leap in reading indicators in the country and became an icon of social and cultural transformation for citizens from several generations. 29
Children, Women and Soldiers: A Targeted Nationalism
Between 1926 and 1974, as Portugal swung between extreme closure and controlled opening, children and women were particularly singled out and targeted, as well as discriminated against, by the regime.
In this context, children's daily lives were marked by a nationalistic school environment, which covered everything from school activities to extra-curricular ones. Schooling took a patriotic, conservative, canonical, bookish stamp, with a basic focus on repetition and memorizing, obedience to hierarchies and official values. Extra-curricular activities were developed by youth groups suitable for boys (Mocidade Portuguesa) and for girls (Mocidade Portuguesa Feminina). These were militia organizations following the Nazi and fascist format, that trained youngsters for the defence of the ‘nation’ and the aggrandizement of the ‘race’, with the consequences being physical preparation and militarist, nationalist and patriarchal ideological indoctrination. Membership was compulsory for young people aged 7 to 14 until 1972 (voluntary after that, until military service), with children expected to participate in the monumental parades that multiplied in more patriotic situations. The Ministry of National Education (MEN) tried to replace free student and other associations, but only succeeded partially, and at certain stages of the regime's existence.
In their daily life out of school, the young people of the time were much tempted by children's magazines, especially comics. From the end of World War II onwards, this genre mainly promoted the adventures of US, British and French heroes (in imported versions or in translation), with violence and purposes alien to Salazarist interests but pleasing to these ‘new readers’. To curb this eagerness, the regime's censorship service published strict guidelines for the nationalist sanitization of children's and young people's 30 literature. A higher authority was also created to oversee this crusade, directly subordinate to the dictator. 31
Women were burdened with the social roles of caring for the home, of procreator and servant of the husband, family and nation, fearing God. The Salazarian regime's policies and attitudes towards women constituted a systematic and reactionary response to on-going broader changes in gender relations, instigating the retreat of women into the home (except for time spent on getting provisions and on the Christian sacraments, in addition to education time or time spent caring for others) and towards ideological indoctrination through school and guidance institutions. The regime also sought to curtail women’s civil rights (franchise limited to certain groups, travelling allowed only with husband's permission, restricted divorce), as well as their economic and emotional independence and oversaw their sexual erasure.
This project clashed with the reality of secular economic needs, which involved the majority of women, especially from the mainstream strata, in a multitude of jobs that occupied their lives. Women were engaged in gardening, farm work, animal husbandry and grazing, spinning and other domestic work outside the home. They sold produce in the markets and local squares, provided services in the homes of the rich and middle classes, and worked in factories, bars and cafés. Women were also teachers (but almost always only primary school teachers) and worked in health care (from midwives to nurses, and they were forbidden to marry), and in services (almost always only as telephonists and postal and office workers). On this subject, the feminist Maria Lamas recorded the daily lives of peasant women throughout the country in the 1940s in a book that is still a key reference point today. 32 Moreover, the lived realties of multivalent female practices and experiences, including sex-work, adultery, concubinage, infanticide, abandonment and sponsorship of children, legitimate and illegitimate children, religious prisoners, as single female households and motherhood, contributed to eroding the regime-sanctioned ideal of the woman-mother-domestic goddess and that of the model nuclear family. 33
The mismatch between official policy and societal reality worsened during the Colonial war (1961–1974). In that period, nearly 1,200,000 Portuguese men had to abandon their families for several years; each tour of duty lasted three years, many troops served several tours. They were sent to defend the so-called multi-continental and multi-racial nation on the fronts in Portuguese Africa (not counting around 200,000 illegitimate absentees and deserters). In 1968, the costs of the then 150,000 mobilized troops absorbed one third of the state budget, the largest sector expenditure of a Western country since 1945. During those 13 years of war, the daily lives of the then combatants changed, marked by the twin forced experiences of violence, namely war and colonialism, in a militarized daily life that was almost exclusively male, where gambling, drinking and smoking were accompanied by writing (especially letters to family and friends) and musical evenings. 34 In the midst of this, the shows, records and sentimental mail produced by the godmothers of war from the pro-government organization Movimento Nacional Feminino [National Women's Movement] failed to wipe out a new reality: tens of thousands of dead civilians and soldiers (about 9000 of whom were from the colonial contingent); 15,507 soldiers with permanent physical disabilities; and the spread of post-traumatic stress among tens of thousands of Portuguese.
Finding ‘Room to Manouevre’: Alternate Socio-Cultural Spaces
Forbidden to uphold fundamental public freedoms, the opposition used every possible means to make its voice heard, especially in the cultural sector and during election campaigns. 35 This meant that sociocultural and civic activities became one of the main tools for opposition intervention. The campaigns of Norton de Matos in 1949 and Delgado in 1958, the Programme for the Democratization of the Republic of 1961, and the opposition conferences of 1957, 1969 and 1973 stressed the need for the global democratization of society, including education and knowledge. Cultural and educational intervention became a key mechanism for political contestation, whilst free associations provided a platform for maintaining legal alternatives.
In this context, the independent sociocultural associations comprised both a vital beacon of resistance and an alternative to the Salazarist totalitarian project, thanks to their internal democratic nature, their wide and cross-class audience and their capacity to generate sociocultural alternatives with political scope. Indeed, this is how the regime itself saw the associations, as they persecuted them persistently, using omission, discrimination, repression, and competition to try and curb a movement opposed to the regime's ambition to control everything in the public sphere. One of the most striking cases was the Portuguese Federation of Cultural and Recreation Societies (FPCCR). 36
This Federation was created in 1924 by republicans aiming to unify a broad spectrum of sociocultural and recreational associations to which they were linked. It operated in the Lisbon district, which then included the more industrial Setúbal. In the 1930s, official hostility to the FPCCR was evident in the persecution of several affiliates (for teaching Esperanto, a language considered subversive, or for defiance, etc.), in the increase of tariffs, in the official intention to control the environment, and in their non-recognition as institutions of public utility. Despite this, the Federation became stronger; it regularly celebrated the associative milieu with festivals, competitions and lectures; it enriched its sociocultural and exchange programming; and it mediated in the problems of its members with the authorities. In so doing, it cemented its influence and sociocultural value, and the value of the ‘associative’ realm. In 1941, FPCCR held a ‘Recreational Parade’ in the Terreiro do Paço, in front of Salazar, involving a thousand societies and 50 philharmonics from all over the country (equivalent to one third of all associations, with the Federation then forming about 13% of it, according to its own data). The regime was disturbed by this demonstration of strength. From then on, the FNAT competed directly with the FPCCR. It did so first, by creating its Centres of Joy at Work, then by blocking its national ambition through the enforced absorption of some of its associates and vetoing new articles of association. In 1948 the FPCCR estimated that there were nearly 2 million association members in the country, with a significant share of them in its almost 600 registered affiliates. From the 1950s onwards, the Federation relaxed its dynamic as an alternative to state apparatus (while strengthening the total membership) and expanded its exchange with the regime. In any case, the FPCCR stood as an example of the vitality of civil society and its capacity to generate projects that stood as alternatives to those of the state.
The regionalist movement experienced a similar evolution, whereby a more political perspective was placated and superimposed by sociocultural management. Its purpose was to occupy the free time of its fellows with regular cultural activities such as dances, recitals and popular gatherings. It had its own spaces in the main destination cities of the rural exodus in the metropolis (Lisbon and Porto), in the main cities of the diaspora (especially in Brazil, the USA and France) and in the colonies (Luanda, Lourenço Marques and a few other cities).
Other movements were also active and challenging (to the regime), such as cooperativism, cineclubismo [film clubs], student associations, new cultural currents, protest songs, etc. Together, they made possible greater sociocultural diversity through the dissemination and creation of new practices and forms, but also, in a broader way by spreading alternate ways of thinking about and addressing society and the world, opting for civic intervention and/or pro-democratization of society.
Although the Catholic Church was one of the mainstays of the regime, the safeguarding of the relative autonomy of some of its bodies and the emergence of disaffected figures and currents meant that it also played a part in slowing down the official totalitarian project. The 1940 Concordat signed with the Church recognized the institutional structure of the church's intervention in society, in the Portuguese Catholic Action (ACP). Its publications were exempt from censorship, except for a few that irritated the regime with their social and political denunciation. Some of the ACP bodies engaged in a significant reflection and debate on the problems of Portuguese society, through meetings, periodicals, film clubs, and so on. The most nonconformist segment of its membership joined other organizations with oppositional sociocultural and civic intervention. The most radical activists in this sector became known as progressive Catholics and enjoyed some influence with the new urban generations, students and cultural groups.
Spaces, Groups and Practices of Sociability Outside State and Associational Frameworks
Apart from the official framework and networks free popular association, the wider dynamics that affected the daily life of the Portuguese can be divided into two major groups: sociocultural practices with a more communitarian slant, and the expansion of mass culture (the two being sometimes interconnected). Continuing a tradition that goes back to the eighteenth century and the bars enlivened by popular poets such as Bocage, literary gatherings remained a firm presence during the dictatorial period, despite the tightening of controls on freedom of expression and the omnipresence of informants and secret police agents at many of the main opposition-related gatherings. Similarly, given their place in a certain bourgeois daily life, particular cafés and bookstores continued to be centres of cultural-political tradition, with many of the really notable gatherings taking place in them, bringing together writers, journalists, artists, students, politicians and businessmen. The role of taverns as sociable places of conviviality, partying, gambling, music, protest and association (with groups of sightseers having lunch or dinner), which until the 1960s competed with the cafés, wine cellars and other establishments involving the working classes, is also important to note. In some of these establishments the fado ‘vadio’ [‘vagabond’ fado] and the fado ‘operário’ [‘workers’ fado] resisted, in a sharp retreat from the official imposition of professionalization in the 1930s.
The gradual expansion of leisure time and mass culture led to the emergence of new types of entertainment and venues and the conversion of others. A good example of this is the Parque Mayer, created at the beginning of the ‘Roaring Twenties’ and aspiring to be a modern entertainment hub in the capital. In the decades that followed it became the centre of vaudeville, a modern popular fair and social area, with a mix of restaurants, cafés, terraces, circus and variety shows, amusement venues, boxing and wrestling, etc. In the field of entertainment, the popular fairs of Lisbon and Porto also stood out, created in the 1940s by philanthropic institutions and having the profile of a modern amusement park, like those found in other European cities.
Remaining on the subject of shows, fado ranged from the ‘fado vadio’ taverns to ‘retreats’ for serious or tourist fado, at least in Lisbon, with similar events staged in Coimbra and Porto; in addition there was the ‘itinerant’ fado, taken to the countryside by blind musicians and other artists. Another common spectacle was the bullfight, especially in the Centre and South of Portugal, along with the travelling circus. Of these activities, only fado vadio was able to pursue some of its critical inclination (being played in multiple spaces on a daily basis it was not possible to control everything at the same time), despite all musicians being required to have a professional licence from the 1930s onwards. Evening outings also had their own spaces, from palaces, casinos, bars and dances to venues such as Parque Mayer and popular fairs. The most popular games were games of chance, usually found in the hundreds of taverns and recreational societies (as well as the casinos and underground gaming houses), and pool. Some popular games with traditional roots also held out, even in an urban context, in certain recreational societies. Not to mention children's games, with marbles, spinning tops, balls, and hoop and stick.
Along with amateur sport, sports events were mainly anchored in professional football. The growth and spread of football in the country was mainly due to the commercialization of leisure activities and to the expansion of an associative network, despite the dictatorship's attempt to control professional practice 37 and to oppose corporate football and physical education, with the latter considered a central beam for race regeneration. The popularity of football was followed to a lesser extent by hockey, cycling, boxing, etc. All these sports were national expressions of a global urban popular culture. 38
In terms of festivities, besides boosting the Christmas (extended until the New Year's Eve party) and June periods (see above), the carnival celebrations in towns and cities underwent a makeover. Masked balls were held in clubs and the carnival processions grew (being very popular in the colonies and in Portugal's coastal districts). Carnival street masquerades were suppressed because social criticism and derision of customs were a central part of them, and that could be disruptive and threatening. This kind of social subversion was only tolerated in small doses, limited to some remote rural areas where traditional popular carnival remained an ancestral community event.
Mass Culture: From Radio to Rock
Aware of the potential of the new mass media, Salazarism decreed a state monopoly of broadcasting in 1930 and television in 1955, and, in them, sought to combine ultra-nationalist messages with the maxim of ‘don’t be boring, never be boring’. This maxim, used by António Ferro when he was head of the official broadcaster, implied a programming schedule full of music, especially light music, in constant tension with classical music and national musical variants. 39 In order not to scare away an auditorium prone to (inter)nationally fashionable commercial music and not especially music loving (despite integrating the middle and upper classes), those responsible for public radio sought to emphasize its entertainment dimension in their daily programming. Radio was then an expensive service, which the people only used in official or commercial establishments, until the transistor came into general use in the 1950s. 40
The Portuguese Estado Novo thus tried to keep up with its Italian, German and Brazilian counterparts in the agile use of the radio, and to a certain extent it succeeded. The Emissora Nacional de Radiodifusão (EN) broadcast to the entire national area (including colonies) and to the Portuguese centres of Brazil and North America from 1935. Music dominated the programme content (from 84% in 1935 to 69% in 1944), followed by information and opinion (with a peak of 17% in the wake of the Spanish Civil War). Sport featured less prominently (although the Sunday football report had the largest weekly audience in 1953), as did children's programmes, news/documentaries (sometimes foreign), theatre, radio dramas and religious services. 41 Of particular note among the radio broadcasting schedules are the programmes intended to send ‘missing you’ messages to family members, the ‘Evening for workers’ of FNAT, with the ‘radio girls’ and humorous sketches, as well as information programmes and programmes for rural communities.
In terms of private radio, the regime only granted national licences to Rádio Clube Português (RCP, on the air since 1931) and to the Catholic radio station, Rádio Renascença (RR, 1938). RCP was noted for its support of Franco and the Portuguese volunteer force in the Spanish Civil War, as it was a nationalist and aligned broadcaster. It attracted large audiences for programmes such as radio soap operas and shows. In 1960 RCP created the first news service in the country. RR was created as the official Catholic radio station, and in the 1950s was already in a leading position, after EN and RCP. This was partly due to its innovative programming, with the transposition of The War of the Worlds (by H. G. Wells in 1958), listener competitions and reporting programmes since 1959. In the colonial context, Rádio Clube de Moçambique (1933) should be singled out from among dozens of stations. To these latter must be added a myriad of others with local or regional coverage, known as popular stations, which operated in the Lisbon and Porto areas in the 1930–40s. And Rádio Universidade (1950), linked to the Mocidade Portuguesa.
It was to the infrastructure and expertise of RCP, RR and regional stations that the regime resorted when setting up state television in 1954–56, in exchange for one third of its capital and advertising revenue. Regular broadcasting began in early 1957, after coverage of Queen Elizabeth II's visit to Portugal, tests having been carried out at the Feira Popular the previous year, a debut made alongside Belgium and before Spain and Ireland. By the end of 1957, its coverage encompassed almost half of the Portuguese population, and a year later 32,000 television sets had been sold. The programming was controlled by a clique linked to Salazar's successor, Marcelo Caetano, and consisted mainly of news (mixed with propaganda), football, music, humour, theatre and dance. Contemporary cinema was absent from television schedules because of the cost and exclusivity agreements. The first success in the public television programming was a serialization (a kind of soap opera), which soon became a permanent item. Many of its early ‘names’ came from the theatre, especially from comedy.
Despite the encroachment of telephones and television in the daily life of the middle classes, in this period, going to the cinema was clearly the most popular and regular ‘mass culture’ practice. Foreign cinema prevailed between premières and reruns with different prices and of different lengths. For instance, in 1936, between 7000 and 8000 people went daily to cinemas in Lisbon to see the almost 300 premières shown that year, 99% of which were imported. 42 In that year, more than 60% of the films were American, the rest being French, German and English (later, there were films from Italy, Brazil and other countries). Cinema audiences were mainly concentrated in Lisbon and Porto, where there were many venues targeting various social classes, from popular neighbourhood cinema to large theatres. Several provincial cities also had their own cinemas.
Portuguese cinema gained an official boost with the 100-metre law (from 1927), which made it compulsory to screen a Portuguese short film of about 10–15 minutes (the 100 metres of film) at the opening of each commercial cinema session that showed a new feature film. Despite criticism of poor quality, this was how the school of national documentaries started, with images of sites, monuments, landscapes, Portuguese customs and festivals, and international and national news. From 1938 on, the regime instrumentalized this production, ordering two series of news for the purpose of propaganda, in an effort to copy what was done in Italy, Germany, Spain and Brazil: the Jornal Português [Portuguese News] (1938–51) and Imagens de Portugal [Pictures of Portugal] (1953–70), both from the SPN/SNI. However, Portuguese cinema would never establish the right environment to cope with the foreign avalanche: it lacked robust official support, a commercial welcome, and artistic freedom and capacity.
To bring nationalist production to the people, the dictatorship launched its mobile cinema (via SPN/SNI), whose vans travelled the country with plenty of support, given the popularity of this art form, in competition with independent travelling projectionists. The state used this channel to try and spread respected films with historical or literary themes, for propaganda, as well as making some concessions to more commercial films. For thousands of Portuguese from the lower classes, these sessions were unique opportunities to watch the most attractive mass show of the time, which they enjoyed, regardless of the films shown, aided in particular by their additional double attraction: they took place after work and outdoors.
It was another Portuguese cinematic genre that sparked popular interest and stayed in the Portuguese imaginary: the comedy of manners. It was celebrated by great actors from the theatre and silent cinema in films such as The Song of Lisbon (1933), The Tyrant Father and The Patio of Songs, both from 1941. The audience also applauded films such as Fado – the Story of a Singer (1947), portraying the rise of fado singer Amália Rodrigues. However, this genre lacked diversity and depth, in that it omitted any discussion of the current moral and social problems that censorship prohibited.
From the 1940s, in Portugal as in France, Brazil, Argentina and Cuba, alternative film clubs sprang up around the country, networked by magazines, exchanges and debates, and driven by educated youth until the 1960s. Their strength is evidenced by the 30,000 members in 1960, of various streams. 43 These clubs embraced international auteurs and social cinema and restored undervalued Portuguese filmmakers, with a special mention for Manoel de Oliveira. This cultural legacy and learning inspired most of the key auteurs of the ‘new cinema’, which relaunched Portuguese cinema in the early 1960s.
Right behind cinema came theatre, which adapted itself to the tastes of new audiences, Salazarist ideology and service censors. In this sector, the most popular genre in Portugal was vaudeville. Brought from France in 1851, it soon developed into Portuguese revue theatre, thanks to its ability to adapt its greatest asset to the situation: comical reviews of the main events of the year, through political and social criticism. Given its profile, it was jeopardized by the prior censorship of scripts and made several concessions in a compromise for survival. As early as 1926, a new series of revue theatre pieces appeared, based on a defence of ruralist traditions, which would influence the genre towards showing solidarity with official ideological assumptions. Revue theatre had already secured its viability under Salazarism thanks to the sophistication of the musical, visual and choreographic displays (summed up in the formula, ‘music, light and colours’) and the quality of its composers, producer-dramatists and actors (some of them also active in cinema). Its political and social critique, very active during the First Republic, was then stifled by the portrayal of texts of a mundane or simply jocular nature. From then on, revue writers had to express social criticism through repeating situations that caricatured the social relations of popular and petty bourgeois worlds. The same social stereotypes were invariably reproduced: yokels visiting the capital, meetings of kitchen maids and foot soldiers, drunks and cocottes, fado singers and thugs, etc. In addition to sexually-based puns and macho allusions, the recurring themes were municipal works, national cinema, public transport, football, high prices, fado, bullfights, mothers-in-law, and fads. The revue writers began to convey political messages in more subtle ways, playing with the complicity of the public and the talent of the actors. Consequently, revue theatre became one of the few popular public spaces of regular critical intervention. Thus, Salazar and other figures of the regime could be the favoured target of revue criticism because this was done by subterfuge. For example, targets could be alluded to only indirectly (the dictator referred to only as António), with an ironic exaggeration of virtues (referred to as Saint Antonio), or through the elision of political traits into personal defects (austerity equated with avarice). In the post-World War II period, there was a brief opening, quickly used to accentuate the critical tendency, with the public responding: the play Alto lá com o charuto [Up there with the cigar] – an allusion to Churchill – had 350 performances.
Other popular types of theatre that should be mentioned were operetta (until 1940), Spanish zarzuela (in vogue in the 1930s), amateur dramatics, based in community groups spread around Portugal's towns and cities, and popular theatre with traditional roots, rural and religious in scope. Nor should we forget farces, puppet theatre, marionettes, glove and hand puppets, masked puppets, burials, etc. The radio theatre also had its own broadcast spaces, but these were only accessible to a restricted audience until quite late.
In the more erudite repertory theatre, despite censorship, ‘modernist’ currents were consolidated, through productions representing a range of playwrights, both foreign and Portuguese. The state supported national theatres (whose elitist logic regarding audience and budget share excluded the Coliseu dos Recreios, for popular audiences from 1959), some university theatre and tested a popular theatre: SPN/SNI promoted the travelling Teatro do Povo (1936–1955) and the Teatro Nacional Popular (1955–1960); the MP, the Teatro da Mocidade (1948–1958); and MEN had a theatrical section in its adult literacy campaign (1952–1956). As with mobile cinema, these shows also had popular support, as they provided unique opportunities for many disadvantaged Portuguese, being staged free, outdoors and after work hours. Theatre performances were also set up for children, based on separate matinée performances in certain cinemas and theatres and in the Teatro do Gerifalto. As in the cinema, independent theatre also coexisted with the forms outlined above, which was experimental in nature. This was established in the 1950s and expanded into university theatre in the following decade. 44
Other links between the cultural industries and musical genres in vogue should also be mentioned. Listening to records, cassettes and radio programmes (as well as watching musical films and similar works, and going to concerts and dances) was engaged in by the Portuguese to a considerable extent in the big cities. Most popular was light music, Latin and French songs, fado, and from the mid-1950s onwards, explosive rock’n’roll. Urban youth joined in so enthusiastically that the secret police would put notices on the curtains of cinemas that showed musicals such as Rock Around the Clock, from 1956: ‘Young people can be happy without being irreverent’. 45 In the early 1960s, show business and the phonographic industry cultivated the emergence of Portuguese yé-yé groups (a term then in vogue), which soon caught the attention of urban youth. For many stars, professionalization or internationalization meant exemption from the duty to serve in the colonial war. By the 1970s, progressive rock had emerged. Seeking to bend commercial music to its ideological programme, the regime sponsored a new musical fusion, the national-cançonetismo, a nationalized light music sung by young performers on the radio and television (especially in its national song festival). This formed a corollary to official moves towards a more pragmatic national-populism, that would both adhere to direct and entertaining mass cultural models, while seeking to maintain a nationalist strand. 46 Whilst in popular theatre audiences repeatedly looked for jokes that poked fun at their own economic weakness, survival skills or social vices, in music and football there was a adhesion to national idols (e.g., Amália and Eusébio) as a means of restoring collective pride in a context of competitive insertion in the world and of violent fracture caused by the Colonial war.
Conclusions
This article has presented a problematizing overview of almost half a century of daily life. The period under discussion (1926–1974) was infused by tensions between a totalitarian official project, in line with the ambitions of the philofascist regimes to which Salazar's dictatorship was affiliated, and diverse sociocultural tendencies, with roots in popular, traditional and mass cultures, and in resistance-alternative projects and attitudes.
The daily lives of the Portuguese were subject to a combination of official, corporate, educational, cultural and propagandistic impositions. The aim of the New State was to strengthen domestic, institutionalized and controlled leisure. This included the sports that would become better established, and in spite of everything came to be autonomous, starting with football. The purpose was also to promote twin policies and practices, one for the people and another the elites, in education and reading, production, circulation and cultural consumption.
Evaluating the impacts of official corporatist interventions in workers’ daily lives still requires further detailed studies. There is also a need to understand in a systematic way how the contributions of local, institutional and individual incursions focused on ordinary citizens. However, the research already carried out makes it possible to state that such interventions affected cultural consumption and influenced the supporting of sociability networks and the processes of social advancement of certain population segments. This was especially true for those working in the state and corporate sectors, for supporters of the regime, for individuals living in more conservative contexts, and for less politicized groups. At the same time, we also know that the corporate network failed to reach and/or regularly mobilize all those who might have been encompassed within its programmes. The limits of specific political interventions are thus exposed, influenced as they were by a conception of state corporatism wherein governmental and centralist action was highly burdensome and restricted the autonomy of local projects.
Young people and adults from the middle and upper classes spent a certain amount, though not very much, of their daily life reading. For some this was prescribed in school environments that were starting to open up to the masses, for others it was enabled by improved library stocks, especially through associative networks and the Gulbenkian Foundation, or by the expansion of popular commercial publishing. In all of these circumstances, ideological control and selection of material remained present, particularly in public libraries, where the reading of the working classes was subject to particular discrimination.
The official all-embracing project of the regime was influenced by the inexorable expansion of mass culture (via sport, the cinema, theatre, discos, concerts, radio and television) and by multiple platforms of sociocultural resistance and alternative forms of expression including: interventionist music; independent cinema and theatre; subversive, underground and exile printing; various associative networks (popular, film clubs, cooperativism) and of the FCG, the interventions of Catholic Action. Finally, the article has set out how civil society resisted and/or ambivalently incorporated official policies through the analysis of a relevant set of counter-proposals, commitments, and associative, community, publishing and artistic creations, and highlighted the sociocultural impact of disruptive phenomena such as emigration and the Colonial war.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I thank the translator Jean Burrows for her careful work. This work is financed by Portuguese funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., within the scope of the Norma Transitória – DL 57/2016/CP1453/CT0062. This article had the support of CHAM (NOVA FCSH/UAc), through the strategic project sponsored by FCT (UIDB/HIS/04666/2020).