The people and the power: political and social violence in Portugal from the crisis of the constitutional monarchy to the origins of the new state

At the end of the 19th century and in the early years of the 20th century, the relationship between the people and the power in Portugal revealed various forms of animosity, struggle and resistance. Violence from below expressed inorganic feelings of maladjustment and exclusion from population strata scarcely heard by ruling powers, underrepresented, or in open conflict with the existing political legitimacy. On the other hand, violence from above was often the response of powers and regimes that felt threatened, undergoing crises of liberal growth (in the last decades of the Constitutional Monarchy, until 1910, and during the period of the First Portuguese Republic, between 1910 and 1926), or replacing liberalism by dictatorial rule (from 1926 onwards and throughout Salazar's New State). The purpose of this text is to explore the cycle of political and social violence visible in Portugal from the crisis of the Constitutional Monarchy to the origins of the New State, synthesizing its main causes, dynamics, actors and numbers, whose chief effect was the delegitimization of the liberal state and culture, and the joint suppression of instability and freedom, when the military dictatorship (1926-33) and Salazar took over power.