António de Oliveira Salazar (28 April 1889 – 27 July 1970) was a Portuguese dictator, academic, and economist who served as the Prime Minister of Portugal from 1932 to 1968. Having come to power under the Ditadura Nacional ("National Dictatorship"), he reframed the regime as the corporatist Estado Novo ("New State"), with himself as dictator. The regime he created lasted until 1974, making it one of the longest-lived authoritarian dictatorships in modern Europe.
A political economy professor at the University of Coimbra, Salazar entered public life as finance minister with the support of President Óscar Carmona after the 28 May 1926 coup d'état. The military of 1926 saw themselves as the guardians of the nation in the wake of the instability and perceived failure of the First Republic, but they lacked the means to address the critical challenges of the hour. Armed with broad powers to restructure state finances, within one year Salazar balanced the budget and stabilised Portugal's currency, producing the first of many budgetary surpluses. Amidst a period when authoritarian regimes elsewhere in Europe were merging political power with militarism, and leaders were adopting military titles and uniforms, Salazar enforced strict separation of the armed forces from politics. Salazar's aim was the de-politicisation of society, rather than the mobilisation of the populace.
Opposed to democracy, communism, socialism, syndicalism and liberalism, Salazar's rule was conservative, corporatist and Portuguese nationalist in nature; it was also opposed to capitalism, which it regarded as plutocratic in nature. Salazar distanced himself from Nazism and fascism, which he described as a "pagan Caesarism" that did not recognise legal, religious or moral limits. Throughout his life Salazar avoided populist rhetoric. He was generally opposed to the concept of political parties when, in 1930, he created the National Union. Salazar described and promoted the Union as a "non-party", and proclaimed that the National Union would be the antithesis of a political party. He promoted Catholicism but argued that the role of the Church was social, not political, and negotiated the Concordat of 1940 that kept the church at arm's length. One of the mottos of the Salazar regime was Deus, Pátria e Família ("God, Fatherland and Family"), although Catholicism was never the state religion. The doctrine of pluricontinentalism was the basis of Salazar's territorial policy, a conception of the Portuguese Empire as a unified state that spanned multiple continents. From the 1950s onward, during the later phase of Salazar’s rule, Portugal recorded sustained growth in GDP per capita and a decline in illiteracy. By the end of the Estado Novo in 1974, Portugal still had the lowest per capita income and the lowest literacy rate in Western Europe.
Salazar supported Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War and played a key role in keeping Portugal neutral during World War II, providing aid and assistance to the Allies, but also becoming the second receiver of Nazi gold. Despite being a dictatorship, Portugal under his rule took part in the founding of some international organisations. The country was one of the 12 founding members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949, joined the European Payments Union in 1950, and was one of the founding members of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) in 1960; it was also a founding member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in 1961. Under his rule, Portugal also became a member of the United Nations in 1955 and joined the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1961. The Portuguese Colonial War broke out in 1961, leading to the independence of Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique in 1974. The annexation of Goa by India also occurred in 1961.
With the Estado Novo enabling him to exercise vast political powers, Salazar used censorship and the PIDE secret police to quell opposition. One opposition leader, Humberto Delgado, who openly challenged Salazar's regime in the 1958 presidential election, was first exiled and became involved in several violent actions aimed at overthrowing the regime, including the hijacking of the Portuguese cruise liner Santa Maria and the Beja Revolt ultimately leading to his assassination by the PIDE, in 1965. After Salazar fell into a coma in 1968, President Américo Tomás dismissed him from the position of President of the Council of Ministers. The Estado Novo collapsed during the Carnation Revolution of 1974, four years after Salazar's death.
Salazar was born in Vimieiro, near Santa Comba Dão (Viseu District), to a family of modest income on 28 April 1889. His father, a small landowner, had started as an agricultural labourer and became the manager for the Perestrelos, a wealthy family of rural landowners of the region of Santa Comba Dão who possessed lands and other assets scattered between Viseu and Coimbra.
He was the only male child of two fifth cousins, António de Oliveira (1839–1932) and his wife Maria do Resgate Salazar (1845–1926). According to Portuguese naming customs, which place the mother's surname first, Salazar's name would have been "António Salazar de Oliveira" – a pattern followed by his four sisters – but, for reasons that remain unclear, the order of his surnames was reversed, and he thus became "António de Oliveira Salazar". His four older sisters were Maria do Resgate Salazar de Oliveira, an elementary school teacher; Elisa Salazar de Oliveira; Maria Leopoldina Salazar de Oliveira; and Laura Salazar de Oliveira. Laura married Abel Pais de Sousa in 1887, brother of Mário Pais de Sousa, who served as Salazar's Interior Minister.
Salazar attended the primary school in his small village and later went to another primary school in Viseu. At age 11, he won a free place at Viseu's seminary, where he studied for eight years, from 1900 to 1908. Salazar considered becoming a priest, but like many who entered the seminary very young, he decided not to proceed to the priesthood after receiving holy orders. He went to Coimbra in 1910 during the first years of the Portuguese First Republic to study law at the University of Coimbra. During these student years in Coimbra, he developed a particular interest in finance and graduated in law with distinction, specialising in finance and economic policy. He graduated in 1914, with 19 points out of 20, and in the meantime, became an assistant professor of economic policy at the Law School. In 1917, he assumed the chairs of economic policy and finance at the university by appointment of professor José Alberto dos Reis. In the following year, Salazar was awarded his doctorate.
Salazar was twenty-one years old at the time of the revolution of 5 October 1910, which overthrew the Portuguese monarchy and instituted the First Portuguese Republic. The political institutions of the First Republic lasted until 1926, when it was replaced by a military dictatorship. This was first known as the "Ditadura Militar" (Military Dictatorship) and then, from 1928, as the "Ditadura Nacional" (National Dictatorship).
The era of the First Republic has been described as one of "continual anarchy, government corruption, rioting and pillage, assassinations, arbitrary imprisonment and religious persecution". It witnessed the inauguration of eight presidents, 44 cabinet re-organisations and 21 revolutions. The first government of the Republic lasted less than 10 weeks and the longest-ruling government lasted little over a year. Revolution in Portugal became a byword in Europe. The cost of living increased twenty-fivefold, while the currency fell to a 1⁄33 part of its gold value. Portugal's public finances entered a critical phase, having been under imminent threat of default since at least the 1890s. The gaps between the rich and the poor continued to widen. The regime led Portugal to enter World War I in 1916, a move that only aggravated the perilous state of affairs in the country. Concurrently, the Catholic Church was hounded by the anti-clerical Freemasons of the Republic, and political assassination and terrorism became commonplace. Between 1920 and 1925, according to official police figures, 325 bombs were detonated in the streets of Lisbon. The British diplomat Sir George Rendel said that he could not describe the "political background as anything but deplorable... very different from the orderly, prosperous and well-managed country that it later became under the government of Senhor Salazar". Salazar would keep in mind the political chaos of this time when he later ruled Portugal.