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Commemoration and Propaganda in Salazar's Portugal: The Mundo

Português Exposition of 1940
David Corkill and José Carlos Pina Almeida
Journal of Contemporary History 2009; 44; 381
DOI: 10.1177/0022009409104115

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Journal of Contemporary History Copyright © 2009 SAGE Publications, Los Angeles, London, New Delhi,
Singapore and Washington DC, Vol 44(3), 381–399. ISSN 0022–0094.
DOI: 10.1177/0022009409104115

David Corkill and José Carlos Pina Almeida

Commemoration and Propaganda in
Salazar’s Portugal: The Mundo Português
Exposition of 1940

Abstract
Salazar’s Portugal is often represented as a colourless, pale imitation of the
fascist dictatorships in other parts of Europe during the 1930s and 1940s. Yet,
in its consolidation phase, the regime embraced the concept of the ‘festival
state’, and commemorative events and expositions became key ingredients in
the attempt to forge a new, highly selective cultural identity for the Portuguese
people. The centerpiece of these efforts was the Mundo Português Exposition
of 1940, when the symbols of a new hybrid identity grafted the discourse of
Empire onto the traditional conservatism of the New State (Estado Novo).
This major cultural event served a triple function for the regime’s propagan-
dists: in their quest for regime legitimacy, for propagating Salazar’s nationalist
version of the nation’s history, and in shaping the national consciousness of the
Portuguese people in order to eliminate the ‘anti-national’.

Keywords: commemoration, empire, exposition, Portugal, propaganda

The double centenary celebrated at the Exposição do Mundo Português

(Portuguese World Exhibition), held in Lisbon between June and December
1940, was the first major cultural event of the Estado Novo (New State) dicta-
torship and marked the high-point of its ‘nationalist-imperialist’ propaganda.
Staged to commemorate the foundation of the nation in 1140 and indepen-
dence from Spain in 1640, the Exposition became a vehicle for the diffusion
and legitimization of the dictatorship’s ideology and values in which the idea
of the nation was (re)constructed through a series of carefully planned images,
myths and symbols.1 This article examines how the dictatorship of António
Oliveira Salazar utilized the Exposition to project its specific representation of
historiography and national identity, and to further its broader political aims,
including the validation and legitimization of its rule. It will argue that, despite

1 José C. Almeida, Celebrar Portugal. A Nação, a Comemorações Públicas e as Políticas de

Identidade, Lisboa, Instituto Piaget (Lisbon 2005), 116. See also David Corkill, ‘The Double
Centenary Commemorations of 1940 in the Context of Anglo-Portuguese Relations’, in Teresa
Pinto Coelho (ed.), The Portuguese Discoveries in the English-Speaking World, 1880–1972
(Lisbon 2006), 143–66.

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382 Journal of Contemporary History Vol 44 No 3

its reputation for minimal mobilization and for eschewing populism, festivities
were a core ingredient in the Estado Novo’s cultural policy. While Salazar dis-
liked — even feared — the emotional, mass events associated with Hitler’s and
Mussolini’s propaganda machines, he did value them for their legitimizing,
educative and propagandistic functions. In this, the regime was quite prepared
to borrow selectively from the showcase events staged by the ‘classic’ fascisms
and blend them with an exhibition formula sculpted from a decade of staging
exhibitions and participation in World Fairs.2
It is argued that the Salazar dictatorship preferred to involve the population
in essentially passive state-sponsored spectacles in preference to mobilizing
them through a mass party, public rallies, or similar mechanisms. Salazar
deliberately avoided the choreography and collective fervor associated with the
mass meetings that characterized Italian fascism and German nazism. Instead,
he preferred to construct an imagined community and sense of pride by way of
commemorations, expositions, and symbols throughout the duration of a dic-
tatorship that spanned four decades. As part of its policy of cultural renewal,
the regime launched an extensive public works program to restore historic
buildings, monuments and traditional villages.3 An almost obsessive concern
for restoring the national heritage prompted comments in some quarters that
Salazar would have liked to turn his country into a large museum. As the
showcase for the first phase of this project, the 1940 event revolved around the
core symbols of identity as defined by the Salazar regime. Among the recurrent
symbols mobilized during the Exposition were God, nation, family, work,
authority, rurality (traditional values and peasant life), unity, cohesion, inter-
national recognition, universalism, empire, civilization and multi-racialism.
This article will explore how this litany was melded together in an attempt to
forge a new, selective cultural identity as expressed in a major Exposition.
Our understanding of the dynamics of interwar authoritarianism has been
greatly enhanced in recent years through a focus on the role played by culture
and aesthetics in constructing fascist and other interwar authoritarian regimes.
The culturalist approach to fascism investigates the dimensions that had previ-
ously been dismissed as shallow ‘veneer’, such as style, rhetoric, spectacle and
myth.4 Roger Griffin argues that culture was appropriated in order to generate
consensus and mobilize the population without conceding any access to
power. He identifies the key features as the proliferation of public works to
forge ‘sacred’ spaces and the introduction of ceremonies and rituals aimed at
the regeneration of the nation.5 In this regard, Salazar shared the interwar

2 For a discussion of Portugal’s participation in major international exhibitions 1851–1992, see

Ilídio M. Pereira Louro, ‘Portugal e as Exposições Universais’, História 27 (1996), 4–21.
3 Margarida Acciaiuoli, Exposições do Estado Novo 1934–1940 (Lisbon 1998), 11.
4 A. António Costa Pinto, ‘Back to European Fascism’, Contemporary European History 15(1)
(2006), 103–15; David D. Roberts, ‘Myth, Style and Substance and the Totalitarian Dynamic in
Fascist Italy’, Contemporary European History 16(1) (2007), 1–36.
5 Roger Griffin, ‘Staging the Nation’s Rebirth’, in G. Berghaus (ed.), Fascism and Theatre:
Comparative Studies on the Aesthetics and Politics of Performance 1925–1945 (Oxford 1996), 23.

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Corkill & Almeida: Commemoration and Propaganda in Salazar’s Portugal 383

authoritarian concern with decadence and the drive for renewal in all aspects
of national life under a strong state. In 1936, the regime celebrated the tenth
anniversary of the military coup that installed the dictatorship (ano X da
Revolução Nacional — Year Ten of the National Revolution) on the basis that
it marked the beginning of a nova era (new era). Later, when António Ferro,
the propaganda chief, referred to 1940 as ‘the tremendous year of resurgence’,6
he invoked the standard theme of palingenesis. No doubt Salazar’s Catholic
seminarian background inclined him to share a belief in rituals as important
elements in an ideological project intended to graft new identities onto old
ones. Indeed, it has been argued that the interwar dictatorships promoted the
‘festival state’, in which political rituals were performed regularly and re-
inforced by temporary Expositions, because the fascist political culture ‘aimed
to colonize the mind as well as the state’ and public spectacles were the
‘favored vehicle of cultural persuasion and reconstruction’.7
The architects of the Portuguese New State were preoccupied with the selec-
tion and presentation of markers of national identity for consumption by a
domestic and international audience. In this regard, the longevity of the
Salazar regime ensured that numerous opportunities arose for the regime to
refine its skills at organizing commemorative events. Various centennials and
anniversaries punctuated the Salazar era, providing ample opportunity to
transmit a particular vision of history to the people. The regime seized the
opportunities offered by the 550th anniversary of the Battle of Aljubarrota
(1935), the double centenary of the Foundation and Restoration of Portugal
(1940), the centenary of the taking of Lisbon from the Moors (1947) and the
centenary of Don Henrique’s birth (1960) to promote its own version of the
country’s history. During the 1930s the regime maintained a steady rhythm of
significant political and cultural spectacles, both at home and in the colonies,
as the list in Table 1 attests:

TABLE 1
Historical Commemoration Events, 1930–40

1930 National Colonial Congress

1931 Exhibition held in conjunction with First Congress of União Nacional (National Union –
Portugal's only official political organization)
1933 National Imperial Congress
1934 Porto Colonial Exhibition (Exposição Colonial Portuguesa)
1936 Celebration of 1926 National Revolution
1936 First Economic Conference of the Portuguese colonial empire
1937 Congress of the Portuguese Expansion in the World
1940 Portuguese World Exhibition

6 H. Heriberto Cairo, ‘“Portugal is not a Small Country”: Maps and Propaganda in the Salazar
Regime’, Geopolitics 11 (2006), 376.
7 Mabel Berezin, Making the Fascist Self. The Political Culture of Interwar Italy (Ithaca, NY,
1997), 246.

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384 Journal of Contemporary History Vol 44 No 3

It is interesting to compare the dominant recurrent spiritual and rural

themes that were central to the Lisbon event with the contemporaneous New
York World Fair (1939–40), which took as its theme ‘Tomorrow’s World’ and
focused on progress and the future.8 Whereas the organizers of the New York
event, at least in its conception, looked to the future, an important strand in
Portugal’s 1940 Exposition looked backwards to a ‘golden era’ and tried to
connect it to the present. Moreover, the traditional, rural and spiritual dimen-
sion of the nation, which Salazar interpreted as a return to the simplicity of the
pure and simple life, was linked to the country’s historical and spiritual rights
to empire. Imperialism was justified on moral grounds and offered as an
example to be followed by other imperial powers, as we shall see later. The
Exposition contributed to the emergence of a national mythology, later articu-
lated as ‘Luso-tropicalism’, that the Portuguese were good colonizers and
culturally suited to bring Christianity and civilization to tropical peoples.9
Throughout its first decade, the Salazar regime placed cultural policy at the
top of its political agenda. The ambitious aim was to recover ‘a true Portuguese
culture’ rooted in conservative and backward-looking principles. The Secre-
tariado da Propaganda Nacional (SPN) was established as the brain-centre of
cultural policy and propaganda, under its director, António Ferro, who reported
directly to Salazar.10 Charged with generating national identity and a ‘spirit of
unity’, the SPN employed propaganda to transmit the government’s message to
a largely illiterate population through organs such as the press and publishing,
radio, cinema and theatre. To help achieve this, the media were fed a constant
diet of commemorations, ceremonies, awards, conferences and other events.
For Ferro, the educative function was paramount. The aim was ‘to utilize all
the great values and dates in our history as a symbol and lesson for the current
generation of Portuguese’.11
In his inaugural speech to the Secretariat of National Propaganda in 1933,
Salazar expressed the hope that the new department would help the Portuguese
people gain a greater appreciation of their real value as an ‘ethnic group, a cul-
tural centre, a productive force, with a civilizing capacity, as an independent
unity in the concert of nations’.12 The SPN’s política do espírito (politics of the
spirit) sought to recover and promote national popular traditions and folklore
and to restore Portugal’s ‘spiritual sovereignty’. The intention was no less than
the ‘moral regeneration’ of the nation. To this end, no facet of public and
everyday life was left untouched by a policy that would impact on all classes,
generations and regions. The Estado Novo decreed new civic holidays (28

8 Marco Duranti, ‘Utopia, Nostalgia and World War at the 1939–40 New York World’s Fair’,
Journal of Contemporary History 41(4) (2006), 663.
9 Daryle Williams, Culture Wars in Brazil: The First Vargas Regime, 1930–1945 (Durham, NC,
2001), 235.
10 José P. Zúquete, ‘In Search of a New Society: An Intellectual between Modernism and
Salazar’, Portuguese Journal of Social Science 4(1) (2005), 39–59.
11 Secretariado Nacional de Informação, Catorze Anos de Política do Espírito (Lisbon 1948), np.
12 Ibid.

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Corkill & Almeida: Commemoration and Propaganda in Salazar’s Portugal 385

May, the anniversary of the 1926 military coup) and altered street names to
eliminate any association with the discredited republican regime that had
preceded it. Scores of public monuments were commissioned in order to com-
memorate major events, generate a pride in the country’s history and create a
‘new tradition’.
Public buildings were erected in a novo estilo (new style), strongly imbued
with a Portuguese character but reflecting the influence of modernism.13 At the
same time, traditional and historical forms of architecture were promoted to
generate community feeling and pride. Amid all this activity, what has been
described as estatuo-mania (statue-mania) gripped the country as sculptors
took on the task of fashioning images of iconic figures in Portuguese history.14
In the construction sector, the nationalist cultural movement encouraged the
development of a neo-traditional style known as casa portuguesa. This archi-
tecture was associated with a return to traditional ways by making optimum
use of glazed tiles, cork, wrought iron, cotton prints, etc. The country’s historic
heritage received close attention as major restoration work began on St
George’s Castle and the Sé cathedral in Lisbon, the battlefield monasteries at
Batalha and Alcobaça, the twelfth-century Domus Municipalis in Bragança
and the royal palace at Vila Viçosa as part of an effort to make the historic
patrimony more visible and accessible to the public. The restoration work
stood as ‘physical proof of the regime’s commitment to restoring the values of
a national past in order to spearhead a ressurgimento nacional’.15 Salazar
charged the recently created Direcção-Geral dos Edifícios e Monumentos
Nacionais with no less than the reconfiguration of the collective historical
imaginary. It supervised the building and renovation of monuments and civil
commemorations, paying particular attention to those that could trace their
origins back to the medieval era.16 By focusing on three symbols: ‘o castelo, a
igreja e o mosteiro’, an attempt was made to reinforce the association between
political power, religious authority and faith. This trinity had underpinned the
nation’s greatness in the past and was expected to do so again in the future.
The regime took great pride in launching major building projects to express the
new mood of confidence and resurgence, as well as to ensure that visitors could
reach the Exposition site. These projects included the new international airport
at Portela, the maritime stations in the capital, the opening of the Marginal
(the coastal road between Cascais and Lisbon), the Estádio Nacional (National
Stadium, inaugurated in 1944), as well as new railways, hotels and port instal-
lations the length and breadth of the country.
13 José M. Fernandes, Português Suave. Arquitecturas do Estado Novo (Lisbon 2003), 23.
14 Arlindo. M. Caldeira, ‘O poder e a memória nacional. Heróis e vilões na mitologia
salazarista’, Penélope 15 (1995), 130.
15 Ellen W. Sapega, ‘Image and Counter-Image: The Place of Salazarist Images of National
Identity in Contemporary Portuguese Visual Culture’, Luso-Brazilian Review 2 (2002), 47. See
also (by the same author) Consensus and Debate in Salazar’s Portugal. Visual and Literary
Negotiations of the National Text, 1933–1948 (University Park, PA, 2008).
16 This body was set up in 1929 as part of the Ministério de Comércio e Comunicações, under
the direction of Duarte Pacheco.

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386 Journal of Contemporary History Vol 44 No 3

The young were a prime target in this drive to instill national pride at an
early age. Coimbra’s theme park, Portugal dos Pequenitos (Children’s Portu-
gal), opened as a playground. It consisted of miniature houses, farms, castles
and national monuments, including the famous convent window at Tomar.
Even in this popular attraction the educative function was apparent, comple-
menting the efforts made in the school classroom, to employ history to formar
portugueses (make Portuguese), and, for this reason, any alternative versions
were routinely denounced as unpatriotic. Competitions were organized, most
notably one in 1938 to find the most Portuguese village in the country. Just
how concerned the organizers were to preserve the past is evident in the rules,
which stipulated that the winner must demonstrate ‘resistance to decomposi-
tion and outside influences, and its conservation in the purest state possible’. In
announcing the winner, the Lisbon daily newspaper and regime mouthpiece
Diário da Manhã eulogized Monsanto as ‘paradise on earth’.17 A similar pre-
occupation with the past is apparent in the encouragement given to folklore
and folk-music as symbols of Portuguese nationalism. Ranchos Folclóricos
(traditional rural musicians, singers and dancers) received support from the
state organization the Federação Nacional Alegria no Trabalho (FNAT),
although the SNI ideologues adopted a more cautious attitude towards the
fado because of its political and social content, as well as its part-African ori-
gins.18 Later, when emptied of any political meaning, fado rapidly became a
musical symbol of Portuguese national identity. Across the country, museums
opened to convey the cultural heritage and contribute to the invention of
tradition. Such was the frequency with which materials and items from museum
collections were requisitioned for various events that they were sometimes
returned damaged.19 Even postage stamps transmitted the dominant discourse,
with the issue of sets commemorating the discoveries, although, unusually for
authoritarian dictatorships, none were released that featured Salazar himself.20
Cinema was identified as an important propaganda instrument. The govern-
ment lavished resources on film and newsreel in order to ensure that its ideas
were transmitted to audiences, and major public events were recorded on
documentary films. António Lopes Ribeiro, who became known as the
cineaste do regime (the regime’s film-maker), produced a steady diet of films
recording the state-sponsored propaganda for transmission to a national audi-
ence. Ribeiro’s work benefited from state funding, including the major feature
film Feitiço Imperial (1940), about Portugal’s mission to bring ‘civilization’ to

17 Maria de S.J. Côrte-Real, ‘Cultural Policy and Musical Expression in Lisbon in the Transition
from Dictatorship to Democracy (1960s–1980s)’, unpublished PhD thesis, Columbia University
(2001), 88, 93.
18 Kimberly DaCosta Holton, Performing Folklore: Ranchos Folclóricos from Lisbon to
Newark (Bloomington, IN, 2005).
19 Sérgio Lira, Museums and Temporary Exhibitions as a Means of Propaganda: The Portu-
guese Case during the Estado Novo, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Leicester (2002), 75.
20 Igor Cusack, ‘Tiny Transmitters of Nationalist and Colonial Ideology: The Postage Stamps of
Portugal and its Empire’, Nations and Nationalism 11(4) (2005), 600.

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Corkill & Almeida: Commemoration and Propaganda in Salazar’s Portugal 387

FIGURE 1
The Foundation Gate photographed by Mario Novais

Africa, while the Jornal Português newsreels carried regular reports for
cinemagoers on the Double Centenary celebrations.21
As already noted, in common with other authoritarian regimes, the Estado
Novo employed history as a means to justify and legitimize its seizure and
exercise of power. The regime placed great importance on the role of history in
the construction of portugalidade (‘portugueseness’). In 1936, Salazar had
refounded the Portuguese Academy of History to promote a re-interpretation
of the past that accorded with the regime’s values. Among the Academy’s
stated objectives was the stimulation of ‘the revisionist efforts needed to re-
introduce historical truth and to enrich the documentation of Portugal’s
inalienable rights’.22 By 1940 history had become state propaganda, and the
commemorations offered an opportunity to inculcate a historical conscious-
ness among the public under the slogan orgulhosos da nossa história (‘pride in
our history’). To this end, the Exposition represented both a celebration of
Salazar’s efforts to liberate Portugal from its decadence and a platform to
present the regime’s version of the country’s history. Accordingly, the organ-
izers structured the exhibits around the high-points of Portuguese history: the

21 The propaganda films included A Revolução de Maio (1937); Exposição histórica da rev-
olução (1938); As festas do Duplo Centenário (1940); and Exposição do mundo português
(1941): Luis R. Torgal, L. R., ‘Cinema e propaganda no Estado novo. A “conversão dos
descrentes”’, Revista de História das Ideias 18 (1996), 298.
22 Boletim da Academia Portuguesa de História (Lisbon 1937–38), 53, quoted in Lúcia Maria
Pascoal Guimarães, ‘Echoes of the “politics of the spirit” at the Brazilian Historical and
Geographical Institute’, e-JPH 4(2) (Winter 2006), 3–4.

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388 Journal of Contemporary History Vol 44 No 3

Foundation, the Occupation and Conquest, Independence and the Maritime

Empire, which was lauded as one of the great achievements of mankind. The
key dates 1140–1640–1940 (emblazoned on three towers that stood at the
entrance gate) affirmed a line of continuity based on a conception of history as
evolution without change, in which the nation’s soul remained constant
despite the passage of time. For some observers, a further contradiction —
even schizophrenia — lay at the heart of this approach. The relentlessly back-
ward-looking rhetoric could not be easily reconciled with the modernist archi-
tecture and sculptures that adorned the site. Presenting the past in a modernist
guise only thinly disguised the fact that architect Cottinelli Telmo’s estilo
português de 1940 (‘Portuguese style 1940’) was, in fact, little more than a
pastiche of different styles.
The choice of the site for this major event, Belém and the Jerónimos
Monastery, was intended to be symbolic. In the national memory, the location
represented a golden age when it was the locus of the country’s position as a
maritime and transcontinental power. What took place represented a system-
atic ‘ideologization of history’, in which diverse memories are transformed into
a single official memory to become part of the national identity. In other
words, selective history and symbols (explorers, soldier-heroes, national icons
and so on) were manipulated both to serve as a form of national cohesion and
to act as an inspirational and mobilizing force. In a specific example of the
‘invention of tradition’, the organizers designed a new flag for Portugal’s first
King, Afonso Henriques, in order to display it in the parades and at the
Exposition. In practice, the efforts to produce a história única (‘single version
of history’) became equivalent to the role of the partido único (single party) in
the political sphere.
The development of the ‘politics of the spirit’ involved mobilizing culture as
propaganda, reconciling the traditional with the modern and developing a
national popular culture grounded in the values propagated by estadonovismo.
The policy is attributed to António Ferro, a journalist who had conducted a
series of interviews with Salazar in 1932 and became SPN head in October
1933. A nationalist, modernist and admirer of Mussolini’s Italy, Ferro imported
European concepts into Portugal and ensured that his política do espírito
remained at the heart of government policy. As Ferro himself put it, the policy
was anchored in the belief that ‘the spirit is indeed also material, a precious
metal, the raw material of men’s souls and the people’s souls’.23
Portugal was already a nation with a strong national identity, having been
an independent state with stable frontiers for 800 years, pre-dating industrial-
ization by many centuries. The country boasted a long history with regard to
its territorial stability, along with linguistic, ethnic and religious homogeneity.
Indeed, as Eduardo Lourenço pointed out, Portugal suffers not so much from
a crisis of identity as from hyper-identity.24 However, since the nineteenth

23 Quoted in Corte-Real, ‘Cultural Policy’, op. cit., 44.

24 Eduardo Lourenço, Nós e a Europa ou as Duas Razões (Lisbon 1994), 10.

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Corkill & Almeida: Commemoration and Propaganda in Salazar’s Portugal 389

FIGURE 2
Main pavilions, water feature and marine horses statue

FIGURE 3
Nau de Portugal moored on the waterfront at the Exposition

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390 Journal of Contemporary History Vol 44 No 3

FIGURE 4
Discoveries monument designed by Telmo Cottinelli and Leopoldo de Almeida

FIGURE 5
Espelho d’Água building and Discoveries monument at night-time

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Corkill & Almeida: Commemoration and Propaganda in Salazar’s Portugal 391

FIGURE 6
Part of the Portuguese villages site

century, the intelligentsia had begun to express fears that Portugal’s decadence
and backwardness was eroding this strong sense of identity. Salazarist conser-
vatives shared this reading of Portuguese history anchored in the belief that the
era of the discoveries constituted a golden age that was followed by a long
period of decline that culminated in the Republic (1910–1928), which had
became a byword for political instability, financial chaos and negative inter-
pretations of Portuguese colonialism. Inevitably, Salazar’s policy of cultural
renewal, which embraced architecture, music, archeology, history and other
subjects, sought to build a ‘new’ Portugal to reverse the decadent state the
country found itself in. To remind the public that this process commenced with
the military takeover, António Ferro imitated the Italian regime and modeled
the commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the military intervention on
Mussolini’s Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution, his commemoration of the
March on Rome in 1922.25
Because it took place after the outbreak of war in September 1939, the
political significance of the representations inevitably outweighed any com-

25 M. Maria Stone, ‘Staging Fascism: The Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution’, Journal of
Contemporary History 28(2) (1993), 215.

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392 Journal of Contemporary History Vol 44 No 3

mercial considerations. Driven by overtly political and ideological purposes,

the Mundo Português Exposition was transformed into an ambitious propa-
ganda vehicle to reaffirm Portugal’s historic civilizing vocation and demon-
strate to the watching world that improvements in its colonial administration
had delivered economic, social and spiritual progress to its subject peoples.
Another priority was to engender loyalty to a new political order that lacked
the legitimizing stamp of democratic approval 14 years after the military over-
throw of the Republic. Just as Paris’s 1900 Exposition Universelle was intended
to show the world that France had recovered from its defeat in 1871, so the
1940 event was designed to demonstrate that the country had recovered from
the ‘chaos’ of the previous regime. Salazar’s dictatorship deliberately sought to
use the medium of a major themed event to present and ritualize the symbols
of portugalidade. Accordingly, Salazar expressed his hopes that it would ‘give
the people a tonic of happiness and self-confidence to affirm their ability to
achieve’. As a result, the Exposition was regarded as ‘the most significant
cultural event in the ideological building process of the New State, where the
ideology and mythology of the regime were exalted and represented’.26
The Exposition formed the centerpiece of a national commemoration that
lasted throughout the year and covered the whole country. The commemora-
tions were divided historically, with specific weeks devoted to the ‘Medieval’,
‘Imperial’ and ‘Brigantine’ periods. During the fortnight devoted to the
Medieval era, ceremonies took place at Guimarães (to celebrate the founding
of the nation), Braga, Oporto, Coimbra and, lastly, Lisbon. The building work
on the Exhibition site at Belém took over two years to complete, during which
time 5000 workers toiled in a collaborative effort by artists, sculptors, com-
posers, photographers and others. Work did freeze for a month on the out-
break of war in September 1939, before the decision was taken to continue.
Salazar took a close personal interest in the project at all times (no doubt mind-
ful of the potential costs in financial terms) and often telephoned to enquire
how the work was progressing. By the time the well-resourced event closed its
doors on 2 December 1940, almost three million visitors had been exposed to
its narrative of national glory. In December 1940, a violent storm badly
damaged some of the buildings, although a number of items still remain today,
including the marina, the marine horses (sculpted by António Duarte) and the
tropical gardens.
The Exposition comprised a range of pavilions devoted to the foundation of
the nation, the discoveries, independence and the Portuguese in the world. A
pavilion dedicated to contemporary Portugal (Portugal 1940) highlighted the
achievements of the Estado Novo. Smaller pavilions housed exhibits for
Lisbon and Brazil (the only independent foreign country invited to participate)
and visitors could also enjoy a Portuguese boat (nau), replicas of Portuguese
villages, tropical gardens, and an amusement park. In the pavilions, tradition

26 João Fagundes, ‘Obras Públicas — a Grande Fachada do “Estado Novo”’, I. O Ditador e a

Ditadura (Amadora 1996), 383–4.

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Corkill & Almeida: Commemoration and Propaganda in Salazar’s Portugal 393

took center stage, with rooms filled with costumes, foods, cooking utensils,
agricultural implements and demonstrations of traditional crafts. Built as the
Exhibition’s centerpiece, on the riverside opposite the Jerónimos Monastery,
the Padrão dos Descobrimentos (Monument to the Discoveries) was originally
constructed from temporary materials, but later rebuilt as a permanent struc-
ture for the Henrician anniversary celebrations in 1960. Meanwhile, in the
colonial section, the popular attractions included a native village transplanted
from Guinea-Bissau and a typical street from the Far East colony of Macau.
Described by its Comissário Geral, Augusto de Castro, as ‘the symbolic city
of Portuguese history’, the Exposition presented an inventory of the achieve-
ments of the nation in the form of an illustrated history lesson. It reconstructed
how the Portuguese saw themselves, but also how they viewed the world. The
New State re-imagined Portugal as an oasis of peace and internal order, a
problem-free country that served as an example to other nations at a time of
international upheaval and war. Particular stress was placed on order and
authority and on the ‘harmonious’ relations that existed between capital and
labour.27 Although still inchoate, the building-blocks were in place to justify
the claim that the regime had developed a distinctively Portuguese solution to
the crisis that fell outside the dominant contemporary political ideologies.28
The 1940 Exposition aimed to provide ‘uma lição viva de história de
Portugal’ (‘a living lesson in Portuguese history’), and the nation was imagined
or re-imagined in a self-exclusionary way, with its emphasis on national
heroes, ancestors and accomplishments. Portuguese history was presented as a
series of episodes populated by heroes capable of extraordinary deeds, to
whom Salazar was added as the heir to the lineage. Clearly, the link with these
icons of Portugueseness was intended to nurture a reverential respect for the
leader, underlining his providential power as reflected in the panel in the
Estado Novo room that reminded visitors that ‘o chefe é a imagem viva da
Nação’ (‘the leader is the living image of the nation’).
Arlindo Monteiro has argued that the regime’s official history led to a hiper-
valorização do herói individual in which everything is attributed to the lone
hero guided by providence.29 Heroic figures were divorced from their historical
context and came to embody the values that the regime privileged as part of
the official mythology. In the pantheon, Afonso Henriques, who fought for
independence, Infante D. Henrique, and the giants from the age of discoveries
took pride of place alongside Dom Sebastião, the Portuguese monarch who has
long been the subject of myth and legend. Salazar was portrayed as heir to this
exalted company of national heroes, a status merited on the grounds of his
skillful management of the economic crisis. To reinforce this message, a room

27 M. Ramos do O. Jorge, ‘Modernidade e tradição. Algumas reflexões em torno da Exposição

do Mundo Português’, in AA.VV. O Estado Novo. Das Origens ao fim da Autarcia 1926–1959,
vol. II (Lisbon 1997), 180.
28 Williams, Culture Wars, op. cit., 235.
29 Eduardo Lourenço, O Labirinto da Saudade. Pcicanálise Mítica do Destino Português
(Lisbon 1978), 31.

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394 Journal of Contemporary History Vol 44 No 3

(‘Portugal 1940’), dominated by large statues of Salazar and President

Carmona, was dedicated to documenting the regime’s achievements. In order
to convey the message that Portugal’s economic independence was equally as
valuable as its political independence, a self-congratulatory banner proclaimed
‘Portugal é um país de boas contas’ (‘Portugal is a country that keeps good
accounts’).30 The self-confident tone was also evident in another banner, which
declared ‘Até agora temos realizado tudo o que havíamos proposto’ (‘To date,
we have accomplished all we have planned’).
As with other authoritarian regimes, the public were exhorted to imitate
their leader, in the hope that this would develop a new national conscience. In
reality, Salazar remained a somewhat distant, avuncular figure whose inspira-
tional qualities were more paternalistic and less public than those displayed by
Hitler and Mussolini. Regime propaganda proclaimed Salazar as a wise leader
who had extricated Portugal from a major financial and political crisis and
kept the country out of dangerous conflicts such as the Spanish Civil War and
the second world war.
As already noted, the regime adopted a deeply conservative and rural ethos,
a reflection of the influence exerted by the agricultural interests that exercised
such strong influence over Salazarism during the 1930s and 1940s. The simi-
larities with De Valéra’s Ireland are striking: both societies were projected as
non-material, deeply Catholic rural paradises that had turned their backs on
what were regarded as the evils of the modern world and where spirituality
was accorded a higher value than economic progress.
Until the 1950s, the peasant and rural way of life came to be regarded as the
repository of national virtues and an integral part of nationhood. Salazar used
the dual centenary to praise ‘the traditional order, the past, the “good old
days” of the medieval pax ruris . . . the neo-medieval saudosismo of many
Salazarian intellectuals, emblems of the traditionalist order of the Nation’.31
The value placed on the simplicity of rural life was reflected in the reconstruc-
tion of traditional Portuguese villages at the Belém site and the relocation of
local inhabitants to Lisbon for the duration of the event. In essence, the
message was that simple peasant living was superior to modern, materialist-
dominated culture. The regime’s overt ruralism lavished excessive attention
upon traditional ways of living, costumes, song and gastronomy. Traditional
activities such as agriculture, stock raising and fishing were identified as
key elements in forging the national identity. This is reflected in the string of
museums dedicated to national and regional culture that opened their doors
during the 1930s. The 1940 Exhibition added to their number by including a
pavilion of Popular Art (later Museum of Popular Art). At least during the first
decade of its existence, before the tensions with the modernizing develop-
mentalists surfaced, this conservative vision of Portuguese popular culture pre-

30 Lira, Museums, op. cit., 188.

31 José C. Almeida, Social Change and (Re)imagination of the Nation. National Identity and
Public Celebrations in Portugal (Bristol 2002), 15.

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Corkill & Almeida: Commemoration and Propaganda in Salazar’s Portugal 395

vailed, during which, in its exaggerated form, Salazar could be accused of har-
bouring the desire to transform his country into a vast rancho folclórico. In
many respects, the 1940 event celebrated the success of the strategy in which
the country turned to its past, rather than striving for industrialization and
modernization.
As we have seen, the program to restore the national heritage looked delib-
erately to a pre-republican and liberal past when church and state imposed a
strict conservatism on society. Anchored in Catholic conservatism and tradi-
tionalism, this hyper-nationalist and morally superior religious representation
of the national heritage naturally expunged any elements of liberal and foreign
influence. The marriage of Catholicism and nationalism had reached its apogee
in May 1940 with the signing of the Concordat with Rome, which included an
acordo missionário (missionary agreement). Pope Pius XII followed this up
with a papal encyclical (June 1940), in which the pontiff noted the providen-
tial confluence of the centenary celebrations and the ‘spiritual rebirth of the
Portuguese people’. It provided the perfect opportunity for Cardinal Cerejeira,
the patriarch of Lisbon, to make the link between a Catholic nation and its
imperial policy during the many ceremonials at which he presided. One of the
main ideological discourses was the image of a moral nation and empire.
Catholic nationalism provided the legitimizing discourse of colonial domina-
tion based on the claim that

Portuguese imperialism is very different from other European imperialisms [because of its]
altruistic concern to convert to Christianity [and] civilize the backward races. The expression
‘Portuguese Empire’ corresponds to the imperative of the race and represents only the aware-
ness that Portugal has of its historical destiny and its role as main defender of the spiritual
patrimony of humankind.32

According to António Ferro, cultural policy had to build the ‘national

family’, a monocultural, Catholic nation based on corporatist principles. Deus,
Pátria e Família (God, Fatherland and Family) became the trinity that encap-
sulated the fundamental values of Salazarism. Unlike Mussolini, Salazar
accepted the limits of authoritarianism and embraced Catholicism as a form of
Portuguese popular culture. Rather than trying to create a fascist identity
based on the subordination of the individual to the state, Salazarism blended
the traditional and socially conservative with highly selective aspects of the
modern.
Public spaces are important to authoritarian regimes. Squares or praças host
public spectacles where citizens can be reminded of past glories by events that
trigger social memory. The architectural setting assumes great importance,
because national spaces can be brought into the present by their use for major
events. The capital, along with other cities, underwent a major redevelopment
during the 1930s. Under the stewardship of Duarte Pacheco, Public Works and

32 F. Alves Azevedo, ‘O Estado Novo e o Império’, Portugal Colonial: Revista Mensal de

Propaganda e Expansão do Império Português 50 (1935), 10.

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396 Journal of Contemporary History Vol 44 No 3

Communications minister, a swathe of restoration and building projects got

under way, to make Lisbon into a worthy imperial capital. Given carte blanche
by Salazar, Duarte Pacheco oversaw an extensive urban renewal, restoration
and public works programme in the Portuguese capital. In part, the aim was to
establish ‘visual texts’ designed to convey the regime’s preferred readings of
history.33
The choice of Belém, a district of the city located on the shores of the Tagus
river earmarked for urban renewal, as the site for the Exposition was heavily
symbolic. The buildings at Belém are the architectural representations of the
Manueline era, when Portugal was a leading power and pioneer of maritime
discoveries. The area is indelibly linked to the messianic imperial idea. The
focal point of the 1940 Exposition was the Praça do Império, which is bounded
by buildings resonating with history, including the Belém tower (departure
point for the maritime discoveries), which had long stood as ‘a symbol of
Portugal’s genius for exploration’ and had already been incorporated into the
imperial narrative. Belém itself signified the ‘birth, origins and claims of divine-
ly ordained destiny’.34 The dominant ideology was reinforced by the location of
the Jerónimos monastery on the site, a building dating from 1501 and the
repository for the remains of Vasco da Gama, one of the great explorers, and
Luís de Camões, author of the epic poem Os Lusíadas. To these monuments
the architects Cottinelli Telmo and Leopoldo Almeida added the Padrão dos
Descobrimentos (Monument to the Discoveries), built in the shape of a caravel.
In some respects, the site has parallels with the (uncompleted) new city on the
outskirts of Rome which Mussolini planned to be the spatial expression of his
regime’s political, cultural and economic achievements. The city was founded
to house a world exhibition (Esposizione Universale di Roma) and, not unlike
Lisbon, was designed to reconnect Rome to the Mediterranean and make the
Italian capital an imperial city.35
By 1940, the imperial theme had become well established among the
European colonial powers anxious to celebrate their imperial achievement, as
demonstrated at the various Expositions Universelles and Coloniales held in
Paris (1900 and 1937, for example) and Wembley (1924). Portugal was no
exception, as evidenced by the Exposição Colonial Portuguesa, which attracted
1.3 million visitors to Porto in 1934, although there was a clear-cut commer-
cial and industrial, rather than simply a commemorative, motivation behind it.
Just as Mussolini sought to establish an ideological identification between

33 Sapega, ‘Image’, op. cit., 47. See also António P. Rafael, ‘Master Builder for Portugal. Public
Works Minister Duarte Pacheco and the New State, 1938–1943’, Portuguese Studies Review 2(1)
(1992–3), 60–76.
34 Marcus Power and James D. Sidaway, ‘Deconstructing Twinned Towers: Lisbon’s Expo ’98
and the Occulted Geographies of Discovery’, Social and Cultural Geography 6(6) (2005), 867, at
870.
35 Anna Notaro, ‘Exhibiting the New Mussolinian City: Memories of Empire in the World
Exhibition of Rome (EUR)’, GeoJournal 51 (2000), 15.

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Corkill & Almeida: Commemoration and Propaganda in Salazar’s Portugal 397

fascist Italy and antiquity, so Salazar made a similar link with the ‘golden age’
of the discoveries and the empire as core symbols of identity.
As already noted, the New State used the event to demonstrate the pivotal
role played by the empire in the regime’s ideology and in defining its place in
the world. The ‘discoveries’ had always constituted a historical reference point
at the heart of Portuguese national identity. Narratives of imperialism were
reworked and refined to emphasize that Portugal was not a second-rank nation
but a major power with a colonial empire that stretched across the globe. A
key part of nationalist discourse under the dictatorship was that Portugal is not
a small country. The scale of this pluri-continental empire was popularized in
the saying de Minho a Timor (‘from the Minho to Timor’) and, in school text-
books, Portugal’s imperial possessions were superimposed on maps of the
United States and Europe from the Mediterranean to Russia to suggest that
Portugal was not only multi-continental but also as large as these great land
masses. Events, such as the one held in 1940, promoted the advantages of
empire for both the colonizers and the colonized.36 In order to transmit this
message, the organizers presented a sanitized version of the exotic. This involved
transplanting an entire African village from Guinea-Bissau to be reconstructed
at Belém together with its tribesmen, while a Mozambican orchestra was
brought over to entertain the visitors. These human showcases were common
in international colonial exhibitions of the time, where contradictory values
coexisted with one another, demonstrating ‘the plural morality in operation
throughout European culture at the time’.37 These and other exhibits were
designed to relay the gratitude felt by the colonized peoples for their deliver-
ance from barbarism. Everywhere the visitor was made aware of Portugal’s
role as a civilizer and the mutual benefits derived from Portugal’s mission to
lusitanizar other peoples. Indeed, the Exposition contributed to the construc-
tion of a national mythology that the Portuguese possessed unique civilizing
qualities that made them ‘good colonizers’.
Although this was not an international exhibition, Brazil was invited to take
part because of the close cultural and historical connections between the two
nations. The presence of its former colony served to deflect criticism of
Portuguese colonialism and legitimize its civilizing role. Brazil, under Getúlio
Vargas’s Estado Novo government, was enlisted as confirmation that Portu-
guese colonialism eschewed violence and cultural barriers and ultimately trans-
mitted the ‘gifts’ of language, blood and religion. The message was clear: not
only was the Portuguese empire multi-racial, but it did not practice discrimi-
nation. In the same textbooks, a mother figure of the nation sits with her arms
around two children, one black, the other white. At the first Colonial

36 At this time the empire consisted of the Azores, Madeira, São Tomé and Príncipe, Cape
Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, Mozambique, Goa, Damãn and Diu, East Timor and Macao. All
these possessions were considered part of the national territory.
37 Paul Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas: Expositions Universelles, Great Exhibitions and
World’s Fairs, 1851–1939 (Manchester 1988), 79.

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398 Journal of Contemporary History Vol 44 No 3

Exhibition held in Oporto in 1934, the reconstructed indigenous villages from

various parts of the empire and a ‘typical’ Macao street proved to be major
attractions. Indeed, a substantial number of people attended the event specifi-
cally ‘to see the blacks’.38 The presence of colonial subjects was living proof of
the country’s ‘missionary vocation’ to expand the faith and bring to the rest of
the world ‘the light of Christian civilization’. Colonization was described as a
‘racial tendency’ of the Portuguese, while events were held to celebrate that the
‘overseas expansion was done more with the heart than with the sword’.39 The
country was said to be incomplete without its colonial subjects and its empire
to be indivisibly part of the nation. Interestingly, the Exposition demonstrated
how cartography can be used as a propaganda weapon in the nationalist and
colonialist discourse.40 Maps and charts were enlisted to implant the idea of the
national territory among a domestic audience. Hundreds of maps adorned the
walls of the pavilions and rooms to reinforce the Estado Novo’s contention
that the nation and the empire were inextricably and inalienably entwined.
Although the dictatorship endured for another 34 years, and commemora-
tive events continued to feature in its cultural policy, the 1940 Exposition
represented the high watermark of the ‘festival state’. Future events witnessed
some dilution in their scale, ambition and confidence, because of the impact on
the economy of the second world war and the defeat of fascism, which trans-
formed the regime’s priorities. Although a direct heir to the Portuguese World
Exposition, the next celebration of empire, in 1960 to mark the fifth centenary
of Henry the Navigator’s death, took place against the backcloth of growing
anti-colonial sentiment across the world and on the eve of the outbreak of the
wars of liberation in Portugal’s African possessions.
Culture did bind the Portuguese people to the regime, but it should be
remembered that when persuasion and propaganda did not have the desired
effect, the New State ensured conformity and loyalty through repression and
censorship. The nation was above everything and Salazar, as a father and head
of the nation, had to be respected. Indeed, patriotism, as defined by the regime,
was made the litmus test of nationality, as Salazar reminded his fellow-
countrymen: ‘Whoever is not patriotic, cannot be considered Portuguese’.41
However, it is undeniable that the 1940 Exhibition acted as a powerful
weapon in the construction of a new national identity by harnessing the dis-
course of empire to the power of the New State. In part, it explains why
Portugal, although economically and militarily the weakest European colonial
power, clung stubbornly on to its empire longer than its counterparts.
Historical discourse and heritage were utilized to validate a political regime
and shape the national consciousness of the Portuguese people. Not only was

38 O Livro da Primeira Exposição Colonial Portuguesa (np, 1934).

39 Programa Oficial das Comemorações Centenárias (Lisbon 1940).
40 Cairo, ‘Maps and Propaganda’, op. cit., 367.
41 António Oliveira Salazar, O Meu Depoimento. Speech to Second Conference of União
Nacional (Lisbon 1949), 9.

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Corkill & Almeida: Commemoration and Propaganda in Salazar’s Portugal 399

the event intended as a vehicle of popular culture and education; its purpose
was also to inspire. Its important educative function is encapsulated in the chief
organizer Augusto de Castro’s aspiration that the visiting public would saber
ser Português (learn to be Portuguese). Judged by the frequency of commemo-
rations, anniversaries, historical processions and reconstructions, the Salazar
regime merits the description as a ‘festival state’ designed to disguise the lack of
mass mobilization and the absence of a strong political movement. When, nearly
half a century later, the democratic, European and post-colonial Portugal hosted
the 1998 World Expo (May–September 1998), the last universal exhibition of
the twentieth century, the nationalist-imperialist propaganda had disappeared
and the country was represented as part of the international community of
nations. Although a maritime theme persisted, the focus had switched to the
conservation of the oceans and openness of the country to Europe and the
world community.

David Corkill
is Professor of Iberian Studies at Manchester Metropolitan
University.

José Almeida
is a Research Fellow in the Manchester European Research Institute
(MERI) at Manchester Metropolitan University.

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