New center puts focus on Portuguese dictator Salazar’s legacy

Salazar ruled with an iron fist for more than three decades before falling into a coma in September 1968. He died 23 months later.(AFP) — A center devoted to the study of Portugal’s 20th-century dictator Antonio Salazar opened in his home village Friday after two decades of disputes.Salazar used a feared secret police force and brutal repression of opponents to maintain his “New State” rule from 1932 to 1968, when he became ill and fell into a coma. His legacy is fiercely debated.The Interpretive Center for the New State — Regime and Resistance opened in Vimieiro, where Salazar was born in 1889.Its development has been disputed for two decades. Some historians and rights groups expressed fears that it would help efforts to rehabilitate Salazar’s name and become a pilgrimage site for supporters of the New State dictatorship.The center is in a school dating to the 1940s near the house where Salazar was born and the cemetery where he is buried.It has a library, a permanent exhibition and a replica of a classroom from the Salazar years. Temporary exhibitions, lectures and conferences are planned.“We do not want a museum that glorifies Salazar, nor a place where people bad-mouth this principal figure,” said Ines Matos, mayor of Santa Comba Dao, which includes Vimieiro.“We want a space that is open to everyone” to discuss Salazar, she told the Lusa news agency.Salazar ruled with an iron fist for more than three decades before falling into a coma in September 1968. He died 23 months later at age 81.The New State regime was overthrown in a military uprising in 1974 following mounting opposition to Portugal’s wars in its African colonies.Several museums and institutions are already devoted to the dictatorship years.A museum about resistance to Salazar’s authoritarian rule opened in a former secret police prison in Lisbon in 2015.Another, dedicated to Aristides de Sousa Mendes, a diplomat who helped thousands of Jewish refugees escape persecution during World War II, opened in 2024 in his home village of Cabanas de Viriato.Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads