During the Portuguese dictatorship, art emerged as a powerful form of resistance and expression. In those years, music and paintings were born, as well as books and plays that challenged the oppressive regime, standing out as demonstrations for freedom and justice. Hundreds of works were censored and seized by the censors working for the regime. Some examples of these artistic protests are:
“Felizmente há luar” (Fortunately there is moonlight) is a play written by Luís de Sttau Monteiro in 1961. The play, set in Portugal during the Liberal Wars of the 19th century, more specifically in 1817, and deals with themes such as politics, power, love, betrayal, repression, and censorship. The story follows the movement led by General Gomes Freire de Andrade, who seeks to defeat the absolute monarchy, and is later arrested and hanged in the fort of São Julião da Barra, an act carried out by Marshal Beresford’s regime and firmly supported by the Church. It symbolically portrays the resistance against the dictatorship of the Estado Novo and cultural censorship. It also features Humberto Delgado, a general who defied the dictatorship of the Estado Novo.
“The Jew”, a play by Bernardo Santareno, written in 1966, portrays the life of António José da Silva, an author of comedies and comical operas born in 1705, the son of “New Christians”. The work deals with hatred during the Portuguese Inquisition, highlighting the persecution of non-Catholics. Despite the torture and persecution, António continues to create satirical plays, gaining recognition, including from the king, but was condemned to the stake for being Jewish. Santareno draws parallels with the Salazar regime and censorship, criticizing political oppression and the lack of freedom of expression.
“New Portuguese letters” is a literary work published jointly in 1972 by: Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Teresa Horta and Maria Velho da Costa, born in the late 1930s in Lisbon. The book is inspired by Letters Portugaises, a French work from the 17th century, consisting of five letters written by a Portuguese nun after she was seduced and abandoned by her lover. The work was considered “immoral” and “pornographic” because it portrayed free women who questioned their identity and expressed their desire to have access to new social and religious ideas.
The book revealed to the world the existence of discriminatory situations in Portugal: dictatorial repression, the status of women (marriage, motherhood, and female sexuality) and the realities of the Portuguese as emigrants, refugees and “returnees” from Portugal. A manifesto against all forms of oppression, the book became a symbol against the dictatorship, challenging the regime’s moral authority in the 1970s and, after its publication, the work was considered deleterious to the regime and banned by censorship, becoming the object of clandestine readings. A lawsuit was filed against the authors, making the text and the case of its suppression internationally famous. The case was suspended, and the authors acquitted only after April 25, 1974. The three writers have never revealed which of them composed each fragment, and various studies have been carried out in an attempt to attribute the authorship of the various texts that make up the book by comparing them with the literary works subsequently released by the individual authors.
Esteiros The story of five boys who work instead of going to school, forms the plot of Soeiro’s masterpiece. The misery portrayed in “Esteiros” is much more than fiction, it is the reality of a country, where more than half the population can neither read nor write. From his bedroom window, Soeiro Pereira Gomes watched the tragic struggle of the workers to survive. Among the men were children of primary school age. They collected clay from the narrow river channels, the esteiros, to make tiles and bricks. They worked for a miserable wage, which condemned them to begging, to a life without a way out of poverty. The author saw it all from the of his house in Alhandra and reflected on the injustice of an oppressive and exploitative society, organized in favour of the strongest. Instead of keeping quiet, he preferred to denounce the Salazar regime with words and other acts of resistance. Published in 1941, “Esteiros” has characters inspired by reality: Gaitinhas, Guedelhas, Gineto, Maquineta and Sagui, are “the children of men who were never boys”, as the author dedicates at the opening of the novel. The work, one of the most emblematic of the Portuguese neorealist movement, is written in a language, with simple sentences, favoring direct speech to give voice to the oppressed. The 1st edition has a cover and illustrations by Álvaro Cunhal, the historic founder of the PCP, the Portuguese communist party to which the writer had joined in 1937.
