This week's collection of whimsical and curious stories will discuss the twilight years of Portuguese dictator António Salazar (1889-1970). As is usually the case with potentates, strongmen and dictators, they rarely go into the night quietly and often compound the tragedy of their regimes during their final days. However, Salazar's demise was less of a tragedy and more of a farce.
Not just a law professor - In 1969, in an interview with a French political magazine, the ageing Portuguese dictator António Salazar was asked to opine on the law professor Marcelo Caetano. In his reply, Salazar lamented that "[Caetano] is smart and has authority, but he is wrong for not wanting to work with us in the government". It was through this interview that the wider world found out that Salazar had no idea that he was no longer the leader of Portugal and its empire but had instead been replaced by that very same law professor, Marcelo Caetano.
Downfall - The story that led to this moment started on Saturday, 3 August 1968 at 9am in a deckchair. 79-year old Salazar had just seated himself to receive a haircut when the chair suddenly collapsed underneath him causing his head to connect audibly with the stone floor. His doctor was only informed of the incident three days later and everything seemed normal for another month when his state suddenly deteriorated. Following a surgery to remove a blot clot from his brain, he made a brief recovery before suffering a severe stroke that put him into a coma from which he was not expected to wake up again. A successor was quickly announced: former law professor and regime ideologue Marcello Caetano.
Goodbye Salazar - However, a month after his stroke, Salazar not only woke up again but also seemed to recover most of his mental and physical faculties. He even returned to live in his official residence on Rua da Imprensa in Lisbon and resumed his official duties - or so he thought. In an elaborate ruse concocted by the Minister of Interior, Salazar continued to chair meetings with ministers and host dignitaries. Salazar even received a copy of his favourite newspaper every morning which had been thoroughly scrubbed of any reference to Caetano's government and printed just for him. This farce lasted for two years until his (actual) death in 1970. Four years later, Salazar's political regime also died when Portugal became a democracy.
Salazar in 1969 surrounded by a group of students three months after being discharged from the hospital
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Sources:
Ferrari, M. (2020) The Incredible Story Of Antonio Salazar, The Dictator Who Died Twice. Editori Laterza
Gallagher, T. (2020) Salazar: The Dictator Who Refused To Die. Oxford University Press