The Torre do Tombo National Archive (ANTT) will digitize the archive of the leader of the Estado Novo dictatorship, António de Oliveira Salazar (1889-1970), and make it available to the public on the Internet, its director, Silvestre, told Lusa. Lacerda news agency.
The director of the ANTT, in statements to Lusa, stated that, within the framework of the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR), financed by the European Union, which must be completed in 2026, the priority of Torre do Tombo is “to make Digitization of the Salazar archive and its availability to the public, with a catalog partially on the internet, in addition to [a inventariação] currently existing on paper, written by Madalena García [antiga subdiretora do ANTT]published by Editorial Estampa in 1992.”
The person in charge said that the digitization of 1.2 million images from the so-called Salazar Archive, composed of 1,177 boxes, two filing cabinets and a drawer with personal items.
The archive of the President of the Council of the dictatorship, who claimed to “write for History”, was initially located in the National Library of Portugal (BNP), but, by Decree-Law No. 279, of August 1991, its transfer was determined to the new premises in Torre do Tombo, where it was established on January 17, 1992.
This “quite large” file occupies around 460 meters of documentationand it is the third most requested, only surpassed by the Archive of the Inquisition, which continues to be the most consulted, and by the political police of the dictatorship, PVDE/PIDE/DGS, created by Salazar in 1933, the second most requested.
Salazar’s “Diaries”, a ten-year work by Madalena García, are fully transcribed and was published as an ‘ebook’, by Porto Editora, in 2021, and is available for free in the reference room of the Torre do Tombo , in Lisbon.
Salazar’s handwriting is horrible, said the director of the Torre do Tombo, and it is not easy to read the manuscript. But these “Diaries,” the name he himself gave them, “have something very interesting, which is not common in this type of work, which are the detailed indexes.”
The collection thus provides “a large set of everyday information [de Salazar]: who received and how many times they were nominated; We found out that every Sunday he had dinner with Dr. Bissaya Barreto, the books she read, etc.,” she continued. “He himself realized that he wrote for History,” Silvestre Lacerda told Lusa.
These “Diaries” – often also called “Agendas” – have the day and time in which you received the people and the issues you discussed. “For example, we learn that Salazar received, on the eve of the military uprising that gave rise to the Spanish Civil War [1936-1939]General José Sanjurjo [1872-1936] who led the nationalist attempt and was succeeded by General Francisco Franco [1892-1975]who directed the destinies of the Spanish State, in an autocratic manner, until 1975.”
“The day before, at three in the afternoon, if I’m not mistaken, Salazar received Sanjurjo. This shows that Salazar was aware of what was going to happen and saying that Portugal was always neutral is a myth,” said the ANTT director.
Salazar presided over the Government of the dictatorship for more than 36 years, from 1932 to 1968. He assumed the Treasury portfolio for the first time in 1926, for 15 days, after the military coup of May 28 that put an end to the First Republic. . He returned to Finance and Government two years later, when he guaranteed control of the mechanisms of the State, which he had not been able to achieve before.
In 1930 he temporarily held the position of Minister of the Colonies, establishing a colonizing policy, centralized in Lisbon, through various diplomas of an economic, financial, political and administrative nature, including the Colonial Act, which became part of the Constitution. of 1933.
This legislative device assumed the “historical function” of “possessing and colonizing overseas domains and civilizing” the local populations, which were stratified between “civilized, assimilated and indigenous”, without recognizing their citizenship, and establishing strict conditions so that they could obtain it. . .
The laws of Salazar’s colonial policy, which remained in force until the 1960s, framed the practice of racism, extensive social and cultural discrimination, and legitimized an economy based on forced labor, repeatedly denounced by the press, agencies and International organizations.
Source: Observadora
