The visible power: D. Carlos, the press and the public opinion in the end of the Portuguese constitutional monarchy

Abstract

The present article analyses the main currents that mark the evolution of the Portuguese press at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth – masspolitik, industrialization and democratization. It aims to understand the relationship between the King (D. Carlos I) and the newspapers and the public opinion from the time of his political beginnings as Prince Royal to his final political bet on João Franco and the tragic debacle of the regicide. In this way, we hope to make sense of how the end of the constitutional monarchy was the outcome, among other factors, of the problems posed to the Court and the regime’s main political figures by the demands made by the newspapers stemming from what we may now call the “golden age” of the Portuguese press.