A case of political violence: the «hot Summer» of 1975

Abstract

In the «hot Summer» of 1975, a year after the April 1974 revolution, central and northern Portugal was the setting for a widespread mobilization against the governments led by Vasco Gonçalves: there were large «anti-communist» demonstrations and violent attacks on over eighty work places of the Portuguese Communist Party. This article seeks to explain how this mobilization came about and, more specifically, why it developed into collective political violence. In addition to analysing the reasons for the discontent embodied in the mobilization, this article seeks to identify the links between the mobilization, the practice of collective violence and the existence and attitudes of the state's means of coercion, which in 1975 were going through a time of crisis.