Mr. Ávila and the Casino conferees

Abstract

After over a hundred years, it is time to look at the controversy over the closing down of the «Casino conferences» from a detached viewpoint. The young people of the «1870 generation» did not take themselves to Chiado simply to leave us with a view of the fatherland: they did it to shake the regime. The heavy figure of the marquis of Ávila rose up before them. Posterity considers the young people to have been innocent lambs and the mayor to have been a Calígula. What actually happened was more complex.