The New State as to the périphérie powers: the government of Assis Gonçalves in Vila Real (1934-1939)

Abstract

For a long time, among the memoirists of the Portuguese «Estado Novo», have tended to reduce this régime to a personal dictatorship imposed thorough violence. Most recently one has begun seeing in which way the «Estado Novo» had its origins and its raison d'être in the Portuguese social structure. The present article tries to follow a new direction. Reading the reports addressed
by the civil governor to Salazar, one sees that the authorities of the «Estado Novo» imposed their political order through the appeasement and the enticement of the traditional families of influent people in this region of the rural inland.