Spain: A Unique History (23 page)

Despite the difference in size, comparability with Portugal is greater in every period and in almost every dimension. After the final separation between 1640 and 1668, the two countries continued to follow closely parallel courses. Their Old Regimes overall were remarkably similar, prone to the same problems and even to some extent the same reforms. The loss of colonies took place at approximately the same time, though neither lost all their colonies. The relatively peaceful Portuguese decolonization obeyed the generally more moderate and, if not less conflictive, then at least less violent tone of Portuguese affairs since the mid-seventeenth century. In both countries the effects of the French invasion and — to a much lesser extent — the loss of most of the overseas territories made possible the imposition of political liberalism, which was equally weak and prone to conflict in both countries. Because of Portugal's smaller size, relatively stronger leadership, and lack of regional institutional particularism, it ended the liberalism/traditionalism conflict endemic in early nineteenth-century liberalism in 1834, long before Spain. For somewhat the same reasons, a two-party liberal "turno" (
rotativismo
in Portuguese) was largely achieved two decades before this took place in Spain. The basic problems of weak cultural, social, and economic preparation were present in both countries, together with the restrictive, elitist, somewhat artificial character of the liberal regimes.

During the 1850s, when both countries seemed peacefully embarked on parallel paths, the Iberian federalist movement enjoyed greater support in both Spain and Portugal than would be the case later on.
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At the time of the abortive Spanish dynastic change in 1868-69, some of the more liberal sectors of Spanish politics might have preferred to introduce a Portuguese prince, since during the preceding two decades the Portuguese monarchy was generally viewed as more sincerely liberal than that of Spain, but a Portuguese candidacy was discouraged in Lisbon.

During the central part of the nineteenth century both countries struggled with economic development with limited success, and largely sought to avoid foreign involvement, though with certain exceptions and differences. After 1807 it seemed as though the center of the Portuguese-speaking world had been displaced to Río de Janeiro, something that never occurred in Spain. For approximately a decade the de facto governor of Portugal was a British general, and the British connection remained fundamental to the country's foreign relations. In both countries there was a certain surge of nationalism and expansionism during the middle part of the century. In Portugal, though, where certain fundamental political issues seemed to have been resolved earlier, this took the form of a new concentration on Africa as the "third empire," a goal on which Portuguese policy finally began to make good with substantial occupation of Angola and Mozambique by the last years of the century. Both countries then in turn experienced the imperial frustrations common to the south European states during the 1890s. Once more Portugal was first, receiving an "Ultimatum," as the Portuguese always called it, from its British ally in 1891, which forever ended dreams of "the rose-colored map" — the goal of a broad empire of Portuguese — controlled territory across south Africa from Angola to Mozambique.

What can be called "liberal nationalism" enjoyed significant support in both Spain and Portugal during the nineteenth century, the difference being that it was developed more strongly in Portugal. The reaction to the Ultimatum — "Portugal's 1898" — was also different. In Spain, as similarly in Italy and even to some extent France, such an experience produced a kind of national soul-searching, but also stimulated a "regenerationism," which mostly functioned within the existing political system. The result in Portugal was to stimulate the republican movement, which — generally unlike republicanism in Spain — developed as a strongly nationalist and even imperialist enterprise.

Since the pace of cultural, social, and economic modernization was even slower in Portugal, at the beginning of the twentieth century the working-class movements were very weak, distinctly more so than even in the case of Spain. The pressure from the worker Left was so slight that in this regard Portugal was more like a Latin American than a European country, though it was also distinguished from nearly all Latin American countries by the existence of a relatively stronger middle class and stronger political nationalism. In some ways the best comparison in Europe at that time was Greece, which had somewhat similar characteristics.

The result was another Portuguese "first" — the easy overthrow of the monarchy in 1910 and the introduction of the first new republic in twentieth-century Europe. There were notable differences between Portugal in 1910 and Spain in 1931: Portugal was a much smaller, weaker, and more underdeveloped country, but in possession of a large African empire. Portuguese politics made only a pretense of being democratic and were still dominated by a restrictive nineteenth-century middle-class liberalism, though now radically anticlerical. The idea that the Portuguese republic introduced twentieth-century democracy — as did its later Spanish counterpart — is totally false. The Portuguese republicans in power restricted the electoral franchise to literate males, enabling only a large minority of males to vote, in some respects narrowing the suffrage over what existed in the last decades of the monarchy.

The goal of the dominant faction of Portuguese republicans was a kind of civic "progressivism" that would eliminate conservative influence, especially that of the Church, so that the denial of the vote to the Catholic peasantry was one of its most fundamental features. The falsely titled Democratic Party, the main republican group, developed the most formidable electoral machine seen in the Iberian Peninsula during the early twentieth century, and could never be defeated in normal elections under the restricted suffrage, which was never significantly reformed.

The Democrat electoral machine may have been stable, but the "First Republic" of 1910-26 enjoyed the dismal distinction of being the most unstable regime in Europe. Since this was also a time of considerable instability in some other countries, such an achievement may be considered another Portuguese "negative superlative." It had little to do with pressure from the worker movements, a common source of instability elsewhere. Rather, the notorious political instability of the Republic stemmed from middle-class and elite dissidence, faced with a typical nineteenth-century problem — the lack of access to government due to the domination of the Democrats. The history of the republic was thus filled not merely with severe dissidence but also with armed revolts and attempted revolts, so that even historians have difficulty keeping it all straight. Although there was much conflict and disorder, the total number of victims of violence was limited, which some would think of as typically Portuguese. The limited political mobilization in a nondemocratic system and the small size of both the country and the participating political elites guaranteed that none of these conflicts metastasized into a genuine civil war, something that has happened only once in modern Portuguese history.

Dissatisfaction with the narrow system of republican domination inevitably led to a search for alternatives, and thus to another Portuguese "first" — a new kind of moderate authoritarian system in the form of the "República Nova" of Sidónio Pais in 1917-18, which also introduced the phenomenon of a new kind of mass charisma projected by its leader. Though it was soon overthrown, the República Nova was a harbinger of things to come after the military finally put an end to the parliamentary republic in 1926. The military coup in Portugal resembled that of Primo de Rivera in 1923, not the counterrevolutionary insurrection of 1936 in Spain, and, like the former, was initially supported by some sectors of liberal opinion. The leaders of the new military government, like their contemporary Primo de Rivera, were soon bewildered by the problem of how to operate the state coherently, or how to begin to build an alternative system. In a more underdeveloped, politically only partially mobilized, society, however, they never had to face as much pressure as did Primo de Rivera during his final months in office and by 1930 had found the man capable of building that alternative, the Coimbra economics professor Dr. António de Oliveira Salazar.

In later years Franco and Salazar would often be lumped together as twin Iberian dictators, yet the difference between them and between their two regimes was very great. Salazar was a professor and an intellectual, not a military man, and throughout the long history of his regime had to face intermittent dissidence from the military, something that scarcely bothered Franco. Salazar's "Estado Novo" (New State) evolved from the original military dictatorship, which itself had been the result of a virtually bloodless coup, so that the politically undermobilized Portugal of the era between the wars experienced no trauma even remotely similar to that of the Spanish Civil War.

In 1933 Salazar introduced another Portuguese "first" — the first new corporative constitution in contemporary Europe. At that time there was much talk of corporatism because one statist authoritarian form of it was propagandized by Italian Fascism while nonstatist economic corporatism had become a semi-official doctrine of the Catholic Church. The Estado Novo in fact featured a dual system: a corporative economic chamber and economic system flanked by a restrictively elected parliament. It preserved aspects of the republican system and maintained the nominal separation of church and state, though in fact the Estado Novo strongly supported Catholicism in almost every way. It was less repressive than the Franco regime, partly because in Portugal there was less opposition to repress; Salazar, in fact, never fully overcame internal dissidence and intermittently had to face political challenges and abortive military revolts. Whereas the initial Franco regime was at least semi-fascist, with a fascist state party, the Estado Novo did not have a full-fledged state party, its União Nacional more nearly resembling the Union Patriótica of Primo de Rivera. Salazar drew a sharp distinction between the highly conservative and moderate authoritarianism of his regime and the radical style, doctrines, and practice of Fascism and National Socialism. Unlike that of Franco, his government's policy in World War II was genuinely neutral, tilting toward Great Britain. Indeed, the papacy had some tendency to think of the Estado Novo as the most appropriate "third way" between fascism and Communism, while for years it held the more radical and bloody Franco regime at arm's length.

Though there was one limited Spanish military intervention in Portugal in 1847 to uphold the existing order, relations between the two countries during the nineteenth century were generally peaceful and cooperative. There was greater tension during the first decades of the twentieth century, when the radicalism of the Portuguese Republic aroused the apprehension of monarchists in Madrid and even prompted Alfonso XIII, during the summer of 1913, to float inquiries with the major European states testing the possible reaction to a Spanish military intervention that would restore the monarchy.
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Later, when both countries were governed by rightist military regimes in the late 1920s, relations became more harmonious.

After 1931 it was Spain that introduced a left-wing republic, the Azaña government demonstrating sharp hostility to Salazar and abetting armed efforts of the Portuguese opposition to overthrow him. Once more the accession to power of more conservative forces in Madrid restored better relations at the close of 1933, only to see those relations deteriorate again with the triumph of the Popular Front.

By the beginning of the Civil War, Salazar concluded that his regime could scarcely survive the triumph of a revolutionary Republic in Spain and aligned it completely with Franco, even though Portugal lacked the strength to intervene militarily. This record of loyal collaboration was not altogether reciprocated afterward, for the victory of the Nacionales, followed by those of Hitler in 1939-40, touched off a powerful current of imperial ambition in Madrid, which, particularly among Falangists, sought to extend Spanish hegemony over the entire peninsula. After Franco's meeting with Hitler at Hendaye, the Spanish dictator ordered his general staff to draw up a plan for a rapid invasion of Portugal, but this ambition, whatever its dimensions, was swiftly overtaken by events. Would Franco really have invaded Portugal? The answer probably is that he would have done so only under conditions of a broader Axis victory, which would have, at least indirectly helped to underwrite the enterprise, and such a situation never developed.
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Once more a swing in a more moderate direction in Madrid restored fully harmonious relations. Once Franco had dismissed his Falangist brother-in-law, Ramón Serrano Súñer, the latter's successor as foreign minister, Gen. Francisco Gómez Jordana, made neutrality and cooperation with Portugal cornerstones of his policy, leading to formation in 1942 of the "Bloque Ibérico" to maintain peninsular independence. For the remainder of their long lives, the two dictatorships enjoyed good relations, seeking to reinforce each other. The Salazar regime endeavored, though without success, to bring Spain into NATO.
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Conversely, an aged Franco prudently resisted pressures for a Spanish military intervention at the time of the Portuguese revolution of 1974.

The Estado Novo had in the interim even managed to survive the demise of Salazar in 1968, becoming one of the few non-Communist authoritarian regimes to outlive its founder. It would also have survived the demise of Franco as well, at least for a few years, had not the colonial war against African liberation movements exacted a price that by the early 1970s could not be sustained — not because the physical means were lacking, but because the cadres of the military in metropolitan Portugal themselves began to lose heart and turn against the war. Consequently the Estado Novo, Europe's longest-lasting non-Communist authoritarian regime (an entire decade older than that of Franco) came to an end as all its European predecessors had — as a result of military action, in this case the military revolution of April 1974 — the "revolution of the carnations." In typical Portuguese fashion, this was a bloodless coup, much like the one that had introduced dictatorship in 1926.