Lisbon Rising: Urban Social Movements in the Portuguese Revolution, 1974-75 [1 ed.] 9781526103055, 9780719085444

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URBAN SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE PORTUGUESE REVOLUTION, 1974–75 Lisbon rising explores the role of a widespread urban social movement in Portugal’s revolution and transition to democracy. The emergence of a grassroots movement of the urban poor held the promise that the revolution would deliver a truly popular and socialist democracy. Many thousands participated in democratic neighbourhood assemblies deciding the fate of the city, they built houses, schools and hospitals, and occupied thousands of apartments. Yet, while the movement remains to this day a symbol of the possibilities of grassroots democracy, little is known about how it appeared, what role it played in the Carnation Revolution, and why it disappeared after 1975. Drawing on newly available sources, Lisbon rising challenges the long-established view that civil society in southern Europe was weak, arguing that popular movements had an important and autonomous role in democratisation, and inviting us to rethink the role of popular agency in the history and theory of transitions.

LISBON RISING

LISBON RISING

LISBON RISING URBAN SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE PORTUGUESE REVOLUTION, 1974–75

Lisbon rising will be of interest to students and scholars of twentieth-century European history, as well as of democratisation, social movements and citizenship in political science and sociology.

Cover image: Shantytown: Rua do Sol in Chelas, Lisbon 1970s. Photo by M.V. Moreira, courtesy of the Lisbon Municipal Archive

R A M O S P I N TO

Pedro Ramos Pinto is Lecturer in International Economic History at the University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Trinity Hall

ISBN 978-0-7190-8544-4

P E D R O R A M O S P I N TO www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

Lisbon rising

Lisbon rising Urban social movements in the Portuguese Revolution, 1974–75

PEDRO RAMOS PINTO

Manchester University Press Manchester and New York distributed in the United States exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan

Copyright © Pedro Ramos Pinto 2013 The right of Pedro Ramos Pinto to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9NR, UK and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk Distributed in the United States exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA Distributed in Canada exclusively by UBC Press, University of British Columbia, 2029 West Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for ISBN  978 0 7190 8544 4  hardback First published 2013 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset in Sabon and Gill by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire

To my parents, Maria Manuel Ramos Pinto and Victor Oliveira da Silva

Contents

Figures and tables page viii Prefacexi Abbreviationsxiv 1 Introduction: the Carnation Revolution revisited 1 2 The New State and the transformation of urban citizenship, 1926–7435 3 From rights to action: April to December 1974 82 4 Building a movement: September 1974 to June 1975 124 5 The street and the ballot box: June to November 1975 164 6 Urban social movements and the making of Portuguese democracy204 Select bibliography 230 Index247

List of figures and tables

Illustrations

Figures 0.1 Wards (freguesias) of Lisbon Municipality, 1974–75 (image courtesy of the Gabinete de Estudos Olisiponenses, Câmara Municipal de Lisboa) page xx 2.1 An ‘affordable houses’ neighbourhood, Bairro Encarnação, c. 1946 (photo by Salvador Almeida Fernandes, courtesy of the Lisbon Municipal Archive: PT/AMLSB/SAL/I00077 (SAL) (A27648)(N25244))50 2.2 The massification of social housing: Zone G in Chelas, 1968 (photo by João Cordeiro Goulart, courtesy of the Lisbon Municipal Archive: PT/AMLSB/JHG/S02027 (A62152) (N59636))56 2.3 A pre-­fabricated council neighbourhood, Bairro Padre Cruz, c. 1965 (photo by Artur Inácio Bastos, courtesy of the Lisbon Municipal Archive: PT/AMLSB/AIB/I00261 (AIB) (A38167) (N35644))64 3.1 Neighbourhood commissions, 1974–76 (source: newspapers and AHM/AAC CE 1976) 84 3.2 Shantytown: Rua do Sol in Chelas, 1970s (photo by M.V. Moreira, courtesy of the Lisbon Municipal Archive: PT/AMLSB/MOR/S00037 (A80349) (N76764))88 Tables 2.1 Shack dwellings (barracas) in Lisbon, 1950–81, census estimates39 2.2 Shack dwellings (barracas) in Lisbon, 1905–70, non-­census estimates40 3.1 Classification of neighbourhood commissions according to area87

List of figures and tables

ix

3.2 First mention of residents’ commissions in Lisbon, 1974–76 90 3.3 First movers in the Lisbon Urban Movement, April–August 197492 5.1 Commissions supporting radical and popular power positions, July–October 1975 187 5.2 Voting patterns in Lisbon, 1975–76 195

Preface

This book is as much the result of intent as of serendipity. It began life as a research project on the interaction between history, community and urban regeneration in Lisbon. I was looking to bring history to bear on analysing different patterns of interaction between neighbourhood communities and state agencies. Soon, however, I came to realize that to understand contemporary Portuguese politics, I had to try to make sense of a past that is no clearer for being recent. Despite belonging to a generation who did not live through the Portuguese Revolution, I grew up listening to heated debates over the nature and consequences of authoritarianism and revolution. Politics was all around, not just in the news and in history books, but also in kitchen tables, cafés and buses. In my own family, as in many others, views on the dictatorship and revolution varied (and still vary) widely. It was an education on how historical memory and opinion are constructed, and how sensible, rational people can come to hold radically opposed views. The research in this book became, in many ways, an attempt to look into the past through a lens different from that which informs recurrent debates in Portuguese contemporary history and politics. In doing so, it is not my intention to offer a final word on these controversies. Instead, I want to expand the grounds on which we can discuss how Portugal arrived at its present, and argue that there is a story greater than that of personalities, intrigue and high politics. In particular, I want to argue that the agency of politics, if uncertain, unpredictable and difficult to reconstruct, lies not only with the great and the (at times) good, but also with ordinary people. Whatever someone may think about Portugal today, it is – for better and for worse – largely the result of the actions of its own people. Whatever Portugal may be tomorrow, it will also be the result of their actions. This task would not have been possible without many people’s generous advice and support, to whom I would like to register my gratitude. Simon Szreter was not only an excellent doctoral supervisor, but also

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an engaging mentor. In Portugal, Ana Paula Garcês was a learned guide and loyal friend. Emma Rothschild and Amartya Sen were a source of generous friendship and great inspiration. Many others offered precious advice along the way: Richard Smith, Manuel Villaverde Cabral, Kenneth Maxwell, António Firmino da Costa, Michael Woolcock, Arlindo Caldeira, Martin Daunton, José Mariz, Michael Baum, Nancy Bermeo, Maria Fernanda Rollo, Robert Fishman, Leif Jerram and Matthias Vom Hau. I would also like to note the professionalism and dedication of the staff in a number of institutions and archives, without whom I would not have found many of the materials that are the basis of this book: the Lisbon Municipal Archives; the National Archives in Lisbon, the Centro Documentação 25 de Abril in Coimbra; the Departamento de Planeamento e Projecto of the Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, Hemeroteca Municipal de Lisboa; and the Confederação das Colectividades de Cultura e Recreio, as well as the Faculty of History at Cambridge and the School of Arts, Histories and Cultures at Manchester. A word of thanks must also go to Filipe Mário Lopes, Clara Costa, Rui Oliveira and his colleagues at the Caixa Económica Operária, whose memories helped guide me through the events of the 1970s. This book is the result of several years of research, which was made possible by a doctoral research grant from Portugal’s Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia under its Programa Operacional Ciência e Inovação 2010. Further research (and the time to write the monograph) was made possible by a research fellowship from the Simon Research Fund at the University of Manchester. The Center for History & Economics and the Brazil Programme of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard generously supported a visiting scholarship allowing me the opportunity to develop important ideas that have gone into this work and inspired future projects. Finally, the Mário Soares Foundation Prize allowed me to intensify collaborations and exchanges with colleagues in Portugal that have greatly enriched this book. I am very grateful to these organisations – and to the people who make them work. I am fortunate to have generous and dedicated friends. They were patient listeners when I bored them with my ideas, intelligent critics when I asked their opinion, but most importantly, a constant source of support, solace and encouragement: in the UK, Pek Peppin and Will Vaughan, Inga Huld Markan, Kate Downes, William O’Reilly, Anna Whitelock, Adam Coutts, David Todd, Holly Linklater, Illian Iliev, Gabe Paquette, Matthew Peters, Sarah Phieler, Ben Somers, Teemu Metsala, Rhiannon Morgan, Brendan Cooper, Sasha Handley, Fuzz

Preface

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Pope, Natalie Zacek, Till Geiger and Rachel Berger. In Portugal, Tiago Félix da Costa, Ricardo Niza, Maria Santos, Nuno Costa, Filipa Vaz, João Riscado, Inês Diogo, Guya Accornero, Luís Ramos Pinto, Filipe Carreira da Silva, Mónica Brito Vieira and Gonçalo and Maria Benedita Monteiro and many other friends across Lisbon, Porto and Zambujeira. Finally those closest to me, who know already how much I owe them: my parents, my brother Miguel, his partner Zé and their daughter Vera, and especially my companion throughout it all and much more to come, Rosie.

Abbreviations

AIL

Associação de Inquilinos Lisbonenses

Lisbon Tenants’ Union

AMI

Agrupamento Militar de Intervenção

Military Group for Intervention – military command structure created by 6th provisional government to balance the power of the COPCON

AOC

Aliança Operária-­Camponesa

Workers’ and Peasants’ Alliance – small political party on the far left

BAL

Brigada de Apoio Local

Local Support Brigade – part of SAAL Scheme

CACML

Comissão Administrativa da Câmara Municipal de Lisboa

Provisional City Council Executive

CASU

Centre de Açcão Social Universitário

University Centre for Social Action

CDS

Centro Democrático Social Social-­Democratic Centre (political party)

CGTP

Confederação Geral dos General Confederation Trabalhadores Portugueses of the Portuguese Workers: Portugal’s

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Abbreviations

largest trade union federation, traditionally close to the Communist Party CLOMP

Comité de Luta dos Ocupantes e Moradores Pobres

Committee for the Struggle of Poor Occupants and Residents

CM

Comissão de Moradores

Residents’ Commission

CML

Câmara Municipal de Lisboa

Lisbon City Council

COPCON

Comando Operacional do Continente

Continental Operational Command – military command created by MFA in 1974, headed by Otelo S. de Carvalho, and the powerbase of MFA Populists

CRAMO

Comissão Revolucionária Autónoma de Moradores e Ocupantes

Occupiers’ and Residents’ Revolutionary and Autonomous Commission

CRSTM

Conselhos Revolucionários Revolutionary Councils de Soldados, Trabalhadores of Soldiers, Workers and e Marinheiros Sailors – popular power structure close to the PRP-­BR

CT

Comissão de Trabalhadores

Workers’ Commission

EPUL

Empresa Pública de Urbanização de Lisboa

Public Consortium for the Urbanisation of Lisbon – council-­ owned consortium responsible for social housing and the SAAL in the city

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Abbreviations

FEC-­ml

Frente Eleitoral Comunista Communist Electoral – marxista-­leninista Front –Marxist-­Leninist (political party)

FFH

Fundo de Fomento da Habitação

Housing Promotion Agency – state department with overall control of housing, and the nationwide organisation of the SAAL scheme

FSP

Frente Socialista Popular

Popular Socialist Front – (political party) created from a split of the left wing of the PS

FUP

Frente de Unidade Popular

United Popular Front – short-­lived coalition between Communists and far left, August 1975

FUR

Frente de Unidade Revolucionária

United Revolutionary Front – coalition of far-­ left groups created after the failure of the FUP

GDUP

Grupos Dinamizadores de Unidade Popular

Popular Unity Organization Groups – radical pro-­popular power coalition, successor to the FUR

GTH

Gabinete Técnico da Habitação

Technical Office for Housing of the Lisbon City Council

Inter-­ comissões (or Inter)

Intercomissões dos Bairros Pobres e de Lata de Lisboa

Inter-­commissions of the poor neighbourhoods and shantytowns of Lisbon – federation of neighbourhood commissions, many involved in SAAL scheme

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Abbreviations

Intersindical

Intersindical

Trade Unions’ Federation close to the Communist Party.

JF

Junta de Freguesia

Ward Executive

JSN

Junta de Salvação Nacional

National Salvation Junta – interim ruling body created after 25 April 1974 coup, replaced by Council of the Revolution after 11 March 1975

LCI

Liga Comunista Internacional

International Communist League (political party).

LUAR

Liga de União e Acção Revolucionária

League for Revolutionary Unity and Action (political party).

MDP/CDE

Movimento Democrático Português/Comissões Democráticas Eleitorais

Portuguese Democratic Movement/Democratic Electoral Commissions – political party allied to the PCP

MES

Movimento de Esquerda Socialista

Movement of the Socialist Left – (political party)

MFA

Movimento das Forças Armadas

Armed Forces Movement – military movement responsible for the 25 April Coup. Institutionalised as branch of the state after 11 March 1975.

MRPP

Movimento para a Reorganização do Partido do Proletariado

Movement for the Reorganization of the Party of the Proletariat (political party)

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Abbreviations

MSU

Movimento Socialista Unificado

United Socialist Movement (political party)

PCP

Partido Comunista Português

Portuguese Communist Party

PCP-­ML

Partido Comunista Português – Marxista Leninista

Marxist-­Leninists– Portuguese Communist Party (political party)

PDC

Partido da Democracia Cristã

Christian Democratic Party

PIDE

Polícia Internacional de Defesa do Estado

International Police for the Defence of the State – the dictatorship’s secret police

PPD

Partido Popular Democrático

Popular Democratic Party (political party)

PPM

Partido Popular Monárquico

Popular Monarchic Party (political party)

PRP-­BR

Partido Revolucionário do Proletariado – Brigadas Revolucionárias

Revolutionary Party of the Proletariat – Revolutionary Brigades (political party)

PRT

Partido Revolucionário dos Trabalhadores

Workers’ Revolutionary Party (political party)

PS

Partido Socialista

Socialist Party (political party)

PSD

Partido Social Democrata

Social Democratic Party

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Abbreviations

RALIS

Regimento de Artilharia Ligeira de Lisboa

Lisbon Light Artillery Regiment – army unit, part of COPCON command and loyal to MFA Populists

SAAL

Serviço Ambulatório de Apoio Local

Mobile Local Support System – ­government scheme created in September 1974 to support residents’ housing cooperatives

SUV

Soldados Unidos Vencerão

United Soldiers Will Win – revolutionary clandestine organisation from within the army, active in the summer of 1975

UDP

União Democrática Popular

Popular Democratic Union (political party)

Figure 0.1  Wards (freguesias) of Lisbon Municipality, 1974–75

1 Introduction

Introduction: the Carnation Revolution revisited

The Carnation Revolution revisited

The Portuguese Revolution of 1974–75 was a critical juncture in the second half of the European twentieth century, the first in a series of authoritarian collapses that would bring the whole of western and central Europe into liberal democracy. For those following the events in Portugal over those two years, however, the so-­called Revolution of the Carnations was also many other things. For the first time in almost half a century the possibility of a real popular revolution was felt in the West. Events in Portugal shook the balance of Cold War politics with the possibility of socialism in western Europe, and gave rise to aspirations of new forms of direct democracy that ignited high hopes on the left throughout the continent. Alongside land and factory occupations across the country, the unexpected emergence of a grassroots movement of the poor in Portugal’s cities was one of the aspects of the revolution that most excited contemporary observers, holding out the promise of a truly popular and socialist democracy. This urban social movement engaged many thousands in democratic neighbourhood assemblies deciding the fate of the city, built houses, roads, schools and hospitals and occupied thousands of apartments. To this day, while it remains for many a symbol of the possibilities of grassroots democracy, little is known about how this movement appeared, what role it played in the Revolution of the Carnations, and why it disappeared after 1975. Since 1926 Portugal had suffered under one of Europe’s longest-­ lasting authoritarian regimes and, despite rumblings of discontent from the 1960s onwards (in the form of student protest or an incipient strike movement) few expected what seemed like an acquiescent population to take to politics with such determination. The dictatorship was not brought down by a groundswell of popular mobilization. Instead, its end came at the hands of a group of junior military officers intent on bringing to an end the 13-­year war against liberation movements in Portugal’s African colonies. While the captains’ plot of 25 April 1974

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encountered little resistance from a tired and deflated regime, it still came as a surprise to the military and to opposition politicians who had laboured in clandestinity, how quickly the population burst onto the scene, cheering and supporting the plotters and storming the most symbolic buildings of the deposed regime. This was not a momentary exuberant celebration: through a period of nineteen months not only were the remnants of the dictatorship swept away, but Portugal also experienced what felt like a state of permanent social, economic and political revolution. Traditional social strictures dictating sexual and personal ethics were challenged, hierarchies of power in workplaces, cities and villages were turned upside down, the economy was largely nationalised, voters massed to the polls to chose between a range of political systems, and turned up to almost daily street demonstrations and parades. Yet by November 1975 the revolution had lost steam. A quick military operation disarmed the more radicalised sections of the army, who had spearheaded the drive to create a revolutionary regime. While in April 1974 the people had rushed to the street in support of the military coup, just nineteen months later few or none did so. The slow construction of a liberal democracy that followed was finally completed in 1982 when the military at last relinquished its political role, giving place to a regime that resembled those who Portugal sought to join in the European Community. By the mid-­1980s the Portuguese political system looked very much like that of a ‘consolidated’ western democracy, ruled by alternating centrist parties that monopolised systems of representation, and witnessing levels of political disengagement and electoral abstention almost identical to those of most other countries on the continent.1 The heady days of the revolutionary period seemed very far away. The contrast between a supposedly anaemic public sphere in today’s Portugal and the remarkable levels of popular political participation of the transition period has contributed to the construction of narratives that underplay the impact of the latter. The contentious, at times even violent, nature of the Portuguese path to democracy has been underplayed in both the collective and academic memory of those two tumultuous years.2 As Kenneth Maxwell noted, current political debate in Portugal rests on a degree of obfuscation of the deep divisions that ran through the revolutionary period, what he terms a ‘flattening out’ of a lumpy, contentious process.3 Such representations have served to crystallise the portrayal of popular movements in the period as either an irrelevant sideshow, or as a foundation myth used to critique the political system that emerged afterwards. The former view dismisses it as an extraordinary occurrence, an outpouring of youthful enthusiasm

Introduction: the Carnation Revolution revisited

3

ultimately irrelevant for the creation of a ‘European’ democracy, society and economy. For others, the era has assumed an almost mythical status as a moment ‘when everything seemed possible and each felt the destiny of the country was also in their hands’, but whose defeat replaced hope with apathy.4 This polarisation of historical memory was brought to the surface in 2004 during the commemorations of the thirtieth anniversary of the 1974 coup, when the government, then led by the centre-­right, created a new slogan – ‘April is Evolution’ – de-­emphasising the revolutionary character of the period and looking to focus instead on economic and social modernisation. This prompted a reaction from the left which included a campaign to deface the official commemoration posters so they would read ‘April is (R)Evolution’, as well as rivers of ink debating the meaning and place of the revolution in contemporary Portuguese society. Revealingly, however, even many of those who criticised the conservative view tended to speak of the revolution in ways that removed a sense of collective agency from the moment, using passive verb constructions such as ‘the Revolution was made’, or ‘democracy arrived’.5 In essence, both the right’s ‘evolutionary’ perspective, and the left’s emphasis on broad abstractions served to remove the people as an actor and agent, and of conflict from the discussion and memorialisation of the revolution. This omission is a result of the near-­hegemony of political parties on the Portuguese public sphere, for whom these accounts serve as legitimating strategies. The moderate parties who came to form the central axis of the establishment, the Socialist Party (PS) and the Popular Democratic Party (PPD) set about dismantling the idea that there had been anything like broad-­based popular movement embodying the possibility of different society.6 Arguing that a great deal of the mobilisation of those years was little more than the result of manipulation by small revolutionary groups, the moderates cited the support they received in the elections of 1975 as the real source of popular legitimacy.7 Wary of forms of political participation they had little connection to, the moderates sought to paint the popular movements as unrepresentative and an irrelevance to the process. This served the purpose of sustaining the moderate parties’ self-­projection as the sole progenitors of democracy and, later, helped deal with social protest during the difficult economic environment of the late 1970s. The Portuguese Communist Party (PCP), in turn, defines the revolution as the creation of ‘an advanced democracy on the road to s­ ocialism’ – not, note, socialism itself.8 But while it often refers to the popular mobilisations of 1974–75, it portrays them as synonymous with the

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party itself, allowing it to claim the role of only legitimate representative of the working class, and defender of the social rights that it considers the ‘conquests of the revolution’. This strategy has been particularly important as the party finds itself in competition with a political coalition to its left, emerging from a combination of far-­left organisations and who also emphasises similar themes.9 The omissions of competing ‘political memories’ of the revolution are, in many ways, reflected in the academic analysis of the period. In part, this is a result of the fact that much of this analysis was produced by scholars who were themselves participants in the revolutionary process – and this is the case not only with Portuguese nationals, but also the work of engagé political scientists and sociologists who travelled to Portugal in this period. But the relative neglect of investigation of the role of popular movements in the Portuguese Revolution is also the result of the interpretative models of democratisation and revolution that came to dominate the social sciences in the later 1970s and 1980s, models which tended to relegate collective actors to the condition of a sideshow. Authors approaching these subjects from a Marxist perspective focused on macroeconomic and class processes, where autonomous popular agency was deemed to play little or no role, and need little study. For Nicos Poulantzas, or in the closer analysis of Matias Ferreira, Portugal’s partly industrialised economy had not yet produced a ‘class-­for-­itself’ imbued with the history and experience of class struggle; instead, an ‘immature’ popular movement was unable to mount a revolutionary challenge.10 In turn, radical Marxists idealised popular movements as the harbingers of revolution, but accused the Communist Party and its allies in the military of betraying them and failing to provide revolutionary leadership.11 For Eisfeld, the Carnation Revolution wilted as the contending political parties were ‘too successful’ in manipulating the grassroots to conquer state power. Real devolution of power, which in his opinion could have channelled mobilisation towards building a real socialist democracy, was never a priority.12 Bill Lomax, although more positive regarding autonomy of the popular movement, echoed the interpretation of manipulation by suggesting that the voluntarism of parts of the left had inflated the revolutionary potential of the popular movement, whose role in 1974–75 was, in his opinion, ‘largely illusory and epiphenomenal’.13 A handful of more balanced, homegrown, academic reflections on the revolutionary process did appear in the 1980s, raising a number of questions about the origins and relationship between popular movements, other political actors, and the Portuguese Revolution.14 But the questions they raised were overlooked by an emerging new paradigm in the

Introduction: the Carnation Revolution revisited

5

study of transitions to democracy. Just as the Portuguese dictatorship was coming to an end, scholarship focusing on political transformation was experiencing a shift in perspective. Building on Dankwart Rustow’s critique of structural models of transition, a new approach to democratisation broke away from the determinism of modernisation theory and its teleology of necessary steps and conditions.15 This critique was encouraged by what appeared to be a ‘wave’ of democratisation sweeping across countries – starting with Portugal in 1974 – with substantially different economic structures, political trajectories and cultural contexts.16 The emerging paradigm of democratisation, clearly influenced by the nature of the process in Spain, saw transitions as open-­ended political processes, where choice is available to political actors and outcomes are uncertain rather than predetermined. Because of this emphasis on political choice and strategy, this approach often led to a preoccupation with the role of political elites as the key social actors of democratisation. In these analyses, the skills and virtú of leaders could make or unmake democracies in almost any circumstances, while the role of collective actors was at best subordinate. Despite the very visible presence of ordinary people in the political arena during the Portuguese transition, political scientists of the ‘transitology’ school argued them away from explaining democratisation. In their influential work, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule, O’Donnell and Schmitter, gave an equivocal role to the ‘popular upsurge’: while it is said to perform the ‘crucial role of pushing … transition further than it would otherwise have gone’, it is also something that needs to be contained and controlled in order for countries to democratise successfully.17 This was the case in Portugal where, they argued, the explosion of participation pushed the transition far beyond liberalisation and towards socialism, but not through its own agency, rather as the result of the MFA’s ‘choreography’ of civil society, creating a situation which required skilful leadership to steer the democratic course.18 Building on these observations, a generation of scholarship repeatedly painted the role of popular movements (in Portugal and elsewhere) in essentially negative terms.19 While the ‘elitist’ school of democratisation became largely dominant in western political science, by the 1990s dissenting voices at the fringes and in other disciplines began suggesting alternative models. Buoyed by the renewed interest in the possibilities of mass action brought about by the 1989 revolutions in eastern Europe, social scientists began exploring the role of collective actors in conditioning the choices and options available to political elites, arguing that collective actors can have a critical role in frustrating attempts to renew the legitimacy of authoritarian regimes, with widespread protest not just signalling d ­ isagreement,

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but creating a ‘climate of ungovernability’ which increases the cost of repression and pushes elites to the negotiating table.20 In comparative historical sociology, Rueschmeyer, Stephens and Stephens developed second-­ generation structural accounts which qualified, but still supported, class-­based accounts of democratisation in the long run.21 Other authors raised objections to transitology’s endogenous or ‘internalist’ model of political change whose focus on the decisions of political leaders were said to hide broader factors leading to the breakdown of consensus within authoritarian regimes and to the dynamic relationship between supposed ‘leaders’ and ‘followers’.22 As Sidney Tarrow noted, elites do make choices, but so does the mass public, and focusing solely on the former leaves out the ‘infinitely varied and highly problematic politics of transition processes, in which elites, and masses, institutions and newly formed organisations interact in the context of social and institutional structures’.23 The challenge, as set by Tarrow, is to question the role of collective actors beyond their ‘destabilising’ ­function – already recognised by O’Donnell and Schmitter – ­investigating if, how and when their actions contribute independently to the construction of new political systems. Their interaction with elites, and the elasticity of moments of transition in coping with vigorous mobilisation was highlighted by Nancy Bermeo, whose ‘myths of moderation’ argument turned Schmitter and O’Donnell’s argument on its head by suggesting that rather than a danger to democratisation, a ‘hot family feud’ in the form of contentious, polarised and active mobilisation can create the conditions for a bargained settlement between supporters of ­authoritarianism and pro-­democracy leaders.24 Despite important criticisms, and a growing recognition of the need to develop more encompassing studies of democratisation, many of those who attempt to bring collective actors to the discussion suffer from a one-­sidedness that mirrors those of the elite perspective: there have often been ‘bottom-­up’ as well as ‘top-­down’ studies, but as Joe Foweraker noted, few have attempted to provide a model that integrates both.25 So while the part played by collective actors is generally acknowledged in principle, in practice few studies set out to examine the complex interactions between multiple types of actors variably positioned in the political arena. Even where they do, the range of actors considered is often limited: in Ruth Berins Collier’s landmark comparative work on southern Europe and Latin America, labour and class-­derived actors are assumed to be the key collective agents – the underlying assumption being that social class determines political interests.26 This narrow view of popular politics ignores the extent to which collective actors of all kinds, including but not limited to social movements and political

Introduction: the Carnation Revolution revisited

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parties, encompass complex political and social identities and interests – ethnic, religious, etc. – that may, or may not, intersect with those of class.27 If anything, the scholarship on Portuguese democratisation suffers from these faults to a rather extreme degree. A number of studies have looked at the role of the labour movement in opposition, but while strikes and other forms of union action were clearly a central factor in the dynamics of destabilisation of the dictatorship, so were other forms of mobilisation, which have only recently become the object of systematic study.28 The final years of the dictatorship saw opposition to the regime broaden out from the committed few of the underground communist party and the traditional republican opposition to encompass new groups, issues and forms of action. These included a growing student movement, groups linked to progressive sectors of the Catholic Church or even the exercise of ‘exit’ in the form of a growing exodus of young men avoiding conscription.29 However, while it is increasingly clear that these movements contributed to the delegitimisation of the regime, its end came not at their hands, but at those of the junior ranks of the professional military, whose insurrection on 25 April 1974 brought an end to forty-­eight years of dictatorial rule. The dictatorship’s elites were removed from power overnight through the coup de grace delivered by a military exhausted by a thirteen-­year war and united by corporate grievances against its political leaders.30 There were no ­negotiations, no pacts, no deals. As a consequence, the Portuguese case has contours that differ from most of the episodes of democratisation addressed in the literature. Between April 1974 and the end of November 1975, the ‘transition game’ in Portugal was not played between supporters of the dictatorship and a pro-­ democracy opposition, but between multiple power groups proposing competing futures. Here, if anywhere, actors of various kinds – elites, grassroots, unions, residents, farmers, students, parties, soldiers – were embroiled in a process much more complex than a unified ‘popular upsurge’ against authoritarianism: they were engaged in the creation of an altogether new country, politically speaking. Although almost all claimed democracy as their objective, they defined it through different – and often mutually exclusive – adjectives. According to who one listened to, the Portuguese were struggling to become a modern, European, socialist, Christian, liberal, social or people’s democracy. The Portuguese process was complex, yet the focus of the scholarship remains tilted towards the study of elite actors, and often reduces the question choice between authoritarianism and democracy. In between anti-­authoritarian protest and the institutional politics

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of the ­consolidation of Portuguese democracy after 1975, the role of a broad range of popular collective actors in the much more fluid and ­contentious period of transition has been largely neglected. Some recent research has begun to explore this complexity. Diego Palacios Cerezales’ recent overview of popular mobilisations in the Portuguese Revolution serves to remind us of the centrality of contentious collective action during the period of transition, including right-­wing popular mobilisation and political violence, highlighting the diversity of interests, objectives, strategies and trajectories of collective actors that previous scholarship has tended to amalgamate into a homogenous, if ill-­defined, ‘popular movement’.31 Alongside (and often ahead of) traditional union organisation, factories and business across Portugal witnessed a mushrooming of autonomous workplace-­based committees, which produced one of the most extensive instances of workers’ control in western Europe. At different points between 1974 and 1979, more than 900 firms were taken over by their employees – and at the end of that period, over 700 remained in workers’ hands.32 In rural areas, peasant wage-­labourers embarked on the largest process of land seizures witnessed in western Europe – a process that has received a little more attention but where much is still to be done.33 A further, and equally substantive aspect of popular politics in the revolutionary period were the urban social movements that are the subject of this book, and whose importance, both in numerical as in political terms, has been neglected. In terms of breadth and numbers of participants, the urban movement was one of the key forms of popular participation during the revolutionary period. In Lisbon alone, during the first four months of the revolution, nineteen neighbourhoods created comissões de moradores (residents’ commissions). They were formed following public meetings in shantytowns or social housing neighbourhoods which brought together hundreds and in some cases thousands of local residents to discuss shared problems and aspirations and to elect representative executives. In late April and early May of 1974, thousands of people who had previously lived in shacks or in bedsits seized hundreds of apartments under construction in various parts of the city. By the mid-­summer of 1974 the urban movement was so powerful that the provisional authorities found themselves having to recognise their mobilisation and negotiate with residents, rather than repress and prevent the seizure of houses. In response the provisional authorities enacted two measures that promised a dramatic transformation of the way in which cities were governed in Portugal – a shantytown rebuilding programme and a new Rental Law. Drawing on ideas of community

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participatory development and the energy of a young cohort of urban planners, social workers and architects, the Serviço Ambulatório de Apoio Local (Mobile Local Support Service), or SAAL for short, supported shantytowns who had created representative commissions by assigning them teams of technical experts to advise and support in the planning and building of cooperative housing. Resident-­run cooperatives were to have significant input and oversight of the design and execution of new neighbourhoods, looking to invert traditional relations of authority between state officials and the poor. The participation of architects who would later gain international renown – including Siza Vieira and Souto de Moura – and the success of some of the cooperatives has made the SAAL one of the better known aspects of the urban experience of the period.34 The Rental Law, enacted in response to the movement’s demands for a solution to the housing deficit, meant that the state could take control of the allocation of vacant property to those without a home. Over the course of several months this was expanded to the extent that by April 1975 many neighbourhood committees had gained control of the management of vacant private property. Such wide-­ ranging interventions show the centrality of the urban question in the revolutionary period, and accompanied the growth of the urban movement into a significant political force. In early 1975 residents’ commissions across Portuguese cities began congregating and forming umbrella organisations, such as the Inter-­Comissões dos Bairros de Lata e Pobres de Lisboa (Inter-­commissions of the Shantytowns and Poor Neighbourhoods of Lisbon) which claimed to represent tens, if not hundreds, of thousands. As the revolution increased its pace, particularly after the failed right-­ wing coup of March 1975, the urban movement continued to grow, with new neighbourhood committees were created almost every day. In the spring of 1975 a further large wave of housing occupations reaching into thousands of vacant privately owned homes took place and new, seemingly more radical umbrella organisations appeared, including Lisbon’s Comissões Revolucionárias Autónomas de Moradores e Ocupantes (Autonomous and Revolutionary Commissions of Residents and Occupiers). On 17 May 1975, simultaneous demonstrations were organised by the urban movement in cities across the country, one of the largest public mobilisations of the period which some (admittedly sympathetic) sources put at 100,000 strong in Lisbon alone. As well as organising the seizure of vacant property and presenting their claims for housing, healthcare, transport, schools and childcare facilities in their neighbourhoods, residents’ committees also often took matters into their own hands by organising collectively managed

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facilities, providing services such as childcare, building playgrounds or laundries, or community clubs for residents. By the summer of 1975, the urban movement was without doubt one of the most direct ways in which ordinary citizens engaged with the new politics of the revolution, through open-­air assemblies, demonstrations, reading their pamphlets or attending the festivals organised by them as cities celebrated their patron saints during the month of June. In Lisbon alone, a tally of newspaper and official sources reveals that at least 166 different residents’ committees were created in a city with a population of around 800,000. As the different factions vying for control of the country confronted their alternative visions for the future of the country, the urban movement became further involved in the broader political conflict of the revolutionary period. Some of the radical alternatives on the table put the kind of grassroots participatory democracy being enacted in the neighbourhoods at the heart of revolutionary political blueprints: in its ‘People-­MFA Alliance Manifesto’, published in July 1975, the more radical wings of the MFA proposed a form of council socialism which would see local popular organisations such as residents’ commissions given extensive powers in a structure overseen by a revolutionary military, and directly appealed to ‘residents, workers and soldiers’ to unite in completing the revolution – a call which was seemingly heeded by a not insignificant part of the movement. The urban movement thus went from being a vehicle of political participation in the politics of the revolution to becoming for some a central tenet of the ‘real’ revolution itself, and essential part of an alternative to Soviet-­style centralised socialism, so called ‘Popular Power’ socialism. Following the moderate victory of November 1975 and the ‘normalisation’ of politics that the first constitutional governments sought to impose, the urban movement seems to disappear from the public scene. Mentions to the residents’ commissions become fewer and further between – yet, it is difficult to say what precisely happened to the enthusiasm and mobilising capacity of grassroots organisations. Did they crumble, along with the house of cards that was the ‘popular power’ movement, giving credence to those who see the popular mobilisation of the revolution as little more than an orchestration of the revolutionary left? Alternatively, were they coercively demobilised, as the provisional government regained control of the instruments of government and the forces of law and order? Despite its obvious importance as a form of political participation, very few studies have looked at the urban movement in any depth. Hemmed in by ideological approaches and a temporal strait-­ jacket that runs only from the 25 April 1974 to the 25 November 1975, we

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know very little about how the movement emerged, developed, and (if at all) disappeared. The aim of this book is to revisit the urban movement by reconstructing its origins and trajectory in Lisbon and its role in the Portuguese Revolution as a means to to re-­evaluate the political ­dynamics of the Portuguese Revolution and transition to democracy. Urban social movements in the Portuguese Revolution Only a few decades on, very little of what remains in public and academic consciousness about the urban movement seems to come from the people who made it happen. This silence hinders any attempt to try to reconsider the movement and its relation to the politics of the revolutionary period, particularly in three key areas. Firstly, we still know relatively little about how and why the movement appeared: was it the result of the short-­term political conjuncture of the revolutionary period, or is it connected to deeper, more long-­lasting processes of social transformation? Secondly, what was it a movement of, and for? How did its participants see themselves and its objectives, what were its mobilising identities and ambitions? Was it a working-­class revolutionary movement that proposed and enacted an alternative model of a more democratic and egalitarian society? Or was it the puppet of a far-­ left minority who brought the country dangerously close to civil war? And, thirdly, how are we to explain its seemingly rapid demise around November 1975? Was the urban movement defeated by the moderate seizure of power, or do we need to search for alternative explanations, such as ‘protest fatigue’ or even ‘bureaucratisation’? Only by answering these questions can we address the bigger picture and begin to frame new ways of connecting such wide collective mobilisations to the overall political process of the Portuguese Revolution. At first sight, given the poverty of urban conditions in 1970s Portugal, the appearance of a movement demanding more and better housing for the city’s poor, as well as improved public services in healthcare, education and transport, seems unsurprising. However, a longer view soon reveals that the appearance of these topics as issues of political contention, and of the use of morador (resident) as a mobilising identity, were anything but given. Authors on the left and on the right share the view that the popular upsurge that followed the April 1974 coup was the result of a range of social problems that fuelled simmering resentment during the final years of the dictatorship, a ‘pressure cooker’ of social tension that was released by the 25 April coup.35 In such accounts, urban poverty, lack of housing and amenities, in short, ‘objective p ­ roblems’ – the results of contradictions of the capitalist

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Lisbon rising

system for some, the p ­ roducts of rapid modernisation for others – are a sufficient explanation for the mobilisation of the urban poor, and the question becomes when would urban squalor erupt into political mobilisation, not if.36 The when question is often resolved by pointing to the removal of the dictatorship’s repressive apparatus with the April coup, and to the opportunity afforded by the divisions between transitional political elites that hampered the normal exercise of political power. This argument recurs in different forms across the literature: so, for Downs, ‘the development of urban social movements is part of a change in the general balance of class forces’, to the extent that the mobilising issues (‘simply the most basic problems of the neighbourhood’) become secondary to the conditions of mobilisation.37 Similarly, for Cerezales, the initial wave of housing occupations shortly after the coup took place after residents confirmed the incapacity of the policy to maintain regular functioning of law and order – only subsequently did a ‘social ­movement’ develop by building on these actions.38 There is no doubt that the disintegration of coercive power of the state that followed the 25 April coup allowed the emergence of popular movements of the period. But the removal of barriers and constraints to mobilisation is only one side of the story – opportunities do not, at least in the first instance, create the social actors that may (or may not) mobilise to take advantage of them. If on one hand social actors are constituted through their actions, and the movement did not emerge fully formed, on the other they cannot be reduced to the spontaneous actions of opportunistic individuals. It was not just occupations, but also petitions, meetings and delegations that were organised in neighbourhoods across Portuguese cities in the days after the coup – all essentially collective political mobilisations that suggest a commonly held belief that certain categories of goods were rights to which the claimants were entitled to. This means that they had to draw on shared ideas about what such rights were and who was responsible for delivering on them, while mobilisation had to be based on some form of common identity, drawing on pre-­existing networks.39 All this points to a longer timeframe through which urban identities and ideas about urban citizenship developed. Yet, the existing literature takes a largely ahistorical perspective on the urban movements, leaving the question of political values and mobilisation resources unproblematised. It assumes that urban conditions were directly translated into political values and interests, and projected identities (most often class identities) onto the movement. In doing so, it regards the urban social as ex-­tempore phenomena detached from longer historical processes and political traditions. This premise has never been questioned and, in my opinion, leads us to mis-

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understand the nature of the urban movement, and a failure to properly account for its appeal, its trajectory and its influence on the Portuguese transition to democracy. The importance of the ‘urban question’ as a broader political issue in 1974–75 was to a large extent the result, not the condition, of the mobilisation of the urban movement. After all, urban poverty and poor living conditions are not unusual, while powerful and wide-­ranging social movements of the poor are rare, even in countries where opportunity structures are ‘open’. And a longer historical outlook makes clear that urban immiseration, shantytowns and overcrowding were by no means new phenomena. At least since the mid-­nineteenth-­century, Lisbon had experienced a degree of urban squalor common to industrialising cities across Europe. The historical novelty of 1974–75 was not the extent of such problems, but the political movement that took them as its central issue. Its claims were also original in so far as they regarded housing and urban services as social rights of citizenship, that is, as goods that the state was duty-­bound to provide to the poor by virtue of their condition of citizens. Until that time, there is little evidence of a widespread consensus, even amongst the urban poor, that it was the state’s obligation to intervene directly in this category of problems. Finally, it was also the first time when urban identities were explicitly politicised, placing the emphasis on neighbourhood over other forms of social relation, such as class or craft, as the nexus of mobilisation. During a century that saw Lisbon expand to become an industrial centre and host to generations of migrants, living conditions in the city had never been a major focus of political struggle. The idea that people could draw on their status as residents of the city to demand of the authorities the resolution of issues of  housing, sanitation and transport was at best a marginal aspect of political debates. Seen in this light, the emergence of the urban movement in the 1970s is evidence of a shift in popular conceptions of citizenship that needs to be explained if we are to understand the movement and its influence on the politics of the revolutionary period.40 If the origins of the urban movement have been largely ignored, accounts of its role in the politics of 1974–75 echo the partisan debates of the public sphere. Did the movement signify a popular desire to change the nature of political power and class relations, or was it the result of political manipulation? More probing analysis, which charts and questions the strategies, claims and alliances of a diverse and at times contradictory popular movement, is remarkable by its absence. With liberal scholarship tending to undervalue the role of popular collective actors, almost all analyses of the urban movement have come from Marxist or neo-­Marxist perspectives. In this line of inquiry, the central

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Lisbon rising

question has often been trying to ascertain the extent to which the urban movement was a ‘true’ revolutionary movement, that is, to what extent did it propose a wholesale transformation of relations of property, politics and power in its urban context. Influenced by the French school of social movement studies and particular Alain Touraine, with whom he had studied, the urban sociologist Vítor Matias Ferreira provided the first academic analysis of the urban social movement, published in 1975 as the movement gathered strength and political influence. Arguing the mobilisation had first come from segments of Lisbon’s lumpenproletariat of shantytown-­dwelling recent migrants, Ferreira suggested that the movement had managed to transcend its origins to capture sections of the working class and urban petty bourgeoisie. In doing so it had also transformed itself from a limited ‘claim-­ making movement’ making general demands to decent housing into a ‘protest movement’, which identified the state and municipality as the targets of its political action. Writing in 1975, Ferreira saw the movement at a cross-­roads: having gained concessions and allies even in the state itself (the SAAL), the question was whether those links would lead to the movement’s bureaucratisation and emasculation or, instead, prove the catalyst for its transformation into a de facto ‘social movement’ which would evolve into proposing an overall transformation of the urban order by, for instance, challenging the question of private property.41 Other authors who observed the movement during 1974 and 1975 were in no doubt about the movement’s revolutionary potential. John Hammond, and particularly Charles Downs, who observed the urban movement at close quarters in the city of Sétubal, saw the neighbourhood residents’ commissions as part of a wider popular movement that was nothing less that an emancipatory socialist experiment, and the basis for a possible reorganisation of the institutions of the state along the principles of collective management and participatory democracy being implemented at neighbourhood level.42 Such views have found a recent echo in writings that look to the urban movements as forerunner and potential inspiration for a contemporary, radical reconstitution of democratic institutions in a more participatory direction.43 Other views were considerably less optimistic regarding the transformative potential of the urban movement, especially as the focus of debate moved to explaining why such a transformation, or even revolution, had failed to materialise. Writing in Les Temps Modernes, Leitão et al. argued the revolutionary potential of the urban movement had been curtailed by the diversity of its social composition: for these authors, the demand for a radical devolution of urban power to the neighbourhood level and the creation of collectively managed urban services such

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as childcare centres was mostly limited to traditional working-­ class neighbourhoods. This stood in contrast with the more ‘individualistic’ attitudes of the shantytown lumpen who in their opinion never took the step beyond mobilising for access to housing within the logic of the capitalist urban system.44 Returning to the theme of the urban struggles in the early 1980s, Matias Ferreira also emphasised the question of class heterogeneity to explain why the urban movement had failed to become a ‘social movement’ in the Tourainian sense: while the embeddedness of individual commissions in their local community had facilitated their mobilisation, their ‘territoriality’ hampered the creation of an all-­city movement and vision, and the movement floundered in the contradictions caused by the different social origins of the various commissions.45 While these discussed the (im)possibility of revolution in 1970s southern Europe, others were more sceptical about whether the kernel of revolutionary ambition was even present in the first place. Juan Mozzicafreddo argued that the popular movements of the transition had been misread, and seemingly radical seizures of property and productive resources such as factories and fields were essentially defensive actions or at best represented a desire for ‘social integration’ rather than a rejection of the system.46 At times such debates drifted into discussions over the extent to which the urban movement could be said to have been an ‘autonomous’ social actor, or was it in effect, manipulated by external political forces, such as parts of the military, the far left or the communists. For Lucena, the popular movements lacked a broader political strategy beyond immediate demands but ‘unable to make their own revolution they were, instead, available to make the revolution on behalf of others’, and were seduced into an externally directed ‘Popular Power’ strategy.47 For Leitão and his colleagues, it was the class basis of parts of the movement which had allowed this manipulation – in their opinion the ‘sub-­ proletarian’ sectors of the movement lacked an organic leadership with the resources and experience to guide it, leaving the door open for a takeover by middle class far-­left militants.48 In reply, those more sympathetic to the urban movement tend to argue that the alliance between the residents and radical political forces should be understood as a meeting of circumstances and objectives rather than the result of an imposition of the ideas of a ‘vanguard’ on a malleable population.49 Regardless of their conclusions, these accounts rely on a stylised and monochromatic view of the urban mobilisations that asks only a very limited range of questions: rather than reconstituting this social phenomenon for what it was, it is measured against the yardstick of a supposed revolutionary potential. More striking, however, is how little we hear from the people that were the movement. How were their claims

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Lisbon rising

articulated – what terms and language did residents use to address their claims? Since the popular politics of the Portuguese Revolution were last the focus of sustained scholarly attention, approaches to the study of social movements have widened their field of inquiry, breaking away from narrow class-­based interpretations. Other mobilising identities, including those of place, gender and other affinities are recognised as potential sources of political action. Similarly, the traditional dichotomy evidenced in debates over ‘autonomy’ and ‘manipulation’ have been replaced by more open approaches that see any social actors not as isolated nodes, but entities constructed by interaction with other actors in relation to whom identities are built, but also resources, ideas and practices exchanged. Below I will return to some of these themes, but for the moment it can be emphasised that in order to understand the movement in its proper context and question its role in the politics of the period it is necessary to discover its voice, not the reverberations of those who sought to aggrandise or underplay its role. A further issue that must be explored in relation to the urban movement is to consider the manner of its demobilisation. How (if at all) did the urban movement die away? Was it repressed and antagonised by the post-­revolutionary state, as some would have it? Or was it somehow incorporated and institutionalised into a gradually consolidating democratic system? And ultimately, did it have a role in shaping the characteristics of the democratic settlement, its institutions and processes – many of which still mould political discourse and practice in contemporary Portugal? The apparent abrupt end of the urban mobilisations following the restoration of the authority of the state at the end of November 1975 is given different meanings according to the perspective of each commentator. For some, it is the inevitable debacle of an impossible dream, the result of counter-­revolutionary repression, or even of the betrayal of potential allies, such as the Communist Party. For the sceptics, the lack of popular support for the revolutionary left when the military confrontation finally occurred is evidence that the popular movements were little more than a paper tiger.50 Lacking in detailed evidence of the process of demobilisation, it is impossible to draw precise conclusions. It is not even clear that the urban movement crumbled in 1975, as it is claimed: there is some evidence that many neighbourhood grassroots organisations continued their activity for years to come.51 But even admitting that the movement as a political force ceased to exist, the cause and meaning of that demise is open to interpretation. This could mean, for instance, demobilisation ‘from above’ as the result of the recentralisation of state power

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and military discipline that followed 25 November 1975 – the naked reassertion of bourgeois class power in the eyes of the left, or the result of successful pact-­ making and institutional architecture by political leaders, as is emphasised by Schmitter, O’Donnell and other authors of the liberal school. But it is also possible to envisage alternative causes of demobilisation that are at least partially internal to the urban movements. Some may mean a degree of defeat, such as a growing fatigue following over a year of continued commitment with mixed results, or a disillusionment with the achievements of the movement, or with the attempts at political manipulation, control or infiltration of neighbourhood groups. Alternatively, there could have been more active reasons for turning down the intensity of the urban movement’s political engagement. In Spain, which also witnessed a strong urban movement during its process of transition, such a development has been linked to a process of institutionalisation, where many of its leaders were integrated into the political system through local government and party machineries.52 In a broader comparative perspective, looking at urban social movements in both the Spanish and Chilean transitions to democracy, Hipsher has suggested their demobilisation was a strategic rational choice of not simply party and movement leaders, but also of its rank and file, seeking to establish democratic gains and fearful of provoking an authoritarian reaction.53 In addition, while in some cases demobilisation can go hand in hand with incorporation into the political system, as in Spain and Brazil, in others, such as Chile or East Germany, social movements may find themselves excluded from a closed, professionalised party system.54 The new Portuguese constitution, drafted in the summer of 1975 as popular mobilisation reached fever pitch, created highly devolved systems of local representation, combining elected ward-­level executives and deliberative assemblies open to all residents, as well as other forms of direct popular participation at the local level.55 This should draw our attention not only to the possible influence that the urban movement had in shaping longer-­lasting structures of not just urban governance, but also to critical aspects of the democratic system, including the constitution.56 The extent to which such mechanisms of popular participation were created in response to the mobilisation of the urban poor, and whether they account for a possible institutionalisation of movement activists and organisations, are open questions that relate to the broader issue of their role in the making of Portuguese democracy. It is these questions, gaps and contradictions in our knowledge of the popular politics in general, and the urban movement in particular that this book will address by investigating the history of grassroots political mobilisation in the city of Lisbon. It will focus on the dynamic politics

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Lisbon rising

of the transition period (1974–75), but at the same time seeking to place these two years in broader historical context, looking back to changes in the city and the country that influenced the nature of the politics of the transition. The focus on a single city allows for a detailed reconstruction of the birth, development and demise of the movement in close relationship with other local and national actors. But the choice of Lisbon, the capital city, also aims to fill a glaring gap in the study of the urban movement: the few existing detailed accounts, such as Downs’ work on Setúbal, and a few more pieces on Portugal’s second city, Oporto, provide the bulk of our current detailed knowledge about the urban movement.57 There is no study of the movement in Lisbon, where it was arguable at its most powerful and influential – not just because of the size of the city, but particularly because of it is place as the cockpit of the Portuguese Revolution. Lisbon was home to the government, the leadership of the political parties and crucial military players. All these were critical in interactions with the urban movement – representations were often made directly to the government or the military; radical army units from the capital were especially active in fostering links with residents’ organisations; and crucially, the overwhelming majority of the national media were based in Lisbon, with their reporting highly skewed towards the capital. Lisbon was the heart of the revolution, to the extent that as the country teetered on the verge of civil war in the summer of 1975, the prospect of a ‘Lisbon Commune’ seemed imminent.58 Addressing the many unanswered questions outlined above by looking at the urban movement and the people who created it in their own right means facing a number of challenges. First, how to develop an approach that is able to take into account contingency and structure, as well as the role of actors at various levels – regime insiders and oppositionists, parties, unions and movements – and their interactions? Second, even if such an integrated approach is taken, how can the ‘impact’ or role of each actor on the political process be assessed, and can meaningful generalisations be inferred from such an analysis? Finally, what kinds of data and sources can be used to investigate these processes, especially where, as in this book, they involve ephemeral, fluid and non-­ institutional mobilisations by the poor, of whose political action little direct trace is left? The first of these two challenges can be met by approaching the movement from a new angle: as part of broader episode of contention.59 This framework asks essentially different questions from those that have dominated the discussion so far (whether there was a ‘revolutionary’ movement, and the extent of manipulation), and proposes instead an open-­ended and bottom-­up approach to understanding popular politics,

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seeing collective actors not as a static combination of organisations, identities and programmes, but as a shifting, diverse and often contradictory networks of relationships and interactions, both within its own space, and with regard to other actors. The field of contentious politics has emerged from the American ‘classical’ social movement paradigm, but seeks to go beyond it in a number of key ways, providing tools that are particularly suited to understanding the Portuguese situation. The relevance of the concept of social movement for this analysis is clear, but social movement theory and methods are a vast and diversified arena divided by a common terminology. Some previous studies of the Portuguese case have used French ‘new social movement’ theory, particularly the early work of Manuel Castells.60 Similarly, although Charles Downs draws in part on the American, rational choice tradition of social movement research for some of his interpretation, he is deeply influenced by and seeks an engagement with Castells theory of urban social movements.61 Born out of a critique of dogmatic structuralist Marxism, new social movement theory became particularly interested in conflicts over social reproduction of whole social (or in Castells’ case, urban) social structures. At its most extreme, and echoing the reductionism of the Marxist model it criticised, it refused the label of social movement to forms of political mobilisation that fell short of achieving anything but the wholesale transformation of society. But principally, ‘new social movement’ theory is concerned with the connections between advanced post-­modern capitalism and the politicisation of supposedly hitherto private arenas leading to the creation of new social conflicts. These are important macro-­questions (which Chapter 2 will discuss in more detail in the context of analysing the origins of the urban social movement), but ones which operate at only one level of analysis, when this book is concerned not only with social and political structures, but also with how these interact with the street-­level to and fro between neighbourhood committees, provisional authorities, and political groups that took place day-­by-­day. On the other hand, this shifting, complex and dynamic situation also calls for an approach more flexible and time-­sensitive than the American ‘classical’ social movement paradigm. Based on the concepts of political process, resource mobilisation and cognitive frames, the focus of the ‘classical’ school was on how collective actors responded to opportunities presented by political structures, on the social networks that support mobilisation and connect activists to necessary resources, and on the discourses and ideas used by political entrepreneurs to give identity, purpose and coherence to movements.62 The classic social movement model has occasionally been applied to the study of popular politics

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in transition-­era Portugal. Dúran Muñoz and Palácios Cerezales have connected the post-­coup upsurge in mobilisation to an opening up of the opportunity structure as a result of the disintegration of the coercive capacity of the state.63 In particular, Cerezales’ work has reintroduced a dynamic understanding of how constellations of power and the alliances of the urban movement evolved throughout the period, alerting us to the importance of the relationships between actors – including state actors – in the process of popular mobilisation, whereas so much of the existing literature wavered between the unhelpful exclusive categories of ‘autonomy’ and ‘manipulation’. But for their important contribution, these studies also reflect some of the shortcomings of the ‘classical’ social movement model. Focusing on political developments at the elite level to explain changes in mobilising opportunities and the constitution of social movements, Cerezales and Muñoz still present an essentially ‘top-­ down’ view of popular politics, underplaying the potential effects of collective action on transforming opportunity structures themselves.64 In addition, the effect of political opportunities on mobilisation is in itself not given: extreme openness and uncertainty, characteristics of rapid political transitions, may in fact have a demobilising effect as the outcomes of protest become harder to predict for potential participants.65 Opportunity structures can only be part of the explanation – alone they cannot account for the decision to mobilise, the diffusion of protest, an explain how the ideas and values that led so many residents to action emerged, nor the diversity in strategies and trajectories that are apparent in the urban movement. These thoughts reflect some of the dissatisfaction that prompted Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow and Charles Tilly and a number of other scholars to reassess the field. Classical social movement theory, they argued, had become self-­referential and too ‘movement centric’, focusing almost exclusively on the internal dynamics and networks of social movements. While much theoretical work was invested by both the French and American social movement traditions in understating how social movements are created, these had failed to develop sound theories connecting social movements to broader processes and outcomes, such as changes in policies, in values and, ultimately to changes in regimes, such as in instances of democratisation.66 To overcome these limitations, they proposed broadening out the field of inquiry from simply social movements to all ‘contentious politics’, defined as conflictual interactions between actors in which governments are involved, either as parties to the conflict themselves (as initiators or targets), or as a third party.67 With this more encompassing definition, which seeks to exclude only private and routine forms of political interaction, McAdam et al.

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aim to provide a common language between students of various forms of social conflict, from protest to civil wars, which they see not as distinct categories of events, but rather episodes where contention takes different forms and scales but where the essential elements – groups in conflict with, for, against or otherwise involving a state – are still present. With this change in perspective, what becomes the focus of the analysis are not categories of actors (such as movements), or of events (such as instances of transition from authoritarianism to democracy), but rather the ways in which actors in political conflict interact to produce different outcomes. This change of perspective is clearly useful in the Portuguese case, where scholarship has been divided between two camps seeking to explain two categories of processes theorised as obeying essentially distinct dynamics – democratisation and revolution – and as a consequence focusing almost exclusively on actors at different levels. Seeing the urban social movement as part of a broader field of contention means that we have to consider it not just internally, but how it was constituted and developed in relation to other actors and institutions: these include the authoritarian state that shaped both its physical context (the city), but also its institutional and political environment and available resources, including political values, networks, relationships between urban residents and agents of the state at various levels; the opposition groups that challenged the dictatorship and the manner in which they did so; and the actors and institutions with which the movement interacted between 1974 and 1975: transitional authorities at the local and national level, emerging and established political parties, the military and its factions, the media and other social movements. The contentious politics approach requires embracing complexity, interaction, endogenously and multiple causality. This, however, means that simple stories about the role of urban movement in the Portuguese Revolution are unlikely to emerge: it will not ‘explain’ the emergence of democracy, or account for the failure of revolution. Few single actors (even collective actors) can command sufficient power to effect such outcomes on their own, and where decisive contributions of collective actors to political change processes have been identified, they tend to involve successful alliance building and collation formation – movement effects are likely to be politically mediated by relationships with other actors.68 In addition, the effects of social movements with regard to the state and to other political and social actors are essentially recursive as the actions of each influence the responses of others in a constant adaptive interaction.69 In the case of the Portuguese urban movement this means tracing the trajectory of its alliances and strategies throughout the revolutionary period, asking not only how and why were particular

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coalitions formed, but also how they evolved and whether alternative configurations of alliance were possible. We also have to be attentive to the possibility of multiple, indirect and unintended consequences: some are likely to be more narrowly political – such as changes in policies close to some of the movement’s demands in terms of housing, urban conditions, and urban governance. But as we have seen, it has been argued that the urban movement was part of a wider call for a deeper transformation of political and social structures. As such, this analysis has to reconstruct the claims and demands of movement, and how they are related to the dramatic changes witnessed in Portugal between 1974 and 1975. And, finally, the analysis will also have to be aware of the potential interactions between contemporary political ideas, discourses and values, exploring what kinds of cultural resources it drew on, and asking whether during the period of its activity it contributed to creating and shaping new issues, agendas and conceptions of politics and citizenship. As a result we are navigating a complex and evolving system of relationships where we have to distinguish between different types of potential outcomes to social movement actions, seeking to trace where particular outcomes can at least in part be attributed to their influence, whilst keeping in mind unintended consequences and indirect effects resulting from the interaction between the urban movements and other political actors.70 One way of disentangling the complex question of impact is to reflect on the way we have tended to ask the question in the context of the Portuguese revolutionary process. Most of the literature sees the outcome (or its lack) it seeks to explain in formal, absolute terms: ‘democracy’ or ‘socialism’ as abstract totalities. Then, a critical moment of transition, or a pivotal occurrence is placed at the centre of the analysis in the form of a coup, and election or a military confrontation, reducing longer-­term trajectories and interactions to single decisive moments that can either only be explained by an over-­simplified model (such as the virtú of leadership) or seen as the inevitable consequence of anonymous historical processes. In his later works on contention and democracy, Charles Tilly proposes an alternative formulation of democracy, and of conceptualising changes that lead political communities towards or away from it. Tilly sees democracy and authoritarianism as descriptors of a combination of various forms of relationship between people and regimes, in short as different types of citizenship relations. Citizenship relations are characterised by four dimensions: the degrees of inclusivity of the category of citizen, of equality between citizens, of protection of citizens against arbitrary action, and the degree of protected consultation (the more electoral dimension).71 Democratic and authoritarian

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regimes differ extensively in the way they combine these factors, and even democratic regimes can show tremendous variation across space and time without ceasing to be democracies as such.72 It is clear that sometime following 25 April 1975 Portugal crossed the notional line between authoritarianism and democracy propelled by changes to these four types of relationship – but these did not all happen at the same time, nor was this a uni-­directional change. Some aspects of the change happened before the 1974 coup, during the ‘thaw’ attempted by Salazar’s successor Marcello Caetano after 1968, others took place during the revolutionary period, but even then the country weaved a tortuous path where instances of broad popular participation such as the April 1975 elections went hand-­in-­hand with developments that took – or could have taken – the country further away from the possibility of democratic citizenship, including the flexing of the military’s political muscle at several points. As such, this book seeks to explore such effects on various levels: the direct effect of the urban movement on the political sphere, in relation to the state and to other political actors – did it contribute to changes in Tilly’s four dimensions of democracy (in either direction) as well as political cultures, ideas of democracy, and popular sovereignty during, but also beyond the revolutionary period? Did, for instance, the movement broaden the range of political inclusion through its practice of open public assemblies involving local populations? Or, if the manipulation thesis is proved to be true, were residents’ commissions actually a barrier to real inclusivity? Did the movement contribute to greater equality in participation and enjoyment of rights? We can even ask whether, even if the movement contributed to the integration of previously excluded populations and to a potentially more democratic equality, was the way it did so incompatible with other dimensions of democracy, protection and consultation? In other words, to what extent was the movements’ direct democratic practice, based on continuous participation, face-­to-­ face meetings and in-­group consensus, potentially problematic for the management of democratic disagreement, minority opinion and broader forms of representation?73 Exploring these issues also means contending with overlapping temporalities other than the rhythm of the revolution between April 1974 and November 1975. It requires considering the changing relationship between the state, the city and its inhabitants; generational changes in political values and preferences that fuelled popular mobilisation; and the longer-­ term consequences of political experiences of the transition. These are issues where the deductive methodologies of historical analysis can make a contribution that will enrich and complement other

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approaches. Historical narratives can be powerful analytical tools, and the sections above have made the case for extending the temporal framework of the analysis – here extending it from the traditional focus on the revolutionary period to take in the period of the dictatorship during which the social environment of the key object of the analysis, the urban movement, was formed.74 Building a picture of the movement which will allow in-­depth analysis requires assembling a wide range of evidence and material that has not so far been used in writing about the urban movement. The lack of scholarly attention it has so far received is also in part a result of the difficulties in finding materials that would throw light on its history. In building that evidence-­base, two difficulties had to be surmounted. Firstly it was necessary to reconstruct a narrative of the emergence and evolution of the urban movement – there were few details that would show the basics of where, when and who the movement was. The second, and the particularly important task, was finding materials that allow the people whose commitment gave the movement life to speak on their own behalf some thirty years hence. The first step in the analysis was to build a comprehensive storyline of the movement through a critical reading of the contemporary press. This provided the backbone of the sources, as well as revealing a number of leads to further evidence. Yet, the newspaper data had to be approached with care – any researcher working with press sources is aware of potential distortions, omissions and biases, both wilful and unconscious.75 In this case, particular circumstances must be taken into account: during the revolutionary period, and particularly with the left-­wing lurch after 11 March 1975, the press came increasingly under the control of the radical left, either through nationalisation and government appointment of editors, or through workers’ takeovers.76 If this made some newspapers more likely to report on the actions of the neighbourhood committees that were seen to represent the ‘popular movement’ it also meant that middle-­class organisations, or those closer to a different political faction than that supported by the newspaper were less likely to be reported. But omission is not the only difficulty arising from the use of newspapers from Portugal in this period. There was also a considerable description bias that inflated numbers, cast moral judgement on participants or tended to analyse events in simplified and manichean terms of class and exploitation. In order to minimise the impact of these problems this analysis resorted to a process of triangulation, trying to gather data from a variety of newspaper sources, collating as wide a range of points of view as possible.77 The contents of every issue of six daily and four weekly newspapers published between 25 April 1974 and 31 December 1976

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were sifted for items relating to neighbourhood movements.78 These were complemented by nine weekly or monthly publications of eight political parties.79 A set of criteria was elaborated to select and analyse articles relevant to the analysis from the press: while some researchers limit newspaper analysis to social movement protest event counts, such a narrow focus can limit understanding of wider contexts, relationships, forms of exchange between political actors.80 This is particularly important if the dynamic relationship between the movement and other institutional and non-­institutional actors, such as the military, political parties or other movements is to be successfully mapped. Furthermore, the objective required that attention was paid not just to the quantitative but also to qualitative and discursive aspects of the movement. Taking these considerations, the elaboration of the criteria for selection followed the ‘political claims analysis’ methodology proposed by Koopmans and Statham, making the whole of the news item a potential source.81 The criteria selected those newspaper items which: (1) addressed issues relating to urban conditions in Lisbon; (2) referred to public meetings, demonstrations, petitions, occupations and other collective acts undertaken in relation to urban issues; (3) addressed claims made in a variety of ways (communiqués, interviews, etc.) by residents’ groups and their organisations; (4) reported on other actors, such as political parties, city and state authorities or media commentators in relation to the urban movement. In addition (5) other items relating to broader, contextual issues, themes were collected when they were deemed relevant to the context of the urban movement. This produced a database of around 650 news items from the daily and weekly press, with a further hundred from party newspapers. Some aspects of this source base were quantified, particularly to explore timings of diffusion of the movement, political positioning and an approximation to socio-­ economic categorisation of residents’ commissions by neighbourhood type. But much of the analysis was more broadly qualitative, uncovering discourses, relationships and trajectories that are not easily quantifiable on the basis of the variable quantity and quality of data survivung for each of the commissions. While the newspaper sources provide some insight into the workings and motivations of the movement, they are still limited in their capacity of bringing us closer to the men and women at its heart. Finding a second major source of evidence, hitherto unknown, allowed my work to get closer to the urban movement than anyone has been able since Charles Downs managed to participate and interview activists at close quarters. Nearly all the neighbourhood residents’ organisations have by now disappeared, leaving no records other than the few scattered papers

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at a handful of archives. On the other hand, the length of time elapsed and the changing nature of the city made finding a sufficient number of first-­hand oral histories from the perspective of the neighbourhood very difficult.82 During the course of research for this book, I uncovered a large cache of copies of correspondence between the Lisbon city authorities and residents’ organisations. Mistakenly filed alongside the records of registration of candidates to the 1976 local elections in the Municipal Archives were seven box-­files containing hundreds of items, including petitions, manifestos, general to and fro of claims, licences and other items, and in some cases lists of residents’ commission executives. The coverage across the city is fairly evenly distributed, and the available material for each neighbourhood commission seems to reflect the varying levels of activity across neighbourhoods as reported in the newspapers. These two categories of sources form the bulk of the evidence for the argument presented here. In addition, this work is based on extensive materials from official and private archives, including documentation from various ministries, welfare institutions or collections of papers and pamphlets left by activists to the 25 April Archive at the University of Coimbra. In some places these complement the evidence from the newspapers and the correspondence archives; often they help explain the context and development of the urban and national politics with which the urban movement was concerned. Combined, these sources allow an original interpretation into the beliefs, trajectories and demands of the urban social movement that supports new insight of its role in the Portuguese transition to democracy. Overview of book The book’s organisation follows the development of a number of key issues in the analysis of the movement, and its chapters approach the problem of urban social movements along different temporalities. Chapter 2 is concerned with understanding how and why urban conditions and housing emerged as a mobilising issue, which requires a broad historical perspective. Analysing the evolution of urban policy and politics it argues that the right to housing – the central political demand of the movement – resulted from a novel popular conception of citizenship, an unintended consequence of the dictatorship’s urban policies as experienced by the urban poor on a day-­to-­day basis. Issues alone do not create movements – they need agency and mobilisation. Chapter 3 asks who were the first residents to organise local commissions or the seizure of social housing. Identifying the ‘first mover’ neighbourhoods explains how this particular repertoire of

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action was born and spread throughout Portuguese cities and throws light on the question of ‘spontaneity’ or ‘autonomy’ of the movement, revealing the extent to which early mobilisation was connected to expectations and disappointment connected with the dictatorship’s housing policies, as well as the role of mediating actors – social workers, local clergy and in some cases radical political activists in the creation of the movement. Chapter 4 analyses how the movement expanded to become a significant player in the politics of the revolution. Exploring the interaction between the residents’ commissions and other actors – the government, parties, the military and the city council – it argues that the growing reach and power of the urban movement was the result of a cycle whereby the provisional authorities and political parties found themselves having to respond to the actions of the urban poor. Their responses, driven by the need to keep a growing political constituency on the side of the revolution, signalled to areas that had not yet organised that there were substantial rewards for doing so, encouraging the diffusion of the movement across the city. At the same time, as it established itself as a political entity, particularly by creating federations of neighbourhood commissions aggregating different areas of the city, the movement also became increasingly engaged with the political factions of the transition both in the military and in the ­civilian parties. This political centrality came at a price. Focusing on the ‘Hot Summer’ of 1975, Chapter 5 explores the role of the urban movement in the endgame of the Portuguese Revolution, and its relationship to the ‘Popular Power’ movement and the radical left. Reassessing existing interpretations that tend to portray the movement as a monolithic entity, it argues that the strategies of the movement and particularly of its supporters have to be understood in multifaceted ways. Looking at the level of individual residents’ commissions it is possible to explore the degree of success of the revolutionary camp in recruiting the urban poor to their project and how the population reacted to the polarisation of the revolution. Chapter 6 provides an epilogue to the history of the urban movement, following them in the post-­revolutionary period and makes the case that the movement had a number of significant impacts in the course of the transition to democracy, on the shape of political institutions and political cultures in contemporary Portugal. These conclusions allow us to connect the Portuguese experience to other episodes of democratisation and argue that popular politics has been a key component of the making of European democratic polities as we know them today.

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Notes  1 André Freire, ‘Participação e Abstenção nas Eleições Legislativas Portuguesas, 1975–1995’, Análise Social, XXXV, 154–155 (2000); Carlos Jalali, ‘A Investigação do Comportamento Eleitoral em Portugal: História e Perspectivas Futuras’, Análise Social, XXXVIII, 167 (2003).  2 Nancy G. Bermeo, ‘Myths of Moderation: Confrontation and Conflict During Democratic Transitions’, Comparative Politics, 29, 3 (1997): 307–309; Diego Palacios Cerezales, ‘Reacción Popular Violenta Y Estado Revolucionario. El “Verano Caliente” Portugués de 1975’, Historia y Política, 7 (2002): 211–212.  3 Kenneth Maxwell, ‘Portugal: “Revolution of the Carnations”, 1974–5’, in Civil Resistance and Power Politics: The Experience of Non-­Violent Action from Gandhi to the Present, ed. Adam Roberts and Timothy Garton-­Ash (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 146.  4 Francisco Martins Rodrigues, ed., O Futuro Era Agora. O Movimento Popular do 25 de Abril (Lisboa: Ed. Dinossauro, 1994), 7; José Gil, Portugal, Hoje: O Medo de Existir (Lisboa: Relógio D’Água, 2004, 39).  5 Filipa Perdigão Ribeiro, ‘“A Democratic Revolution Must Always Remain Unfinished”: Commemorating the Portuguese 1974 Revolution in Newspaper Opinion Texts’, Journal of Language and Politics, 10, 3 (2011): 375, 388–389.  6 In 1976 the Popular Democratic Party changed its name to Social Democratic Party (Partido Social Democrata – PSD).  7 See, for instance PS supporter José Cutileiro’s assessment of the popular movement: ‘A Via Democrática’, in Diário de Notícias, 29 October 1976, p. 3. Manuel Villaverde Cabral’s reflections on the Portuguese Revolution notes how, due to the conflictual nature of the revolutionary period, democracy came to be seen as a victory of the ‘moderate’ or even ‘silent’ majority: Manuel Villaverde Cabral, ‘A “Segunda República” Portuguesa numa Perspectiva Histórica’, Análise Social, XIX, 1 (1983): 141.  8 Álvaro Cunhal, A Verdade e a Mentira na Revolução de Abril (Lisboa: Avante, 1999), 108.  9 Marco Lisi, ‘New Politics in Portugal: The Rise and Success of the Left Bloc’, Pôle Sud: Revue de science politique de l’Europe méridionale, 30, 1 (2009). 10 Vitor Matias Ferreira, ‘A Cidade e o Campo. Uma Leitura Comparada do Movimento Social, 1974–1975’, Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais, 18/19/20 (1987): 559; Nicos Poulantzas, The Crisis of the Dictatorships: Portugal, Greece, Spain (London: NLB, 1976), 138. 11 Tariq Ali, ‘Revolutionary Politics: Ten Years after 1968’, Socialist Register, 15 (1978): 151–153. 12 Reiner Eisfeld, ‘Reflexões Sobre o Murchar dos Cravos’, Revista Crítica das Ciências Sociais, 15/16/17 (1985): 130. 13 Bill Lomax, ‘Ideology and Illusion in the Portuguese Revolution: The Role of the Left’, in In Search of Modern Portugal: The Revolution and Its Consequences, ed. Lawrence S. Graham and Douglas L. Wheeler (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983), 127.

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14 Cabral, ‘A “Segunda República” Portuguesa numa Perspectiva Histórica’; Manuel de Lucena, O Estado da Revolução: A Constituição de 1976 (Lisboa: Expresso, 1982); Boaventura Sousa Santos, O Estado e a Sociedade em Portugal 1974–1988 (Porto: Edições Afrontamento, 1990). 15 Dankwart Rustow, ‘Transitions to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic Model’, Comparative Politics, 2, 3 (1970). 16 Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991). 17 Guillermo O’Donnell and Philippe C. Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions About Uncertain Democracies (Baltimore/London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 56. 18 Ibid., 53–54. The idea of popular movements as puppets of the various political forces can also be found in some of the Portuguese scholarship: Lucena, O Estado da Revolução: a Constituição de 1976, 44–46; Juan Mozzicafreddo, ‘A Questão do Estado no Processo Politico Português, 1974–76’, Cadernos de Ciências Sociais, 2 (1984): 61. 19 Michael Burton, Richard Gunther and John Highley, ‘Introduction: Elite Transformations and Democratic Regimes’, in Elites and Democratic Consolidation in Latin America and Southern Europe, ed. John Highley and Richard Gunther (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Kerstin Hamann and Paul Christopher Manuel, ‘Regime Changes and Civil Society in Twentieth-­Century Portugal’, South European Society and Politics, 4, 1 (1999): 90; Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America and Post-­Communist Europe (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 120. 20 Ruth Berins Collier and James Mahoney, ‘Adding Collective Actors to Collective Outcomes: Labor and Recent Democratization in South America and Southern Europe’, Comparative Politics, 29, 3 (1997); Sidney Tarrow, ‘Mass Mobilization and Regime Change: Pacts, Reform, and Popular Power in Italy (1918–1922) and Spain (1975–1978)’, in The Politics of Democratic Consolidation: Southern Europe in Comparative Perspective, ed. Richard Gunther, P.N. Diamandouros, and Hans-­ Jürgen Puhle (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995); Elizabeth J. Wood, ‘An Insurgent Path to Democracy – Popular Mobilization, Economic Interests, and Regime Transition in South Africa and El Salvador’, Comparative Political Studies, 34, 8 (2001): 285. 21 Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens, and John D. Stephens, Capitalist Development and Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 22 Robert Fishman, ‘Rethinking State and Regime: Southern Europe’s Transition to Democracy’, World Politics, 42, 3 (1990); Joe Foweraker, ‘Popular Political Organization and Democratization: A Comparison of Spain and Mexico’, in Developing Democracy: Comparative Research in Honour of J.F.P. Blondel, ed. Ian Budge and David McKay (London: Sage, 1994); Daniel H. Levine, ‘Paradigm Lost: Dependence to Democracy’, World Politics, 40, 3 (1987).

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23 Tarrow, ‘Mass Mobilization and Regime Change: Pacts, Reform, and Popular Power in Italy (1918–1922) and Spain (1975–1978)’, 205. 24 Bermeo, ‘Myths of Moderation: Confrontation and Conflict During Democratic Transitions’, 314, 318–319. 25 Foweraker, ‘Popular Political Organization’, 219. 26 Ruth Berins Collier, Paths toward Democracy: The Working Class and Elites in Western Europe and South America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 27 Giovanni Capoccia and Daniel Ziblatt, ‘The Historical Turn in Democratization Studies: A New Research Agenda for Europe and Beyond’, Comparative Political Studies, 43, 8/9 (2010): 949. 28 For an overview of the labour movement before 1974 see: José Carlos Valente, ‘O Movimento Operário e Sindical (1970–1976): entre o Corporativismo e a Unicidade’, in O País em Revolução, ed. J.M. Brandão de Brito (Lisboa: Editorial Notícias, 2001). In addition, an older work remains an unavoidable reference: Maria de Lurdes Lima Santos, Marinus Pires de Lima, and Vitor Matias Ferreira, O 25 De Abril e as Lutas Sociais nas Empresas (Porto: Afrontamento, 1976). 29 Guya Accornero, ‘Efervescência Estudantil: Estudantes, Acção Contenciosa e Processo Político no Final do Estado Novo (1956–1974)’ (PhD Thesis, Universidade de Lisboa, 2009); Miguel Cardina, ‘On Student Movements in the Decay of the Estado Novo’, Portuguese Journal of Social Science, 7, 3 (2008); Vitor Pereira, ‘Émigration, Résistance et Démocratisation: L’Émigration Portugaise au Crépuscule de L’Estado Novo’, Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez, 37, 1 (2007); David L. Raby, Fascism and Resistance in Portugal: Communists, Liberal and Military Dissidents in the Opposition to Salazar, 1941–1974 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988). 30 Nancy Bermeo, ‘War and Democratization: Lessons from the Portuguese Experience’, Democratization, 14, 3 (2007); Lawrence S. Graham, ‘The Military in Politics: The Politicization of the Portuguese Armed Forces’, in Contemporary Portugal: The Revolution and Its Antecedents, ed. Lawrence S. Graham and Harry M. Makler (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979). 31 Nancy G. Bermeo, The Revolution within the Revolution: Workers’ Control in Rural Portugal (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986); Diego Palacios Cerezales, O Poder Caiu Na Rua – Crise de Estado e Acções Colectivas na Revolução Portuguesa 1974–1975 (Lisboa: Imprensa das Ciências Sociais, 2003). 32 Centro de Estudos Fiscais da Direcção-­Geral das Contribuições e Impostos, Auto-­ Gestão em Portugal – Relatório da Comissão Interministerial para Análise da Problemática das Empresas em Auto-­Gestão (Lisboa: Ministério das Finanças, 1980), 253–254. Like the urban movement, this aspect of popular political action in Portugal is largely unresearched, with the most comprehensive, if partisan, account being John L. Hammond, Building Popular Power: Workers’ and Neighborhood Movements in the Portuguese Revolution (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1988). For a general overview of labour move-

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ments, see Rafael Durán Muñoz, Contención y Transgresión: las Movilizaciones Sociales y el Estado en las Transiciones Española y Portuguesa (Madrid: Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, 2000); Valente, ‘O Movimento Operário e Sindical (1970–1976): Entre o Corporativismo e a Unicidade.’ 33 Fernando Oliveira Baptista, ‘O 25 De Abril, a Sociedade Rural e a Questão da Terra’, in O País em Revolução, ed. J.M. Brandão de Brito (Lisboa: Editorial Notícias, 2001); António Barreto, Anatomia de uma Revolução: A Reforma Agrária em Portugal 1974–1976 (Lisboa: Publicações Europa-­América, 1987); Bermeo, The Revolution within the Revolution: Workers’ Control in Rural Portugal; Margarida Fernandes, Terra de Catarina: Ocupação de Terras e Relações Sociais em Baleizão (Lisboa: Celta Editora, 2006). 34 A more in-­depth discussion of the SAAL programme is given in Chapter 3. For an overview and analysis of the scheme, see: João Arriscado Nunes and Nuno Serra, ‘“Decent Housing for the People”: Urban Movements and Emancipation in Portugal’, South European Society and Politics, 9, 2 (2004). For local case studies on Sétubal and Oporto: Jaime Pinho, Fernanda Gonçalves and Leonor Taurino, Fartas de Viver na Lama – 25 De Abril. O Castelo Velho e Outros Bairros Saal do Distrito de Setúbal (Lisboa: Edições Colibri, 2002); Maria Rodrigues, Pelo Direito à Cidade. O Movimento de Moradores no Porto (1974/76) (Porto: Campo Das Letras, 1999). 35 Diego Palacios Cerezales, O Poder Caiu na Rua: Crise de Estado e Acções Colectivas na Revolução Portuguesa 1974–1975 (Lisboa: Imprensa das Ciências Sociais, 2003), 106–107. 36 See for instance: Marília Andrade, ‘O Estado, a Sociedade e a Questão da Habitação em Portugal – 1974–1976’, Intervenção Social, 11/12 (1995); Charles Downs, ‘Residents’ Comissions and Urban Struggles in Revolutionary Portugal’, in In Search of Modern Portugal: The Revolution and Its Consequences, ed. Lawrence S. Graham and Douglas L. Wheeler (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983), 153; Charles Downs, Revolution at the Grassroots: Community Organizations in the Portuguese Revolution (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989), 77–83; Luís Leitão et al., ‘Mouvements Urbains et Comissions de Moradores au Portugal (1974–1976)’, Les Temps Modernes, 34, 388 (1978): 655; José Medeiros Ferreira, Portugal em Transe (1974–1985), ed. José Mattoso, vol. VIII, História de Portugal (Lisboa: Círculo de Leitores, 1993), 106–112. 37 Downs, Revolution at the Grassroots, 108, 111. 38 Cerezales, O Poder Caiu na Rua, 83. 39 Doug McAdam, Political Process and the Development of the Black Insurgency, 1930–1970 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999 [1982]), ix. 40 By conceptions of citizenship, I mean not those relating to its categorical aspects, such as who is and is not a citizen of a given country, but to the content of relationships between state and citizens, including mutual rights and obligations: Charles Tilly, ‘Citizenship, Identity and Social History’, International Review of Social History, 40, Supplement 3 (1995): 8. 41 Vitor Matias Ferreira, Movimentos Sociais Urbanos e Intervenção Política (Porto: Afrontamento, 1975), 15–20.

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42 Downs, Revolution at the Grassroots, 105–107; Hammond, Building Popular Power, 137, 188. 43 Nunes and Serra, ‘Decent Housing for the People’, 71–74. 44 Leitão et al., ‘Mouvements Urbains’, 675–676. 45 Ferreira, ‘A Cidade e o Campo’, 562–566. 46 Mozzicafreddo, ‘A Questão do Estado no Processo Politico Português, 1974– 76’, 58. 47 Lucena, O Estado da Revolução: A Constituição de 1976, 44–45. 48 Leitão et al., ‘Mouvements Urbains’, 662–663. 49 Downs, Revolution at the Grassroots, 86; Hammond, Building Popular Power, 137–138. 50 Lomax, ‘Ideology and Illusion in the Portuguese Revolution: The Role of the Left’, 123. 51 Helena Vilaça, ‘As Associações de Moradores Enquanto Aspecto Particular Do Associativismo Urbano e da Participação Social’, Sociologia – Revista da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto, 4 (1994): 74–76. 52 Manuel Castells, ‘Productores de Ciudad: el Movimiento Ciudadano’, in Memoria Ciudadana y Movimiento Vecinal: Madrid, 1968–2008, ed. Vicente Pérez Quintana and Pablo Sanchéz León (Madrid: Catarata, 2008), 30–31. 53 Patricia L. Hipsher, ‘Democratization and the Decline of Urban Social Movements in Chile and Spain’, Comparative Politics, 28, 3 (1996). This echoes Fishman’s analysis of labour union activists and their attitudes to the politics of transition in Spain: Robert Fishman, Working-­Class Organisation and the Return to Democracy in Spain (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990). For broader perspectives on demobilisations see: Olivier Fillieule, ed., Le Désengagement Militant (Paris: Éditions Belin, 2005); Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 54 G. Ekiert and J. Kubik, ‘Contentious Politics in New Democracies: East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia, 1989–93’, World Politics, 50, 4 (1998); Lynn Kamenitsa, ‘The Process of Political Marginalization: East German Social Movements after the Wall’, Comparative Politics, 30, 3 (1998); Salvador Sandoval, ‘Social Movements and Democratization: The Case of Brazil and the Latin Countries’, in From Contention to Democracy, ed. Marco Giugni, Doug McAdam, and Charles Tilly (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998). 55 M. Rebordão Montalvo, ‘O Poder Local e Participação dos Cidadãos’, in Portugal – Os Sistema Político e Constitucional, 1974–1987, ed. Mario Baptista Coelho (Lisboa: Instituo de ciências Sociais, 1989). 56 On the possible impact of ‘street politics’ and constitution-­making in Portugal, see: Filipe Carreira da Silva and Mónica Brito Vieira, O Momento Constituinte: os Direitos Sociais na Constituição (Coimbra: Almedina, 2010), 54–62. 57 Downs, Revolution at the Grassroots; Rodrigues, Pelo Direito à Cidade. 58 Juan J. Linz, ‘Spain and Portugal: Critical Choices’, in Western Europe: The Trials of Partnership, ed. David S. Landes, Critical Choices for Americans (Lexington: Lexington Books, 1977), 253.

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59 Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow and Charles Tilly, Dynamics of Contention (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 60 Manuel Castells, City, Class and Power, Sociology, Politics and Cities (London: Macmillan, 1978); Manuel Castells, The City and the Grassroots: A Cross-­ Cultural Theory of Urban Social Movements (London: Edward Arnold, 1983); Ferreira, ‘A Cidade e o Campo’; Sousa Santos, O Estado e a Sociedade em Portugal 1974–1988. For an overview of this perspective: Claus Offe, ‘New Social Movements: Challenging the Boundaries of Institutional Politics’, Social Research, 52, 4 (1985). For important critical overviews of new social movement theory, see Craig J. Calhoun, ‘“New Social Movements” Of the Early Nineteenth Century’, Social Science History, 17, 3 (1993); Nelson A. Pichardo, ‘New Social Movements: A Critical Review’, Annual Review of Sociology, 23 (1997). 61 Downs, Revolution at the Grassroots, 6–9, 118–133. 62 Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics, 28–34. 63 Cerezales, O Poder Caiu na Rua, Durán Muñoz, Contención y Transgresión. More recently, Guya Accornero has used social movement theory to analyse the cycle of mobilisation of Portuguese university students before and during the revolutionary period. Accornero, ‘Efervescência Estudantil: Estudantes, Acção Contenciosa e Processo Político no Final do Estado Novo (1956– 1974)’. 64 On the neglected aspect of the ‘feedback’ effect of mobilisation on opportunity structures, see Olivier Fillieule, Stratégies de la Rue: les Manifestations en France (Paris: Presse de Science Po, 1997). 65 Ekiert and Kubik, ‘Contentious Politics in New Democracies’, 572. 66 For an overview of the problems and some key intellectual approaches to it, see Marco Giugni, Doug McAdam, and Charles Tilly, eds, From Contention to Democracy (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998). 67 McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly, Dynamics of Contention, 5; Charles Tilly and Sidney Tarrow, Contentious Politics (Boulder: Paradigm, 2007), 4–5. 68 Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics, 191. 69 Edwin Amenta et al., ‘Challengers and States: Toward a Political Sociology of Social Movements’, Research in Political Sociology, 20 (2002): 69–76. 70 Charles Tilly, ‘From Interactions to Outcomes in Social Movements’, in How Social Movements Matter, ed. Marco Giugni, Doug McAdam and Charles Tilly (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 268. 71 Charles Tilly, Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 11–15. 72 This point can be easily illustrated by pointing to the enormous variations in inequality across democratic countries, or how rights such as habeas corpus are transformed or suspended in reaction to terrorist threats at different times. 73 This is the practical reflection in ongoing debates in democratic theory over deliberative and representative forms of democracy. For an overview of current debates see Nadia Urbinati and Mark E. Warren, ‘The Concept of Representation

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in Contemporary Democratic Theory’, in Annual Review of Political Science, Annual Review of Political Science (Palo Alto: Annual Reviews, 2008). 74 Capoccia and Ziblatt, ‘The Historical Turn’, 932–944; Tim Büthe, ‘Taking Temporality Seriously: Modelling History and the Use of Narrative as Evidence’, American Political Science Review, 96, 3 (2002). 75 Jennifer Earl et al., ‘The Use of Newspaper Data in the Study of Collective Action’, Annual Review of Sociology, 30 (2004): 67–73. 76 Ben Pimlott and Jean Seaton, ‘Political Power and the Portuguese Media’, in In Search of Modern Portugal: The Revolution and Its Consequences, ed. Lawrence S. Graham and Douglas L. Wheeler (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983), 51–52; Ricardo Revez, ‘O Caso Républica’, História, 72 (2004): 36–41. 77 On triangulation of newspaper sources see: Roberto Franzosi, ‘The Press as a Source of Socio-­Historical Data’, Historical Methods, 20, 1 (1987): 8. 78 The newspapers used comprised five national titles (Diário de Notícias, Républica, Jornal Novo, A Luta), and two (A Capital and Diário de Lisboa) were Lisbon-­only papers, although the focus on the capital was almost identical across the board. The weeklies comprised Expresso, Vida Mundial, Século Ilustrado and Gazeta da Semana. They also represent a wide spectrum of political views, from the more radical left (A Capital) to the Socialists (Républica until May 1975, then A Luta) and liberals (Expresso). 79 These included the newsletters/newspapers of the PS, PCP (both the Avante and O Militante), PPD, MDP/CDE, PRP/BR, UDP, MRPP, and MES. 80 Ruud Koopmans and Paul Statham, ‘Political Claims Analysis: Integrating Protest Event and Political Discourse Approaches’, Mobilization, 4, 2 (1999): 204–205. 81 Ibid., 206. 82 One of the difficulties was precisely that, lacking an overview of the trajectory of the neighbourhood commissions, it was difficult to be precise as to which of these organisations should be looked at, and to find any names of those involved. I very much hope that one of the contributions of this book is to provide such a framework which will help others wishing to employ oral history methodologies to investigate the urban movement in Lisbon.

2 The New State and the transformation of urban citizenship, 1926–74 The New State and urban citizenship, 1926–74

I asked [a miner] when the housing shortage first became acute in his district; he answered, ‘When we were told about it.’ (George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier, 1937)1

The reasons why so many people became politically active in popular movements such as the residents’ commissions and housing occupations of 1974–75, often for the first time, is taken as read. For most existing accounts of the urban movement, the obvious scarcity of housing and levels of urban poverty experienced – ‘concrete conditions’ – are sufficient to explain such widespread mobilisations.2 In this perspective, social conditions generated discontent which was held down by the dictatorship’s repressive order, creating a ‘pressure cooker’ that was released by the 25 April coup.3 This reading relies on two assumptions that, taking a long view, are questionable. The first is that the dictatorship oversaw a rapid decline in social conditions, particularly in terms of housing and urban amenities, to the extent that this had become a central political problem. The second is that it is given that the victims of this negligence will see in the state the solution to the problems that affect them. Neither holds up. Urban conditions were certainly gravely deficient, but it is hard to argue that they were dramatically different from what they had been for a long time, stretching back even to before the establishment of the dictatorship in the 1920s. And while it is clear that the urban movement saw housing as a social right that required state intervention, this is the first time in Portuguese history that a popular-­based political movement couches the issue of housing in those terms. Taking an historical perspective on the issue shows that housing and urban conditions were to a large extent politicised during the dictatorship to the extent that they became an object of contention between people and state in a way hitherto unknown in Portugal. As such, explaining the emergence of the urban social movement in 1974 requires accounting for a significant change in

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political beliefs, values and strategies on the part of Lisbon’s ill-­housed population which took housing from being a private to a public issue. Housing had been an issue before, and was often discussed and fought over in the last decades of the nineteenth and in the first quarter of the twentieth century, but the kinds of contentious politics in evidence reflected accepted ideas, in so far as housing pertained to the field of contract, either as part of wages, or as part of the contractual relation between landlord and tenant. In contrast, by the time of the revolution housing had come to be regarded as an issue of collective consumption managed by the state – and the state had gone to being a third party or regulator in arguments between tenants and proprietors to being the target of mobilisation – a clear example of the ‘nationalisation’ of political contention which accompanied the process of state-­building in the modern era.4 This transformation of political values and outlooks cannot be accounted for by the actions of oppositionists during the 48-­ year ­dictatorship – such opposition as there was, was either a middle-­class affair lacking an organisational basis and the means to influence large sectors of the population or, in the case of the communist party, the only opposition group with roots in the urban working classes, effectively and brutally repressed and reduced to a small underground movement.5 Even if there had been more opportunities for contact and proselytising, would these have been sufficient to explain the extent of this ideational transformation? Calls of ‘statist’ solutions of the housing question in the Republican period had failed to generate any kinds of popular enthusiasm and support. In order to understand how values changed we need to identify not just sources of a language of rights, but also the conditions that allowed it to resonate and be adopted by sectors of the population that had previously seemed impervious to such ideas. The politicisation of housing as an issue must be sought in the unprecedented expansion of the state’s capacity and, for want of a better word, ‘governmentality’ brought about by Salazar’s New State.6 For better or for worse, such processes brought a greater proportion of the population into the sphere of the ‘political’. This happened at the same time as larger economic processes were transforming traditional forms of social support through large-­scale migration, urbanisation and the entry of women into the labour force and increasing numbers of ordinary citizens became at least partially dependent on the state for their welfare. Gradually, unevenly and in many cases, unfairly, the state became more and more a part of the everyday life of those who had hitherto lived almost entirely at its margin. Increasingly they were brought into contact with social workers, doctors, police and municipal authorities. Although not at first, the state’s intervention would come to be framed

The New State and urban citizenship, 1926–74

37

in the language of rights that permeated governmental circles as the post-­war period wore on. But as well changing the terms of the debate, the increasing governmentalisation of everyday life produced a further two developments that facilitated the adoption of a frame that portrayed housing as a social right of citizenship. In the first instance, the expansion of social housing provision accompanied by public commitments to resolve the ‘housing problem’ by authorities made the case for a universal right to housing plausible. But equally important with regard to the mobilisation of the urban movement was the fact that, in their day-­to-­day experiences, citizens encountered the highly unequal, preferential and segmented nature of the delivery of housing and other welfare services. In introducing social rights such as housing, the New State transformed the nature of state legitimation. By failing to deliver them equitably it contributed to its own demise, creating an opportunity for both moderate and radical opposition groups to argue that only a new kind of regime would be able to deliver on the new social contract. With a strictly policed public space, high levels of illiteracy and a deeply felt isolation from the rest of the world, Portuguese civil society was shaped determinately by its interaction with Salazar’s New State. In the following sections, this chapter explores how and why the dictatorship – often portrayed in the literature as a laissez-­faire ruler – became deeply involved in directing a project of urban transformation. In its earlier decades, this project was part of a broader sense ‘civilising mission’ and national regeneration that were central to Salazar’s New State vision. As time wore on and the regime’s missionary zeal was replaced by an authoritarian technocratic pragmatism which built on and expanded earlier interventions alongside an emerging language of rights that would provide the vocabulary for future demands. These developments shaped the reaction and strategies of opposition groups, but critically, enveloped the urban poor in new forms of relationship with the state, structured the creation of new forms of urban community and identity. Largely unwittingly, the dictatorship instituted social housing as a perceived right of urban dwellers, and the language of the neighbourhood groups that appeared in 1974 reflected this new sense of entitlement by calling for a clearly statist solution to their problems. By taking the state into housing provision, previously the sole preserve of the market, the dictatorship created a practical entitlement that, when frustrated by the regime’s inability to deliver on its ambitions, eventually shaped the motivation, language and aims for the urban movement. As Tocqueville quipped with regard to the Ancién Regime’s assertion of the right to work: ‘it was indiscreet enough to utter such words, but positively dangerous to utter them in vain’.7

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The evolution of urban conditions in Lisbon The potential for urban conditions to become a live political issue had been present for a long time. The urban squalor that prompted the mobilisation of the urban movement in Lisbon was by no means a phenomenon of the 1960s or 1970s. The city had grown at a fast pace for over a century: between 1878 and 1960, its population more than trebled, reaching just over 800,000.8 Sustained by rural migration, this rapid growth brought overcrowding, slums and shantytowns that did not go unnoticed by contemporaries. By the 1880s, novelists producing shocking tales of poverty and moral degeneration had gained huge popularity. Fialho de Almeida’s short stories, such as A Ruiva (1881), combined graphic descriptions of poverty with tales of sexual promiscuity, and the inevitable ruin their combination would bring.9 Late nineteenth-­century hygienists, including Ricardo Jorge, the father of Portuguese public health policy, campaigned on the moral and medical consequences of lack of decent housing and sanitation. Jorge told his audience of ‘the poor classes, the world of the proletarian, who languish in damp and lugubrious hovels, lacking air or light, and abandoned at the hands of vile speculation’.10 The problem was also recognised by a handful of employers and philanthropists, who were responsible for the construction of a small number of workers’ neighbourhoods at the turn of the century, such as the Grandella (1907) or Estrela D’Ouro (1908) estates.11 Neither did the problem escape public authorities: in 1905 a Commission set up by the Ministry of Public Works published the first full-­scale governmental inquiry into housing, the Inquérito aos Pateos de Lisboa (Inquiry into Courtyards in Lisbon).12 Although the term pateo traditionally referred to habitations built in the courtyards behind and between existing buildings to be let cheaply, the inquiry extended its remit to a variety of different forms of poor housing: In Lisbon one can find all examples of all kinds [of insalubrious dwellings]. In some the houses are shacks, irregularly scattered in gardens, in others they are surrounded by tall buildings, which accentuate their shabbiness, there are also hovels and ancient houses whose ruins are taken advantage of, [and] dark and cramped warehouses.13

According to the inquiry, there were at least 10,487 people living in these conditions, that is, between 2 and 3 per cent of the city’s population.14 By the 1920s, if not before, there were also large shantytowns in the outskirts of the city. The Bairro das Minhocas was one of the largest, a place of ‘astounding misery’, according to a 1930 magazine article.15 Aside from these large bairros de lata or ‘tin neighbourhoods’, after the

39

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material often used as a roof for shacks, there were many other pockets scattered through the city. In the early 1920s, the writer and reporter Raúl Brandão toured the city’s poorest areas taking notes for a book on living conditions. He described one of them, Monte do Prado, as somewhere ‘one needs to visit in order to see misery and exploitation in Lisbon’. It was, he wrote: a pile of sheds … on a slippery embankment that threatens to slide into the valley. Sheds of stacked wood. The walls and roof are [made from] oil barrels, some with brick: in some the gaps are so poorly covered that one can see everything inside. And everywhere rubbish, rubble …, things that rot in the street … It is always the same misery, the same pale faces, the same wretchedness.16

Brandão, a socialist, described sensing a clear anger coming from those who lived in such conditions, women and children with ‘eyes filled with a rage I feel is just’.17 Yet, it was only half a century later that this rage was expressed as political action directed at the state. Was it only then that the problem reached a scale serious enough to warrant mobilisation? The scarcity and reliability of figures on living conditions in Lisbon makes charting their evolution difficult, but the overall picture indicates that this was a long-­standing problem, rather than a rapidly developing crisis. It was not until the 1950 census that the recently founded Institute of National Statistics collated data on housing types, including the number of barracas, or shacks. The census data shows a rise in the absolute numbers of shacks in Lisbon between 1950 and 1970. This rise also represents an increase in proportions of dwellings classified as shacks, peaking at almost 6 per cent of total dwellings by 1970 (see Table 2.1). At first sight these numbers would seem to back an interpretation of the emergence of the issue of housing in political contention as a result of the failure of the New State to deal with a new and growing problem. Table 2.1  Shack dwellings (barracas) in Lisbon, 1950–81, census estimates Year

Families in shacks

As % of total families

1950

4,042 Number of shacks

2.17 As % of total dwellings

1960 1970 1981

7,574 12,490 8,799

4.20 5.82 3.39

Source:  Censuses 1950, 1960, 1970, 1981.

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But other sources seem to contradict the evidence in the censuses and suggest that a considerable proportion of the population of the city had long lived in shoddily built dwellings and that this continued to affect a roughly similar proportion of the population throughout the 48-­year dictatorship. Following the 1905 Inquérito aos Pateos, which estimated that between 2 and 3 per cent of the population were in urgent need of rehousing, there was no comprehensive study into living conditions in the capital until a report by the Lisbon Municipality from 1936. This report estimated that there were 11,174 barracas in the city, with 41,796 residents, accounting for over 6 per cent of the city’s population.18 In 1944, as the dictatorship’s urban intervention developed, a further survey by the Municipality reported a reduction in the numbers of shacks and put their number at around 7,500.19 While these numbers roughly coincide with those reported in the census, there are marked variations in the numbers used by different agencies during the 1950s. A study on housing needs executed by the Technical University of Lisbon from that same year puts the number of barracas at around 10,000, considerably above the census figure.20 If the next available non-­census estimate, the 1958 Cabinet Inquiry into Shantytowns, seems to corroborate the census figures by claiming the existence of only 7,331 shacks with around 30,000 residents (just under 4 per cent of the total population), the numbers used by the government’s own technocrats to complete the national Interim Development Plan for 1965–67, worked on the basis of the existence of 10,918 shack dwellings in Lisbon with 43,470 residents, or 5.5 per cent of the city’s population (see Table 2.2).21 There seems to be no clear reason for these discrepancies. If the Table 2.2  Shack dwellings (barracas) in Lisbon, 1905–70, non-­census estimates Year

Number of shacks

Population in shacks

As % of population, estimated by census mid-­point

Population reference censuses

1905 1936 1944 1956 1964

– 11,796 7,478 7,331 10,918

10,487 41,796 30,743 ‘c. 30,000’ 43,470

2.7 6.4 4.8 3.7 5.5

1900; 1911 1930; 1940 1940; 1950 1950; 1960 1960; 1970

Sources:  Censuses 1900–70; Inquérito aos Páteos de Lisboa, Anno de 1905 (2ª Parte), Lisboa, Imprensa Nacional, 1905; Anais do Município de Lisboa, 1945, Lisboa, Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, 1945; Oliveira Salazar Archive: (IAN-­TT/AOS), files CO/IN-­2/Pst.11; CO/PC-­59/Pt.7 and CO/EC-­5K1.

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41

higher figures were not broadcast widely, neither were they hidden from public view, which rules out overt censorship. The mostly likely reason behind such differences is methodological: the classification of what constitutes a shack, which is often not specified in these studies, or simply the method of data collection. Admissions of methodological shortcomings by the authorities support this explanation: the third National Development Plan of 1968 states that there were ‘omissions on important aspects of the topic [of housing]’ in the preparation of the 1960s census and that these had created difficulties in estimating the real dimension of the problem.22 This recognition, and the addition of a dedicated housing survey in the following census, suggests that the figure presented in 1970 of over 12,000 shacks and other unfit dwellings for 48,755 persons, or 6.4 per cent of the city’s total population, is likely to be a truer reflection of the actual state of affairs.23 If this is taken to be a reasonable assumption, the idea that it was rapidly deteriorating urban conditions dating from the final years of the dictatorship that led to the mobilisation of the urban poor needs to be qualified. If anything, the proportion of the city’s residents living in barracas at the time of the first studies in the 1930s are roughly similar to those of the 1970s, despite a large increase in population size in the city.24 Alongside the visible issue of shantytowns, there were other pressing issues surrounding the urban question, including the problem of overcrowding or, as the 1959 Cabinet report put it, ‘of the promiscuity of houses inhabited by more than one family’. The same report quoted a figure of 66,550 families living in dwellings with more than one family in 1950, a problem which had already been noticed by others in earlier decades.25 While the urban question cannot be considered solely by looking at Lisbon in isolation – there were significant shantytowns in surrounding municipalities which had grown from small hamlets to substantial cities in the space of a few decades – the problem in the capital was by no means new, or objectively more acute by the time of the ­revolution than it had been at the end of the Republican period. Urban squalor and popular politics before the dictatorship While the Inquérito Industrial of 1881 and the hygienist campaigns of the late nineteenth century had revealed the extent of urban immiseration, the political response was underwhelming. The liberal political consensus under constitutional monarchy regarded such issues to be best addressed by removing obstacles to private investment, using tax incentives for developers willing to rent at affordable prices. The preface to the first bill to come before Parliament on the housing question, in

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1883, was careful to underline that ‘to intervene directly’ in the solution of housing needs was ‘not part of the mission of public bodies’; its role was instead to ‘assist private initiative’ in addressing it.26 The 1883 bill proposed to offer companies willing to build housing for rent at under 50$00 a year sale and land tax exemption for the period of 20 years, as well as access to state forests for building materials (at market prices). Despite the modesty of these proposals, the bill was lost in parliamentary committees, without ever reaching a vote, even though it was tabled once more the following year.27 Over a decade later, even as he noted how ‘little or nothing’ had been done on the housing question in Portugal when compared to other countries, Adães Bermudes, a leading Portuguese architect, continued to see the role of the state simply as one of ‘levelling out the difficulties and obstacles’ that stood in the way of private efforts. As a solution, Bermudes appealed to the Queen to sponsor a Philanthropic Society for the Promotion of Affordable Housing, another project that never got off the ground.28 In 1891, Guilherme Santa Rita, a civil servant and later parliamentarian with an interest in social issues, published a study on the housing question which called on the state to guarantee a minimum capital return of 6 per cent to building companies willing to rent houses at affordable prices (which Santa Rita assured would not lead to any actual expense to the public purse, as he expected the rents to provide developers with higher interest payments), as well as access to one-­third of the land formerly held by convents in cities and which were now reverting to the state.29 Once elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1901, Santa Rita repeated these proposals in the form of a bill, which was again lost in the apathy of parliamentary committees.30 The principle of state intervention in the housing question was never entirely absent, but the voices that advocated it were isolated and ignored. In 1898, Teixeira Bastos, journalist, republican activist and member of the Lisbon municipal council, wrote a pamphlet inspired by an international congress on workers’ housing held the year before in Belgium. Across Europe, he noted, governments and municipalities invested in workers’ neighbourhoods with great effect. In Portugal, he argued, where private initiative ‘hindered’ by the state achieved little, ‘it is the responsibility of the government and the municipalities to meet this urgent need’. Teixeira Bastos blamed the failure to intervene on the ‘lack of sincerity’ of politicians who used the housing question, like other social legislation, as ‘a political weapon to weaken the revolutionary movement’ during electoral periods, but quickly forgot it afterwards.31 Teixeira Bastos died before the 1910 Revolution that ended the Monarchy and brought his Republican Party to power, but even then

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43

the new regime seemed unwilling to break with tradition and intervene forcefully in urban issues. An electoral promise for the ‘construction of workers’ neighbourhoods’ was buried deep in the 1912 manifesto of the Republican Party, with no specification of how this was to be achieved, whether through public, cooperative or private initiative. When legislation did reach Parliament in 1914, the question was put once more in terms essentially similar to the 1885 and 1901 proposals, using tax incentives to lure private investment – while the preamble to the bill reviewed state and municipal investment in Britain, Germany, New Zealand and Belgium, it discarded such options in favour of the traditional liberal approach. Even then it generated little excitement: several parliamentarians noted that the rents and repayments predicted would leave many houses beyond the means of most of those in need of affordable housing. After a short debate, the proposal was sent to the committee on labour legislation, from whence it failed to re-­emerge.32 It was not until 1918, during the short-­lived Sidónio Pais dictatorship, that the first bill aimed at promoting the building of workers’ neighbourhoods was enacted. Pais had come to power on the back of a military coup and instituted a personalist dictatorship that borrowed heavily from the intellectual traditions of integralism and social Catholicism, which would later form a key part of the ideology of Salazar’s regime.33 Sidónio’s social policies sought to lure the working class away from radical politics, representing a faustian bargain whereby social insurance, medical provision and housing would be given in return for acquiescence and integration into a quasi-­corporatist structure. In the year of his rule, until his assassination in December 1918, Sidónio Pais worked hard at creating an image of himself as a charitable but strict father to the nation: municipal granaries and soup kitchens were set up, social insurance promised and the management of public hospitals streamlined. All this was accompanied by a recurrent rhetoric contrasting the ‘good worker’, whose virtues comprised hard work and a lack of interest in politics, and the ‘bad worker’, the agitator, even the ‘citizen Lenin’. For the first, Pais promised soup and bread, for the second, gaol.34 It was as part of this strategy that the first law bringing the state into the provision of housing was decreed, on 25 April 1918. The bill was clear as to its intentions, since it considered that poverty of housing ­conditions would lead to: workers and proletarians, instead of forming an attachment to the home, begin to detest it, to consider it a place of suffering which gives birth, not to peace, contentment and happiness, but to feelings of hatred and revolt.35

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In fact, the law was essentially based on the proposals that had been muted over the previous two decades, and while there was the provision that municipalities or even the state could in theory take on the role of developers, its preference was clearly to ‘encourage capital’ by providing the conditions that would provide it with a sufficient return. To this end, tax exemptions were granted, but there was also a state credit line with interest capped at 4 per cent for companies and cooperatives willing to build neighbourhoods along the lines established by the decree. The momentum created by this decree was not lost with the re-­ establishment of the republican regime following the assassination of Sidónio Pais. The Minister for Labour of the new Socialist government, Augusto Dias da Silva, recovered the idea of public housing and recast it in different terms, arguing for the need to create employment for construction workers to meet the ‘needs and rights of those who work and produce’.36 The government also recognised that it was unlikely to galvanise private investment and decided to take the initiative, giving permission for the Ministry of Labour to open a large credit line for four neighbourhoods in Lisbon, which would be built in groups of twenty houses by self-­ managing workers’ committees.37 Construction began at two sites, Arco do Cego and Ajuda, but the projects soon ran into escalating costs and mounting problems. By 1922, without any of the projects concluded, building work was halted. By 1925, after a series of inquiries, it was decided that the state could not afford them and that the existing buildings should be sold privately.38 The failure of the first state interventions in the question of housing can be partially attributed to the political instability of the period, when rapid government turnover and financial constraints made the pursuit of long-­term goals difficult. But the lack of enthusiasm showed by later governments in capitalising on these beginnings is also connected to the little support these initiatives seemed to gather amongst the organised working class, who never provided real pressure for the state’s direct intervention in urban problems. From the time of their initial formation in the late nineteenth century, trade unions and working-­class political organisations had been suspicious of state action, seldom seeing it as a possible agent of positive transformation. Faced by a state consistently impervious to popular demands, reformist, state-­oriented political parties were unable to gather as much support as ‘excluded ideologies’, anarcho-­syndicalism in particular, that argued for the self-­organisation and self-­reliance of the working class.39 In 1901, the author of a history of the then recent appearance of a workers’ movement in Portugal noted that:

The New State and urban citizenship, 1926–74

45

Appeals to the State … are almost never used, [both] because the demonstrations of the working class rarely reach such proportions that they awake the government and drive it to intervention, and normally because our governments pay little attention to the issues of workers, unlike in other countries.40

The idea that the state was responsible for building housing for workers rarely featured as a strategy advocated by working-­ class organisations. Faced with a state with little capacity, and an even smaller will, for direct intervention, popular classes look to themselves to ensure their welfare and security: by the 1920s, mutual aid societies providing credit, medical and funeral insurance in Lisbon boasted a number of members equivalent to 44 per cent of the city’s population.41 These were the models for the solution to the housing problem: the main thesis on housing at the first national Congress of Mutual Societies (1911) called for legislation allowing mutual aid societies and credit unions to invest their funds in affordable housing and a cap of 4 per cent on interest rates for housing cooperatives.42 Although at the Congress itself an amendment was approved that called on the state and on municipalities to contract loans with a view to building affordable housing, the statist solution rarely figured in public debates on the housing question, especially on the part of workers’ organisations.43 When housing surfaced as a political issue, it tended to do so as subsidiary to the labour question, in terms of the connection between wages and rents. Rents were always a central part of the debate over wages, and working-­class organisations and radical parties also accused landlords of driving rents up and of failing to maintain properties in the terms the law obliged them to. This, rather than state-­built housing, were the issues that seemed to strike a chord and animate the population. The widespread practice of six-­month tenancies, which had to be renewed in May and November, cyclically raised tensions between landlords and tenants. According to Teixeira Bastos, as these dates approached, a clamour over housing conditions and rents ‘rose from all the recesses of the city, finding an echo in the Municipal Council’ and even occasionally in Parliament.44 In 1912, there were scuffles as a crowd attending a rally to protest rising rents attacked a delegation of landlords on their way to petition parliament against property tax hikes. A few months later, in 1913, the Illustração Portugueza reported that a tenants’ rally on rents had seen calls for ‘massive passive resistance’ to rent increases, and even for ‘active and revolutionary resistance’ to landlords who attempted to enact them, with only a few more moderate

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Lisbon rising

voices arguing for ‘an appeal to an immediate and forceful intervention by the government’ – but by outlawing rent rises.45 Even when Augusto Dias da Silva carried through Sidónio Pais’ legislation and the first workers neighbourhoods were begun in 1919, they were regarded with suspicion. In 1920 the Socialist newspaper O Combate, directed by Dias da Silva himself, accused workers’ organisations of refusing to participate in the ‘worker’s committees’ that were expected to manage the building and running of the Arco do Cego neighbourhood.46 The political strategies and ideologies of working-­ class organisations during the last years of the First Republic, between the end of the Sidónio dictatorship in 1918 and the military coup of 1926, have been the subject of very little study. As a consequence, it is difficult to gauge the level of popular support for state-­provided housing. However, there are also no signs of sustained pressure by any organised groups on the question of workers’ neighbourhoods. Fátima Patriarca’s detailed analysis of the politics of the ‘social question’ during the military dictatorship that preceded the establishment of the Salazar regime reveals a leadership who continued to reject statist solutions to social issues.47 But neither were they capable of providing an alternative: the cooperative movement was never able to build more than a few dozen workers’ houses in one or two sites with no impact on the living conditions of the urban population. The military coup of 1926 put an end to the rapid turnover of weak governments that had characterised the Republican period without bringing a substantially new political direction. New legislation was enacted in 1928, but the preamble to the decree continued to argue that state provision was not a feasible way to address the housing question in Portugal.48 From the 1880s to the 1920s, despite a period of rapid urbanisation and deterioration of urban conditions, the housing question remained an important yet essentially ‘apolitical’ issue. Several state-­sponsored initiatives faltered on the indifference of liberal laissez-­faire ideology and the suspicion of the organised working class, who saw in the self-­organisation of the cooperative movement and better wages the solutions to the problem. It was not until Salazar, appointed as plenipotentiary ‘dictator of finance’ in 1928 by the military, was able to consolidate his position as head of the government that a significant policy shift in the field of housing arrived. It was this shift that would lay the foundations for a change in the relations and meanings of urban citizenship that would later underpin the emergence of the urban movement.

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Building social rights: welfare and housing under the New State In 1931, Salazar forwarded a copy of a pamphlet he had received to Duarte Pacheco, his Minister for Public Works, recommending it for some of its ‘worthy reminders’. The pamphlet, which highlighted the social evils that stem from deficient housing, also stated: The Government can no longer delay the solution of so great a problem and, if it is its responsibility to defend citizens from the bombs of society’s enemies, it is equally bound to defend them from the microbes from ­unhygienic housing, since both have deadly effects.49

The issue of housing, and the possibility of state intervention to address it, was on the table once more at the highest levels of government. A similar concern was expressed to Salazar in a personal letter from the secretary of the Minister for the Colonies, who warned that the housing problem was so grave that it could not wait for ‘a slow and protracted natural solution’ through private initiative. If the state were to address the problem, the correspondent added, it would also be an ‘attack on certain Bolshevik fervours of the working classes’, who would be transformed into small proprietors.50 Soon the regime would legislate on the issue, marking a new stage in the state’s intervention on urban issues. The announcement of the dictatorship’s flagship housing scheme was made in the same year (1933) as the new constitution, proclaiming the New State (‘Estado Novo’) was implemented. The ‘Affordable Houses’ programme (Programa das Casas Económicas) empowered the central state and municipalities to invest directly in the building of neighbourhoods of single-­family homes.51 The neighbourhoods of Arco do Cego and Ajuda, which had remained unfinished and in a legal limbo since 1919, were transferred to this scheme and finally inaugurated in the mid-­1930s with great pomp in the presence of the regime’s leading figures.52 By 1943, a government propaganda brochure boasted that five neighbourhoods with 1,447 ‘Affordable Homes’ had already been built in Lisbon, calling this ‘one of the most beautiful’ achievements of the New State, testament to its ‘humane sentiment’.53 While the ‘Affordable Houses’ scheme focused on providing access to housing to the lower middle classes, other programmes followed. The dictatorship announced a large-­scale urban renewal programme in preparation for the 1940 Double Centenary Exhibition, which was to be the embodiment of its ideological ambition to recast national identity and ambition.54 Part of this involved removing the major shanty neighbourhoods in the city, Minhocas and Bélgica, as well as the many families who had

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made homes in caves in the Monsanto hills, which would now be turned into a municipal park. To re-­house them a new scheme was announced in 1938 that would finance the building of temporary, pre-­fabricated units as a stepping-­stone to permanent settlement in future ‘Affordable Houses’.55 By 1944, two such neighbourhoods had been built, Quinta da Calçada and Bairro da Boavista, housing 4,497 people, and the larger shanties demolished.56 Overall, the best estimates suggest that between 1933 and 1950, across its several different schemes, the state was responsible for building around 10,000 new dwellings in Lisbon. Another 6,000 went up in other cities.57 While these initiatives were clearly short of solving existing problems, there can be no doubt that it was a visible and significant departure from the state’s previous stance on urban issues. The reasons for this shift in policy, and the break with the tradition of a largely non-­interventionist state can be found in the New State’s ideological make-­up. On coming to power, Salazar embarked on a wholesale transformation of the very nature of the state in Portugal, drafting a new constitution that centralised power in the executive, seeking to prevent a return to the political instability of the republican era by doing away with parliamentarism. A new ‘organic democracy’, built along ‘natural’ associations organised by economic sector – corporations – would subsume political conflict under the authority of the New State. Salazar’s vision drew on a number of intellectual traditions: corporatism, social Catholicism and the examples of fascist Italy and Germany.58 This project, with its heavy-­handed use of selected aspects of Portuguese history – the conquest of the Moorish south and national foundation in the middle ages, the voyages of the discoveries and the imperial heyday – its emphasis of a society of orders and the resurrection of the idea of the craft guild, can at first sight be regarded as an essentially conservative, backward-­looking project. But this obsession with the past hid an essentially modern project: the use of state power to transform people and to create a ‘new man’. As Fernando Rosas has pointed out, Salazar’s ‘new man’ may look very much like an ‘old man’ – god-­fearing, respectful of traditional values, imbued with the spirit of a national destiny – but he is certainly also a totalitarian-­inspired project of transformation, to be created by the institutions of the New State so that he in turn could be the guarantor of its continuity.59 An early interview of Salazar’s, carefully staged and reported by António Ferro, soon to become the regime’s chef propagandist, reveals the extent of Salazar’s ambition. In Ferro’s word’s this was nothing less than the ‘patient’ transformation of the national mentality, restraining ‘the passions of man’ and ‘curing his fever’. For Salazar, the exercise of political power was not an end in itself

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or a tool of economic progress, but rather an instrument for moral discipline, for the creation of a new man, released from the ‘acquired vices … of education, of mentalities’ and guided by Christian morals. Only in ‘spiritual life’ would the country find ‘progress worthy of that name’.60 For Salazar, the successive liberal regimes of the previous century had, in the dereliction of laissez-­faire, presided over a serious moral degeneration and consequent social crisis that only the authority of a strong state could combat. While the communist alternative was denounced for the obliteration of individual liberties and ‘natural hierarchies’ through the ‘deification’ of the state, the ‘strong state, restrained by morality’ would be instrumental in realising Portugal’s ‘historic mission’. To do this, the state needed to be strong, ‘so strong that it need not to be violent’.61 The foundations of its programme for national regeneration lay in the ‘natural associations’ that for corporatist doctrine constituted the ‘real … political society’, the most fundamental of which was the family, ‘irreducible social cell’ of the nation. Other ‘natural’ or ‘organic’ forms of association, such as the local community, the municipality and the trade guild evolve from this source, but their qualities depend directly on the morality, consistency and cohesion of the family, the ‘purest source of the moral values of production’.62 Salazar conceived the role of the state as two-­fold: on a general level, the corporative state should manage the ‘conciliation’ and organisation of the collective and individual interests in the higher interest of the nation. But on a practical level, the contemporary degeneration of material and moral life necessitated a ‘moderate interventionism’, an ‘educational function’, so that the eyes of those ‘who keep them stubbornly closed’ may be opened to a ‘different way of life, another idea of civilisation.’63 As pivotal social unit, the family would therefore be at the centre of the dictatorship’s intervention, and this not only justified, but also necessitated addressing the housing question. Alongside the introduction of a ‘family wage’, that would prevent female work outside the home, which had ‘practically unravelled the family’, the ‘certainty of a clean and bright home, water, [and] hygiene’ were seen as essential for the ‘education of the worker’ and his defence from ‘false apostles’.64 This ideological framework had implications for the kind of housing policies that the New State promoted in its early stages. As the historian Luís Vicente Baptista noted, the Estado Novo’s intervention was animated by a ‘quasi-­missionary spirit’ intent on protecting what it called the Christian concept of the family from the twin threats of ‘urban anomie’ and modernity itself.65 The ‘independent’, owner-­ occupied home would be the material foundation of the family.66 Independence meant a rejection of collective housing blocs, which Salazar equated

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Figure 2.1  An ‘affordable houses’ neighbourhood, Bairro Encarnação, c. 1946

with Fourier’s utopian communities, the phalanstères of ‘semi-­nomadic’ populations of modern civilisation.67 Instead, the new home of the Estado Novo would be a single-­ family, detached or semi-­ detached house in the garden-­city model, provided with small plots which would keep families connected to the virtues of the soil, while its design was based on a ‘Portuguese style’, referencing heavily from real or invented vernacular styles from various rural areas (see Figure 2.1).68 Finally, independence and the reinforcement of the family also meant not just owner-­occupation, but the tying of the property not just to a (male) household head, but to the family as a unit. ‘Proper’ families of modest but stable incomes with good character references would be preferred in the allocation of homes which would become the property of the tenants after 20 years of rent payments. Yet property rights were conditional on the preservation of the family unit: separation (divorce was illegal) could mean the forfeiture of the home, and the property could only be sold with permission from the authorities.69 This was a recasting of the role of the state in a paternalistic and interventionist mould. The New State’s propaganda machine took pains to contrast its proactive welfarist stance with that of the regimes that preceded it. A brochure on affordable housing boasted that ‘this social

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mission of the State … was unknown in previous democratic and liberal constitutions’ which defined a limited role for the state. In the liberal era, it claimed, the interests of the workers and employers were ‘left to their own devices, which lead to struggles and the necessary domination of the weak by the strong.’70 The 1933 New State constitution, in contrast, was said to represent a ‘new notion of State’, which sees in the ‘protection of the labouring classes … one of its fundamental duties’.71 In effect, a language of rights had begun to permeate the dictatorship’s legitimating discourse, not least from Salazar’s himself, who argued the state’s role must include guaranteeing ‘the rights and just moral and material interests of the working classes’.72 Both in rhetoric and in practice, these were substantially new terms of citizenship. For understandable reasons, much of the post-­transition historiography of Portugal has emphasised the repressive and restricted nature of the dictatorship’s social efforts, although more recent studies have highlighted the relative success of these measures in undermining the defences of the resolutely anti-­state working-­class organisations by creating a gulf between them and a constituency that was often tempted by the comparative largesse of the New State.73 Recognising that the New State was the first Portuguese regime that was able to begin to address the social question in a concerted fashion is not to make its apology, particularly when its achievements were extremely limited in comparison to what was feasible (especially in later years as we shall see below), but also in relation to the heavy legacies the institutions it created have left on contemporary Portuguese society.74 While the ‘Affordable Houses’ and other schemes mark the beginnings of a new direction, it is important to note how limited in scope such interventions proved to be, at least in the first decades of the regime. After the building spree of the 1930s and early 1940s, the pace of construction dropped. This was in part a result of financial constraints: the rising cost of building materials during the war and Salazar’s obsession with fiscal discipline prevented a mass expansion of existing programmes. But there was also a sense in which these programmes were not intended to create a wholesale resolution of the housing problem. Despite the heavy rhetoric of the regime’s propaganda machine over the first neighbourhoods of ‘Affordable Houses’ – which historian Manuel de Lucena described as a ‘festive racket’ – the establishment of a welfare regime where the state was recognised as the lead provider was still far off.75 Like other aspects of the New State’s social policy, the housing schemes of the 1930s and 1940s were supposed to be first and foremost ‘exemplary’. According to Salazar, the measure of social progress should be not the expansion of the role of the state, ‘crowding out’ private initiative, but the extent to

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which its ‘pedagogical function’ had succeeded in stimulating others to fulfil their role in the corporative society.76 The government, in housing as in other forms of welfare, would create ‘model institutions’, providing the template for corporations, cooperatives, employers and charitable organisations to follow its lead in addressing the social question.77 Part of the aim of building social housing was to prove to private investors that investment in the ‘affordable houses’ scheme could provide a steady and reliable return on capital, which it did, according to a 1942 report.78 As such, despite a shift towards state intervention in the 1930s and 1940s, there were limits to the discourse and practice of social rights in the first decades of the New State, which was still far from fully conceiving housing and other welfare goods as essential duties owed by the state to its citizens. A 1945 government pamphlet on welfare reminded its readers: ‘social assistance should be primarily grounded in the duty of all (…) rather than on the rights of the poor’; similarly, a 1935 primer on the ‘Citizen under the New State’ emphasised duties of hard work, charity and moral conduct over any notion of rights.79 From these beginnings, however, important repercussions followed. The initial toehold of state intervention created a precedent, a language and a policy space through which the idea of public housing could be discussed. In addition, it contributed to the creation of a class of technocrats increasingly invested in state-­led solutions to social problems who extended the state’s housing programmes to levels unthinkable in the 1930s. This change went hand in hand with a gradual transformation of the ideas and practices of government which saw Salazar’s conservative and cautious policies being replaced by a more active developmentalist outlook, which would be a defining characteristic of his successor’s attempt to save the regime in its final years. Experts, reformers and the evolution of the dictatorship’s urban policy Critical in this transition from a ‘supplementary’ or ‘pedagogical’ ­intervention in the urban question were calls for a more wholesale involvement of the state in the construction of social housing on a mass scale by voices inside the regime, and particularly from leading administrators and intellectuals close to the regime who were increasingly doubtful of the ability of private philanthropy or corporate responsibility to step in and for the state to maintain a purely coordinating role. In housing, as in other fields of social provision, a growing number of ‘loyal critics’ allow us to chart the New State’s gradual shift to more statist models. Once the regime had publicly admitted the extent and

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urgency of the housing problem, campaigners and social reformers could engage with the problem without being accused of undermining the regime. As early as the 1930s, there were calls from within the regime for more (and more direct) investment in the resolution of the housing question. Following the first thorough inquiry into living conditions in Lisbon’s shantytowns in 1936, the President of the Lisbon Municipality wrote a briefing note to Salazar, advising that only ‘a scant hundred’ or so of the many thousands living in the shanties would be able to apply to the ‘Affordable Houses’ scheme on account of not meeting the 21–40 age requirement, not being accepted for the required life insurance, or simply for not being able to pay the minimum 85$00 rent, more than twice the average rent for a barraca. After laying out all his doubts, Rodrigues de Sousa was careful to add: ‘it is not a question of belittling the value of the measures taken so far (…) it is only a question of stating a fact with seriousness and loyalty’. Rodrigues de Sousa pondered two possible solutions: making the return on investment in affordable housing more attractive to private capital, or that the Municipal Council and the state should take direct responsibility for their financing, even if only as a temporary and exemplary measure.80 Around the same time the tireless Manuel Vicente Moreira, physician, philanthropist and later municipal councillor, wrote a series of pamphlets and newspaper articles exposing the poor housing conditions of the population of Lisbon and calling for further state intervention.81 Júlio Martins, a municipal councillor, publicly argued that the state needed to do more to solve housing problem ‘which today is common to the poor and middle classes, raising moral, social and sanitary issues so alarming that neither the state nor the Municipality can ignore’.82 Technical experts, particularly architects and urban planners were also exerting pressure for not just more, but substantially different, forms of social housing provision. Heavily influenced by Corbusier’s Athens Charter, which was translated into Portuguese in 1944, a new generation of Portuguese architects embraced modernism and used its ideas to reject both the scale and traditionalism of the regime’s early housing interventions.83 Many of the theses presented at the First National Congress of Architects in 1948 openly criticised the existing model as ‘not viable for the mass of the population’, both for economic reasons, and because its policy of building detached, single-­family homes fostered an ‘egoistic spirit’ divorced from ‘Human Fraternity’.84 Yet, at the same time, calls for a new direction were framed within the regime’s ideology, as one contributor to the 1948 Congress argued:

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The State must take advantage of modern techniques, building a new type of home, something that is entirely compatible with Corporative Organisation. [Their basic principle] will not be profit, but rather competition to profit. Private initiative should be encouraged to build, but within boundaries previously established by the Government, in order to prevent speculation.85

Far from being cast out, these arguments were echoed by influential figures inside the regime. As the wartime constraints eased, the Lisbon Municipal Council began working on a large-­scale urbanisation project in the outskirts of the city. The municipality presented and explained its plans in the language of modernism: multi-­storey buildings were the ‘most objective’ approach, based on the ‘rational study’ of domestic habits free from ‘prejudices’ and ‘secular traditions’.86 With what is today the neighbourhood of Alvalade, the regime took its first steps towards massification of construction, the greater centralisation and professionalisation of urban planning, and housing, and the setting of increasingly ambitious targets for public provision.87 While many continued to raise suspicions of the dangers of collective living – amongst other reasons, on account of the opportunities stairwells afforded teenagers for ‘undesirable liaisons’88 – in just over a decade, the nature of official and technical debates on housing had changed considerably. By the late 1940s administrators in the government were arguing for the adoption of designs that had been denounced by Salazar in the 1930s as no better than Fourier’s phalanstères. In a 1949 volume on the ‘Housing Problem: Causes and Solutions to be Adopted’ the director for urban improvement in the Ministry for Public Works defended going much further than Alvalade’s modest 4 and 5 storey buildings, arguing that the only economically viable solution was the construction of 8 to 12 storey-­high blocs, equipped with communal canteens – ‘more economical than individual kitchens’ – childcare facilities and collective laundries. Saraiva e Sousa claim that his views were the result of participation in ‘congresses and visits to other countries’ also points to another important factor: the growing and increasingly professionalised bureaucracy of the Estado Novo was, by this stage, establishing new connections that brought it into contact with international policy circles which were actively discussing unprecedented levels of state investment and control to meet the housing shortage in countries affected by the Second World War.89 These ideas and practices gradually gained traction, and from the 1950s begin to appear not only in interventions made by experts on a personal capacity, but as statements of official policy, indicating a

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shift in the dictatorship’s approach towards not only a more consequential intervention in the housing question, but also towards presenting housing as a universal citizenship entitlement, as opposed to an instrument of moral and social rehabilitation. In 1958, the report of a commission charged with reporting on the issue of shantytowns to the Cabinet, while still arguing that private investment was key to the solution of the problem, also noted that beyond the traditional mechanisms of guaranteeing lines of credit, providing tax exemptions and land, the state could also ‘where necessary, provide a [financial] contribution to construction’. The resolution of the ‘shantytown’ problem would be financed by a tax on high-­value property.90 These proposals represented a clear break with the New State’s political rhetoric and tradition, something which did escape the authors of the report, who felt moved to justify it by arguing it was a system that had already been implemented in ‘other capital cities’.91 While this particular proposal was not enacted, from the mid-­1950s, experts and bureaucrats within the regime were increasingly arguing for a modernisation of responses to the housing question and, concurrently, for a growing role for the direct state investment and responsibility in its solution.92 In Lisbon, this was mirrored by the creation of a ‘Technical Office for Housing’ (Gabinete Técnico da Habitação – GTH), with special powers to lead the process of urbanisation of two large areas in the east of Lisbon, Chelas in the Freguesia of Marvila and Olivais, in Santa Maria dos Olivais. The aim was to build 3,000 new dwellings per year, in high-­rise blocks, permanently leaving behind the ideal of single-­ family, semi-­detached housing. Following Charter of Athens precepts, the new neighbourhoods were to combine social and private housing concentrated in tower blocs surrounded by parkland, aiming to achieve a degree of social miscegenation (see Figure 2.2).93 By the late 1960s, and during the final years of the regime, this tendency was further accentuated as part of a broader shift and new emphasis in the social policies of the dictatorship, a change that was closely connected to the multiple challenges facing the regime in its final years. The challenge of reform: housing and the ‘Social State’ As Salazar aged, the question of succession and the preservation of the regime became an increasing concern in the government’s highest circles. In 1968 the dictator was incapacitated by a stroke, and would die two years later. The New State was Salazar’s creation and its legitimacy was bound up with his image, placing a heavy burden on the shoulders of his

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Figure 2.2  The massification of social housing: Zone G in Chelas, 1968

successor, Marcello Caetano. Appointed in 1968, Caetano was no newcomer: he had been one of the regime’s early ideologues, long regarded as Salazar’s dauphin, and was closely involved in the drafting of the 1933 constitution and much of the regime’s corporatist doctrine. Whilst his status had been diminished by his ambiguous stance over the repression of the university students’ demonstrations of 1962 and known sympathies for the reformist and technocratic tendencies within the regime, he was still the only figure who could bridge the gap between old hands and new blood in the government.94 Yet the challenges faced by the new leadership were far from being ones of personal legitimacy: the regime itself was beset by a number of growing and worrying problems that called for a change of tack. By the time of Caetano’s ascension, Portugal was involved in an escalating and unpopular war in its African colonies, its economy showed growing signs of strain, and pressures for both political and economic liberalisation were increasing, both internally and externally.95 The dominant political rhetoric of the New State, its glorification of rurality, Catholicism and material modesty, emphasising stability even at the cost of riches, had been cast in reaction to the long-­forgotten turmoil of the republican twenties, and jarred with a country that had undergone deep changes during its ‘golden period’ of economic growth.

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Looking to find common ground between the regime’s hard-­line and liberalising camps, Marcello Caetano promised a ‘renewal in continuity’ in a series of televised addresses to the nation. This heralded what has been dubbed ‘Marcellist Spring’ during which press censorship was relaxed, unions were allowed to elect their representatives more freely, and, in an effort to renew the regime, the lists of the single party were overhauled to admit a generation of young technocrats and modernisers who would become known as the ‘liberal wing’.96 This renewal would also transform the way in which the regime sought to secure the continued acquiescence of the population. In effect, Marcello Caetano sought to redraw the Portuguese social contract, with important consequences for the dynamics of citizenship during the later years of the regime and the transition to democracy. Caetano sought to rebrand the New State as the Social State (‘Estado Social’), giving public welfare provision a central role in the legitimising discourse of the dictatorship. Rejecting the idea of a small, regulatory state, Caetano argued that war and economic crisis had forced states to ‘boldly’ intervene to address the needs of growing populations which could no longer be met by unplanned private charity. At the same time, Caetano warned of a ‘great crisis’ in the western world, undermining the fabric of society through the weakening of the authority of the family, education and moral values. The state, he asserted, could not witness this ‘quietly and passively’, it must protect the collective good threatened by excessive individualism.97 This was to be done through a programme of welfare expansion that would also serve to legitimise the regime itself, as Caetano himself admitted. Stating that calls for democratisation were misguided, he maintained: what is asked of leaders is not more freedom – rather prices that match salaries, decent houses, accessible education, efficient social insurance, good medical assistance and guaranteed pensions in old age and incapacity. What good is it to ensure in the Constitution civic rights if citizens do not have the economic and moral conditions of exercising them? (…) The State can no longer distance itself from the function of ensuring the services that allow all citizens access to the fundamental commodities and guarantees of civilisation.98

Housing was, naturally, a central aspect of this programme. The 1968 Five-­year Development Plan (Plano de Fomento) was candid in regard to the country’s housing needs and what had been achieved before. For the first time there was a section devoted exclusively to housing in a full five-­year plan, where it was recognised that previous schemes had failed to meet the expected results, and that the objectives of the

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­ revious plan would not be met.99 It set out an ambitious programme of p administrative restructuring of the government departments responsible for housing, and the construction, by public and semi-­public entities, of around 50,000 new houses by 1973.100 While the plan had been in preparation before the end of Salazar’s rule, it was published in the context of an unprecedented period of openness on the part of the regime. It was not just that government services were being reformed – Caetano allowed a degree of openness in debates on social problems that would have been unthinkable under his predecessor. Crucially, this was true both within restricted technical and specialist circles, and in the public arena. It was hoped that an emphasis on social reform would stem calls for political reform, or at least allow the government to control the terms and direction of the latter. Emboldened by Marcello Caetano’s public commitments to reform, a new generation of technocrats and government officials saw an opportunity to bring new techniques and practices to bear on Portugal’s social problems. These men and women were themselves products of the New State, which had created a network of higher education centres with close ties to policy and technical agencies. By the 1950s, a new bureaucracy was emerging endowed with a degree of autonomy and technical capacity and service ethos hitherto unknown in Portugal. However, it was also this class of professionals that was most in tune with debates and practices outside the country, which revealed not only a different way of addressing social issues, but also served to highlight the connection between them and the political situation. In the field of housing, the reforms of the 1960s were spearheaded by a new generation of architects, urban planners and sociologists who looked to promote the expansion of the regime’s commitments in terms of welfare delivery, developed experimental (and in some cases radical) methodologies, and perhaps most importantly, linked housing to a language of rights that would soon become dominant. While some of these men and women were already active in more or less critical or oppositional organisations, many others simply used their position within the administration to attempt to build new programmes and establish new practices which had the unintended consequence of reinforcing languages of rights and raise expectations that would ultimately be dashed. The 1969 Housing Congress is a good example of this process. The congress was organised by the Ministry of Public Works with a double purpose. While ostensibly a meeting of experts aiming at discussing new tendencies and programmes in addressing the housing question, it was also a means of signalling that Caetano’s Social State was serious

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about addressing the country’s most pressing social problems. It was no coincidence that this public event was held shortly before the first ‘elections’ without Salazar, which Caetano sought to portray as a more open process. The discussion paper produced for the conference, taking its cue from the admissions of the 1968 five-­year plan, noted the failures of housing policy in previous decades, and asserted that only the state could deliver affordable housing. This was not posed simply as a matter of expediency in the face of temporary shortcomings of private developers, as the New State’s intervention had pretended. Instead, the team who prepared the paper saw the role of the state in this field as an obligation: The responsibility of the State in the satisfaction of fundamental rights (…) covers equally health, education, the supply of jobs, and finally the creation of the living environment, of which housing is a key component.101

Dozens of participants and speakers reiterated the right to housing, and the primary role of government in addressing it. This understanding was enshrined in the first conclusion of the conference’s final report, which read: ‘each family unit needs a home. From this comes the concept of the right to housing which, being a right, has to be assured to all by the collectivity, under the responsibility of the State’.102 Other papers proposed experimenting with housing cooperatives bankrolled by public funds, involving residents’ committees in the building process.103 Such participatory practices were inspired by the ideal of ‘community development’, which was widely discussed in international organisations, employed in developing countries and transmitted to Portugal by civil servants whose work brought them into contact with international organisations and fact-­finding missions across the world.104 The 1969 Congress shows how Caetano’s strategy was seized upon by reformists within the state’s bureaucracy, who explicitly applied the language of rights to housing. Once such commitments were made in public, they could become a legitimate topic of discussion. In the hitherto pliant National Assembly, the new ‘liberal wing’ of the single party also highlighted the question of housing in terms of citizen rights and state duties: in a 1972 debate, deputy Raquel Ribeiro noted that ‘a right to housing … under the responsibility of the state’ had been ‘officially recognised’ and that, while ‘respecting individual freedoms’, the nation should ensure that the poor had their ‘rights of Portuguese citizenship guaranteed’.105 Her words were echoed by another member of the ‘liberal wing’, Pinto Machado, who argued the right to housing was ‘absolute’, and therefore had to be positively addressed by the state, and could not be left to the market.106

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These discussions and commitments were seized upon in broader circles,  aided by the easing, but by no means the removal, of press censorship, which accompanied Caetano’s attempts at reform. ­ Encouraged by the discussions held at governmental level, newspapers and magazines began reporting and commenting on the poverty of urban conditions in Portugal’s cities: in January 1971, the weekly magazine Vida Mundial published a thirteen-­page reportage on the problem of shanty neighbourhoods in the Lisbon region, calling it a ‘scandal’ which could not be ignored, and many other newspapers began regularly reporting on the housing problem.107 The authorities reacted by addressing the media, rather than censoring items that drew attention to the problem, as had been the case earlier in earlier times: high-­ranking officials, such as the President of the Lisbon City Council, Santos e Castro, recognised the ‘movement of interest in both the small and great problems’ of the city, and promised to work towards the eradication of shantytowns in the city in press interviews.108 The new impetus to the public housing sector in the later years of the regime did have material effects, and new build rates overshadowed those of the previous decades. The variety of schemes in place, and the number of state and para-­state institutions involved in building social housing makes it difficult to estimate the number of units built, but the best approximations suggest that nationally, the state’s contribution to overall numbers of new building went from 1.9 per cent in 1971 to 5.7 in 1973.109 But in Lisbon, by 1970, social housing accounted for 18.1 per cent of housing stock, up from 11.2 in 1960 – although this figure includes state-­subsidised schemes that were only affordable to the middle classes.110 Yet, these efforts failed to significantly address a problem whose magnitude required resources the regime was unwilling (or unable, given the effort being made to continue the wars in the African colonies) to commit. Access to land was a perennial problem: in Lisbon municipal land was scarce, and many empty lots had been used by migrants to build illegal settlements, whose residents needed to be re-­housed before any new building could start.111 Despite new legislation, expropriation still required a long and complex process, as well as expensive compensation for landowners, a class the regime was unwilling to antagonise. Functionaries in the new state agency for housing complained that a lack of organisation and structures of communication with other government departments seriously hampered their work.112 In addition, rising construction costs brought about by the growing inflation of the early 1970s also meant that increasing proportions of houses built for low-­income families had to be sold or let privately to guarantee planned returns on investment.113 At the same

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time, private construction, which accounted for 90 per cent of the sector across the country, was not complementing the efforts of the state, as its developments were targeted at the middle and upper-­middle classes and far beyond the pockets of the city’s poor: in 1970, the average rent for new flats in Lisbon represented from 73 to 116 per cent of an average ­industrial worker’s salary.114 Critics were soon using such shortcomings to attack the regime. The authorities’ open discussion of the scale of the problems and the introduction of a language of rights had provided a weapon to oppositionists. Articles in the magazine A Habitação, published by the Lisbon Tenants’ Union – an organisation staffed by critics of the regime and operating on the limits of its tolerance – used quotes from the 1969 Congress to highlight the limitations of the regime’s interventions: The right to housing (…) was recognised by the Congress on Housing Policy promoted by the Ministry for Public Works. But were these just empty words, carelessly spoken, a kind of literary poetry? It is clear that housing has not ceased to be regarded as a commodity, without any social considerations.115

Groups opposing the dictatorship, who had become increasingly organised and active since Caetano’s coming to power, explicitly linked the regime’s record on housing to the need for democratisation. At the third Congress of the Democratic Opposition, during the 1973 election campaign, the right to housing was used to leverage demands for civic and political freedoms. An anonymous group of architecture students contributed a paper which denounced the rhetoric of rights employed by the dictatorship as a ‘mystification, since the right to housing cannot be acknowledged in isolation of all rights that guarantee the full development of each person within the collectivity’.116 Following similar lines, the architect and oppositionist Keil do Amaral explained the reasons for the regime’s failure: I believe that our rulers for the past 50 years would have liked to have gone beyond what they managed in terms of social housing (…) But a thorough analysis of the situation (…) has convinced me they were not impeded by technical, economic or administrative shortcomings (…) but by conditions inherent to the very political system; its dictatorial and centralising tendencies; [and] the habit of overvaluing its achievements through propaganda.117

By the late 1960s and early 1970s, then, the idea of the provision of housing by the state as a social right had gained wide acceptance amongst governmental and technical circles, and was invoked by

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­ pposition groups in their criticism of the regime. Housing had, in short, o been politicised – but had these ideas had any impact on the people who experienced the poverty of living conditions first hand? Everyday citizenship: living with the state in Lisbon, 1926–74 To explore how changes at the elite level could have transformed values and opinions at the street level, and to understand what happened in 1974 we must look to the urban poor: how did popular political beliefs change from the rejection of state intervention of the 1910s and 1920s to the formation of a social movement explicitly directed at the state for social rights? This is not an easy task: the people living in Lisbon’s poorest neighbourhoods left little record of their lives, particularly in a country where tight censorship and pervasive surveillance discouraged the voicing of political opinion. Most of the traces of their lives and opinions appear to us reflected through the prism of official documents of the regime that sought to control, educate and ‘improve’ them. Such sources are by their very nature incomplete and one-­sided, to be approached with care, but they also offer us glimpses of how over time the urban poor of Lisbon constructed new relationships with public authorities. It is critical to explore how people interacted with the ‘built environment’ created through urban policy and how that contributed to shape political attitudes and community identities. This built environment was not solely the houses and neighbourhoods erected by the dictatorship, but also the entanglement of rules, regulations, practices and state agents that were part of the experience of being (or seeking to be) in receipt of housing or other forms of urban welfare.118 In the context of a highly controlled public space (as well as high levels of illiteracy) this was the primary means through which the urban poor came into contact with the material consequences of debates over rights and citizenship. Two issues in particular stand out. Firstly, the increasing role of public authorities in managing the everyday lives of the urban population seems to have been the matrix upon which new urban and neighbourhood identities were built, particularly in the areas of expansion of the city from the 1940s, which were home to the larger shanties and poorer areas, and which would later spearhead the urban movement. Secondly, the expectations generated by the Estado Novo’s policies and pronouncements contrasted with the piecemeal and segmented way in which its programmes were implemented, and there was a growing gap between promises and delivery. The combination of the material experience of the dictatorship’s intervention in the urban community, full of

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material and human implications, with the increasing use of language and practice of rights (or at least state duties) on the part of both the dictatorship’s own officials and the opposition, provided what Frank Trentmann has termed the ‘political synapses’, that is ‘political traditions and languages through which actors were able to connect material experiences to a sense of belonging, interest and entitlement’, in this case an understanding of housing as a right of citizenship, and consequently as a motive for state-­oriented political mobilisation.119 The Estado Novo’s use of housing as a tool for the re-­education of a ‘demoralised’ population and the construction of a new citizen resulted in a level of intervention and control of the lives of the urban poor unprecedented in modern Portuguese history. While the state’s growing capacity for discipline and control was not restricted to these areas, nowhere was this truer than in the neighbourhoods built to rehouse some of the families from Lisbon’s shantytowns.120 A rich and unique collection of sources provides one of the few insights into the everyday lives of the urban poor in twentieth-­century Portugal and their interaction with the agencies of the state. The records of the Commission for Social Assistance in Municipal Neighbourhoods (1938–74) show how policies devised at the heart of the dictatorship were translated onto the streets of Lisbon and how they were experienced by the people they targeted. The Commission comprised representatives of the Lisbon City Council and of two institutions linked to the regime that provided social assistance in the neighbourhoods. Its was responsible for the neighbourhoods of Quinta da Calçada (built in 1938), Boavista (1938), Furnas (1946) and Padre Cruz (1960), and liaised with the administration of additional municipal brick-­built neighbourhoods constructed under the ‘Houses for Poor Families’ scheme, which included Quinta do Jacinto (1946), and several others built between the 1940s and 1960s (see Figure 2.3).121 Both the pre-­fabricated and the ‘Housing for Poor Families’ estates were designed as temporary staging posts where the poor would learn habits that would ‘integrate them into the Estado Novo’ and turn them into ‘loyal collaborators’.122 If residents proved hard working, respectable and ‘dutiful … in carrying out the instructions of the administration’, they could earn a promotion to better categories of social housing. Those starting out in the oldest (and worst built) neighbourhoods would be assessed for ‘promotion’ in various steps of increasingly well-­provided estates.123 A social worker in one of the neighbourhoods explained the logic behind this: despite the lack of quality of the pre-­fabs, they were the buildings ‘best adapted to the conditions of its inhabitants’ who, because they were ‘used to living in filthy shacks, [and] should not live

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Figure 2.3  A pre-­fabricated council neighbourhood, Bairro Padre Cruz, c. 1965

a house of bricks and mortar’; the pre-­fabs would be, the social worker emphasised, ‘a means of re-­education and re-­adaptation’.124 Eventually, or in a few cases straight away, this learning process would lead virtuous families to the middle-­class ‘Affordable Homes’, which, unlike the revocable tenancies of other schemes, would become the property of residents after twenty years of payments. To manage the welfare of the new neighbourhoods, the city council invited the Portuguese Legion, a militia organisation inspired by those linked to the German and Italian fascist parties, who in turn enlisted the help of the Women’s Union for National Education, an organisation created by the state to promote its pro-­family and pro-­natalist policies.125 The Legion provided a resident medical doctor, while the Women’s Union organised assistance to women and children in one

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of its ‘Social Centres’, run by some of the first graduates of the newly created Institute for Social Work. Given the militarised nature of the Legion, it is no surprise that the aim of guiding and educating the population would be assisted by discipline and vigilance on the part of the authorities: what contemporaries called ‘social action’ (acção social) was very much something that was to be done to the poor. This was clear from the moment families were moved from shantytowns into the new neighbourhoods: officials checked through personal possessions, including clothes, and destroyed any items deemed in unacceptable condition. The families moved to Quinta da Calçada were also subject to delousing and vaccination as they arrived in trucks from the shanties.126 After relocation, everyday control and management of the neighbourhood was in the care of a social worker and, in particular, of a neighbourhood warden (fiscal). Wardens, often former policemen, had inquisitorial powers over the lives of residents of the newly built estates. Wardens not only collected rents and fees, but were asked to write daily reports of occurrences to the administration and enforced strict rules, including the prohibition of unauthorised guests and ‘walking barefoot’; they were also instructed to attach a note on the behaviour of any resident who petitioned the administration.127 Surviving daily reports written by the warden in Bairro das Furnas between 1949 and 1958 reveal the extent to which this power was exercised and its reach into the most intimate aspects of residents’ lives. These reports reveal an overriding concern with the enforcement of ‘moral’ behaviour, and show a particularly severe stance on women’s sexual behaviour, often based on hearsay, but also on the close surveillance by the local warden. On account of supposed illicit sexual liaisons, women and their families were threatened with, and often subject to demotions to the lowest-­ ranked neighbourhood, Quinta da Calçada, or even expelled from the public housing system altogether. In one case a family was relocated to one of the poorer-­quality neighbourhoods as punishment for living in ‘concubinage’, in another a man was threatened with eviction if he did not take back his estranged wife.128 There is also one instance of a family being evicted on account of ‘witchcraft’ – the woman in question offered prayers, cures and herbs to neighbours, something which the ­administration considered ‘inconvenient’.129 Cultivating religiosity and ‘proper’ moral behaviour was a priority for administrators and the newly created body of social workers involved in the neighbourhoods. Neighbourhood ‘workhouses’ for girls looked to keep young girls from ‘social perils’ when not at school; there they would learn domestic skills, particularly sewing and laundering, which would also ‘prepare them for their future life as housewives, to which

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they are normally destined’.130 Such hopes, characteristic of the Estado Novo’s idea of femininity, were contradicted by the observation, made in another report by social workers, that the majority of women in the neighbourhoods worked away from home, particularly in factories, as maids, or as street sellers.131 Each bairro was also provided with a church and chaplain (who also acted as one of the neighbourhood’s administrators), and residents were encouraged to attend and participate in religious services. Even then, the social worker responsible for Quinta da Calçada noted in a 1954 report that the residents possessed a ‘very superficial religious education’, attended mass very irregularly and needed ‘assiduous assistance’ to prevent their ‘faith from crumbling’.132 Other faiths, however, seemed more successful, and were regarded as a threat by officials linked to the Catholic Church: in 1955 the social worker stationed in Bairro da Boavista asked for the urgent appointment of a new chaplain, on account of the ‘extraordinary protestant movement, whose work with local families increases daily, providing material assistance, distributing pamphlets, calling meetings’. Even more worryingly for the social worker, was the fact that this did not seem ‘pure protestantism’, but something leavened with other ideas, ‘perhaps political, perhaps masonic’.133 Despite the suspicions of the authorities, the spaces created, managed and policed by public authorities were also appropriated by residents who built their own local identities around them – the residents of Lisbon’s municipal neighbourhoods were gradually building their own sociability and institutions in a relatively autonomous way, creating networks that in many cases supported explicitly political mobilisation later on. By 1945, the inhabitants of Boavista had founded their own sports club, the Águias (eagles); in Calçada the residents had created a devotional association; and in 1950 there is mention of a ‘residents’ commission’ from Boavista organising an event to pay homage to the two medical doctors working for the local ‘social centre’.134 As the communities living in the municipal neighbourhoods settled, more evidence of residents’ self-­organisation begins to appear in the archives of the administration: in 1956, again in Boavista, the administration authorises ‘a residents’ commission’ to organise a sports tournament to raise funds for a local invalid.135 Such initiatives were not always well received, particularly where they seemed to implicitly bring into question the authorities’ capacity to deliver on promised local welfare services. In 1950, a group of men from Quinta das Furnas sent a petition to the neighbourhood administrators asking that the residents be given charge of administering the 3$00 monthly fee collected by the municipality for its welfare fund, a request rejected on the basis that the money

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was already used to contribute to the medical walk-­in centre and other services.136 By the early 1960s, the attitude of at least some of the agents of the state at the local level was showing signs of changing. The theory and practice of community development, recently embraced by the United Nations and its agencies, had arrived via the affiliation of the social workers’ professional organisation to the Union Catholique Internacional de Service Social.137 Under the initiative of a study group linked to this body, several experiments with community development techniques were initiated that sought to involve local populations in the management of local services and facilities. In Lisbon, the Bairro Padre Cruz – another municipal pre-­fabricated housing neighbourhood, built in 1960 – was chosen for a pilot scheme. According to notes from the committee responsible for the neighbourhoods, its aims were to ‘bring the population to participate actively in its own development’, helping it to ‘express its needs’ and ‘collaborate in their redress’. With the help of the local priest, three meetings were organised (two for men and one for women) where the population presented its most urgent neeeds – a list which included medical and childcare centres, policing and public transport, demands that would later also be articulated by the urban social movement.138 Only a few years after the initial pilot scheme the fostering of resident-­run groups had been extended to most municipal neighbourhoods, and their progress was noted in the annual reports submitted by social workers to the city council. The ‘associative spirit’ of the residents was said to be particularly strong in Boavista, whose groups revealed a ‘strong desire for progress’ and ‘much initative’, while Padre Cruz, despite some successes, was less active because ‘the population has moved in more recently, from different places’.139 In Furnas a very active resident-­led events committee had been given control over the local community centre, through which it managed impressive fundraising campaigns, paying the rents of residents in difficulties, distributing Christmas hampers to the neighbourhoods’ poorest families, subsidising a children’s summer camp and providing funds for the victims of the disastrous floods of 1967, which killed hundreds in shantytowns ­surrounding Lisbon.140 As well as a new generation of social work professionals, residents in Lisbon’s poor neighbourhoods were also increasingly coming into contact with young middle-­ class volunteers promoting similar community development schemes. Most of these were connected to youth catholic organisations inspired by the new social doctrine of the Church promoted by the second Vatican Council. One such organisation was the Centro de Acção Social Universitário (CASU – University Centre

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for Social Action), who worked in Quinta da Calçada and Boavista, as well as in shantytowns elsewhere in the city.141 The CASU, as noted in pamphlets about its activity collected by the political police, was also inspired by community development ideals, training its volunteers in ‘facilitation of debates’, ‘group work techniques’ and ‘how to mobilise a community’.142 While the political police failed to find anything ‘of suspicion in the moral and political behaviour’ of the student group, it seems clear that at very least the encouragement, if not the aid of both social workers and student activists emboldened the populations of the municipal neighbourhoods and some shantytowns in Lisbon to begin addressing claims and demands from the authorities much more forcefully than had been the case in the 1940s and 1950s.143 Soon after the first meetings organised by social workers in Bairro Padre Cruz, there is evidence of some terse exchanges between administrators and the population: according to a letter from the commander of the municipal police, residents had been complaining that despite paying monthly towards the upkeep of neighbourhood facilities, there were not enough medics to attend to the population – according to a local warden the population was threatening to write to the newspapers to denounce the situation.144 This seems to have been part of a growing conflict between residents’ groups and the administration over control of neighbourhood facilities, as around the same time the officials warn that local groups should ‘stick to sports and leisure activities’ and leave other issues to the welfare services. Nevertheless, by 1973 a group of women was presenting a petition to be allowed to install and run a cooperative laundry in the community centre.145 Similarly, residents in Caramão da Ajuda were also said to have organised a public meeting to ask for improvements to their ­community centre.146 The lack of a free press, or of other sources including official documents, make it difficult to establish how representative such demands were, but it is significant that by the early 1970s signs of mobilisation appear in other areas, suggesting that the organisation of residents’ groups, of signed petitions and contact with officials and media over housing conditions had become, if not thoroughly widespread, at least not unusual in social housing estates and in some shantytowns. In 1971, the newspaper O Século reported that a committee representing nearly 700 families from shantytowns in the areas of Curraleira and Vale Escuro had petitioned the mayor of Lisbon to halt the removal of their shacks for new construction – the mayor told O Século that no one would be evicted without alternative accommodation being found.147 The same committee also approached parliamentarian Raquel

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Ribeiro, a member of the ‘liberal wing’ of the regime and former social worker who had in the past been one of the administrators of Lisbon’s municipal housing estates. Ribeiro mentioned their petition in the 1972 debate on housing in  the national assembly, noting in particular their complaint of ‘inhuman’ treatment by the municipal police charged with clearing the shacks.148 Elsewhere, a residents’ committee was created in the Galinheiras shantytown following a meeting organised by the local social worker and the Lisbon Tenants’ Union.149 Even more extraordinary was the occupation of a whole neighbourhood in Odivelas, just outside Lisbon, by families from the shantytowns in the surrounding areas. The neighbourhood of Bom Sucesso – a pre-­fab neighbourhood initially built to house families made homeless by the great floods of 1967– had stood empty following the re-­housing of its residents to newer blocks. In May 1970 it was taken over by 48 families, many of whom has been made homeless when violent gales damaged the shacks where they lived. The municipality and the owners of the estate responded by cutting off the water supply to the neighbourhood and serving eviction orders, which were executed after a few months.150 Back in the municipal neighbourhoods there were also signs that the population was increasingly confident in facing the authorities: from 1972 onwards neighbourhood wardens report large numbers of residents boycotting payment of the extra fees added on to the monthly rent by the municipality for water and medical assistance, on the argument that both were now provided by other means, including the new ­government medical insurance scheme.151 These episodes of organisation do not amount to a coherent, or even embryonic social movement, yet they are instances of what could be called a form of ‘rightful resistance’ – a way of exercising voice that uses the language and norms of the powerful, framing its claims within the boundaries authority itself has established.152 They reveal something of importance in understanding the origins of the much wider urban mobilisations that followed the April 1974 coup, and that became part of the Portuguese Revolution. Most commentators on the urban social movement in the revolutionary period have emphasised its novelty. To some, this very novelty becomes part of the explanation for their demise, or their failure to become a broader, more transformative movement: for Matias Ferreira, the movement lacked a ‘historical memory’ that could serve to give it legitimacy.153 Yet, these fragmented and incomplete stories strongly suggest that the urban social movement was not born out of nothing, but drew on experiences, struggles and relationships built over the previous decades. Both by their own efforts and sometimes aided by social workers, volunteers and students, particularly in

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official public housing estates, the ill-­housed in Lisbon created the social spaces and ties that supported neighbourhood collective identities. These networks and identities were invoked to mobilise the population to present claims and grievances to the managers of the estates and other public officials – albeit under the constraints of an authoritarian system. This evidence shows the origins of the urban social movement to have been rooted in an evolving relationship between the urban poor and the public authorities that was established as a result of the Estado Novo’s intervention in the city. This was the case with what social movement scholars call ‘mobilisation resources’: social networks supported by common identities, social spaces such as local clubs and associations, the experience of collective organisation, and the availability of ‘brokers’ – in this case urban professionals and volunteers – that facilitated the initiation of collective mobilisation when the opportunity arose.154 But the Estado Novo’s intervention, and the population’s contact with its agencies and agents also contributed to forming the frames in which the urban problem was understood, and the solutions that were demanded by the urban poor. The indignation that galvanised the urban movement was not just linked to the degree of control exercised by neighbourhood wardens and administrators: it was also closely linked to expectations created by the dictatorship and its failure to meet them. This anger was articulated by the urban poor using the terms of reference and the conceptions of citizenship that the deposed regime had introduced to the political vocabulary – but it would take the collapse of the authoritarian order in the face of a military mutiny to afford them the opportunity to express it. Notes 1 George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (London: Penguin, 2001), 59. 2 Charles Downs, ‘Residents’ Comissions and Urban Struggles in Revolutionary Portugal’, in In Search of Modern Portugal: The Revolution and Its Consequences, ed. Lawrence S. Graham and Douglas L. Wheeler (Madison.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983), 153. 3 Ibid., 154; Diego Palacios Cerezales, O Poder Caiu na Rua: Crise de Estado e Acções Colectivas na Revolução Portuguesa 1974–1975 (Lisboa: Imprensa das Ciências Sociais, 2003), 104–106. 4 Other examples of this process, synthesised by McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly as a form of scale shift, can be observed in change of orientation of popular protest towards parliaments, parties, governments and other national actors between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, or from national to transnational

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targets of claims in the form of international organisations: Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow and Charles Tilly, ‘Methods for Measuring Mechanisms of Contention’, Qualitative Sociology, 31 (2008); Sidney Tarrow and Doug McAdam, ‘Scale Shift in Transnational Contention’, in Transnational Protest and Global Activism, ed. Donatella della Porta and Sidney Tarrow (Boulder: Paradigm Publisher, 2005); Charles Tilly, ‘Parliamentarization of Popular Contention in Great Britain, 1758–1834’, Theory and Society, 26, 2–3 (1997); Daniele Caramani, The Nationalization of Politics: The Formation of National Electorates and Party Systems in Western Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 5 David L. Raby, Fascism and Resistance in Portugal: Communists, Liberal and Military Dissidents in the Opposition to Salazar, 1941–1974 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), 223. 6 Without needing to argue that this is the only mechanism through which values and beliefs are transformed, several different analytical traditions point to the processes through which the actions of states can condition the political sphere, and the nature of political contention. The argument sketched here draws not only on Foucault’s idea of ‘governmentality’, but particularly on the process of ‘integration of trust networks’ identified by Charles Tilly, through which private arrangements that sustain important aspects of social life are incorporated into the public sphere, leading to a re-­orientation of political action to a new object, the state. Or, more pithily, Sckocpol and Amenta’s assertion that ‘not only does politics create social policies, social policies also create politics’. Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège De France 1977–1978, ed. Michel Sennelart, François Ewald and Alessandro Fontana (Basingstoke: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2007); Charles Tilly, Trust and Rule, Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Theda Skocpol and Edwin Amenta, ‘States and Social Policies’, Annual Review of Sociology, 12 (1986): 149. 7 Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the French Revolution (New York: Anchor Books, 1983), 181. 8 Luís Baptista and Teresa Rodrigues, ‘Population and Urban Density: Lisbon in the 19th and 20th Centuries’, in Urban Dominance and Labour Market Differentiation of a European Capital City: Lisbon 1890–1990, ed. Pedro Telhado Pereira and Maria Eugénia Mata (Boston: Kluwer, 1996), 71. 9 José V. Fialho de Almeida, Contos (Porto: Ernesto Chardron, 1881). 10 Ricardo Jorge, Hygiene Social Applicada á Nação Portuguesa (Porto: Livraria Civilização, 1885), 39–40. 11 Nuno Teotónio Pereira, ‘Pátios e Vilas de Lisboa, 1870–1930: a Promoção Privada do Alojamento’, Análise Social, XXIX, 127 (1994): 518–522; Maria João Madeira Rodrigues, Tradição, Transição e Mudança – a Produção do Espaço Urbano na Lisboa Oitocentista, Separata do Boletim Cultural da Assembleia Distrital de Lisboa, no 84 (Lisboa: Assembleia Distrital de Lisboa, 1978), 35–52. 12 Inquérito aos Pateos de Lisboa – Anno de 1902 (Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional,

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1903); Inquérito aos Pateos de Lisboa – Anno de 1905 – 2ª Parte (Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional, 1905). 13 Inquérito aos Pateos … 1902, 5. 14 Inquérito aos Pateos … 1905, 5. 15 O Notícias Ilustrado, 21 December 1930, pp. 10–11. 16 Raúl Brandão, Os Operários (Lisboa: Biblioteca Nacional, 1984), 311–312. 17 Ibid., 313. 18 ‘Informação sobre os bairros de lata. Discriminação e descrição topográfica dos terrenos de baixo preço apropriados para construções económicas’ 18 August 1936; Instituto dos Arquivos Nacionais-­Torre do Tombo, Arquivo Oliveira Salazar (Portuguese National Archives, Lisbon, Oliveira Salazar Collection, hereafter: PT/TT/AOS), CO/IN-­2/Pst.11, f. 562. The percentage of the population in shacks was estimated by relating the number given in the 1936 study to an estimated mid-­point between the 1930 and 1940 city population totals. 19 ‘Inquérito sôbre Construções Clandestinas – Referido a 1944’, in Anais do Município de Lisboa – 1944 (Lisboa: Câmara Muncipal de Lisboa, 1945), 18. 20 Luís Guimarães Lobato, O Problema da Habitação de Lisboa – Subsídios para o seu Estudo (Lisboa: Instituto Superior Técnico, 1950), 3. 21 ‘Actividade da Comissão Encarregada de Estudar os Problemas Relativos aos Bairros da Lata’, PT/TT/AOS/CO/PC-­ 59/Pt. 7, Lisboa, 1958–1960, f. 76; ‘Câmara Corporativa – Parecer Subsidiário das Secções de Indústria e de Interesses de ordem Administrativa (Subsecção de Construção, vidro e Cerâmica – Subsecção de Obras públicas e comunicações)’ 1964. PT/TT/ AOS/CO/EC-­5K1, fls. 234–265, f. 258. The Lisbon City Council’s Technical Office for Housing also seems to have been working on the basis of the higher numbers, estimating around 12,000 families living in shantytowns in 1960, a number compatible with that used by for the Interim Development Plan: J. Reis Machado, ‘Plano De Chelas V – Elementos Relativos à População que Habita em Barracas’, Boletim do G.T.H. 1, 9 (1965): 448. 22 Presidência do Conselho da Républica Portuguesa, III Plano De Fomento Para 1968–1973, Vol. II – Continente e Ilhas (Continuação) (Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional de Lisboa, 1968), 536. It is also worth noting that the deficiencies of the census in capturing the realities of urban conditions led to the commissioning, by the municipality, of a detailed door-­to-­door study of a sample of neighbourhoods in the city to support the drafting of the 1967 urban plan. Unfortunately, the results of that study have been lost. For its methodology, see: A. Ferraz de Andrade, J.P. Barata and M. Gonçalves da Fonseca, ‘Aspectos de um Inquérito às Condições de Habitação em Lisboa’, Análise Social, 2, 6 (1964). 23 The 1970 census returns were only collated for a 20 sample of the data, so care is advisable. Also, the number provided here encompasses not only ‘shacks’ as such but, as the census publication states, ‘improvised lodgings – shelters or occasional buildings … e.g. shacks’ and also ‘parts of buildings not built for housing or caves, etc’, 1º Recenseamento da Habitação – Continente e Ilhas Adjacentes -­1970 (Estimativa a 20 per cento), Lisboa, Instituto Nacional de Estatística, 1975. Table 1, p. 25.

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24 Between 1930 and 1970 the city’s population grew by over 168,000 to around three-­quarters of a million residents, with a peak around 800,000 in 1960. Baptista and Rodrigues, ‘Population and Urban Density’, 72. 25 ‘Actividade da Comissão Encarregada de Estudar os Problemas Relativos aos Bairros da Lata’, PT/TT/AOS/CO/PC-­59/Pt.7. Lisboa, 1958–1960, f. 76. 26 ‘Proposta de Lei dos Srs. Ministros A.M. Fontes Pereira de Mello e Ernesto Hintze Ribeiro, lida na Câmara dos Srs. Deputados em sessão de 15 de Janeiro de 1883’, in A.R. Adães Bermudes, Projecto para a Organização d’uma Sociedade Promotora de Habitações Económicas Destinadas às Classes Laboriosas e Menos Abastadas (Lisboa: 1897), 68–70. ‘Regeneration’ refers the 1850s and 1860s, a period which witnessed the development of modern infrastructures in Portugal, particularly in terms of transport, often with state sponsorship. 27 ‘Relatório do illustre deputado sr. Augusto Fuschini lido na Camara dos srs. Deputados em sessão de 17 de Maio de 1884’ in Adães Bermudes, Projecto para a Organização, 70–73. 28 Adães Bermudes, Projecto Para a Organização, 8–9. 29 Guilherme Augusto Santa Rita, Habitação do Operário e Classes Menos Abastadas (Estudo Precedido de um Outro de Algumas das Nossas Condições Sociais) (Lisboa: Typografia da ‘Gazeta de Portugal’, 1891). In 1834, monasteries and convents had been abolished, with immediate effect for masculine orders. Feminine orders would continue to exist until the death of the last resident, at which time they would revert to the state. 30 Guilherme Augusto Santa Rita, Discursos Parlamentares, Sessão Legislativa De 1901: Habitações Económicas – Associações de Socorros Mútuos (Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional, 1901). 31 Francisco José Teixeira Bastos, Habitações Operárias, O Ideal Moderno – Bibliotheca Popular de Orientação Socialista (Lisboa: Companhia Nacional Editora, 1898), 60–61. 32 Partido Republicano Português, ‘Programa Aprovado no Congresso de Braga de 27 a 29 de Abril de 1912’ (Lisboa: Partido Republicano Português, 1912); Diário da Câmara dos Deputados 1913–1914, Sessão Extraordinária nº 8-­A, 29 July 1914, pp. 3–20. There were, however, some small-­scale experiments with workers’ housing by the municipality of Oporto, undertaken on a private basis and without the benefit of national legislation: between 1914 and 1917 a total of 312 single-­family houses were built in four neighbourhoods: Manuel C. Teixeira, ‘As Estratégias de Habitação em Portugal, 1880–1940’, Análise Social, XXVII, 1 (1992): 76. 33 João Medina, ‘A Ditadura Sidonista: a “Ideia Nova” de Sidónio: Presidencialismo Carismático ou Regime Protofascista?’, Clio, V (2000): 110–111. 34 Maria Alice Samara, Verdes e Vermelhos: Portugal e a Guerra no Ano de Sidónio (Lisboa: Editorial Notícias, 2002), 191. 35 Decreto-­Lei nº 4:137, Diário do Governo, Iª Série, nº 87, 25 April 1918, p. 451.

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36 Decreto-­Lei n.º 5:397, Diário do Governo, Iª Série, nº 77, 14 April 1919, p. 641. 37 Ibid. and Decreto-­Lei n.º 5:481, Diário do Governo, Iª Série, no 90, 30 April 1919, pp. 721–723. 38 Maria Júlia Ferreira, ‘O Bairro Social do Arco do Cego – Uma Aldeia Dentro da Cidade de Lisboa’, Análise Social, XXIX, 127 (1994): 701. Despite the recommendation of a sell-­off, the neighbourhood remained in an official limbo, until Salazar incorporated it into his housing plans, as described below. 39 Maria Filomena Mónica, Artesãos e Operários: Indústria, Capitalismo e Classe Operária em Portugal (1870–1934) (Lisboa: Instituto das Ciências Sociais, 1986), 148–153; Manuel Villaverde Cabral, Portugal na Alvorada do Século XX: Forças Sociais, Poder Político e Crescimento Económico de 1890 a 1914 (Lisboa: A Regra do Jogo, 1979), 317, 19; Michael Mann, ‘Ruling Class Strategies and Citizenship’, Sociology, 21, 3 (1987): 344. 40 Luiz Gonçalves, A Evolução do Movimento Operário em Portugal (Lisboa: Adolpho de Mendonça & C., 1905), 97. 41 Even taking into account that mutual aid societies had an incentive to exaggerate their membership numbers, and that many people would have belonged to more than one society, it is nonetheless a remarkable figure, especially if we consider that for the most part, membership was only open to adult males. Miriam Halpern Pereira, ‘As Origens do Estado-­Providência em Portugal: as Novas Fronteiras Entre Público e Privado’, in A Primeira Républica Portuguesa – Entre o Liberalismo e o Autoritarismo, ed. Nuno Severiano Teixeira and António Costa Pinto (Lisboa: Edições Colibri, 1999), 56. 42 José Maria Mello de Matos, ‘These XII – Da Acção da Mutualidade Contra as Habitações Insalubres’, in Primeiro Congresso Nacional da Mutualidade. Relatórios. Theses. Actas das Sessões e Documentos., ed. José Ernesto Dias da Silva (Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional, 1911), 19–20. 43 ‘Relatorio do Congresso Nacional de Mutualidade de 1911: Theses; Actas das Sessões e Documentos’, Boletim do Trabalho Industrial, 45 (1911): 465–468. 44 Teixeira Bastos, Habitações Operárias, 4–5. 45 David Ferreira, ‘Inquilinato’, in Dicionário da História de Portugal, Vol. III, ed. Joel Serrão (Lisboa: Iniciativas Editoriais, 1971), 327–328; A Illustração Portugueza, no 356, 16 December 1912, pp. 784–785 and no 380, 2 June 1913, p. 673. 46 O Combate, 1 March 1920, p. 1. 47 Fátima Patriarca, A Questão Social no Salazarismo, Colecção Análise Social (Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional Casa da Moeda, 1995), 333–335. 48 Decreto-­lei no 15: 289; Diário do Governo, I Série, nº 74, 30 March 1928, pp. 631–638; Decreto-­lei nº 16:055, 12 October 1928; Diário do Governo, I Série, nº 243, 12 October 1928, pp. 2166–2171; Carlos Nunes Silva, Política Urbana em Lisboa: 1926–1974 (Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, 1994), 88–99. 49 ‘A Crise da Habitação e a sua Perniciosa Influência na Higiene: A Solução do

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Problema’, PT/TT/ AOS/CO/PC-­10/Pt.3/5ª Subdivisão. The note can be found in folio 157. 50 Letter from Augusto C. [Surname illegible] to Oliveira Salazar, 20 December 1931. PT/TT/AOS/PC-­10, cx. 538, pt. 3, ff. 208–218. The letter includes a costed plan for a house-­building scheme prepared by Cottineli Telmo, who would become one of the leading public architects of the New State in the 1930s and 1940s. 51 Decree-­Law 23:052 of 23 September 1933 in Diário do Governo, Iª Série, nº 217, pp. 1664–1671. 52 Ferreira, ‘O Bairro Social Do Arco Do Cego’, 702–706. 53 Dez Anos de Política Social, 1933–1943 (Lisboa: Instituto Nacional do Trabalho e Previdência, 1943), 177. 54 Vitor Matias Ferreira, A Cidade de Lisboa: de Capital do Império a Centro de Metrópole (Lisboa: Dom Quixote, 1987), 129–146; David Corkill and José Carlos Pina Almeida, ‘Commemoration and Propaganda in Salazar’s Portugal: The Mundo Português Exposition of 1940’, Journal of Contemporary History, 44, 381–399 (2009): 385. 55 Decree-­Law 28:912 of 12 August 1938, Diário do Governo, Iª Série, nº 186, pp. 1197–1201. This scheme was expanded and renamed as ‘Houses for Poor Families’ in 1945: Decree-­Law 34:486 of 6 April 1945; Diário do Governo, Iª Série, nº 73, pp. 232–234 56 ‘Comissão Administrativa dos Bairros de Casas Desmontáveis – Contas da Gerência’, in Anais do Município de Lisboa – 1944 (Lisboa: Câmara Muncipal de Lisboa, 1945), 283. 57 Carlos Nunes Silva, ‘Mercado e Políticas de Habitação em Portugal: a Questão da Habitação Na Primeira Metade Do Século XX’, Análise Social, XXIX, 3 (1994): 671. 58 António Costa Pinto, Salazar’s Dictatorship and European Fascism: Problems of Interpretation (New York/Boulder: Columbia University Press, 1995); Fernando Rosas, ‘O Salazarismo e o Homem Novo: Ensaio Sobre o Estado Novo e a Questão do Totalitarismo’, Análise Social, XXXV, 157 (2001). 59 Rosas, ‘O Salazarismo e o Homem Novo’, 1053–1054. 60 António Ferro, Salazar: o Homem e a Sua Obra (Lisboa: Empresa Nacional de Publicidade, 1935), 150–151; Salazar: ‘O Estado Novo Português na Evolução Política Europeia’, speech given on 26 May 1934, in António de Oliveira Salazar, Discursos, Vol. I: 1928–1934, 1st edn (Coimbra: Coimbra Editora, 1935), 340. 61 ‘Princípios Fundamentais da Revolução Política’, speech given on 30 July 1930, in Salazar, Discursos, Vol. I, 79, 80–81, 91. 62 ‘Princípios Fundamentais da Revolução Política’, speech given on 30 July 1930, in ibid., 85–86; ‘Grandes Certezas da Revolução Nacional’ speech given on 26 May 1936; António de Oliveira Salazar, Discursos e Notas Políticas, Vol. II – 1935–1937, 1st edn (Coimbra: Coimbra Editora, 1937), 134; ‘Conceitos Económicos da Nova Constituição’, speech given on 16 March 1933, in Salazar, Discursos, Vol. I, 201.

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63 ‘Grandes Certezas’, 26 May 1936, in Salazar, Discursos, Vol. II, 133. ‘Conceitos Económicos’, 16 March 1933, in Salazar, Discursos, Vol. I, 208– 210. 64 Ferro, Salazar: O Homem e a Sua Obra, 28–29; ‘Conceitos Económicos’, 16 March 1933, in Salazar, Discursos, Vol. I, 190, 210. 65 Luís Vicente Baptista, ‘Casa, Família, Ideologia: a Emergência da Política de “Moradias Unifamiliares” em Portugal nos Anos 30’, Ler História, 34 (1998): 162. 66 Ibid., 149. 67 ‘Conceitos Económicos’, in Salazar, Discursos, Vol. I, 202. 68 Baptista, ‘Casa, Família’, 155. 69 Marielle Christine Gros, ‘“Pequena” História do Alojamento Social em Portugal’, Sociedade e Território, 20 (1994): 121. 70 Casas Económicas (Lisboa: Secretariado da Propaganda Nacional, 1943), 6. 71 Ibid. 72 ‘Princípios Fundamentais’, 30 July 1930, in Salazar, Discursos, Vol. I, 89. 73 Patriarca, A Questão Social no Salazarismo, 639–643; Manuel de Lucena, Evolução do Sistema Corporativo Português: Vol. I, O Salazarismo (Lisboa: Perspectivas e Realidades, 1976), 382–383. 74 For an overview of the legacies of authoritarian social policy on southern European societies, see Marisol García and Neovi Karakatsanis, ‘Social Policy, Democracy, and Citizenship in Southern Europe’, in Democracy and the State in the New Southern Europe, ed. Richard Gunther, P.N. Diamandouros and D.A. Sotiropoulos (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 75 Lucena, Evolução do Sistema Corporativo Português: Vol. I, O Salazarismo, 384. 76 ‘Conceitos Económicos’, 16 March 1933, in Salazar, Discursos, Vol. I, 208. 77 Assistência Social, Cadernos do Ressurgimento Nacional (Lisboa: Secretariado Nacional de Informação, 1945), 35. 78 Silva, ‘Mercado E Políticas De Habitação’, 667. 79 Manuel Rodrigues, O Cidadão do Estado Novo (União Nacional, 1935); Assistência Social, 36. 80 ‘Informação sobre os bairros de lata. Discriminação e descrição topográfica dos terrenos de baixo preço apropriados para construções económicas’, PT/ TT/AOS/CO/IN-­2/Pt. 11, fls. 569–570. 81 Manuel Vicente Moreira, Problemas da Habitação (Ensaios Sociais) (Lisboa: Tipografia Minerva, 1950). 82 Júlio Martins, ‘O Problema da Habitação de Rendas Acessíveis às Classes Média e Pobre’, A Arquitectura Portuguesa e Cerâmica e Edificação (reunidas), 117 Supplement (1944): 1–4. 83 Nelson Mota, ‘Modernist Housing for Contemporary Families: The Arrival of the Athens Charter in Lisbon’, in The Challenge of Change: Dealing with the Legacy of the Modern Movement, ed. Dirk van den Heuvel (Rotterdam: IOS Press, 2008). 84 Miguel Jacobety, ‘A Racionalização na Habitação e na Urbanização’, paper

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presented at the 1º Congresso Nacional de Arquitectura, Lisboa, 1948), 225; Viana de Lima, ‘O Problema Português da Habitação’, paper presented at the 1º Congresso Nacional de Arquitectura, Lisboa, 1948), 217. 85 Lima, ‘O Problema’, 218. 86 ‘Grandes Problemas de Lisboa: a Construção de Casas de Renda Económica’, Revista Municipal, 26 (1945): 34–35. 87 Pedro Janarra, ‘A Política Urbanística e de Habitação Social do Estado Novo; o Caso do Bairro de Alvalade de Lisboa: Entre o Projecto e o Concretizado’, Ler História, 34 (1998). 88 Moreira, Problemas da Habitação (Ensaios Sociais), 173. 89 Alberto Saraiva e Sousa, O Problema da Habitação: Suas Causas e Soluções a Adoptar, vol. III (Lisboa: Ministério das Obras Públicas, Direcção-­Geral dos Serviços de Urbanização, 1949), 24. It is noteworthy that the 21st Congress of the International Federation of Housing and Planning took place in Lisbon in 1952. On the trajectory of housing policy in post-­war Europe, see Michael Harloe, The People’s Home? Social Rented Housing in Europe & America (London: John Wiley & Sons, 1995), 255–259. 90 ‘Relatório – Comissão Encareegada de Estudar os Problemas Relativos aos “Bairros de Lata”’, PT/TT/AOS/CO/PC-­59/Pt. 7. fl. 89. 91 Ibid., fl. 90. 92 See, for instance Raúl da Silva Pereira, ‘Problemática da Habitação em Portugal’, Análise Social, I, 1/2 (1963). This was also the case across other areas of social provision, cf. Daniel Fernando Carolo, ‘A Institucionalização Do Estado Providência em Portugal: da Reforma da Previdência Social de 1962 à Actual Reforma da Segurança Social’, in XXVI Encontro da Associação Portuguesa de História Económica e Social (Lisbon: Ponta Delgada, 2006); José Luís Cardoso and Maria Manuela Rocha, ‘Corporativismo e Previdência Social (1933–1962)’, Ler História, 45 (2003). 93 Carlos Nunes Silva, Política Urbana em Lisboa: 1926–1974 (Lisboa: 1994), 160–163; Nuno Teotónio Pereira and José Manuel Fernandes, ‘A Arquitectura do Estado Novo de 1926 a 1959’, in O Estado Novo: das Origens ao Fim da Autarcia (1926–1959), Vol. II (Lisboa: Fragmentos, 1987), 332. 94 Vasco Pulido Valente, Marcello Caetano: as Desventuras da Razão (Lisboa: Gótica, 2002), 59–62. 95 For an excellent overview of the challenges and transformations experienced during the Caetano period, see Fernando Rosas and Pedro Aires Oliveira, eds., A Transição Falhada: o Marcelismo e o Fim do Estado novo (1968–1974) (Lisboa: Notícias, 2004). 96 Tiago Fernandes, Nem Ditadura, Nem Revolução: a Ala Liberal e o Marcelismo (1968–1974) (Lisboa: Dom Quixote, 2006). 97 Marcello Caetano, Renovação na Continuidade (Lisboa: Verbo, 1971), XVII–­ XXIII. 98 Ibid., XXIII. 99 Presidência do Conselho da Républica Portuguesa, III Plano de Fomento Para 1968–1973, 537–538.

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100 Ibid., 544–546. 101 Ministério das Obras Públicas, Colóquio Sobre Política de Habitação: Texto de Base, Vol. II (Lisboa: Ministério das Obras Públicas, 1969), 4. 102 Ignácio Peres Fernandes et al., Colóquio Sobre Política de Habitação: Relatório Final (Lisboa: Ministério das Obras Públicas, 1969), 2. 103 J. Reis Álvaro, ‘Auto-­Construção’, in Colóquio Sobre Política de Habitação, ed. Ministério das Obras Públicas (Lisboa: Ministério das Obras Públicas, 1969). 104 The first Portuguese publication on community development was a pamphlet sponsored by the very un-­radical Association of Portuguese Industry written by Maria Manuela Silva, who was also a participant in the 1969 Housing Congress: Maria Manuela Silva, Desenvolvimento Comunitário – Uma Técnica de Progresso Social, Estudos de Economia Aplicada (Lisboa: Associação Industrial Portuguesa, 1962). Nuno Portas, one of the conference organisers and later Secretary of State for Housing during a part of the revolutionary period, has stated in interviews that the ideas for participatory housing schemes developed before and during the revolution were also inspired by slum-­rehabilitation programmes in Latin America observed on fact-­finding missions by delegations of Portuguese civil servants: see his interview in Jaime Pinho, ‘O Caso de Castelo Velho – Lutas Urbanas em Setúbal (1974/76)’ (Master’s Thesis, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 1999). 105 Diário das Sessões, 9 March 1972, X Legislature, 3rd Session, nº 165, pp. 3306–3307. 106 Diário das Sessões, 11 March 1972, X Legislature, 3rd Session, nº 167, p. 3346. 107 Viriato Dias, ‘Barracas: Ignorar a Sua Existência Não Solucionará o Problema’, in Vida Mundial, 29 January. 1971, pp. 27–39. 108 O Século, 19 March 1973, pp. 27–29. According to Nuno Teotónio Pereira’s memoirs, in 1963 censors had cut a series of articles due to appear in the Diário Popular on living conditions in poor neighbourhoods: Nuno Teotónio Pereira, Tempos, Lugares, Pessoas (Matosinhos: Público, 1996), 29. 109 Teresa Barata Salgueiro, ‘A Promoção Habitacional e o 25 de Abril’, Revista Crítica das Ciências Sociais, 18/19/20 (1986): 675. 110 Abílio Cardoso, ‘State Intervention in Housing in Portugal, 1960–1980’ (PhD Thesis, University of Reading, 1983), 179; cited in: Gros, ‘“Pequena” História do Alojamento Social em Portugal’, 85. 111 Silva, Política Urbana, 164. 112 Margarida Coelho, ‘Uma Experiência de Transformação no Sector Habitacional do Estado – Saal 1974–76’, Revista Crítica das Ciências Sociais, 18/19/20 (1986): 619. 113 Silva, Política Urbana, 163. 114 Christian Topalov, ‘La Politique du Logement dans le Processus Révolutionnaire Portugais (25 Avril 1974 – 11 Mars 1975)’, Espaces et Société, 17–18 (1976): 115. Topalov also points out that these average rents were also high even for middle-­class service-­sector employees, and links it to increased

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militancy in the their professional associations in the final years of the dictatorship (p. 115). 115 A Habitação, December 1972, p. 6. 116 Grupo de Trabalho de Estudantes de Arquitectura do Porto ‘O Direito à Habitação’, in 3º Congresso da Oposição Democrática: Teses, 3ª Secção–4ª Secção (Lisboa: Seara Nova, 1974), 224. 117 Francisco Keil do Amaral, ‘O Problema da Habitação em Portugal – Generalidades’, in 3º Congresso da Oposição Democrática: Teses, 3ª Secção –4ª Secção (Lisboa: Seara Nova, 1974), 140. 118 William H. Sewell Jr, ‘Refiguring the Social in the Social Sciences: An Interpretivist Manifesto’, in Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 362–369; Partha Chatterjee, The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 34–36. 119 Frank Trentmann, ‘The Modern Genealogy of the Consumer: Meanings, Identities and Political Synapses’, in Consuming Cultures, Global Perspectives: Historical Trajectories, Transnational Exchanges, ed. John Brewer and Frank Trentmann (London: Berg, 2006), 21. 120 There is surprisingly little research on the Estado Novo’s policies of social and political control, the best overviews are: Susana Pereira Bastos, O Estado Novo e os Seus Vadios: Contribuições Para o Estudo das Identidades Marginais e da Sua Repressão (Lisboa: Dom Quixote, 1997); João Madeira, Irene Flunser Pimentel, and Luís Farinha, Vítimas de Salazar: Estado Novo e Violência Política (Lisboa: Esfera dos Livros, 2007). 121 Around 4,000 houses were built in Lisbon under these two schemes between 1938 and 1970: Silva, Política Urbana, 126–135. The sources in question cover only the pre-­fabricated housing neighbourhoods, whose management was transferred to the Lisbon Misericórdia, a charitable institution run by the Catholic Church, after 1974. Archives relating to neighbourhoods managed by other institutions are not currently open to the public. 122 Major Augusto Lopes Guerra, Secretary of the Junta Central da Legião Portuguesa to the Director of the Legion’s Social and Political Affairs, 6 February 1939, Arquivo da Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa, Comissão de Acção Social dos Bairros Municipais (hereafter SCML/CASBM), E37-­A. Cx. 4, Pt. 1. 123 Comissão Administrativa dos Bairros de Casas Desmontáveis: ‘Regulamento de Serviço Interno’, 1951. SCML/CASBM/E36-­A-­1. 124 However, the same document notes that in 10 years, only 58 families out of 499 living in Quinta da Calçada had gained a ‘promotion’ to other neighbourhoods: ‘Bairro da Quinta da Calçada – Relatório de Trabalho – Ano de 1949’, SCML/CASBM/E36 A-­1. 125 The Portuguese Legion, created by the regime in 1936 after pressure from its radical right-­wing supporters, was never given sufficient autonomy or power to really emulate other fascist militias. Gradually, Salazar directed its efforts

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towards surveillance and information network in support of the regime’s political police, as well as some interventions in the charitable or welfare provision, as was the case in the municipal housing estates: Luís Nuno Rodrigues, A Legião Portuguesa: a Milícia do Estado Novo, 1936–1944 (Lisboa: Estampa, 1996). On the Women’s Union – the Obra das Mães para a Educação Nacional, see Irene Flunser Pimentel, História das Organizações Femininas no Estado Novo (Lisboa: Temas e Debates, 2001), 120–125. 126 ‘Relatório do Bairro da Boavista – 1941’, SCML/CASBM/E37-­D. 127 Comissão Administrativa dos Bairros de Casas Desmontáveis: ‘Regulamento de Serviço Interno’, 1951, SCML/CASBM/E36-­A-­1. 128 Various items, Bairro das Furnas, Comunicações de Fiscal (Verbetes Azuis), SCML/CASBM/ E37-­A2, Pts. 9 (1949–51) and 10 (1952–63). 129 Ibid., Pt. 9, Relatório no 35, 15 February 1950 and Ofício nº 364, 8 March 1950. 130 ‘Regulamento das Casas de Trabalho dos Bairros Municipais’, 1942, SCML/ CASBM/E36-­A, Pt. 1.2. 131 ‘Relatório … do Centro Social do Bairro da Quinta da Calçada … 1945 e 1946’, SCML/CASBM/E36-­A, Pt. 3. On the Estado Novo’s idea of femininity and its links to social welfare, see Pimentel, História das Organizações Femininas no Estado Novo. 132 ‘Bairro da Quinta da Calçada – Relatório do Ano de 1954’, SCML/CASBM/ E37-­A1, Pt. 6. 133 ‘Relatório do Bairro da Boavista, 1955’, SCML/CASBM/E37-­A1, Pt. 6. 134 ‘Relatório do Ano de 1954 – Quinta da Calçada’, SCML/CASBM/E37-­A1, Pt. 6 135 ‘Ofício nº 852’, 26 September 1956, SCML/CASBM/E37-­A1. 136 Untitled petition by residents of Quinta das Furnas, 20 June 1950, SCML/ CASBM/E37-­A1, Pt. 4. 137 Maria Manuela Silva, ‘Oportunidade Do Desenvolvimento Comunitário Em Portugal’, Análise Social II, no. 7–8 (1964): 503–504, Alcina M.C. Martins, ‘Serviço Social Crítico em Tempos de Ditadura em Portugal – Mulheres Rebeldes em Serviço Social’, Centro Português de Investigação em História e Trabalho Social, Working Paper (2002): 6. 138 ‘Assuntos a Considerar’, 1962, SCML/CASBM/E37-­D/6.4.1.2 139 ‘Relatório da Comissão de Acção Social dos Bairros Municipais – 1965’, SCML/CASBM/E36-­A/2.1.1, Pt. 6. 140 ‘Relatório … 1967’, SCML/CASBM/E36-­A/2.1.1, Pt. 8 141 ‘Relatório … 1964’ SCML/CASBM/E36-­A/2.1.1, Pt. 5 142 ‘Centro de Acção Social Universitário’, Arquivos Nacionais de Portugal – Torre do Tombo, Espólio PIDE-­DGS (Portuguese National Archives – collections relating to the dictatorship’s political police, hereafter PT/TT/PIDE-­DGS), SC/ SR/3529/62/NT3352, f. 13. 143 Ibid. 144 Letter, 29 November 1962, SCML/CASBM/E37-­A-­1/5.2.1.1, Cx.5. 145 ‘Acta nº 76’ 20 November 1962, and ‘Untitled – Petition’, 3 August 1973, SCML/CASBM/E.36-­A-­2, Pt. 1.4.

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146 Relatório … 1964’ SCML/CASBM/E36-­A/2.1.1, Pt. 5. 147 O Século, 19 November 1971, pp. 1 and 8. 148 Diário das Sessões, 9 March 1972, X Legislature, 3rd Session, nº 165, p. 3306; ‘Maria Raquel Ribeiro’, in Os Deputados à Assembleia Nacional – 1935– 1974, ed. J.M. Tavares Castilho (Lisboa: Assembleia da Républica, 2009). 149 A Habitação, November 1971, p. 7. 150 A. Barbosa et al., Ocupação do Bairro do Bom Sucesso em Odivelas, por 48 Famílias de Barracas (Porto: Afrontamento, 1972). 151 ‘Comunicação do Fiscal’, various items January–­May 1973, SCML/CASBM/ E37-­A-­1/5.2.1.1. 152 Kevin J. O’Brien, ‘Rightful Resistance’, World Politics, 49, 1 (1996): 32–35. 153 Vitor Matias Ferreira, ‘A Cidade e o Campo. Uma Leitura Comparada do Movimento Social, 1974–1975’, Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais, 18/19/20 (1987): 567. 154 Mario Diani, ‘“Leaders” or Brokers? Positions and Influence in Social Movement Networks’, in Social Movements and Networks: Relational Approaches to Collective Action, ed. Mario Diani and Doug McAdam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 117–120.

3 From rights to action

From rights to action: April to December 1974

April to December 1974

There was no need to have a strategy to involve the population. They came [to us] anyway: they never asked our permission to open the door and come in … They had given me the offices of the Vice-­President of the old regime … It had gold leaf, period furniture and a large portrait of Fernando Pessoa by Almada hanging on the wall … People would come in and be taken aback by it all. [I would say] let’s sit down, on that huge table, with those chairs, and it would be difficult for them. [But] then they would stay until two or three in the morning, discussing everything. (Filipe Mário Lopes, Vice-­President of the Administrative Commission of the Lisbon City Council, 1974–1975)1

In the end, it took less than a day to bring down a dictatorship that had ruled over two generations. When the junior military officers who composed the MFA moved against the regime in the early hours of 25 April they could not have expected either such a rapid collapse, or the popular uprising they sparked: thousands of people flooded the streets in support of the rebel troops, surrounding them and celebrating their arrival – including the florist who distributed flowers to the soldiers, creating the ‘Revolution of the Carnations’. The few loyalist units that came out in defence of the regime were hampered and discouraged by the crowds that stood between them and the insurgents.2 Surrounded in a military barracks in the centre of Lisbon, Marcello Caetano pleaded to surrender to a high-­ranking general – António de Spínola – so that power would not fall to the street.3 Nevertheless, it was clear that it had been the street who had won the day, and who was to be a crucial, if inconstant actor in the coming nineteen months. The popular movement that followed the coup did not end with the surrender of the government, but spread across factories, fields and, of course, the country’s urban neighbourhoods. Less than forty-­eight hours after the coup, while the attention of the country and of its capital was on the merry-­go-­round of officers, political communiqués and the return of exiled oppositionists, the people of the Boavista neighbourhood organ-

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ised the seizure of empty council houses in their area and their allocation to families considered in urgent need. A few days later it was the turn of properties on a housing estate in Ajuda named after the former dictator, Salazar. Soon after, a much larger number of shantytown dwellers (thousands in some reports) moved to occupy twenty-­three unfinished apartment blocks in the east side of the city, in Chelas. At the same time, other neighbourhoods began organising committees to deliver petitions and demands to whoever would listen or seemed to be in charge. Only a month after the coup seven such neighbourhood committees had been created, and others were in the process of being established. These were first in a long series of intentionally public acts by residents of the most deprived areas of Lisbon, which put the issue of housing on the table of a hastily organised transition authority, the Junta de Salvação Nacional (Junta of National Salvation). By early summer 1974, these disparate mobilisations were beginning to form a social movement: an identifiable group of grassroots organisations using a common language and repertoire of action to make claims to the authorities which, in addition, were beginning to form connections to each other and discuss their common predicament. The story of the genesis of the movement is often couched as a popular political awakening of epic proportions. In the words of members of one shanty residents’ commission: ‘the people woke up and realised their needs’.4 In reality, just as the issues and outlooks that animated the movement have to be linked to the history of the relationship between state and population in the city, so the dynamics of mobilisation are connected to the history of that interaction and of the communities it moulded. This is made clear by the range of timings and strategies adopted by different neighbourhoods which are normally lumped into the category of the urban poor. Time-­wise, mobilisation spread from a core of pioneering neighbourhoods to the rest of the city and indeed, the country (see Figure 3.1). A small group of ‘first movers’ neighbourhoods were active from the first months of the revolutionary period, providing an example and blueprint for hundreds of other neighbourhoods.5 In Lisbon the total number of active commissions grew steadily over the course of the revolutionary period. From little more than a dozen in June 1974, there were over thirty by the end of January of the following year, and new commissions began appearing rapidly from March 1975, until the rate dropped ­dramatically after November that year. From the outset, in addition to different timings of mobilisation, different neighbourhood groups also adopted very distinct forms of action. There is a marked difference between neighbourhoods who

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Cumulative New commissions

160

20

Cumulative total

140 120

15

100 80

10

60 40

5

New commission per month

180

20 Dec-76

Oct-76

Aug-76

Jun-76

Apr-76

Feb-76

Dec-75

Oct-75

Aug-75

Jun-75

Apr-75

Feb-75

Dec-74

Oct-74

Aug-74

Jun-74

0 Apr-74

0

Figure 3.1  Neighbourhood commissions, 1974–76

chose a forceful but non-­confrontational relationship with the provisional authorities – organising petitions, lists of demands, etc. – and those who opted for a more transgressive direct action approach, seizing property first, negotiating later. These different strategies are central to the history of the broader movement, and can be said to be at the heart of conflicts and disagreements within it that gradually became apparent over the course of 1974 and 1975. These differences in timing and strategy highlight the diversity of the collection of organisations and mobilisations that are grouped under the heading of a single urban movement, and point to the need to analyse the underlying dynamic of the movement’s constituent parts, since it may be premature to treat the movement as a single, coherent political actor. What characteristics and circumstances set first-­movers apart from other areas of the city? What led to different groups of residents opting to challenge or cooperate with the new authorities? The early mobilisation of some neighbourhoods was not random, nor is it explained by the relative deprivation of some areas – which would have seen mobilisation starting in Lisbon’s most destitute urban areas. Instead, mobilisation appeared first in areas that could draw on established bonds of community and identity, as well as possessing a history of interaction with municipal authorities and access to key mediating figures, such as priests, social workers or urban officials. Together, these meant that first mover communities were, for the most part, areas of the

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city which had already been the target of the dictatorship’s urban interventions, revealing the extent to which the Estado Novo’s urban policies were (unwittingly) responsible for the politicisation of the urban question and the eventual mobilisation of the revolutionary urban movement. Many existing accounts of the movement portray it as a the creation of a lumpenproletariat of recent rural migrants in Lisbon’s shantytowns,6 but the sources reveal a more complex and nuanced picture. The different strategies of the areas that first mobilised are also closely connected to their experience and past relationship to urban authorities. The majority of first movers opted to cooperate because they were already involved with urban authorities who managed their neighbourhoods or had at least already embarked on a process of re-­housing from shantytowns into state-­built neighbourhoods before the coup. In setting up representative organisations they were seeking not so much to overthrow the system, but rather to gain voice and a degree of control within it. In contrast, and perhaps surprisingly, those who chose to occupy were not primarily the totally excluded either. The more recent shanties, built in the 1960s and 1970s would not join the movement until later. In most cases, it were longer-­established neighbourhoods, whose residents had been managed, assessed and, crucially, had spent years waiting for promised houses, who tended to take matters into their own hands. Reconstructing the origins of the movement In order to analyse and chart the trajectory of the urban movement, including identifying the first movers and how the movement spread throughout the city, it is necessary to identify its constituent parts, the local neighbourhood commissions, and classify them with regard to their location, socio-­economic characteristics and timing of creation. Unsurprisingly, no single, ‘official’ list of neighbourhood commissions was ever kept during the turmoil of the revolutionary period and the revolving door of provisional governments and municipal authorities. The neighbourhood commissions were adhoc organisations with no institutional framework, whose power derived essentially from their ability to mobilise local populations – their documentary remains are fragmented and essentially limited to the correspondence with the Lisbon city council found in the Lisbon municipal archives. As a result, the best way to construct a picture that reflects the constantly shifting and changing trajectory of the urban movement, from first movers to its eventual decline, is to combine and triangulate between the multiple but incomplete sources at our disposal: newspaper accounts, pamphlets and correspondence to and from the neighbourhood commissions.7

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Combined, these sources reveal the names of 166 commissions who came into activity between April 1974 and July 1976. Almost every residents’ commission can be located geographically in relation to a freguesia, or ward. The Freguesia is the smallest administrative division of the Portuguese state, evolved from the medieval parish and served by a local executive committee, the Junta de Freguesia, equivalent to a ward or parish council.8 The municipality of Lisbon was composed at this time of 53 such wards. Their size, both in terms of area and population, varied greatly from the medieval heart of the city, with its intricate mosaic of small wards, to the much larger, formerly rural wards in the out-lying areas of the city. A map on page xx (Figure 0.1) shows the freguesias of the city. In addition to organising them into their freguesias, neighbourhood commissions have been classified in relation to the socio-­ economic characteristics of the bairro (neighbourhood) they claimed to represent. Having barely changed since the early modern period, and varying greatly in size, while the administrative freguesias can sometimes be a bairro in the sense of a both a physical area and reasonably well delineated community, often they can include multiple neighbourhoods within them, or bairros can cut across freguesia boundaries. Since census data was neither detailed nor reliable enough for this period, this classification had to rely on more descriptive, qualitative evidence from newspaper descriptions, local histories, as well as a small number of official reports by municipal and governmental bodies charged with addressing the city’s socio-­economic problems.9 Based on these materials, I created seven categories describing the major types of neighbourhood in the city which describe the diversity of living and social conditions in Lisbon at the time (Table 3.1). Of the 166 commissions, 152 were assignable to one of these categories but 14 were not, since the surviving information was not sufficient to identify their geographical provenance with sufficient accuracy. The ‘Shantytown’ category is used to describe areas where most houses were shacks (barracas), built of wood and metal sheets, although in some areas these may have been reinforced with bricks and mortar (see Figure 3.2). Shantytowns had developed on empty plots of land, and were of varying age. Some were long established, like Curraleira, while others had sprung up or grown in recent years. No accurate record was kept of the extent, size and age of shantytowns, and as is usual in such informal settlements there could be a substantial turnover of population. Often shantytown residents were forced to pay rent to the landowner, in some cases the City Council itself. Shantytowns had no electricity, other than the occasional wire tapping into a street lamp, no sewers, and only a small number of water fountains to serve often hundreds of people.

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From rights to action: April to December 1974 Table 3.1  Classification of neighbourhood commissions according to area Category

Housing

Neighbourhood facilities

Shantytown

Shacks built from wood or metal sheets, sometimes partly in brick in older shantytowns Brick-­built but in poor repair. Often either decaying former suburban villages or clandestinely built by residents Tightly packed pre-­twentieth-­ century buildings divided into flats. Often in poor state of repair and lacking modern kitchens and toilet facilities Temporary neighbourhoods built to re-­house shantytown residents. Low quality, cheap materials intended to be used for around 5 years. In some cases had been in use for over 30 Built by the dictatorship, varied from detached houses from the 1930s and 1940s, to more recent high-­rise flats Anything from older neighbourhoods to modern developments where the housing stock was in good repair Not applicable

Rarely provided, other than public water taps

Run-­down brick Old-­central

Pre-­fabricated council

Social housing

Middle-­class

Ward-­level

Very poor, although conditions varied Provided with electricity, water and sewerage, but houses often poorly equipped to connect to them Basic facilities, but in many cases time and official neglect had made conditions very poor Modern, benefiting from all facilities, although often lacking in urban public services Modern, benefiting from all facilities Describes commissions which represented whole wards (Freguesias), which could encompass several different types of neighbourhood

Cholera was still a killer in Lisbon in the 1970s, and shantytowns were where it struck most often. ‘Run-­down brick houses’ is perhaps the most difficult type to characterise, as the boundary between poor housing made with bricks and shantytowns is often more a question of name than actual comfort or quality. This term is used to identify those rural villages that had been absorbed by urban expansion, or areas of seriously decayed low-­quality housing stock. Paço do Lumiar and Olivais Velho are two examples of small rural villages which were engulfed by Lisbon, and whose small

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Figure 3.2  Shantytown: Rua do Sol in Chelas, 1970s

farm-­labourers’ houses, run down and lacking in modern facilities, were only a step above shacks in shantytowns. The ‘Old Central’ category refers to inner-­city areas, often built on the old city’s medieval street pattern, tightly packed and where nineteenth-­ century tenement blocs stand shoulder to shoulder with older houses, dating back to the reconstruction of the city following the 1755 earthquake, or even earlier. Although conditions could be extremely poor in some of these areas, their central location put them close to employment areas and amenities. Some of the Old Central wards had been the locus of significant rural migration from the countryside in the 1930s and 1950s.10 Others were more established older working-­class communities, dating from the early twentieth century. On the whole they were more likely to be settled communities, and residents to be employed in stable, semi-­skilled jobs. Nevertheless, reflecting the shift of the new population and factories to the out-lying freguesias, the population of these areas was also gradually ageing.11 ‘Social Housing’ accounts for neighbourhoods built by state agencies and, in some cases, charitable institutions. These ranged from the Casas Económicas neighbourhoods, built in the 1930s and 1940s as part of Salazar’s flagship housing scheme of detached houses described in the last chapter, to the newer and more modern social housing blocks being built since the late 1950s. Although social housing flats could experience

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all the problems associated with high-­rise living across Europe – and in future years would certainly do so – most of these neighbourhoods were still under a decade old in Lisbon. To the extent that they provided access to modern facilities, in contrast to the overcrowded and insalubrious conditions of shantytowns, they were attractive to the many thousands of ill-­housed across the city. ‘Pre-­Fabricated Council Housing’ is a subset of the category of social housing that describes its lowest rung on the ladder of house types. The pre-­fabricated housing schemes, which were featured at length in the previous chapter, began in 1938 as a temporary solution. Despite being technically in receipt of social housing, inhabitants of these neighbourhoods had seen them deteriorate over many years. The conditions of some of them were barely a step up from nearby shantytowns, while the promise of relocation to council flats was put back year after year. The neighbourhoods of Quinta da Calçada (Campo Grande) and Relógio (Marvila) are examples of the appalling living conditions in these areas. When they first sent a list of demands to the Provisional Government, the residents of Quinta da Calçada wrote that the ‘houses were in such a state that they would scarcely be fit for animals, let alone people’. Rats abounded and each of the houses was only allowed one 25-­watt bulb, which precluded the use of any other electrical appliances. Nor was there any street lighting or adequate garbage removal.12 The ‘Middle Class’ category includes all those areas where the housing stock was in a reasonable state of repair. These areas ranged from those comfortably well-­off, like much of the Freguesia of São João de Brito, built in the 1940s and 1950s, to others such the new neighbourhoods in Olivais and Benfica built between the late 1960s and early 1970s. They were only lightly affected by poor housing and lack of urban services. As such, in these areas housing only tended to be an issue when residents’ commissions believed empty houses and flats could be occupied and distributed to shantytown residents. ‘Ward-­level’ describes a handful of commissions, mostly created in the summer of 1975 and often enjoying close links to the Juntas de Freguesia, the ward council executive. Ward-­level residents’ commissions often acted as umbrella groups to a number of area commissions, or sought to directly represent the population of a whole ward, which could comprise different neighbourhoods. It is worth noting that quite a few of the commissions listed under ‘Old Central’ could also be considered in this category, but the distinction was made on the basis that old wards tended to contain single neighbourhood units, fairly socially homogenous and possessing their own identities. In contrast, other Freguesias could contain several neighbourhoods with different

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Table 3.2  First mention of residents’ commissions in Lisbon, 1974–76 1974

Middle-­class Old central Pre-­fab  council Run down  brick Shantytown Social housing Ward-­level Unidentified All % Note: 

a

1975

Apr.– Aug.

Sep.– Dec.

Jan.– Apr.

May– Aug.

– – 6

1 1 –

11 7 –

1

2

9 3 – – 19 11.4

1976 Sep.– Dec.

Jan.– Jul.

Total

%

18 16 1

9 3 1

4 – –

43 27 8

26.1 16.3 4.8

6

3

3

2

17

10.2

5 1 1 2

7 1 – –

10 6 6 5

2 2 – 6

1 – – 3

34 13 7 17a

20.5 7.8 4.2 10.2

13  7.8

32 19.3

26 15.7

10  6.0

65 39.2

166 –

– –

‘Total’ column includes 1 uncategorised and undated commission.

Sources:  Newspapers and AHM/AAC CE 1976.

characteristics and identities.13 The Freguesia of Sta Maria dos Olivais is one example of a large out-­lying ward encompassing a number of distinct ­neighbourhoods – including shanties of Quinta dos Machados, Circumvalação and São Cornélio; social housing neighbourhoods in Cabo Ruivo and Quinta do Morgado; large middle-­class neighbourhoods that organised four separate residents’ committees; and one commission representing the ancient village of Olivais, now a run-­down brick area, engulfed by the urban sprawl of the 1950s and 1960s. Table 3.2 combines this categorisation of neighbourhood commissions with the date they first appear in the sources, giving an idea of the diffusion of the urban movement throughout the revolutionary period. The date of first mention is not always necessarily the date in which neighbourhoods were created by public assembly of local residents – such precision is only available for 47 of the 166 commissions. Where that is not available, the date of first mention in the sources is used as a proxy for the beginning of their activity. Table 3.2 shows that the urban movement was initiated by a small number of neighbourhoods that appeared in April and August of 1974. These ‘first movers’ decided to act in extremely uncertain circumstances, risking repression or a backlash by the new authorities, in some cases only hours after the military had moved to remove the dictatorship.

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Their actions had a number of consequential results for the development of the movement as a whole, and for the dynamics of popular contention more broadly. First, they challenged the existing authorities and the military by a set of transgressive mobilisations, particularly through the occupation of houses. The unwillingness of both the police force and the military to react coercively sent a strong message to people in other neighbourhoods and contexts that the rules of the game had changed. Secondly, even where they opted for a strategy of petition and representation, they forced a response and a recognition from the transition authorities that they were valid interlocutors who would be listened to. Through these early actions (and the response to them), the ‘first movers’ provided other areas with a repertoire of action – public assemblies, creation of residents commissions and even housing ­occupations – that others saw could be used effectively to address the issues of housing and urban conditions. This interplay between mobilisation and response informs the selection of neighbourhoods to include in the ‘first mover’ category. In a strict sense, we could restrict this category to a handful of areas that mobilised in the first few days that followed the 25 April coup. But the uncertainties and provisional nature of the response by the new authorities were a feature of the summer of 1974. By the end of August 1974 the government announced the creation of a new housing scheme, confirmed the right to housing, and the institutions of central and local government began functioning again at the hands of new transitional appointments. Their response, as we shall see below, which to an extent ‘normalised’ grassroots mobilisation by confirming that there were returns to be had to local organisation, heralded a period of expansion and consolidation of the urban movement. Table 3.3 lists the neighbourhood committees formed between April and August 1974. It reveals the disproportionate weight of state-­built neighbourhoods in the first-­mover group, comprising (in the form of pre-­fabricated municipal and more recently built social housing neighbourhoods) around half of the group. This is striking if we compare this with the overall proportion of commissions formed across the whole of the revolutionary period, where state-­built and managed neighbourhoods account for only just over a tenth of the total. At the same time, the ‘first mover’ group also includes a substantial number of shantytown neighbourhoods. So how did these nineteen commissions appear? Why these, and not others – there were, after all, many more poor neighbourhoods, including more abject shanties. What distinguishes these groups from others and how does that help to explain the emergence of the urban social movement? A key way to address these questions is to go

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Table 3.3  First movers in the Lisbon Urban Movement, April–August 1974 Residents’ commission

Neighbourhood type

Freguesia

First mention

Curraleira Zona I de Chelasa Quinta das Fonsecas

Shantytown Social housing Shantytown

3 May 9 May 11 May

Casalinho da Ajuda Casal Ventoso

Social housing Shantytown

Horta Novaa Padre Cruz Alto dos Moinhos

Pre-­fab council Pre-­fab council Shantytown

Quinta do Narigão e   Quinta do Alto Quinta da Calçada Boavistaa Musgueira Sul Relógioa Paço do Lumiar

Shantytown

São João Marvila São Domingos de Benfica Ajuda Santo Condestável Carnide Carnide São Domingos de Benfica São João de Brito

Pre-­fab council Pre-­fab council Pre-­fab council Pre-­fab council Run-­down brick houses Shantytown

Campo Grande Benfica Lumiar Marvila Lumiar

9 June 22 June June June 4 July

Marvila

6 July

Social housing Shantytown

Benfica Campolide

July July

Shantytown

Alto do Pina

1 August

Shantytown

São Domingos de Benfica

16 August

Quintas da Rosa,  da Farinheira, de S. João dos Peixes e dos Mouzinhos Pedralvas Quinta da Bela Flor,  Tarujo e Ribeira de Alcântara Quinta do Bacalhau e  Monte do Coxo Quinta D.Leonor

Note: 

a

19 May 24 May 27 May May 3 June 3 June

Residents’ Commissions formed after housing occupations.

Sources:  Newspapers and AHM/AAC, Correspondência Eleitoral 1976.

beyond what the existing literature has done and analyse in detail the claims and demands that accompanied their mobilisation. Taking action: the pioneer residents’ commissions The first visible signs that those living in the city’s poorest areas were not going to be mere spectators in the Portuguese Revolution appeared only

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days following the coup. The residents of Boavista, one of the group of pre-­fabricated council estates that featured in the last chapter, were the first to act, taking charge of 230 apartments houses built by the council but that, according to the occupiers, had stood empty for five years and fallen into disrepair. The occupiers stated the houses had been promised to residents of Boavista and demanded keys and contracts from the city council.14 On 2 May shantytown dwellers elsewhere in the city followed their example, occupying 270 flats being built by a charitable foundation in Ajuda named after the late dictator, Oliveira Salazar.15 A week later the newspapers reported that over a thousand people from shanty­ towns across Lisbon occupied over twenty apartment blocks that had been built by the government’s housing agency in the neighbourhood of Chelas, in Marvila.16 This wave of house occupations – the first of several to come over the following eighteen months – was over fairly quickly, petering out once nearly all vacant social housing properties had been seized – there was little appetite to take occupations further. Having taken over the buildings, occupiers set about organising assemblies and electing representative commissions to negotiate with the Junta: in Chelas, each of the twenty-­three seized apartment blocks contributed three delegates to a commission that initiated a register of the occupying families and approached the Provisional Government to demand the keys to the houses.17 These occupations did not represent a challenge to the institution of private property nor a rejection of the system, at least not yet. Instead, the evidence helps to confirm the claim made in the previous chapter – that the dictatorship’s housing policies and its ever more ambitious promises had generated an expectation of state-­provided housing. The inability of the regime to meet those expectations gave rise to an anger and feeling of wronged entitlement that fuelled the mobilisation of Lisbon’s ill-­housed, who often felt justified in claiming they had been victims of corruption and favouritism on the part of the authorities, making (sometimes justified) accusations that preference was given to regime supporters, police officers and undeserving others. For instance, in an interview with the Maoist magazine Luta Popular a year later, a woman who had seized one of the houses being built by the Salazar Foundation in Ajuda, said her decision to come had been motivated by rumours spreading in a nearby shantytown: ‘[people said:] do you think you’ll get to live [in the new estate]? That’s for the secret police agents! That’s for police officers!’. Although ostensibly the houses were destined for the residents of the shantytown this served only, in the words of the same woman ‘to shut them up’ and only those who

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could afford to bribe social services staff with ‘kilos of ham, jugs of olive oil and thousands of escudos’ were awarded houses. In the eyes of the occupiers, it was the undeserving who got the houses: President Américo Tomás’ chauffeur, an ‘engineer’ or a city council employee.18 These accusations were echoed by the families who occupied apartments in Chelas, which they claimed were being handed to police and army veterans ahead of the poor.19 As the face of the regime’s officialdom, social services, police officers and neighbourhood wardens were often the target of the residents’ ire once the dictatorship was removed: in Musgueira, where the Lisbon municipality was clearing local slums, residents called for the sacking of head of local social services, who they accused of accepting bribes of ‘ham and olive oil’ in return for preference in housing allocation, while in Beato the social worker was accused of ‘bad faith’ in assessing incomes of those on waiting lists which would determine both priorities and the level of rent to be paid to the council.20 In Casal Ventoso, one of the city’s largest and oldest shantytowns, the residents’ commission organised a protest outside the local social services office, demanding to be given control over the community centre and accusing the priest who ran it of ‘never having done anything’ for the neighbourhood.21 Another common target was the municipal police who patrolled council neighbourhoods, enforced housing regulations, and whose assessment of ‘good conduct’ or otherwise could mean the difference between getting a house or immediate eviction. The newsletter of the residents’ commission of the pre-­fabricated council estate in Relógio demanded the sacking of dishonest city council officials and of: the corrupt and disgusting Municipal Police, responsible for so much of our exploitation. We shall never forget the humiliations that our wives and mothers went through at their hands as they begged for a house for their families.22

At present it is impossible to ascertain exactly where all those who seized council houses in late April and early May of 1974 came from, whether they were new arrivals to the city or which shantytowns and neighbourhoods they came from. However, it is noteworthy that several of these occupations, such as those in Ajuda, Boavista, Relógio and Horta Nova seem to have taken place in a circumscribed social space, with people occupying ‘their’ homes, or at least those they felt had been promised to a particular group of shanty-­dwellers. Only in Chelas is there a wider, cross-­city movement – elsewhere the seizures were a new chapter in an ongoing and often sour relationship between residents, housing officials and social services.

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The housing occupations were a powerful symbol of how much had changed in the few weeks since the coup: thousands of people had chosen  an unconventional and disruptive way to claim a right and had not been met by violent repression from the state. Nevertheless, the few hundred homes occupied could not solve the problem of the many thousands of families living in dreadful conditions. And while some did improve their conditions, even by moving into unfinished apartments, often with no water, electricity or even windows, an equal number found themselves shut out of houses they had hoped to move into. A group of shantytown residents from Chelas, who were on the official waiting list to move into the blocs occupied on 8 May told A Capital how, on learning of the occupations, municipal housing officers came to their neighbourhood in the middle of night to hand over keys to the flats to those on the waiting list in the hope that they would still make it to the houses. The distribution of keys was, however, chaotic, and many missed out. In the end that mattered little as when they got to the flats ‘they found the doors broken in and the houses occupied by others who threatened anyone who came near’.23 A further consequence of the occupations was the cessation of all building work – the occupied buildings would not be finished for many months, in some cases years. In a construction sector already rattled by rising inflation and costs, the possibility of occupations halting work was a problem that would have far-­reaching consequences.24 Attracting less attention from the media, but at the same time as housing occupations took place, a larger number of neighbourhoods were mobilising in less confrontational ways. In a pattern repeated across the city, groups of local residents called neighbourhood public meetings, often attended by hundreds of people. These public assemblies discussed pressing issues facing the neighbourhood, elected a number of representatives – known as a Comissão de Moradores (residents’ commission) – and drew up lists of demands to present to the authorities. Access to publicly funded housing was a key point for virtually all these new residents’ commissions. The shantytown of Curraleira was one of the first to organise: it contacted the Secretary of State for Housing in June 1974 to demand the their urgent re-­ housing in state-­built houses.25 The residents of some Chelas shantytowns wrote to the City Council in August 1974 demanding that planning and building work of blocks for the area’s fifteen thousand residents start ‘immediately’.26 The joint commission for Quinta do Narigão and Quinta do Alto, São João de Brito, in a letter to the Junta de Salvação Nacional and to the City Council, struck a more patient note:

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As Your Excellency knows, the ambition of all those that for several reasons have to live in shacks, is to have their own house … We are nevertheless conscious that this not immediately possible, but we cannot but request that the opportunity to live in a house is given to us soon.27

The next most common demand by the new residents’ commissions concerned a range of urban services which the state had begun to roll out, but whose coverage was highly uneven: medical or social centres, better street cleaning, household waste collection, access to public transport, improved policing and street lighting. The residents of Quinta da Calçada gave an eloquent description of the consequences of inadequate public services in their pre-­fabricated council neighbourhood. With no garbage collection and faulty sewerage, the residents complained of rats running amok in the neighbourhood: Rats big as cats who wonder the streets and through everyone’s houses; who bite children’s ears; who steal what little food families have; who spoil clothes; and who carry infectious diseases, permanently endangering the health of the population.28

Without access to the water grid, most shantytowns also demanded the installation of public water fountains. The owner of the land on which the shantytown of Quinta das Fonsecas was sited had for years refused the installation of more than a few taps. The residents complained they had to walk up to a kilometre for the nearest source of clean water. Tragically, all the residents remembered the date on which a child had died in a fire that could not be put out for lack of water.29 Another common demand was provision of childcare facilities and primary schools. A group of women interviewed by the Diário de Lisboa in the shantytown of Casal do Pinto (Marvila) complained of being unable to hold down jobs because there was no available childcare: one had sent for her 16-­year-­old sister to look after her children; another, who worked as a cleaner in private homes, took her son to work with her; others simply could not take a job.30 According to a 1974 official report, the Marvila ward, one of the poorest in the city, had only 134 free childcare places to serve a total population of between thirty and forty thousand.31 These insufficiencies were similar in other areas of the city – in a list of demands later sent to the city council by Musgueira Sul commission illustrated this point with numbers: There are 472 children between the ages of 0 and 6 in the neighbourhood. As their mothers do not have anywhere to leave the children, 50% of the women of the neighbourhood cannot work and the rest leave their children to fend for themselves. To prove this all it takes is a visit to the neighbourhood at any time of day.32

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The issue of childcare, points further to the seeming importance of women in the early mobilisation of the residents’ commissions movement. The evidence is sparse and generalisations must be cautious, but it is noteworthy that, particularly in the spring and summer of 1974, women are often referred to in the sources as critical in organising local populations. A man interviewed by the newspaper Républica about the Casal Ventoso commission said that ‘it was women who organised all this’, and named Maria Fernanda Coelho as ‘the great engine’ of mobilisation.33 In the shantytown of Quinta das Fonsecas, it was the local women, many of whom worked at the nearby University Hospital and University Canteen, who called in student activists to help them organise the first neighbourhood meeting. When A Capital reported on the mobilisation of the neighbourhood the spokesperson for the residents was a woman, Graça das Malhas.34 In the Boavista occupations, Esperança da Conceição Fernandes is mentioned as the driving force and leader.35 In May 1974, and although no commissions were formed in those neighbourhoods until later, it was reported that it was women who led the protest against the local social worker in the shantytown of Musgueira-­ Norte (Lumiar), and most of the demonstrators who complained of the quality of the houses built by the government’s housing services in Marvila were women.36 The most detailed account available of the creation of a commission is for the shantytowns of Quinta do Narigão and Quinta do Alto, in the Freguesia of São João de Brito, written by the commission itself. According to this document, on 30 April 1974 a meeting was organised for parents of children enrolled at the local kindergarten to inform them about cholera prevention. Those present at the meeting decided it was impossible to follow the advice given while animals still roamed freely in the neighbourhood and garbage piled up uncollected in the streets. ‘Two mothers’, of ‘their own free initiative’ gathered some residents to go to the Junta de Freguesia, to the new government authorities, and finally to the local Social Services Centre, with whose help they called a neighbourhood meeting at which the residents’ commission was elected and a list of demands drawn up.37 Regardless of their origins, there is a common thread to all the demands  made by the new neighbourhood organisations: all were directed to the state – either in the form of addresses to the Junta de Salvação Nacional (and later the provisional government), or the municipal authorities. It is clear that housing and urban service provision had come to be seen as a duty of the state – in fact, these were often articulated in the language of rights which, as was discussed in the previous chapter, had been incorporated into the discourse of both the

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­ ictatorship’s officials and opposition groups. Now, it could be found on d the street: a communiqué from the residents’ commission of Pedralvas social housing neighbourhood stated the right to own their house was an ‘elementary right’ due to the ‘labouring classes’, and demanded that their tenancies be transferred to ownership.38 A shantytown commission wrote in its list of demands that a house worthy of habitation was their ‘right as human beings’; the residents of Horta Nova spoke of the same as their ‘inalienable right’, while an occupier in the Salazar Estate declared ‘our right is based on morality. We are poor, we have children, we need a home’.39 What is also clear from the correspondence and interviews with the first mover residents’ commissions is the extent to which their organisation and grievances were rooted in a history of dealings with the urban authorities, which helps explain the number of public housing neighbourhoods in the ‘first mover’ group, but also why it was particular shantytowns that mobilised early. Those that did included some of the largest and oldest shantytowns, many of whom were already the target of clearance and re-­housing schemes that had involved the population in a relationship with the authorities – as was the case with Curraleira, where some of the residents were promised relocation to the estates being built in Chelas, or in Casalinho da Ajuda which was linked to the privately managed Salazar Foundtion social housing neighbourhood. In addition many of these shantytowns were built on municipal land and the City Council charged ground rent to even the poorest shacks. This gave residents’ a feeling of entitlement to improvements that was also commonly held by the tenants of pre-­fabricated council neighborhoods. While some pre-­fabricated estates like Relógio demanded that rents were suspended altogether, others asked that the rents they pay ‘be translated into the improvement of the neighbourhoods’, as was the case with the residents of Campolide shantytowns and of Alto dos Moinhos.40 After meeting with the Council services, the Residents’ Commission of Narigão and Quinta do Alto complained that the Council seemed to know little about the conditions of their neighbourhoods, ‘which is strange, seeing as they are Lisbon bairros, and all residents are Council tenants’.41 The same neighbourhood, pre-­empting calls that would be echoed by many of the groups appearing at later sages, pushed for the rents to be channelled to a fund that would subsidise the building of houses, since the ‘rent would not exist if it were not for the shacks’, and was therefore immoral.42 There was also a deep feeling of injustice over the continued use of pre-­fabricated units in many of the municipal estates, which were regarded as a form of discrimination by not building ‘real’ houses. One of the first meetings of the new Secretary of State

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for Housing Nuno Portas with Lisbon residents took place in Quinta da Calçada, built in 1938. Their demands included the construction of ‘habitable houses’.43 In June, the newsletter of the residents of Relógio carried the headline ‘No to Tin Houses, Yes to Real Houses’, and demanded that the Council halt the building of any more pre-­fabricated housing anywhere in the city.44 This close connection between public or para-­public agencies (in the case of the Salazar Foundation estate), both in terms of the locations and the demands of the ‘first mover’ group support the hypothesis, already laid out in the previous chapter, of the central role of an expanding state in shaping this new form of public contentious mobilisation and even to suggest strong continuities between the pre-­and post-­revolutionary periods. Although the scarcity of sources for the years before the revolution do not allow us to trace direct connections between particular neighbourhoods and individuals then and in the creation of the urban social movement, the circumstantial evidence strongly suggests that such connections were critical. This impression is further reinforced if we look at the role played by non-­residents in the creation of the first commissions. Allies, instigators and brokers In many accounts of the creation of residents’ commissions, non-­ residents play a role. But these are most often not radical agitators, but professionals who are in some capacity agents of the state in the neighbourhood (although of course, the two categories cannot be seen as mutually exclusive). At times, as has been mentioned above, these officials were the target of the ire of the population, but there is also ample evidence that they could also act as enablers and supporters of the organisation of local residents – a double role that mirrors the conflict between advocates of ‘community development’ and the more authoritarian approach discussed in the last chapter. The residents of poor areas sometimes enlisted the assistance of local social workers or priests (the two categories often overlapped): when the residents of Casalinho da Ajuda sent a delegation to the City Council in May 1974, it was accompanied by the local social worker, whose office was also used for the commissions correspondence.45 In Quinta do Narigão and Quinta do Alto it was the local social workers who gave the idea of a plenary meeting as the form of organising the protest. From the group of women who began organising the population: a request was made that the Social Service Centre support them in this problem and collaborate with them so that the relevant authorities saw

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to their problems (…) the Social Centre gave its support by suggesting the possibility of organising a meeting to decide on the path to follow with those present [the women] and that they would bring their neighbours.46

Another residents’ group made a distinction between ‘their’ local cleric, who assisted in the day-­to-­day running of the commission, and the normal church hierarchy: Father Manuel, from Curraleira, was ‘not a vestry priest. He works hard’.47 There was also a priest in the first commission elected in Quinta da Bela Flor, and another cleric was reported as having helped set up the first commission in the Padre Cruz neighbourhood.48 The Catholic Church, historically a pillar of the New State, was not immune to change and both clergy and believers had been influenced by the Second Vatican Council, and by left-­leaning currents within the Church, which were particularly active in ministering in impoverished areas.49 But it was not only local priests and social workers who were involved in the creation of residents’ commissions in the months following the coup. Residents of Lisbon’s poor neighbourhoods often collaborated with students, officials and activists, sometimes giving rise to the idea that their organisation was the result of manipulation or at the very least encouragement on the part of outsiders. In fact, the diversity of backgrounds (including the officials mentioned above) and political outlook of the people involved belies such an easy interpretation. Where the sources give a glimpse of how the neighbourhoods came to involve outsiders in the organisation of their commissions, it is often the case that residents themselves sought out those they believed could assist them in making their case to the authorities. According to an oral history of the residents’ commission of Quinta das Fonsecas, a few days after the coup a group of local women decided to approach students from the nearby Law Faculty (a well-­known centre of student opposition to the regime) to enlist their help in organising a neighbourhood assembly: The women went to the Law Faculty perhaps inspired by the fact that the Police was always chasing the students, and the students always fighting back, with the lockouts of the Universities – which happened a lot before the 25 April – and [confrontations with the Police] in front of the Canteen or the Santa Maria Hospital. Many of the women worked in the Hospital, others in the Canteen, which is to say they had contact with the students. Then, after 25 April, there you go! They stepped forward!50

One explicitely political organisation that appears in some areas connected to the creation of the first residents’ commissions is the MDP/CDE

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movement (Portuguese Democratic Movement/Electoral Democratic Commissions). The MDP/CDE was created during Marcello Caetano’s political thaw to stand in elections against the regime-­sponsored party, the União Nacional. It was intended as a united front of the democratic opposition groups and in 1973 it had campaigned with the backing of Communists, Socialists and other opposition groups. Active in Lisbon since 1969, the movement could count on a wide network of sympathisers and activists at the time of the coup, something which, apart from the Communists, no other party could claim. Immediately after the revolution, the MDP/CDE also enjoyed the legitimacy of having been the most visible opposition to the regime in its last few years. It presented itself as a ‘unitary’ pro-­democracy movement above partisan squabbles whose members could be sympathisers of any political party. One of the MDP’s leaders, Pereira de Moura presented it as a movement appealing to ‘democrats’ wanting to build a democratic transition to socialism, including members of the Communist and Socialist parties, as well as ‘progressive Catholics’, with whom it was particularly popular, since it avoided the stigma of the traditional anti-­religious stance of the Communist Party.51 In the weeks after the coup, the MDP/CDE began organising public meetings across the city to organise the replacement of Freguesia executives appointed by the dictatorship. One held in the Freguesia of Benfica was reportedly attended by ‘thousands’.52 MDP/CDE activists also organised neighbourhood-­level meetings to discuss local problems that sometimes resulted in the election of a local residents’ commission. The first thus reported was in the shantytown of Alto dos Moinhos, where a newspaper reports say that a somewhat disorganised meeting which ended with the election of a commission was chaired by five MDP/CDE ‘youths’.53 Soon after, a similar process took place in neighbouring Quinta D. Leonor, this time also with some Communist activists.54 The residents’ commission of Paço do Lumiar was elected at a meeting called in the local sports club hall by the local CDE branch.55 In November 1974 the residents’ commissions of the shantytown of Tarujo in Campolide (the result of the division into three commission of the of the Bela Flor, Tarujo and Ribeira de Alcântara commission formed in July) organised a party to celebrate the installation of piped water and electricity in the neighbourhood. MDP/CDE activists, who had been active in the area since before the coup, were present and, according to the newspaper report the monthly meetings of the three commissions were ‘chaired by local CDE activists’.56 The MDP’s relationship to the PCP, particularly as the revolutionary process unfolded, has led some to regard it at this time as little more

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than a satellite of the communist party, used as part of a strategy of ‘entryism’. It is certainly the case that the MDP came to be increasingly allied to, if not directed by, the PCP, who sought to use the legitimacy the MDP had gained in opposition to exert more influence in the administration and attract supporters, especially Catholics, who traditionally would not have considered voting for the Communists. However, in the first few months after the coup the MDP/CDE was in many ways still a unitary organisation harbouring sympathisers of various different parties. It was not until the end of August 1974 that the Socialists and the PPD explicitly denounced the MDP and asked their members to leave the movement. This only happened once the MDP signalled its intention become a political party, rather than a general pro-­democracy movement.57 During this period, it is probably more correct to see the MDP as a catalyst for the organisation of residents’ commissions in areas which were already likely to do so for other reasons – after all, by July the MDP claimed to have organised more than 500 public meetings in Lisbon and the surrounding areas alone, but only a score of neighbourhoods created residents’ commissions.58 When it comes to the occupations of social housing, however, the sources tend to reveal a clearly political role on the part of other groups. Nearly all the occupations of this period seem to have enjoyed at least the encouragement, if not logistical support, of radical left-­wing parties, in particular the maoist MRPP (Movement for the Reorganisation of  the  Portuguese Proletariat).59 Two different newspaper sources attribute the organisation of the housing occupations in the Boavista neighbourhood to the MRPP.60 On 3 May, the A Capital newspaper reported that the occupation had started following a student plenary at the Technical University of Lisbon (IST). At the end of the meeting, around 500 students, bearing placards with slogans such as ‘Democracy for the Workers and Dictatorship for the People’, and red flags congregated on the Casalinho da Ajuda neighbourhood.61

The students are said to have then supported the occupations in the nearby Salazar neighbourhood. While there is no specific mention of a political party in that account, the MRPP’s newspaper later claimed that the UDP (Popular Democratic Union) – another fringe Maoist party – had been involved.62 In Horta Nova the MRPP was again involved in the occupation of the new houses by Cape Verdian immigrants. According to the party’s newspaper Luta Popular: The people of the neighbourhood, following the example of the comrades of the Boavista neighbourhood, and like them under the direction of the

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MRPP, occupied the houses where they now live, knowing how to resist the threats and provocations of Major Galante, representative of the Junta [JSN], who tried in vain to stop the people occupying, while at the same time trying to isolate the activists.63

After the occupation, a neighbourhood plenary was called, ‘having a MRPP flag as backdrop’. The first speech was made by a party member who spoke on police repression and the need to release the famous Cuban POW Soldier Peralta. Only then did residents speak on the neighbourhood’s problems and a commission of ten was elected. Finally, a motion was passed saluting the people of Boavista who occupied houses ‘under the direction of the vanguard of the working class, the MRPP’.64 The MRPP’s newspaper also praised the occupation of fifty empty pre-­fabricated houses in the council neighbourhood of Relógio in late May 1974 and the new residents’ commissions in the same neighbourhood defended positions close to the MRPP line, attacking ‘capitalist exploiters’ and demanding an immediate withdrawal from the African colonies.65 There is no direct evidence of party involvement in the occupations that took place in Chelas on 8 May 1974. However, given the large numbers of people from a variety of poor areas involved in a coordinated seizure in one single night, it is difficult to believe there was no organising agency, and an official statement attributed the occupations to ‘reactionary instigators’ – a designation often used at the time to criticise all kinds of political adversaries.66 Was the support of radical political activists linked to the adoption of direct action tactics, such as the occupation of houses? And if so is this evidence that the shantytown residents that chose to seize housing were ‘manipulated’ into doing so? This seems unlikely: while young activists were clearly supportive of the occupations, their encouragement fell on fertile ground. Many of the shantytowns who organised occupations were not only close to the estates under construction, but could almost be described as ‘semi-­official’ neighbourhoods, whose residents had a history of interaction with the local authorities and were on waiting lists for housing allocation. The occupations seem to have been driven principally by anger at the slowness of promised slum-­clearance projects and perceived official corruption, rather than a sign of deep partisan commitment. Whatever the role of the radical parties, ultimately, it were thousands of shantytown residents who took the risk of seizing houses. But it is important to place the few instances of occupations in the broader context of an emerging social movement: the great majority of organisations created in this period opted for negotiation, rather than

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direct action, and seemed willing to collaborate with the authorities. The residents of Quinta do Narigão and Quinta do Alto, São João de Brito, in a letter to the Junta de Salvação Nacional, provide an example: As Your Excellency knows, the ambition of all those that for several reasons have to live in shacks, is to have their own house … We are nevertheless conscious that this not immediately possible, but we cannot but request that the opportunity to live in a house is given to us soon.67

For the most part the petitions and lists of demands of residents’ commissions revealed confidence in the new authorities. The idea of delivering social housing through the establishment of residents’ cooperatives had been tested in Marvila and announced as a possible solution to the housing problem by the Secretary of State for Housing in June 1974.68 In that interview the Secretary of State added that it was possible that residents themselves could contribute with their labour to reduce construction costs. This proved popular: five of the shantytowns and two of the pre-­fabricated council neighbourhoods are recorded as expressing an interest in creating cooperatives. Even where the tactic of occupation of houses, successful elsewhere, was an attractive option, some residents’ commissions seemed unwilling to antagonise the authorities: the commission of Quinta da Rosa even wrote to the City Council asking for permission to occupy several run-­down houses in the area in order to house some of the neighbourhood’s neediest families.69 On balance, the mobilisation strategies of the ‘first mover’ commissions tend to reflect more the pattern of local expectations and relationship with the authorities – whether positive or negative – than the involvement of outside actors. In terms of understanding the origins of the urban movement, analysing the pioneer group suggests strongly the link between protest and the government’s intervention in the city, as well as the importance of existing community ties and identities. Their actions lay the ground for future mobilisations and changed the political dynamics of the post-­coup period to the extent that they made clear to the provisional authorities that the street would have to be taken into account. But the influence of the ‘first mover’ commissions on other urban communities which had not yet mobilised, as well as on the broader political context, was not purely the result of their actions, but has to be understood dynamically, in conjunction with the response of the new authorities – the Junta de Salvação Nacional, hurriedly appointed to oversee the transition, the military, the provisional government and the administrative commission of the Lisbon City Council – and political forces.

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The troublesome three D’s: building a democratic city In the aftermath of the 25 April coup the organisation of the victorious military officers, the MFA, staked its legitimacy on the delivery of the three Ds: Decolonisation, Democracy and Development. The new rulers of Portugal were well aware that the defeat of the dictatorship was due to that regime’s inability ‘to identify itself with the will of the People, to whom it denied all democratic channels’, and were eager to avoid the same mistake.70 In late April and early May, the time of the first wave of housing occupations, the MFA-­appointed Junta de Salvação Nacional was swamped with demands and busy with the delicate political manoeuvring in securing the appointment of the first Provisional Government. When faced with the mobilisation of the urban poor, still unsure of its position, not knowing how the judicial and administrative systems would respond to the changing circumstances, the Junta decided to temporise the problem and leave its solution to the government and city authorities, when they should come into office. While communiqués were produced denouncing the occupations, on the ground there was little attempt to stop them. The police force, regarded and denounced by the population as ‘fascist lackeys’, had lost the ability to exercise any authority. It was left to the military to deal with the occupations, but the army was unwilling to be seen to employ force against the very people on whose name it had removed the dictatorship.71 When the Fundação Salazar estate was seized by shanty dwellers a Military Police detachment appeared, but according to a newspaper report, the officer in charge told us he did not know about the legality of the actions taken, but that he ‘thought it would not be a problem, as it had already happened in other neighbourhoods’. However, he insisted that his mission was solely to observe what has going on (…) The occupation of the houses took place serenely, which led the M[ilitary] P[olice] unit to withdraw, in the midst of expressions of great joy by the shantytown residents.72

The unwillingness of the military to get involved was apparent not only on the ground, but also at higher levels. After the occupation of the Chelas blocs the new commission sent a delegation to the Presidential Palace to ask for confirmation of their right to the houses seized. There, according to the Diário de Notícias, Captain Santos Silva (…) said that the residents should remain in the occupied houses. Despite being an unlawful occupation, it is now a consummated fact, consequence of the lack of a serious housing policy. That will be taken into account.73

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A statement by the Junta, issued two days later did little to clarify the official position: on one hand it claimed to understand the occupations as ‘a cry against the inefficiency of the [housing] departments’, and announced no one would be evicted, ‘because these are deprived families’, asking the occupiers to form residents’ commissions in order to negotiate with the authorities; on the other it stated that ‘no further occupations would be tolerated’.74 In effect, this amounted to a validation by default of the occupations, a ‘political price’ that had to be paid in order to avoid a conflict between the new powers and the population, according to the new Secretary of State for Housing, appointed later in May.75 The choice for this sensitive brief was Nuno Portas, an architect and civil servant who had been closely involved with the organisation of the 1969 Housing Congress, and part of the generation who had introduced the language of rights and participatory development to dictatorship’s urban policy.76 Portas expressed the fear that the emergence of a protest movement from the city’s poor neighbourhoods could derail the process of creating a new Portugal, the ‘great hope of all the ­progressive forces in Europe’: if no political initiative is taken in this domain by the labouring and popular forces, there is the certain risk that the political struggle will be overtaken by largely spontaneous urban struggles, which are far in advance of what is allowed by the relation of forces between the classes.77

The Secretary of State for Housing explained that the provisional government found itself caught between popular demands and its limitations: scarcity of funds, inherited bureaucratic structures, and its own status as a provisional government: We have to do something useful immediately, the people demand it and need it, but there are also things we cannot do, that we cannot ensure and changes we cannot guarantee; as such we must, as part of the government’s responsibilities, explain why we cannot go further or faster, what is the balance of forces, and what are the reasons that lie beneath it.78

Pressured by the mobilisation of the urban poor, Portas sought to put in place a strategy that privileged popular participation, looking to channel and institutionalise the popular movement, but at the same time further confirming the potential rewards to the mobilisation of the ‘first mover’ commissions.

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The SAAL programme The much-­needed response to the demands of the emerging urban movement began to be drawn up by Portas’ team in June 1974. It came in the form of technical and financial support for resident-­led building cooperatives, an initiative that proved popular across Lisbon’s shantytowns and run-­down neighbourhoods and which would in turn encourage many more communities to form residents’ commissions – a condition of access to the scheme. In an interview in early June, Portas praised the residents’ commissions he encountered on assuming office as ‘capable of resolving many of the [neighbourhoods’] problems’ and announced that the government would build ‘on the climate of popular participation’ and support ‘with money and expertise, all grassroots popular action’.79 These objectives drew extensively on themes of community development put forward by Portas and other architects and urban planners of his generation in the Housing conference of 1969.80 This group now found itself in a position to implement ideas that had been floated and discussed for several years, but that the dictatorship had been unwilling to back fully. However, in 1974, as in 1969, there was a feeling that there was a large gap between what had to be done and what could be done. While five years before solutions had to be sought within the political parameters set by the dictatorship, when Portas took office other constraints loomed. On top of a crisis of government finances resulting from expanding commitments in the fields of education, public health and social insurance, the Secretary of State faced decreasing confidence in investment in the construction sector, responsible for the employment of around 10 per cent of the Portuguese labour force. As such, threats to the sector’s profitability – which included the spectre of occupations – could have devastating consequences.81 A further difficulty in designing interventions in the housing sector was the inheritance of complex laws and bureaucratic structures from the previous regime. Throughout the system there were entrenched practices and attitudes which made a transformation of the way in which public services were delivered difficult. Even the impact of the 1969 housing services reforms, limited as they were, had been constrained by centralisation and watertight compartmentalisation of different agencies. In the words of one housing official, central aspects of the 1969 reforms, such as the creation of a central governmental institute with responsibility for social housing had been met with resistance by a ‘decrepit administration which as a system could not meet the demands of a modern State’.82 Writing in 1979, Portas mentioned the ‘endless paperwork with information from multiple services and technicians from all hierarchies’ that

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was necessary to effect policy. A further obstacle would be the courts, especially where housing plans involved any attempt to expropriate land as, in Portas’ opinion, the legal structure inherited from the dictatorship favoured private property over the public interest.83 Faced with such constraints, rather than looking for ‘overtly radical’ solutions that did not take into account the ‘relation of forces’, Portas chose a twin strategy of channelling state aid to the private construction sector, while developing a scheme that could alleviate the various problems fuelling potential discontent in the neighbourhoods.84 The programme was named SAAL (Local Mobile Support Service), a semi-­autonomous structure answering directly to the Secretary of State which coordinated the work of local ‘brigades’ (BAL – Local Support Brigades) composed of architects, planners, civil engineers and other housing experts. These brigades would be assigned to those shantytowns or run-­down areas that were able to organise a residents’ commission and petition the government for intervention. The teams would provide technical assistance to execute the decisions of the neighbourhood in terms of immediate improvements to the area (typically sewerage, water and electricity services) as well as supporting the creation of a cooperative to build new houses. There were three central features of the SAAL programme that, despite Portas’ words, introduced a radical change to the state’s intervention in housing in Portugal. These were the principles that target populations should be allowed to stay in the areas where they had always lived; that they would contribute towards the cost of their houses in some way; and, crucially, that they would have an important say in the process of designing and building new neighbourhoods. These principles reflected the demands that the first-­mover residents’ commissions had been putting to the government in the months since the coup. Several of the residents’ commissions, when presenting their demands for housing, specified that they wanted to stay in the area where they had built their lives. Many of the first mover shantytowns, and some of the council pre-­fabricated neighbourhoods, were sited in fairly central areas of the city, close to jobs and facilities.85 This was in contrast to the practice of building social housing neighbourhoods in cheaper land in the outskirts of the city, often lacking reliable public transport, access to services, and far from employment centres. In response to those demands, but more broadly to a critique of the way in which social housing was delivered in Europe, the SAAL scheme recognised a ‘right to place’ and ‘the continuity of communities that may live in poor conditions, but in areas that were suited to them’.86 The principle that the recipients of housing aid should contribute towards the building of their neighbourhoods was another central

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feature of the scheme that arose from discussions already present in the 1969 Housing conference. There it had been suggested that auto-­ construção, or ‘self-­build’ was a possible option for the solution of the country’s housing needs. Auto-­construção was defined as the mobilisation of residents’ own resources, either as capital investment or in the form of labour.87 More generally it reflected contemporary currents of thought in slum rehabilitation drawing on Latin American experiences, especially those of Chile under Frei and the interventions in Brazilian favelas led by the architect Carlos Nelson dos Santos, with which Portas had become acquainted during the course of a fact-­finding trip in the 1960s.88 The strength of mobilisation of the residents’ commissions made it difficult to bypass them and their integration into the scheme was a way of guaranteeing that the movement would cooperate with the government rather than antagonise it. But if the SAAL programme was in part a response to the demands and actions of the urban movement, it also sought to use its strength and legitimacy to confront the systemic obstacles faced by the reformers who were seeking to transform the services they found themselves charged with: what was aimed at with this programme (so called experimental, in order not to create enemies before starting out, but also not to mislead populations with [the suggestion of] a capacity for response that we could not guarantee), was to create a space for residents’ mobilisation, giving them an active role in the running of the programmes that concerned them, and in pressuring the state apparatus so that it worked to their benefit.89

By institutionalising a role for residents in the process of building social housing, the SAAL aimed at altering the prevalent mechanisms of accountability. Faced with internal resistances and established practices, using the strength of the urban movement was also a way for the new political leadership to attempt to gain control over the departments of its own administration. Despite this, or possibly because of it, and given the strength of the popular mobilisation, the SAAL scheme was launched before all the conditions were in place: So that the new programme could overcome the difficulties of the first few months and was not defeated by bureaucracy and budget controls, a “sui generis” financing scheme was designed which started with a non-­ refundable subsidy equal to one third of the 1974 cost of a new (…) house, leaving it to the residents’ association, in function of the project and the residents possibilities (income levels, [and] capacity for self-­investment), the calculation of the necessary amount to be made available as a loan.90

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Despite the lack of a sound financial footing, the SAAL programme was launched in September 1974. The scheme, and the work of the brigades, would be an important influence in the development of the urban movement. The SAAL had a substantial influence on the creation of new residents’ commissions in the city and, by implication, on the development of the urban movement, especially in the last quarter of 1974. The SAAL’s creation justified the mobilisation of the first movers and created further incentives for new residents’ commissions to form. Of the nine shantytowns in the first-­mover group, seven went on to create housing cooperatives under the scheme, as did the residents of the pre-­fabricated houses of Quinta da Calçada. Of the thirteen residents’ commissions that appeared between September and December 1974, nine joined the SAAL programme. Even into 1975, being able to be a part of the scheme seems to have been a crucial aspect of the mobilisation of poorer neighbourhoods. Overall, of the twenty run-­down and shanty neighbourhoods that were first mentioned in the sources between September 1974 and April 1975, half (ten) were connected to, or at least tried to apply for, a SAAL team.91 As well as the prospect of the building of new houses, neighbourhoods that joined the programme also stood to benefit immediately: SAAL Brigades supported and aided the creation of cooperatives and the holding of regular public meetings, discussing the necessary improvements and the design of the new neighbourhoods. The shantytown of Quinta das Fonsecas was one of the first to join, creating a housing cooperative with an initial 254 members, with most of the residents’ commission executive becoming part of the board of the cooperative. During these first few months open meetings and discussions were ­frequent, as a member of the Commission recalled: at the beginning of our struggle we organised residents’ assemblies every week, every Saturday night; and while at first the assemblies had 10, 15, 20 people in the open air (…), they began to increase gradually, to 50 and 100. There have been meetings with 200 residents! This was useful for [local] conviviality, for people to get to know each other better and talk more, and to realise in their meetings what in fact they have a right to.92

In the initial stages of their intervention, brigades focused on what could make an immediate impact on the quality of life of the resident population. In the shantytown of Quinta das Fonsecas, for instance, despite paying 200$00 of monthly rent to the landowner (about one-­ third of the monthly income of a manual worker), over a thousand people had to share a single public water tap. With the SAAL intervention, even while they waited for the new houses, the residents could

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count on eight new water sources, placed at regular intervals throughout the neighbourhood.93 In Alto dos Moinhos, the SAAL team, working in tandem with the local commission, created a landfill site for the shantytown’s refuse.94 Many neighbourhoods benefited from the remedial work that brigades were able to deliver in their short spell of activity. The shantytowns of Casal dos Machados, Quinta do Leal and Estrada da Circunvalação were assigned a team that by February had intervened by placing hydrants and drinking-­water taps, phone boxes, electricity, sewerage, public lighting and a system of garbage removal.95 While later some residents’ groups would begin to question the practice of palliative improvements, seeing them as a means to mollify them without actually delivering on housing promises, during this period there were occasions when bairros celebrated work delivered by the programme: in November 1974, the residents’ commission of Tarujo and Casal do Sola organised a neighbourhood party to mark the installation of water and electricity in the shantytown by the local brigade.96 However, not all poor neighbourhoods organised residents’ commissions to apply for SAAL membership so quickly: several would only join later, many not at all. Some, although able to organise commissions, were not given entry to the scheme, presumably because the resources available could not stretch to all the areas in need. In the Santo Condestável freguesia, three commissions (Pátio das Sedas, Rua de Campo de Ourique and Casal do Evaristo) formed in September 1974 but ceased activity a few months later after several meetings failed to end in the assignment of a SAAL team to the area.97 Similarly, the residents of Telheiras wrote to the Council highlighting the dilapidated state of their rented houses and suggesting a new neighbourhood was built, but there is no record of their request ever being acceded to, although they continued their activity as a local residents’ group, lobbying the council on other matters.98 There were limitations, and constraints, to the capacity of the SAAL scheme to expand to all the areas in need. By the time of the programme’s extinction in 1976, fifteen housing cooperatives were enrolled, with some serving more than one neighbourhood, but there were at least twenty outstanding requests which the SAAL services had not been able to address. Throughout 1975 and 1976, the SAAL services protested at the lack of funds made available to the operation, arguing that this was seriously undermining their ability to respond to the demands and expectation of the population. This even led to serious conflict within the housing services and later to the radicalisation of a number of SAAL teams.99

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Overall, the introduction of the SAAL programme was an added incentive for the creation of commissions, an important element in the diffusion of the urban social movement. But it was also part of the deal being offered to the poor residents of Lisbon as means of containing their militancy. Underlying the discourse of participation was the hope that the immediate interventions in shantytowns and poor neighbourhoods, alongside the promise of new housing some years down the line, would be able to integrate the mobilisation into the reforming project of the new authorities, who needed both a popular base of support, and the energy and legitimacy of the social movement to reform the state’s bureaucratic structures. The Rental Law and the second wave of occupations Addressing the immediate problems of shantytowns and the most deprived neighbourhoods was not the only way in which the new authorities sought to tackle the housing problem – and other policies also went on to influence the direction and pace of popular mobilisation. One cause of the housing shortages in the capital was the lack of returns from renting property stemming from a long history of government intervention in the rental market. Faced with growing inflation, the dictatorship had regularly constrained rent rises, with rentals becoming life-­long tenancies transmittable by inheritance. This had made landlords unwilling to rent out properties, preferring investment in new buildings for sale. As sale prices rose, many landlords were finding it more profitable to try to sell their houses. According to the government, this led to thousands of dwellings standing empty, and even, according to critics, in some cases illegal attempts by landlords to drive out tenants in order to free up buildings for sale. This was a particular problem in the central and older areas of the city where long-­standing tenancies combined with the expense of maintaining old buildings resulted in large numbers of houses becoming derelict, even as sitting tenants continued to reside there.100 With inflation rapidly increasing following the coup, the new provisional authorities were wary of risking a catastrophe that was likely to happen if rent controls were suddenly removed. At the same time the housing shortage was pressing and there was a need to act. The chosen path was to produce a system of governmental intervention in the market. The aim of the Rental Law published in early September 1974 was to limit the impact of market mechanisms on the rental sector, which were believed to be fostering speculative practices. Landlords were to declare any empty housing to the City council. Dating from

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the Council’s response, landlords would be given a period of 120 days to either sell or rent the property in the free market. At the end of this period, the City Council would take over the management of any vacant properties, which would then be allocated to tenants in need of housing and decide on the level of rent to be paid. Providing the Council with false information regarding properties, renting above the rates set by law, or refusing to rent to the first comer after the 120-­day period had expired, would be punished by fines and up to two years’ imprisonment for repeated offences.101 Given the logistical challenges of enforcement, the rental law was more of a propaganda exercise than a route to solving the housing problem. However, the authorities gave it their full backing, and its message had a significant impact on popular attitudes to the housing questions. At the end of August 1974, the Provisional Government appointed an Administrative Commission for the City Council, headed by a member of the MDP/CDE leadership, Caldeira Rodrigues.102 The new municipal executive enthusiastically supported the Rental Law and encouraged popular participation in its enforcement. On 8 September it called for ‘popular vigilance’ so that houses left vacant would be registered by the 20 October deadline, a call echoed by the Communist Party.103 Similar encouragement came from Nuno Portas, Secretary of State for Housing, who said in an interview weeks later that: it is essential that it is a neighbourhood’s residents, the administrative authorities, the popular assemblies, and the Juntas de Freguesia who ensure the law is adhered to.104

Despite the political backing for the property registration scheme, its results were disappointing. According to the Diário de Notícias, after more than a month only four hundred vacant dwellings had been reported. Perhaps conscious that this was far below the thousands promised at the time of the publication of the law, on 9 October the City Council called out once more for pressure to be put on landlords, suggesting that many were misreporting the status of their houses. The Council requested once more the ‘tightest vigilance regarding irregularities on the part of landlords’ and that it would investigate accusations corroborated by two witnesses.105 Nevertheless, despite over one thousand such accusations, by the reporting deadline only 2,212 properties had been declared. Furthermore, the Council announced that the great majority of them were in a very poor state of repair, if not totally uninhabitable.106 There were calls from several quarters denouncing the dishonesty of landlords, including from the Associação de Inquilinos Lisbonenses (AIL – Lisbon Tenants’ Union). A spokesman criticised the

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law for being too lenient towards landlords and once more called for ‘popular vigilance’ as the only means to avoid advantage being taken of loopholes in the law.107 Freguesia executives were also coming forward to raise suspicions, as happened in São João de Deus, where the executive questioned the honesty of landlords and warned of speculative practices, as only five vacant houses had been reported in the whole ward.108 The rhetoric of the authorities and the way it was reported in the press did not fall on deaf ears. In early November, only a few days after the deadline, a second wave of occupations hit the city. In comparison to the occupations witnessed in late April and early May, there was a crucial difference: while earlier these had targeted social housing, they now reached private dwellings. Whereas earlier occupiers had justified their actions by invoking the corruptions of housing services and unfair allocation practices, the November wave was motivated by the belief that the new authorities would sanction their actions. The occupations of November 1974 started in a similar fashion as the May events, and even in one of the same places. On the night of 1 November and the following days, a further 54 flats in the Fundação Salazar estate were occupied. These were in unfinished buildings, little more than shells without sanitation, water or electricity.109 Just a few days later, more people, said to come from shantytowns, occupied over 50 private houses along the eastern side of the city, particularly in the wards of Alto do Pina, Graça, São Jorge de Arroios and Olivais.110 The occupiers acted on the basis of hearsay, as one woman told reporters: I came on Saturday night. I heard it was being occupied and I came. I used to live in a single room in Alcântara. I paid 400$00 a month and had no running water. It was so small that my daughter’s bed had to be on the table.111

According to the Diário de Lisboa, the occupations had been sparked by ‘unfounded rumours’ and ‘the hope that a de facto occupation would come to be recognised by the authorities’. The MFA’s Public Information Department had to deny ‘that empty houses could be occupied’ clarifying that this was ‘nothing but a baseless rumour’ and that any occupation justified by it would ‘be considered illegal’.112 This time the authorities reacted by calling in the police and military units assigned to the COPCON. Together, the military and the police arrested some of the occupiers, but soon decided ‘to go round …, explaining to the occupiers the illegality of their actions and demanding they leave the houses by the end of that morning’.113 According to the Républica newspaper, many had done so, but some of the occupiers had decided to stand firm114. In those cases, the security forces were placed on surveillance to

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prevent any furniture from being removed or the re-­entry of any occupiers that left the premises.115 The occupiers’ actions were nevertheless well received, to judge by comments of the socialist-­leaning Républica who, despite a warning that such attacks on private property should not be repeated, defended the moral right of the occupiers: Is it a crime to wish, for oneself and one’s family, a minimum of dignity in life? Is it a crime to yearn for a house with a minimum of conditions? Is it a crime to struggle so that those objectives are met?116

This ambivalence toward the occupations was not just a feature of newspaper commentary. The authorities themselves wavered between the toleration and the persecution of occupiers. At this point they reacted firmly to the occupations of private property, while continuing to tolerate, if not sanction, the occupation of social housing in the Salazar Foundation estate, although in this case privately managed social housing. A few days after the occupation, the new Council President visited the neighbourhood and met with the occupiers. Those who had come in May ‘were worried by the possibility of being evicted’ but the President’s intervention ‘brought tranquillity and the assurance that the Council will do the impossible to resolve this problem’.117 The Council undertook to survey the occupiers to assert relative levels of necessity so that the Foundation could make decisions over the attribution of the houses. Some days later, the occupiers organised a residents’ commission and picketed the Foundation offices, obtaining from them the assurance that they would not be evicted.118 After this wave, while the occupations of private houses stopped until the following year, there was a further mass occupation in state-­built neighbourhood of Chelas in Marvila, which had already been partly occupied in May. It was reported that on 21 November around two hundred and fifty families comprising around three thousand people had taken further blocks under construction.119 This time the government warned against ‘unlawful occupations’ and threatened to send the COPCON to evict occupiers.120 Instead however, the occupiers forced a meeting with high-­ranking members of government. On 4 December five hundred occupiers gathered at a nearby school hall to meet with the Secretary of State for Housing, Nuno Portas, a Prime-­Ministerial aide, and the Minister without portfolio and Communist Party Secretary-­ General Álvaro Cunhal. At the meeting the occupiers were once more promised that surveys would be taken to ensure that houses would only be allocated to those in real need, but reassured that no mass evictions would take place.121

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Despite (and in part because of) a series of intitiatives intended to channel the mobilisation of the urban poor and attend to its demands, by the end of 1974 the provisional authorities found themselves pressured by a growing popular movement. In the course of little more than six months, the authorities had been forced to respond repeatedly to popular mobilisations over urban issues, and their responses seemed to have only stoked the flames of the movement even further. The initial action had begun in neighbourhoods with a history of interaction with public authorities, who were often in contact with state officials, for better of for worse, as the accusations of corruption and abuse of power attest to. As they staked their claims, often aggressively, as was the case with the occupations, the provisional authorities sought to respond, encouraging the formation of neighbourhood commissions. This created a modicum of order, and gave harassed officers and officials something of a structure within which to cope with the explosion of popular demands they faced. As the state began reconstituting itself a generation of young, progressive experts was called to serve, and attempted to reform its structures along more participatory lines. Their response rewarded the neighbourhoods and groups who had organised, sending out the signal to others that the creation of residents’ commissions, elaboration of grievance lists, petitions was going to be the way to gain the attention of the authorities. In addition, by effectively tolerating the housing occupations, the powers that be had, however unwittingly, swept aside the existing bureaucratic structures of urban governance and confirmed the residents’ belief that these were corrupt and inefficient. This created the space for a much more direct relationship between the urban population and the authorities, both municipal and national, and supported the diffusion of residents’ commissions to more and more areas of the city. Yet, while residents’ commission were appearing across the city, there was so far very little formal coordination and communication between them. The urban movement at this stage is more accurately described as a collection of disparate small, locally based groups drawing on the same repertoires of action and putting forward similar demands, but not yet a social movement in the sense of a (even if loosely) coordinated network of groups working collectively towards the same goal. But as the number of commissions and the stake of the issues involved grew, so did the incentives and opportunities for greater communication and coordination and from the end of 1974, the urban social movement in Lisbon entered a new stage in its ­development, a period when it could grow into a substantial political actor.

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Notes 1 Author’s interview with Filipe Mário Lopes, 26 October 2004. 2 E. Clijsters, ‘Portugal 1974: A Non-­Violent Revolution: Causes, Course and Consequences of the “Revolution of the Carnations”’ (PhD Thesis, European University Institute, 1999), 124–125. 3 Avelino Rodrigues, Cesário Borga and Mário Cardoso, O Movimento de Capitães e o 25 de Abril (Lisboa: D. Quixote, 2001), 41. 4 Words from an interview with the residents’ commission of Quinta das Fonsecas, from: Maria João Vila Nova, Maria Teresa Cordeiro and Maria do Rosário Oliveira, ‘O Povo Encontrou-­ Se em Liberdade e Viu as Suas Necessidades’, Cadernos de Intervenção Social – Associação de Estudantes do Instituto Superior do Serviço Social, 2 (1979): 114–115. 5 Other authors use the term ‘early risers’ or ‘initators’: Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 201–202, 205; Doug McAdam, ‘“Initiator” and “Spin-­Off” Movements: Diffusion Processes in Protest Cycles’, in Repertoires and Cycles of Collective Action, ed. Mark Traugott (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995). 6 Vitor Matias Ferreira, Movimentos Sociais Urbanos e Intervenção Política (Porto: Afrontamento, 1975), 15–20; Luís Leitão et al., ‘Mouvements urbains et comissions de Moradores au Portugal (1974–1976)’, Les Temps Modernes, 34, 388 (1978): 675–676. 7 For a discussion of the source materials used in this analysis, see the ­introduction, pp.  24–26. 8 This parish executive, the Junta de Freguesia, articulated representation and responsibilities with the City Council and was charged with a variety of administrative tasks: compiling electoral rolls, enumerating the poor in need of aid, some social security delivery, and the administration of communal property, as well as serving as the first port of call for many state services and bureaucratic requirements. It was theoretically elected, although such local elections were, as all others, strictly managed during the Salazar dictatorship: José António Santos, ‘Freguesias’, in Dicionário de História de Portugal, ed. António Barreto and Maria Filomena Mónica (Lisboa: Figueirinhas, 1994). 9 In particular Francisco Santana and Eduardo Lucena, eds., Dicionário da História de Lisboa (Lisboa: Carlos Quintas & Associados, 1994). Some Lisbon City Council (Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, hereafter CML) publications from the 1990s on the razing of shantytowns and their replacement by social housing estates – the culmination of the process started in the 1960s and accelerated by the urban social movement – also provided valuable information on the city’s shantytowns: Observatório da Habitação, Caracterização Sócio-­Urbanística dos Bairros Sociais (Lisboa: Centro de Estudos Territoriais/ ISCTE – Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, 1992); Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, ‘Erradicação de Bairros Provisórios e Barracas’, Boletim do D.G.S.P.H. da Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, 1, 1 (1997); Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, ‘Nota

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Histórica Sobre os Serviços de Habitação’, Boletim do D.G.S.P.H. da Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, 1, 1 (1997). Finally, pre-­revolution press clippings held at the Archives of the Gabinete de Estudos Olissiponenses were particularly helpful in filling the gaps left by the other sources. Archive Matos Sequeira (hereafter AGMS) and the Archive Pastor de Macedo (hereafter ALPM). 10 Beatriz Rocha-­ Trindade, ‘Do Rural ao Urbano: o Associativismo como Estratégia de Sobrevivência’, Análise Social, 91 (1986), 326. 11 Cf. the discussion by Costa regarding the evolution of the Santo Estevão and São Miguel wards: António Firmino da Costa, Sociedades de Bairro: Dinâmicas Sociais de Identidade Cultural (Oeiras: Celta, 1999), 74. 12 Arquivo Histórico Municipal/Arquivo do Arco do Cego, Colecção Correspondência Eleitoral 1976 (Lisbon Municipal Archive, Arco do Cego Site, Electoral Correspondence 1976 Collection, hereafter AHM/AAC, CE 76) Campo Grande. ‘Caderno Reivindicativo da Comissão de Moradores da Quinta da Calçada’, 9 May 1974. 13 Most of the ‘Old Central’ wards cover small areas in comparison with those towards the outskirts, and have small populations, sometimes only in the hundreds. 14 A Capital, 5 May 1974, p. 6. 15 A Capital, 3 May 1974, p. 32. Later, when they organised a residents’ commission, the occupiers renamed the neighbourhood in celebration of the date of its occupation: 2 de Maio. 16 A Capital 9 May 1974, pp. 1 and 24. Some of these blocks were completed and awaiting allocation, but most were still far from finished, lacking even walls in some cases. 17 A Capital, 13 May 1974, p. 13. 18 Américo Tomás was President of the Republic between 1958 and 1974: Luta Popular, 25 Mar. 1975, p. 10. 19 Francisco Martins Rodrigues, ed., O Futuro Era Agora. o Movimento Popular de 25 de Abril (Lisboa: Ed. Dinossauro, 1994), 106. 20 Diário de Notícias, 15 May 1974, p. 11. There were also counter-­mobilisations defending the role of social services, although even supporters protested against ‘a society that allows people to live in shacks’: Diário de Notícias, 16 May 1974, p. 12; AHM/AAC/CE 76, J.F. do Beato to CML, 6 Nov. 1974. 21 A Capital, 13 May 1974, p. 13; Républica, 24 May 1974, pp. 21, 27. 22 Diário de Lisboa, 21 Jun. 1974, p. 11. See also AHM/AAC/CE 76, CM da Quinta do Narigão e Quinta do Alto, letter to CML, 3 Jul. 1974. 23 A Capital, 13 May 1974, p. 12. 24 Ibid. The construction industry all but collapsed in the months following the coup. Although the general feeling of insecurity, rising wages and costs, and a retraction of credit are also to blame, the possibility of occupations, which would resume in September and continue in 1975 certainly contributed towards the crisis. The result was a virtual halt to new building and the laying off of thousands of construction workers, which in turn, as Bermeo has shown, provided manpower for some of the revolution’s most radical actions, such

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as the land seizures in Alentejo: Nancy G. Bermeo, The Revolution within the Revolution: Workers’ Control in Rural Portugal (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 62–63. 25 Diário de Notícias, 28 June 1974, p. 6; Républica, 27 June 1974, p. 1. 26 AHM/AAC/CE 76, ‘Caderno de Pretenções [sic] do Bairro de Chelas (Quintas da Rosa, da Farinheira, S. João dos Peixes, e Quinta dos Mouzinhos)’, 19 August 1974. 27 AHM/AAC/CE 76, ‘Grupo de Moradores da Quinta do Narigão e Quinta do Alto’, 11 June 1974. 28 AHM/AAC/CE 1976, Comissão de Moradores da Quinta da Calçada to Secretário de Estado da Habitação e Urbanismo, 9 May 1974. 29 Vila Nova, Cordeiro, and Oliveira, ‘O Povo Encontrou-­Se Em Liberdade’, 115. 30 Diário de Lisboa, 6 August 1974, p. 18. 31 Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa, Caracterização Sumária Da Cidade De Lisboa (Lisboa: Santa Casa da Mesericórida de Lisboa, 1974). The population of Marvila according to the census stood at 27584 in 1970 and 40689 in 1981. 32 AHM/AAC CE 1976, Junta de Freguesia do Lumiar ao Sr José Silva Santos, CML, 31 January 1975. 33 Républica, 24 May 1974, pp. 21 and 27. 34 Vila Nova, Cordeiro, and Oliveira, ‘O Povo Encontrou-­ se em Liberdade’, 116–117; A Capital 13 May 1974, p. 12. 35 A Capital, 5 May 1974, p. 6. 36 Diário de Notícias, 14 May 1974, p. 11; A Capital, 13 May 1974, p. 13. 37 AHM/AAC/CE 76, São João de Brito, undated. 38 AHM/AAC/CE 76, ‘Caderno Reivindicativo da Comissão de Moradores do Bairro de Pedralvas’, 4 July 1974. 39 AHM/AAC/CE 76, CM da Zona de Barracas de Campolide – Quinta da Bela Flor, Tarujo e Ribeira de Alcântara, ‘Caderno Reivindicativo’, 15 July 1974; CM da Horta Nova, ‘Caderno Reivindicativo’, 28 May 1975; Républica, 7 November 1974, p. 15. 40 Diário de Lisboa, 21 June 1974, p.  11; AHM/AAC/CE 76, ‘Caderno Reivindicativo dos Moradores Das Zonas de Barracas de Campolide: Qta da Bela Flor, Tarujo e Ribeira de Alcântara’, 15 July 1974; Diário de Lisboa, 21 June 1974, p. 11. 41 AHM/AAC/CE 76, ‘Commissão dos Habitantes da Quinta do Narigão e Quinta do Alto’, letter to JSN Delegate to CML, 26 July 1974. 42 AHM/AAC/CE 76, ‘Commissão dos Habitantes da Quinta do Narigão e Quinta do Alto’, letter to JSN Delegate to CML, 3 July 1974. 43 Républica, 14 June 1974, p. 17. 44 Diário de Notícias, 24 June 1974, p. 11. 45 AHM/AAC/CE 76, Comissão de Moradores do Casalinho da Ajuda to CML, 12 August 1975. 46 AHM/AAC/CE 76, Comissão de Moradores da Quinta do Narigão e Quinta do Alto: ‘Como surgiu a Comissão de Moradores da Qta. Do Narigão e Alto’, undated.

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47 Diário de Notícias, 4 October 1975, pp. 3 and 10. 48 Républica, 16 September 1975, p. 5; AHM/AAC/CE 1976, Comissão de Moradores do Bairro Padre Cruz ‘Comunicado à População’, November 1974. 49 David L. Raby, Fascism and Resistance in Portugal: Communists, Liberal and Military Dissidents in the Opposition to Salazar, 1941–1974 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), 234; Augusto José Matias, Católicos e Socialistas em Portugal (1875–1975) (Lisboa: Instituto de Estudos Para o Desenvolvimento, 1989), 62–63. 50 Vila Nova, Cordeiro, and Oliveira, ‘O Povo Encontrou-­ se em Liberdade’, 116–117. 51 Vida Mundial, 10 May 1974, pp. 9–14. 52 Diário de Notícias, 14 May 1974, p. 9. 53 Diário de Notícias, 3 June 1974, p. 6. 54 Avante, 16 August 1974, p. 5. 55 AHM/AAC/CE 76, Junta de Freguesia do Lumiar to Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, 25 October 1974. 56 Diário de Notícias, 26 November 1974, p. 10. 57 Républica, 29 August 1974, p. 18. 58 Diário de Notícias 10 July 1974, p. 10. 59 The MRPP was a small Maoist party, which had taken root and had considerable influence in student circles disaffected with the orthodox line of the Portuguese Communist Party: Miguel Cardina, Margem de Certa Maneira: o Maoismo em Portugal, 1964–1974 (Lisboa: Tinta da China, 2011). 60 A Capital, 27 April 1974, p. 6; Diário de Lisboa, 30 April 1974, p. 20. 61 A Capital, 3 May 1974, p. 32. 62 Luta Popular, 13 March 1975, pp. 6–7. 63 Luta Popular, 6 June 1974, p. 4. 64 Ibid. Soldier Peralta was a Cuban Army officer who had been captured in Angola before April 1974 whilst supporting the liberation movement in fighting the Portuguese Army. Still in prison at the time of the revolution, his release became a rallying cry for radical left-­wing parties with sympathies towards Cuba and the African independence movements. 65 Luta Popular, 23 May 1974, p. 2; Diário de Lisboa, 21 June 1974, p. 11. 66 Diário de Notícias, 5 July 1974, p. 6. 67 AHM/AAC/CE 76, ‘Grupo de Moradores da Quinta do Narigão e Quinta do Alto’, 11 June 1974. 68 O Século, 12 June 1974, p. 5. 69 AHM/AAC/CE 76, Caderno de Pretenções do Bairro de Chelas (Quinta da Rosa, da Farimheira, São João dos Peixes e Quinta dos Mouzinhos) (sic), 19 August 1974. There is no record of the council’s response. 70 From the introduction to the Decree-­Law 203/74, published on 15 May 1974, setting out the programme and structure of the Provisional Government. Reproduced in Fernando Ribeiro de Mello, Dossier 2ª República – 1º Volume 25/4/74 – 25/4/75 (Lisboa: Edições Afrodite, 1976), 206.

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71 Diego Palacios Cerezales, ‘“Fascist Lackeys”? Dealing with the Police’s Past During Portugal’s Transition to Democracy (1974–1980)’, Portuguese Journal of Social Science, 6, 3 (2007): 159–160. 72 A Capital, 3 May 1974, p. 32. 73 A Capital, 9 May 1974, pp. 1 and 24. 74 Diário de Notícias, 11 May 1974, p. 8. 75 Manuel Castells and Nuno Portas, ‘La Question du Logement au Portugal Démocratique’, Espaces et Sociétés, 13–14 (1975): 204. 76 See Chapter 2, pp. 58–59. 77 Castells and Portas, ‘La Question du Logement’, 199. 78 Ibid., 201. 79 O Século, 12 June 1974, p. 5. 80 See Chapter 2, pp. 56, 67. 81 Castells and Portas, ‘La Question du Logement’, 206. 82 Margarida Coelho, ‘Uma Experiência de Transformação no Sector Habitacional do Estado – Saal 1974–76’, Revista Crítica das Ciências Sociais, 18/19/20 (1986): 619. 83 Nuno Portas, ‘O Programa Saal: um Balanço Provisório’, Cadernos de Intervenção Social – Associação de Estudantes do Instituto Superior do Serviço Social, 2 (1979): 89. 84 Castells and Portas, ‘La Question du Logement’, 206. 85 For instance, in early July 1974, the residents of Quinta do Narigão and Quinta do Alto specified that they wanted to stay in the ward where they had their jobs, social life and amenities: AHM/AAC/CE 76, Comissão de Moradores da Quinta do Narigão e Quinta do Alto to Secretário de Estado da Habitação e Urbanismo, 3 July 1974 86 Nuno Portas, ‘O Processo Saal: Entre o Estado e o Poder Local’, Revista Crítica das Ciências Sociais, 18/19/20 (1986): 639. 87 J. Reis Álvaro, ‘Auto-­ Construção’, paper presented at the Colóquio Sobre Política de Habitação, Lisboa, 1969, 57–59. 88 Interview with Portas reproduced in Jaime Pinho, ‘O Caso de Castelo Velho – Lutas Urbanas em Setúbal (1974/76)’ (Master’s Thesis, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 1999), 247. 89 Portas, ‘O Programa Saal’, 92. 90 Ibid., 92–93. 91 See AHM/AAC/CE 76, various items relating to the named commissions and, for a list of applicants accepted to the SAAL scheme Conselho Nacional do SAAL, Livro Branco Do Saal, 1974–1976 (Vila Nova de Gaia: Conselho Nacional do SAAL, 1976), XXIII–XXXIX. 92 From an interview with leaders of the Housing Cooperative ‘25 de Abril’, by social work students in 1978 or 1979, when the Cooperative was in the process of building a neighbourhood under the SAAL scheme: Vila Nova, Cordeiro, and Oliveira, ‘O Povo Encontrou-­Se Em Liberdade’, 122. The numbers mentioned here are one of the few instances were the sources give an idea of the proportions of residents participating in meetings. The shantytown is reported

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in the newspapers as having around 400 dwellings (A Capital 13 May 1974, p. 12). This means that over half of the families in the neighbourhood joined the cooperative, and that a large proportion of these were attending meetings. 93 Ibid., 114–115. According to official statistics from 1974, the average daily wage of a construction labourer, a common profession for men in shantytowns, was 33$70. This meant, if employment was guaranteed for most of a working month, an income of between 600 and 700$00: Instituto Nacional de Estatística, Anuário Estatístico, Continente e Ilhas Adjacentes, Vol. I (Lisboa, 1974), p. 286. 94 A Capital, 29 November 1974, p. 9. 95 This information comes from an anonymous report on the neighbourhood written by a political activist in September 1975: UC/CD25A/FCP/ Organizações Populares de Base/Comissões de Moradores II/Lisboa, ‘Relatório’, 4 September 75. This source also suggests that the commission may have started in ‘the summer’, and the BAL began work in September 74, making this one of the ‘first movers’. However the document suggest that the author was not in the neighbourhood at that time. Also, the first official communication from the commission dates from the end of October. As such it was decided to place the origin of this commission at the time of its first verifiable mention. 96 Diário de Notícias, 25 November 1974, p. 10. 97 AHM/AAC/CE 76, Junta de Freguesia de Santo Condestável to CML, 23 January 1975. 98 AHM/AAC/CE 76, Junta de Freguesia do Lumiar to CML, 25 October 1974; Josefina Mata to Carris, 27 October 1975. 99 Observatório da Habitação, Cooperativas de Habitação de Lisboa – Situação e Perspectivas (Lisboa: Centro de Estudos Territoriais/ISCTE – Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, 1994), 24. For a breakdown of the ongoing and pending SAAL operations in 1976, see Conselho Nacional do SAAL, Livro Branco do Saal, XXIII–XXXIX. The same volume also includes the stream of press releases from BAL teams, starting in October 1974, accusing the City Council and government authorities of failing to supply the scheme with sufficient funds. 100 According to the Statistical Annual, the average house rent inflation in the City of Lisbon between 1964 and 1974 had been at a relatively modest 4 per cent per year. However, this average hides the fact that most existing rents were controlled and increases were coming from new rentals, as these were not sufficient to meet the growing demand. Author’s calculations from data in Instituto Nacional de Estatística, Anuário Estatístico, Lisboa: years 1965–75. 101 Decreto-­Lei nº 445/74, 12 September 1974. In Mello, Dossier 2ª República – 1º Volume, 621–634. 102 Diário de Notícias, 27 August 1974, p. 2. 103 Diário de Notícias, 8 September 1974, p. 24; Avante, 18 October 1974, p. X. 104 O Século Ilustrado, 28 September 1974, pp. 2–6. 105 Diário de Notícias, 9 October 1974, p. 12. 106 Diário de Notícias, 22 October 1974, p. 5.

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107 Vida Mundial, 31 October 1974, pp. 25–31. 108 Diário de Notícias, 6 November 1974, p. 10. 109 Diário de Lisboa, 5 November 1974, p. 12; Diário de Notícias, 6 November 1974, p. 10; Républica, 7 November 1974, p. 15. 110 Républica, 12 November 1974, p. 24; 13 November 1974, p. 1; Diário de Notícias, 14 November 1974, p. 5. 111 Diário de Lisboa, 5 November 1974, p. 12. 112 Diário de Lisboa, 13 November 1974, p. 18. 113 Ibid. 114 Républica, 13 November 1974, p. 1. 115 Diário de Notícias, 14 November 1974, p. 5. 116 Républica, 12 November 1974, p. 24. 117 Diário de Lisboa, 5 November 1974, p. 5. 118 Diário de Notícias, 6 November 1974, p. 10; Diário de Lisboa, 13 November 1974, p. 11. 119 A Capital, 28 November 1974, p. 11. 120 Diário de Notícias, 30 November 1974, pp. 1, 9; A Capital, 30 November 1974, p. 3. 121 A Capital, 5 December 1974, p. 9; Diário de Notícias, 5 December 1974, p. 9; Diário de Lisboa, 9 November 1974. p. 14.

4 Building a movement

Building a movement: September 1974 to June 1975

September 1974 to June 1975

‘An End to Shantytowns!’ ‘The People Build the Houses, the Houses are the People’s!’ ‘Yes to Houses, No to Shacks!’ ‘Stamp Out Exploitative Landlords!’ ‘Against Unemployment – Down with Self-­Build!’ ‘Yes to the Occupations, No to the Rental Law!’ ‘The Struggle of the Neighbourhoods is One!’ (Slogans from a demonstration, 17 May 1975)1

The growth of the urban movement over the second half of 1974 was a matter with wider resonance than simply the (admittedly important) issue of housing and urban conditions. The mobilisation of the urban poor was part of a wider upsurge in popular contention that contributed to altering the balance of forces between different factions in the military and in the civilian political parties. Popular mobilisation over the summer and autumn of 1974 was key in undermining a project of limited liberalisation as envisaged by President Spínola and strengthening the hand of those in Armed Forces Movement (MFA) and civilian parties who hoped for a fuller transformation of the country’s political and social structures. Until other forms of legitimation, such as elections, were found, the claims to power and support of the various factions rested on their capacity to show the support of active and visible sections of the population, which Spínola failed to do when it mattered. It is in this context that the expansion, increasing organisation, and growing political influence of the urban social movement has to be understood. The period between the fall of Spínola in September 1974 and the beginning of the ‘Hot Summer’ of 1975 saw the consolidation of the urban movement and its arrival on the scene as a weighty political actor. It is also the period when it was arguably able to win the most concessions from the state, culminating in the inclusion of the right to housing in the constitution and a role for neighbourhood organisations

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in the management of key aspects of urban politics. Yet the growth of the urban movement is not solely a response to environmental conditions: the opportunities it took advantage of were at least in part of its own making; it did not simply react to the political conditions, it acted strategically in trying to create a space for itself. It was on account of its potential for mobilisation and capacity for strategic action that it gained political relevance: an unthinking crowd makes no political alliances. The following chapter argues that the creation of formal federations of residents’ commissions linking neighbourhoods across the city changed the dynamic of the interaction between the mobilised urban poor and the wider political sphere. No longer content with focusing their actions at the local level, the urban movement was now able to use these organisations to negotiate collectively with the City Council and with the government. But the arrival on the political scene of federations of neighbourhood commissions also made them a more attractive potential ally to the various political factions. If the leadership of these organisations could be brought into step with one of the political projects on contention, it would give its allies a direct line to thousands of dedicated and active supporters. This became especially clear in the changed political climate following the failed right-­wing coup of 11 March 1974 and the April 1974 elections. Once they were established as representative of the urban poor, the movement’s federations became increasingly embroiled in the web of political competition being spun out by the ‘on-­going revolutionary process’, a route which could bring significant rewards to the urban poor, but also considerable dangers. Political factions in the Portuguese revolutionary process The context and evolution of the political situation in Portugal through to the end of 1974 – which was to be crucial in the development of the urban movement – is complex and deserves some explanation. Following their successful coup on 25 April the military’s junior offices, now institutionalised as the MFA invited General António de Spínola to assume the Presidency. Spínola had been, until March 1974, the Army’s Vice-­Chief of Staff, but was dismissed for criticising the dictatorship’s handling of the colonial wars. It was hoped that his status as former military commander of Guinea-­Bissau would appeal to traditionalists in the military, while his credentials as a critic of the deposed regime would make him acceptable to those pushing for change. His appointment, however, did little to conceal growing divisions within the military, who continued to hold the trump cards in the running of the country. The key issue of contention was the same as had sparked the coup – the course of the wars in Africa

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and the future of the Portuguese Empire. While Spínola, with the support of traditionalists in the army, exerted himself to engineer a federalist solution, the situation in Africa had long superseded him; the feelings of the military in Africa were much closer to the MFA’s position of granting self-­determination, to the extent that commanders in the field were negotiating a cease-­fire with the guerrillas without the President’s knowledge or consent. The future of the country and its empire fed an ongoing tug-­ of-­war between Spínola and the MFA throughout the summer of 1974. Spínola lost an early battle with the MFA, being forced to sign a declaration granting the right to self-­determination to the colonies on 27 July 1974.2 In reply he attempted to gain the upper hand by forcing an early presidential election he hoped would legitimise his own position vis-­à-­vis the unelected MFA. When the latter vetoed his proposals, Spínola also lost his first provisional government, which was replaced by a cabinet much closer to the MFA line, headed by Colonel Vasco Gonçalves, a member of the military movement’s Coordinating Commission.3 Increasingly isolated, and concerned with both the development of the decolonisation process and the domestic situation (including what he regarded as the anarchic popular mobilisation), Spínola sought support to his right, in a number of small parties and army officers, some of whom were supporters of the deposed dictatorship.4 On 10 September 1974 the President addressed the country on the occasion of the granting of independence to Guinea-­Bissau, making thinly veiled criticisms of the decolonisation process, mentioning the risks of the former African colonies being appropriated by ‘certain ideologies’ and other ‘totalitarian regimes’.5 Establishing a parallel with the situation in Africa Spínola portrayed Portugal as an ‘ill country’, vulnerable to ‘extremist adventures’, witnessing the ‘systematic assault of the centres of decision, both public and private, by groups at the margin of any judicial, or even institutional order’.6 Then, in Gaullist tones, he called upon the ‘silent majority of the Portuguese people’ to awaken, and ‘actively defend [the country] against extremist totalitarianisms’.7 This was the starting gun for groups supporting Spínola to begin distributing propaganda for a demonstration of such a ‘silent majority’, to be held on 28 September in support of the President. The left-­wing parties denounced the move as a provocation designed to spark confrontations between different political factions, even as a potential counter-­coup, and vowed to organise a blockade of Lisbon in order to prevent the arrival of Spínola’s supporters. Tensions were building to a critical point forcing even the liberal parties that supported the President, namely the PPD and the CDS, to condemn the demonstration for fear of violent clashes. At the same time, the MFA used its influence to organise military support and arrested

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potential ringleaders of the coming demonstration. Isolated, Spínola called off the demonstration on 27 September and, after once more being denied emergency powers by the Council of State, resigned.8 Spínola’s resignation opened a new chapter in the process set in motion by the 25 April coup. General Costa Gomes who, with Spínola, had resigned in the later stages of the old regime and sided with the MFA, was promoted from head of the military to the Presidency, a role which he exercised more diplomatically than his predecessor. But critically, the MFA used this victory to strengthen its role as the guiding force of the Portuguese transition, creating the Supreme Council of the MFA (better know as the Council of Twenty), a body bringing together the MFA Coordinating Commission with other officers in key political positions, including the President, the Prime Minister and his ministers who were MFA members, as well as the headof the COPCON, the military command that was, in effect, doing the job of the discredited police. The Council of Twenty was intended to coordinate and supervise the military’s role in the running of the country, and avoid the divisions that had pitted the MFA against Spínola.9 The result was further concentration of powers in the hands of the military, which was placing itself as a central cog in the political machinery at a time when the civilian parties were not yet strong enough to place themselves at the helm of the process. The military justified its actions as a ‘tutelage’ of transition, and would continue to hold a central role in politics until 1982.10 Yet, while the MFA as an institution consolidated its position, its military membership showed signs of increasing division over how to build a new country. With Spínola out of the picture, several factions emerged within the MFA, creating alliances both within the military and with the civilian parties who had also been invited to participate in the provisional governments. At this stage two currents were predominant within the MFA, while a third was beginning to emerge. The first was essentially moderate; more than an organised faction, these were officers such as Melo Antunes, who had been involved with the movement from an early stage, and whilst defending left-­wing solutions for the country, were closer to a social-­democratic and parliamentarian solution than to a clearly revolutionary programme. The second bloc congregated around the Prime Minister, Vasco Gonçalves, and was clearly more radical, influenced by the African independence parties which the army had fought in the colonies. This radical group and saw the MFA as the liberation movement of the Portuguese people, a revolutionary vanguard that was to lead to a real and wholesale transformation of society with a strong traditional Marxist inspiration. A further faction, close to far-­left Maoist and Trotskyite parties and sometimes called the

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‘populists’, was coalescing around the leader of the MFA’s operational command, Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho.11 In parallel with the institutionalisation of the MFA as a political actor (and its fragmentation), the civilian parties were developing their base and political discourse, mirroring the different military factions. Spínola’s resignation had momentarily sent into disarray the liberal parties which had been his most regular supporters, the PPD and CDS. This left political initiative with the left, ranging from the Socialist (PS) and Communist (PCP) Parties to the small but influential MDP/ CDE, as well as a handful of fringe parties without seats in cabinet (MES, MRPP, PRP, UDP).12 Circumstantially allied to different MFA factions, the political parties were trying to carve out a space for themselves in the government machinery, and across civil society. In the first instance the stronger organisation of the PCP, as well as its use of its ally MDP/CDE gave it important (although not dominant) positions in the state apparatus, especially at local level, in ­competition with the Socialists.13 What is particularly unique in the Portuguese experience is the manner in which the revolutionary process threw these forces, civilian and military, into a situation where cooperation and competition co-­ existed uneasily. All military factions, and most political parties (with the exception of those to the far left and right) had representatives in the institutions of the state at nearly every level, from ministers in the cabinet to seats in administrative commissions charged with running city councils and freguesia executives at the local level. The need to purge the administrative and executive structures of elements loyal to the dictatorship had also meant a politicisation of the machinery of the state at all levels, including those most often in contact with the urban movement. This created a number of strategic opportunities for the residents’ commissions to leverage concessions, but it also contributed to a degree of chaos and inefficiency within the machinery of state, already destabilised by the removal of the old regime. The resulting difficulty in meeting the movement’s demands contributed to its growing organisation and ­confrontational strategy. The birth of the Inter-­commissions Despite the ongoing conflicts between political factions, Nuno Portas kept his position as Secretary of State for Housing across the first three provisional governments, a testament to the importance placed on addressing the housing issue. But, while there was continuity in leadership at the top, the housing authorities were hamstrung not only by the

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financial constraints of a budget in crisis and rising inflation, but also by a bureaucratic and legal structure that made even modest attempts at reform difficult. Aside from the wave of occupations that gripped the city in November 1974, the slowness of the official response began generating criticisms and complaints even from the residents’ commissions that had joined the SAAL scheme. According to a member of residents’ commission of Alto dos Moinhos, ‘at the beginning all was going well: everything was promised’, but since handing in their list of demands to the Secretary of State earlier in the year, and despite getting help from a SAAL brigade, little had been done.14 A member of the brigade, interviewed in the same report, echoed the representative’s worries, blaming the state for the lack of progress: The successive blockages witnessed come from the very machinery of the State, which does not function, nor is it geared towards addressing emergency situations.15

In January 1975 the Junta de Freguesia of Santo Condestável wrote to the City Council saying that in the previous September three neighbourhoods of the ward (Pátio das Sedas, Rua de Campo de Ourique and Casal do Evaristo) had created residents’ commissions, approached the SAAL and started the legal process to create a housing cooperative. However, by January the residents had given up ‘because their problems are not solved with meetings and small talk’.16 Even in the neighbourhoods of Tarújo and Casal do Sola, where only a few days earlier a party had been held in celebration of the improvements delivered by the SAAL brigade, the commission wrote to the City Council protesting that there was still much that needed doing.17 Dissatisfaction with the pace of change was common to both SAAL staff and residents’ commissions. However, some commissions were also beginning to question the programme of shantytown improvements: at a meeting between government, city council officials and several shantytown commissions, some of the latter stated their fear that such initiatives were ‘a way of delaying the definitive resolution of the problem through the building of new neighbourhoods’.18 At the same meeting, a representative of the Portugal Novo Housing Cooperative – set up by the Quinta do Bacalhau residents’ commission – suggested creating a united front of residents’ groups to negotiate with local and government authorities.19 This seems to have struck a chord with other commissions, and over the course of November and December 1974, several neighourhoods involved in the SAAL scheme began to meet and draw up such a platform. Their creation, the Inter-­comissões dos Bairros Pobres e de Lata de Lisboa (Inter-­commissions of the Shantytowns and Poor

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Neighbourhoods of Lisbon), was to become one of the major residents’ organisations active in the coming year, and a major player in the urban movement. After the first executive committee of the Inter-­comissões was elected in January 1975, it prepared a narrative of its creation which reveals how the disaffection with the inaction of the authorities prompted the coming together of the neighbourhoods. According to the pamphlet, some commissions were becoming ‘tired of promises … not being fulfilled’ and start ‘doubting the government’s pretty words’, leading to a decision to organise in order to fulfil ‘the common objective of dignified housing affordable to current salaries’.20 At the first meeting of the Inter-­Comissões, which took place on 8 December in Bairro da Liberdade, the ‘majority of the residents’ commissions arrived at the conclusion that they do not believe’ the promises made by the city’s housing agency, and claimed some neighbourhoods had gone so far as expelling the SAAL brigades sent to work on improvements.21 The mistrust of the housing authorities was rooted in the residents’ experience from long before the coup, with the meeting noting the agency’s heavy-­handedness in clearing the Vale Escuro shantytown in 1972, and again attacking the Municipal Police. Other commissions present complained that there were not enough brigades to attend to all areas and many were still waiting to be visited and have even their most immediate problems addressed.22 At a further meeting on 26 December, the commissions discussed the government’s policy on housing, and revealed their opposition towards many of the principal tenets of the SAAL scheme. The issue of auto-­ construção (self-­ build), which was understood by the commissions to mean the provision of labour by residents in the building of new neighbourhoods, was condemned for being a form of ‘double exploitation’.23 Arguing they were already exploited in their places of work, the commissions rejected the need for residents to work into the early hours building their houses: if there are thousands upon thousands of unemployed workers in penury sacked by capitalists, those comrades must be found jobs. Why not give them work in the building of social housing?24

Furthermore, the policy of repairing shacks was again attacked by ‘several commissions’: why bring electricity, fix the shacks and put in sewers? The shacks must be demolished and, save extremely urgent cases, there is no point in patching them up.25

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Overall, the discussion seems to have been close to an outright rejection of the SAAL scheme: it was argued that the state should finance all building costs rather than provide an initial lump sum and cheap credit. Any interest ‘would be fattening up the capitalists’; in addition, in order to cut costs derived from the profits of construction companies, it was argued that the building work should be contracted directly by the City Council.26 On 4 January 1975, fifteen Lisbon neighbourhoods – and two from the neighbouring city of Amadora – were represented at a meeting which elected a coordinating commission for the Inter-­comissões and a further meeting was called for 11 January.27 Over the course of the first two months of 1975, the Inter-­comissões met several times to draw up a programme and a list of demands. One of the federated residents’ commissions, Quinta das Fonsecas, tabled a proposal setting out the fundamental objectives of the Inter which reveals the extent to which residents had developed a coherent agenda with clearly defined goals. The proposal demanded the immediate expropriation of land necessary to build the new neighbourhoods and that rents paid to the Council or to private landlords for shacks be diverted to building funds controlled by the neighbourhood cooperatives. Once again, the government and council housing services came under fire: In most of those services, everything works slowly, bureaucratically, and with disdain for the satisfaction of our needs. This must end and to do so it is necessary to have a complete purge. But a purge is not enough. It is also increasingly necessary that those services be controlled by us, who are principally concerned with their work. For now, a fundamental condition is that information is given so that we know how the existing resources are being used and identify who is behind the bureaucracy that seeks to crush us.28

The Quinta das Fonsecas document envisaged the residents’ commissions taking over decisions regarding the design of the new neighbourhoods, and the supervision of SAAL staff and interventions by teams of residents working on the building site, who would be paid for their time. Furthermore, the document did not hesitate to address issues that went beyond the immediate needs of the neighbourhoods, calling on the state to guarantee the attribution of vacant housing to ill-­housed families, and the nationalisation of large construction firms to form a state-­run construction company to build the new neighbourhoods: ‘if we continue in the hands of large construction companies, we will never have decent houses for all’.29 Finally, it emphasised the need to spread the organisation of residents’ commissions to those neighbourhoods where they did

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not exist, and that the existing ones maintain a close connection to their residents, because if they ‘are isolated, with little connection to the residents, they don’t represent anyone, [and] can never carry through any decisive struggle’.30 The Inter-­comissões’ final programme and list of demands was approved on 15 February 1975 and reflected many of the points made in the Quinta das Fonsecas document. Much of it covered ground that had been discussed by the commissions over the past few months. It demanded the expropriation of land for the new developments and a commitment to commencement dates from the Council. While it rejected the renovation of shantytowns and the use of pre-­fabricated housing as a solution, it demanded SAAL brigades address urgent needs. Several of the items dealt with the conditions of the SAAL scheme for cooperatives or the terms of subsidised-­rent social housing: the interest on the government loan for each family in the scheme should not be above 2 per cent per annum for a minimum of 25 years, but preferably interest-­free; it attacked proposed legislation on housing cooperatives which required a minimum of 200 members to access funds, asking for the limit to be set at 50. In rented council accommodation, it demanded that rent should be limited to 10 per cent of the household head’s income, reducible according to personal circumstances. It demanded greater oversight powers to be given to the residents’ commissions by asking that they be present at meetings between the Council and EPUL regarding their neighbourhoods, as well as the handing over of all information on budgets and expenditure undertaken by SAAL teams. Finally, it demanded the nationalisation of large construction companies; that building be done by ‘public bodies’ and the acquisition of funds through ‘effective anti-­ capitalist action’; including legislation ensuring that vacant housing be allocated to the ill-­housed while new housing is built.31 The creation of the Inter-­comissões shows how the movement, or at least part of it, expanded and gained structure and focus in interaction with the interventions of the transitions authorities on the housing issue. While the government had been forced to act as a consequence of the mobilisation of the neighbourhoods over the summer of 1974, its actions were in turn an important influence in the development of the movement. A significant part of the urban movement was increasingly structured around the government’s response, simultaneously looking to take advantage of the SAAL scheme, and to influence the shape and implementation of policies to improve urban conditions. But the urban movement was wider than the residents’ commissions linked to the SAAL: in other parts of the city, the practice of creating residents’ or occupiers’ commission was spreading.

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The third wave of occupations The period from September 1974 and January 1975 witnessed a steady growth of the number of residents’ commissions, as well as the establishment of permanent links between many of them, contributing to the coherence and organisation of the social movement. The beginning of the new year, however, brought a dramatic change in the pace of creation of new organisations, with many opting for more confrontational and radical strategies, particularly with regard to the occupation of vacant housing. To a considerable extent, this was an unintended consequence of the Rental Law published three months earlier. Some of the November occupations had attempted to use the rhetoric that accompanied the publication of the Law as a justification for the occupation of vacant private dwellings. But the authorities had been able to justify a more vigorous reaction against occupations, arguing that the housing problem would be addressed once the law came into force and the Lisbon City Council could begin matching vacant properties to those enrolled on its lists. However, at the same time, other governmental initiatives continued to signal to the population of the city that occupations were, to a degree, justifiable. At the beginning of January 1975, the Secretary of State for Housing announced an investigation into allegations of corruption, embezzlement and favouritism in the allocation of housing by the state agency for housing since its creation in 1969. The inquiry was based on strong suspicions of attribution of housing to members of fascist organisations to the detriment of people who would be entitled [to it] on the basis of the established criteria.32

Perhaps even more important was the decision by the government to issue a decree that was reported in the press as suspending the eviction of squatters. Noting that the question of lettings was provoking ‘tensions among the population’ and to prevent unjust evictions from being carried out before relevant ‘emergency legislation’ was in place, the government suspended evictions in cases where tenancy agreements had expired. More importantly, it suspended the eviction of all tenants without written contracts in the Oporto area.33 This law was primarily meant to address the problem of sub-­letting in Oporto and the surrounding towns, where thousands lived in parts of houses without legal contracts, at the mercy of landlords. It may have also been relevant that sub-­alugas, or sub-­letters had been one of the most important groups in the growing Oporto urban movement.34 While this legislation applied in most part to Oporto, the timing and

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manner of its reporting in the national press gave a distinctly different impression. The newspapers – which did not report it until the end of January – emphasised the issue of the suspension of evictions over the conditions set out by the decree. In terms of timing, this had an important effect. By the end of January 1975 the question of housing and tenancy was looming large, as the 120-­day period given to landlords to rent out vacant housing was due to expire on 18 February, only a few weeks away. Shortly after the release of these news reports, a large number of housing units being built in Lumiar were occupied. On 3 February, around seven hundred people occupied ninety flats in unfinished blocks belonging to the Portuguese Red Cross, destined to be distributed as social housing. According to newspaper reports, the occupation was made primarily by families from the neighbouring shantytown, and motivated by rumours that groups from other areas and even from outside the city were preparing to occupy the neighbourhood destined to re-­house them.35 Although the Police, Military Police and Council staff did not stop the occupiers, the City authorities reacted by attacking their actions. An official from the City Council’s Housing Office said that while the houses were destined for shantytown residents, ‘the regrettable thing is that in these cases the opportunists are not always those most in need’, and many of those who seized the houses were not on the waiting list.36 The President of the City Council, Caldeira Rodrigues called a meeting in Musgueira – where many of the occupiers had come from – to attempt to clarify the situation, and told the press that the events had been, another illegal occupation which, alongside the motivation of social despair created by the lack of housing in Lisbon, is also undertaken by some in a spirit of adventure, commercial opportunism, and even political provocation.

Nevertheless, he added that the Council would not use force, but the courts, to convince the occupiers to leave the houses, so that they could be distributed according to just criteria, ‘not the law of the strongest or who gets to the house first’.37 At a further public meeting a few days later, attended by around five hundred people – ‘mostly women’ – Caldeira Rodrigues accused many occupiers of having incomes well above average. According to the newspaper report, the audience was divided between those who condemned the occupation and those who believed the occupiers were legitimated by their previous living conditions.38

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Despite the tone of the Council’s condemnations, the occupiers were allowed to stay. It is impossible to establish beyond doubt a direct causal link between the attitudes of the authorities, and individual decisions to embark on occupations. However, there can be no doubt that the message was filtering down to the poor of the city that occupation was a viable way to gain access to housing and that at the very least there would not be a violent backlash, as could have been expected during the dictatorship. Moreover, and as the events of the following week were to demonstrate, there may have been a genuine belief that the authorities were in effect sanctioning the occupation of vacant housing. Between 16 and 20 February, the city of Lisbon witnessed the occupation of several thousand houses and apartments throughout the city. It was reported that the occupations started in the neighbourhood of Campo de Ourique, a middle-­class area in the freguesia of Santo Condestável. According to newspapers, ‘young people’ from shantytowns and sub-­ lets began taking apartments and buildings deemed 39 empty. The occupations were reported as being spontaneous and haphazard: one occupier said ‘I was passing on my way to the café and I was told the building was being occupied … So I came in as well.’40 Nearby some families arrived after one group had taken a building and decided to occupy the one next door.41 In some areas, it was reported that organised groups had been identifying vacant houses for occupation: a ‘Movement for the Occupation of Uninhabited Houses’ led the organisation of seizure in the neighbourhood of Lapa and called on shantytown residents to join them.42 Whether this was a politically motivated and organised movement, as the Secretary of State for Housing claimed, or a spontaneous action of those in need of housing does not detract from the fact that the shanty­ town residents were acting on the rumour that occupations would be recognised by the authorities.43 In a more recent interview Nuno Portas recognised that the law allowed political activists to encourage occupations: ‘The Rental Law … allowed the occupation of all those old ­buildings in Lisbon.’ Portas claims to have witnessed activists with a loudhailer in Casal Ventoso saying: occupy such and such buildings because it will be legalised after. They used legalisation as an argument, so those guys would not be afraid, and they left Casal Ventoso and ran to occupy. I believe this was no way to operate.44

Over the course of this new wave of occupations, newspaper reports and the authorities addressed the impression that the expiry of the Rental Law had given carte blanche for seizing vacant dwellings:

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The sudden generalisation of the occupation of empty houses, coinciding with the end of the period given to landlords to rent, renovate, or demolish them seems to come from an organised movement, that had launched the rumour that those living in precarious conditions could occupy those houses by midnight [of 18 February].45

The strength of such rumour is testified by the number of civilian and military authorities – including the MFA’s operational command (COPCON) and the Public Information Department of the Armed Forces – who were forced to denounce it and condemn the occupations.46 The response of the authorities to the occupation of private housing was ostensibly as forceful as it had been in November of the previous year. There were scores of arrests and COPCON forces were sent to give backing to the police. On 20 February A Capital noted that in Campo de Ourique alone twenty buildings were said to have been cleared. The following day, the rate of evictions was said to be easing, with many buildings already cleared.47 Nevertheless, the majority of occupants, especially where actions had kept a lower profile, were still in the houses they had taken. Exact numbers are difficult to ascertain, but it is estimated that the third wave of occupation saw around 2,500 dwellings being seized.48 Both the creation of the Inter-­Comissões and the third wave of occupations reveal how the urban social movement developed in terms of an interaction between the state in its various forms and the population of Lisbon, and how at every step the collective mobilisation of the latter took the process in directions that were not anticipated by politicians and officials. But equally as important as the state were the interactions between the movement and political factions – particularly because the line between the institutional and the political was so blurred. The parties and the movement in early 1975 The development of the movement in the early months of 1975 took place against a backdrop of increasing competition between the political parties as the elections drew near. For much of 1974, there had been at least the rhetoric of unity between the coalition represented in the Provisional Government, if not its practices.49 But, as Maxwell wrote, January 1975 was a ‘trying month’, in which the growing divide between the various factions became apparent.50 The debate over whether there should be a single central trade union organisation recognised by the government was the key issue separating the Communists and their allies from the Socialists and moderates. ‘Union Unity’ would give the

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Communists strong leverage to retain control of the labour movement at a time when Socialists were beginning to gain support at the union grassroots, threatening the traditional PCP hegemony in that field. This debate – eventually won by the Communists with the support of MFA radicals – was only the most visible aspect of a generalised move to gather support and to establish positions within key institutions ahead of the elections, set for April 1975. This made political parties amenable to the demands of the urban movement and unwilling to react forcefully to occupations and other forms of direct action. In particular, given growing signs of strength from the moderate parties, it encouraged the Communists and the MDP/CDE to seek support in the urban grassroots. Through the end of 1974 and early 1975, the MDP/CDE had become increasingly close to the PCP, with both the Socialists and the PPD distancing themselves. The MDP leadership had decided to become a political party and stand in the elections, going back on earlier commitments to be no more than a non-­partisan pro-­democracy movement. MDP leader Pereira de Moura defended this move as necessary to win over ‘less politicised’ sections of society, who could otherwise be influenced by ‘conservative propaganda’.51 The decision was strongly criticised by the moderate parties who accused the MDP of being increasingly controlled by the PCP. Socialist António Reis argued that while in the first months of the transition the MDP had been an important movement comprising supporters from all pro-­democracy parties, its leaders ‘soon began to impose a line of action more suited to the interests of the PCP’. For Reis, the Communists sought to play on ‘two boards’, using the MDP to gain seats from ‘an electorate who probably would not easily vote for the PCP’.52 Although the Communist leader rejected suggestions that the MDP/CDE was a subsidiary of his party, MDP/CDE activists themselves defended the coalition of the two parties: in a public session of the party, a spokesman said that there was ‘a practical alliance with the Communist Party’, who with the MDP and the MFA, could always be found at ‘the first line of defence of the democratic interests of the Portuguese people’.53 From its establishment as a political party, and throughout 1975, the MDP would, in effect, form an alliance with the PCP. This alliance found itself in direct competition with the moderate PS and PPD to its right, as well as a host of more radical parties to its left. With regard to their potential popular constituencies, the PCP-­MDP/ CDE alliance was also in a difficult position in relation to the growing urban social movement. MDP/CDE activists had gained extensive visibility in both national government and as leaders of provisional municipal authorities – the interim President of the Lisbon City Council, Caldeira

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Rodrigues, and several members of his executive were MDP members. Many provisional Freguesia executives were also led by members of the MDP. In short, despite its relatively small membership, the MDP was often the visible face of national and local government. As these institutions came under increased criticism from a growing urban social movement, as was the case of the Inter-­Comissões, or directly challenged by actions such as the occupations, the MDP and PCP-­led City Council and Freguesia executives began to consider how best to forge links and alliances with the urban grassroots. A key strategy was encouraging the creation of new residents’ organisations with a closer link to the institutions of local government. The Lisbon City Council had been advocating, since November 1974 at least, the creation of commissions outside the SAAL scheme. A meeting of Municipal authorities from the greater Lisbon area in that month was reported as agreeing to prioritise the immediate creation of residents’ commissions (…) destined to closely follow the work of the Juntas de Freguesia and Councils, so as to allow the control of local administration by the popular masses.54

To this end, in late December and early January the City Council distributed to the Juntas de Freguesia a draft decree regulating residents’ commissions. It had been prepared by the Lisbon Region Civil Government, headed by Mário Bruxelas, who was also a member of the MDP/CDE’s central committee.55 The proposal saw the role of the commissions generally as to ‘promote economic, social and cultural programmes’ to solve the ‘common problems of the population’, and ‘contribute to the democratisation of the administrative structures at both local and national level’. Stating they should be elected at residents’ meetings, it gave commissions a wide range of areas of activity, including ‘participation in the discussion of urban plans’, the ‘collective management of social services’ such as nurseries, playgrounds and sports centres, and to ‘seek to establish systems of price controls’. While generous in the number of responsibilities it attributed to the commissions, the document was far less so when it came to giving them any actual power over the work of the Freguesia executives. Although it proposed the commissions elect two representatives to a Freguesia-­level ‘residents’ council’, which would sit on and intervene in executive meetings, this body was not given a vote. Similarly, while there would be an obligation for commissions to be consulted over local issues, and over nominations of new members for the Freguesia executive, the draft legislation did not envisage any way in which the commissions could veto or vote on any of those decisions.56 In essence,

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the plan seemed to be to encourage the creation of residents’ commissions as a means of connecting the recently appointed Freguesia executives to local populations, as was the publicly stated aim of the Council, but without giving them actual control over local administration. Certainly, the powers envisaged for residents’ organisations in this document were far removed from the controls over local issues and budgets being demanded by the members of the Inter-­comissões in relation to the SAAL scheme. The proposed legislation was never actually enacted, and it was left to the National Constituent Assembly, to be elected in April 1975, to decide on the powers and responsibilities of Juntas de Freguesia and residents’ commissions. Until a new Constitution came into force, it would be up to the Freguesia executives to decide the extent to which they should involve the commissions in their work. Taking their cue from the City Council and government, from the start of the year residents’ commissions close to the Juntas de Freguesia began appearing in several central and middle-­class wards, a process that would gain pace after March. The residents’ commissions of Pena, São Francisco Xavier and Graça are examples of this new type of commission. Aside from encouraging the creation of commissions outside the shantytowns and social housing areas, the PCP and MDP/CDE were also trying to foster the creation of federations of residents’ commissions that would work in closer alliance with the City Council and the Freguesias they controlled. On 24 February the residents’ commission of Pena organised a meeting sponsored by the City Council between Freguesia executives and residents’ organisations from Lisbon and the surrounding areas. This meeting, besides addressing the proposed diploma on residents commissions, discussed in detail the issue of occupation and attribution of vacant housing, deciding to attribute the power to distribute vacant housing to Freguesia executives, albeit in consultation with the residents’ commissions. Furthermore, the meeting agreed that the existing Rental Law ‘did not completely satisfy the needs of residents’.57 A few days later, on 9 March, the PCP and MDP organised a ‘Popular Assembly’ for the 2nd Quarter of Lisbon, which brought together Juntas de Freguesia, residents’ commissions, workers’ commissions and local associations. The assembly’s agenda mirrored that of the earlier meeting, calling for a revision of the Rental Law and the control of distribution of vacant housing to be given to Freguesia executives and residents’ commissions. Nevertheless, this meeting also revealed the growing competition that fuelled the efforts of the MDP-­ PCP alliance to gain a foothold in the urban movement, as it resolved to condemn:

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right and left-­wing opportunism which takes advantage of the housing occupations – occupations which sometimes reflect the legitimate aspirations of the disadvantaged – to create divisions and conflicts with the MFA and Provisional Government.58

While the Communists and their allies were in a privileged position to tap into grassroots activism, they were also vulnerable to criticism. Taking their lead from the Inter-­comissões, far-­left organisations began attacking the City Council, the government and the Juntas de Freguesias, portraying them as at best ignoring, and at worst stifling, the emerging urban social movement. Furthermore, far-­left activists were active in defending, as well as in some cases organising, the waves of occupations in Lisbon. The effect of the attack from the left was to pressure the MDP and PCP alliance into gradually ceding more and more ground to the radical left, in the hope of gaining the support of the urban grassroots. As we have seen above, by early March Juntas de Freguesia and residents’ commissions close to that bloc were calling for major revisions to the Rental Law and a more active role for popular organisations. But it would be a realignment of forces at the highest level that would dramatically affect the dynamics of the urban movement. The combination of the events of 11 March with the results of the election created an environment in which the urban movement, courted by all political actors, climbed to its highest point of influence. The urban social movement and ‘ongoing revolutionary process’ The urban social movement was not the only form of popular mobilisation gaining in strength as the revolution wore on. Fanned by deteriorating economic conditions, labour strikes and other forms of workplace action continued to grow, showing little regard for the attempts of political parties to bind them to their trade union organisations. In factories and workshops up and down the country, ad hoc Comissões de Trabalhadores (Workers’ Commissions) were formed to present grievances to employers. In a growing number of cases, when firms declared bankruptcy or laid off workers, these commissions declared them under worker’s control, subverting traditional hierarchies of property and workplace relations.59 In addition, from September 1974 rural workers in south and central Portugal began organising to demand work and better wages in the region’s large estates. This led to increasing levels of unemployment, aggravated by the return of young men from military service overseas and of migrants from the cities due to the crisis of the construction sector, where many had been employed. In February 1975,

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unemployed rural labourers and small sharecroppers began occupying fallow land.60 Everywhere popular and mobilisation claim-­making were increasing, and with them tensions within the provisional government coalition; driven apart by the issues of trade-­union centralism versus pluralism, economic reform versus full-­scale nationalisation, and the response to the growing urban, workplace and rural movement, the lines of division between the parties and the MFA factions were increasing. Some of these latent conflicts came to a head in a development that would take the Portuguese political process into a new phase. On 11 March 1975 right-­wing elements in the army attempted a coup aimed at brining Spínola back as President. While the plot was easily crushed, it strengthened the hand of those on the left of the MFA. Vasco Gonçalves and his allies had long argued that reactionaries would stop at nothing to derail the country’s transition to socialism – such clear evidence allowed them to further enshrine the MFA at the heart of the political system. The night after 11 March, at a stormy assembly of MFA representatives dominated by radicals and the extreme-­left f­ actions and awash with revolutionary rhetoric, the constitution of the transitional powers was changed. The State Council and the Junta were dissolved and their powers integrated into a new representative organisation of the MFA, the Council of the Revolution, which also replaced the Council of the Twenty. In addition to its functions in appointing the  higher officers of the state and vetoing government proposals, the Council of the Revolution was also to have legislative power to make ‘the necessary reforms to the structure of the Portuguese economy’.61 The MFA Assembly itself was also expanded to include representation by sergeants and rank-­and-­file soldiers, which strengthened the MFA’s left wing.62 On 26 March 1975, a 4th Provisional Government was appointed that reflected the stronger position of the radicals.63 The leftward lurch in the government had repercussions on the streets of Lisbon. The first symptom of these changes, in the context of a growing rhetorical attack by the government and the MFA on ‘reactionaries’ and ‘counter-­revolutionaries’, was the growth in the number of property occupations for institutional use. Party activists and ordinary citizens across the city began occupying properties linked with ‘reactionary’ organisations to create collective services such as nurseries, community centres or local movement headquarters, without much reaction from the authorities. Initially, during the month of March, all the main parties continued to warn against occupations. However, their preoccupation with expressly forbidding their members from participating in occupations betrays the extent to which their rank-­and-­file was

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­ ecoming caught up in the moment. On 25 March, the Lisbon PCP b issued a strong statement, saying that: The occupation of houses, (…) without respect for democratic law and order, contribute to the aggravation of the lack of stability which the reaction seeks to promote in the country, contributing to possible ­confrontations with the armed forces and the police services.64

The statement also called on Communist Party members to be on the lookout for ‘anarchic tendencies’ and warned that ‘any participation of party members in the illegal occupation of houses would constitute an act of party indiscipline’.65 The Socialists were equally concerned with the activities of their members, forbidding the use of party banners or insignia in any occupations.66 Despite these condemnations, by the beginning of April some of the political parties, the government, and city authorities fundamentally changed their attitude to the urban movement and the issue of occupations. A catastrophic fire in Curraleira, one of Lisbon’s largest shantytowns, was the trigger for several parties to change their public position and begin defending housing occupations. The disaster started when a local man started a fire in his own shack following a marital dispute, a fire in which he and one of his daughters died. The fire spread quickly through the neighbourhood, destroying sixty-­three shacks and leaving hundreds homeless. The following day, the Portugal Novo Cooperative, recently created by the local residents’ commission, decided to take advantage of the visit of the City Council President to the site of the fire to demand that the homeless families be assigned to vacant houses in the area.67 Caldeira Rodrigues promised that the Council would do so as quickly as possible and a city official was said to be urgently reviewing the cases of around one hundred dwellings nearby which could be assigned to the families under the Rental Law passed the previous year. However, many were not willing to wait: In the meantime, the victims of the fire, accompanied by members of the residents’ commissions (…) began to organise occupation pickets for empty houses, while their attribution was not formalised by the City Council through requisition (…) Pickets were placed at the buildings to avoid landlords (…) from re-­taking them illegitimately.68

While the pickets demobilised that afternoon – according to A Capital because landlords had boycotted their actions by furnishing the houses in order to claim they were in use – the Portugal Novo cooperative gave the Council a deadline of a week to find houses for the victims of the fire.69 On the eve of the deadline a small far-­left party, LUAR (League

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for Revolutionary Unity and Action), organised the occupation of several empty buildings across the city for the Curraleira families. The Curraleira residents’ commission, which supported the action, said that they could not wait any longer and asked the Council to recognise the occupations with legal contracts.70 The City Council had been trying to lay down a framework to be able to address such situations. Four days after the fire it had issued a statement legitimating the use of private and public property for ‘social ends’ if rent was guaranteed to proprietors. In those terms, the statement read, it supported ‘the considered occupation of vacant housing [under terms] properly controlled by the Council’.71 On 10 April, the Council decreed the requisitioning of vacant houses as an emergency measure to deal with the Curraleira victims. While this measure was intended to safeguard property rights by claiming alternative solutions would be found as soon as possible where landlords did not wish to celebrate contracts with the new tenants, on the whole it represented a change of attitude towards occupations.72 In effect, while the Rental Law had given the Council some powers to interfere in the rental market as a means to combat speculation, these emergency measures reassigned all powers and initiative to the residents’ commissions and Juntas de Freguesia at the local level. In a letter to the commission of Alto da Eira, a neighbouring shantytown that had also been affected by the fire, Council Vice-­President Filipe Mário Lopes guaranteed the requisitioning of vacant dwellings to house fire victims: The occupation and the distribution [of houses] should be done under the guidance of the Junta de Freguesia with the support of the residents’ commission, as well as (…) the SAAL Brigades and Fire Services (…) On occupation, the houses will be indicated to the [Council’s] Housing Services who will requisition them and register the family. In case of necessity, the occupation can be made in the presence of the Municipal Police and an official from Housing Services, and with the help of the Fire Service.73

The turnaround by the city authorities was mirrored by the government, that had been looking to draw new legislation on urban tenancy since the beginning of the year. The result was Decree-­Law 198-­A/75, which confirmed how the provisional authorities were being pushed by opinion and action on the street to pass increasingly radical legislation. Published in mid-­April, the decree noted that building new social housing would not, even in the medium term, solve the lodging problems of the many who needed it. As such: the most elementary principles of social justice impose that in order to reduce this need in the short term, the country’s housing stock is used

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fully, since while there are people without houses, there can not be houses without people.74

The 198-­A law was the confirmation on legal statute of consummated facts on the ground: unable or unwilling to be seen to dislodge poor residents from the houses they occupied, the government decided to legalise them. While for the legislators some such cases were ‘not admissible’, the decree recognised that most were justified by the urgent need of the poor. It gave proprietors thirty days to reach an agreement and sign a tenancy contract with the occupiers, after which period City Councils would force the signing of a contract and set the rent. Furthermore, the Ministry of the Interior could force rentals against the landlord’s wishes, if a ‘social or humanitarian aim’ was demonstrable, that is for schools, nurseries, etc. Despite saying ‘definitively and very firmly’ that further occupations would not be tolerated, since they could lead to ‘the paralysis of the whole construction industry’ with dire consequences for the economy, it would be very difficult to justify preventing occupations if these could be legitimated by need alone.75 This shift in the positions of both the government and the City Council must be understood in the context of both pressure from below, and the dynamics of increasing competition between all the political actors in the run-­up to the elections. As we have seen, shantytown dwellers and the urban poor were not willing to wait for legal procedure before taking action, leaving the authorities trailing behind them. To the left of the parties in control of the city (the PCP and MDP), the small revolutionary parties continued to seek to gain advantage by supporting the occupations and criticising the council and government for failing to support shantytown residents: only a few days after the publication of the 198-­A law, the Lisbon Tenants Union (AIL), which was closely connected to the far-­left, organised a meeting of occupiers’ commissions where it strongly attacked the law because of its exceptions and for declaring further occupations illegal.76 In May, the President of the AIL, José Hipólito, accused the new Rental Law, of being ‘a law with clearly electoral intentions’, which at the same time safeguarded ‘the interests of the small and medium bourgeoisie’.77 With elections set for 25 April, all political parties looked to the street with an eye on the ballot box. If the PCP and the MDP were probably the main instigators of the 198-­A law, it must be remembered that the PS and PPD were also represented at Cabinet level, and did not, at this stage, provide any criticism of its principles. In addition, the positions defended in their manifestos were not, in essence, different from what the provisional government was enacting. On 20 April the Socialist

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Party newsletter Portugal Socialista presented the party’s programme on housing under the title ‘The Right to Housing: A Revolutionary Right’. It called for an ‘urgent start to an accelerated process of collectivisation of urban land’, at all times ‘supported by the participation of the popular masses’, towards ‘self-­managerial forms of organisation’, that is, housing cooperatives such as those being set up by the residents’ commissions under the SAAL scheme. In the short term it proposed ‘the revision of the Rental Law in order to effectively control the free market in housing’.78 The PPD was not to be left behind in supporting the popular movement ahead of the elections. Only a few days after the Curraleira fire its newspaper, the Povo Livre, called on the expropriation of empty houses near the shantytown to house the victims.79 While later on in the year, both the PS and the PPD would eventually modify their positioning in relation to grassroots organisations, in the run-­up to the elections their policies were almost indistinguishable from those being enacted by the government and the parties to their left. At this stage, they showed no intention of leaving the urban poor constituency to their rivals. The April 1975 elections and the urban movement The elections for the Constituent Assembly had, over the past few months, gained a far more pressing significance than the drafting of the new constitution. Since the end of 1974 the different political forces in play had been trying to couch the forthcoming elections in such a way as to make the most, or the least, of the significance of the election according to increasingly clear expectations of a PS victory and a strong showing for the PPD. Cautiously preparing the ground, the PCP leader had been warning that elections may not be ‘free’, and eventually might ‘falsify the will of the Portuguese people’.80 Nevertheless, the overall feeling of MFA radicals and their allies in the civilian parties was that there was a danger that their project for the transformation of Portuguese society could be derailed by an electoral victory for the moderate parties, which had already begun to express reservations about the role of the military in the political process. In a statement that would be repeated several times in the run-­up to the elections, Prime Minister Vasco Gonçalves warned that the country would ‘not lose through the electoral route that which has cost the Portuguese so much’.81 In the aftermath of the failed 11 March coup, the radicals gained control of the MFA Assembly and, in alliance with a new cabinet with a majority of radical and communist ministers, imposed a pact on the civilian parties that committed them  to keeping the country under military tutelage for a period of three to five years, in order to ensure the fulfilment of the ongoing

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revolutionary project. The Parties-­MFA Platform further enabled the MFA radicals to play down the immediate importance of the vote for the government of the country. Only two weeks before the elections, the Prime Minister stated at a press conference that ‘the elections for the Constituent Assembly are one thing, the functioning government we need is something else’; to ‘mix up’ the two things would be to ‘create problems’ to the process of constructing the ‘socialist route’.82 It was, overall, a sustained campaign to limit the influence of the elections on the government of the country, given the expectation of a victory for the moderates. Despite all these obstacles, including an explicit call for blank votes to be cast as an expression of support for the MFA and the publication of a report that hinted at the implication of moderate politicians in the 11 March mutiny, the elections delivered a stunning victory for the moderates on an unexpected turnout. With an exceptional 91.7 per cent of registered electors voting, the Socialist Party gained 37.9 per cent of the national vote, followed by the PPD with 26.4. The Communists came a distant third with 12.5 and, perhaps most surprisingly, the MDP/CDE failed to convert its prominent role in government into votes, gaining only 4.1 per cent of the vote, less than the 7.6 of the right-­wing CDS.83 In Lisbon, the PS did even better than nationally, reaching 45.8 per cent. Although the PCP also did better in the capital than in the country as a whole, with 15.8, it still trailed the PPD who gained 17.1. The MDP/ CDE’s result in Lisbon mirrored its national share, despite its visibility in the City Council and in leading many of the Juntas de Freguesia appointed in 1974. At the local level there are no clear patterns linking the urban movement to the electoral results. The distribution of votes per ward reveals few links between the poorest areas and voting in any particular political parties. Despite the efforts of the MDP/CDE at the City Council and Freguesia executives to win over the urban movement, the party broke the 5 per cent mark in only three Freguesias. There is however, a concentration of Communist voters in the out-lying wards – along with the older central wards, home to pockets of a longer-­established working class. Nevertheless, in most places where the Communists did well, the Socialists did even better, often getting over half of the vote. The PS was the most voted-­for party in every single Lisbon ward, rich or poor, its share only dropping below 40 per cent in some middle-­class wards where the PPD achieved over a quarter of the total vote. In Lisbon, as in many other parts of the country, the Socialists won the most votes across all social groups, with the Communists failing to win a majority of their target constituency, the urban working class.

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In the absence of sources that would allow a comparison between participation in residents’ commissions and individual voting tendencies, it is impossible to establish whether participation in the movement was linked to any particular voting preference. What can be said, however, is that the obvious courting of the urban poor witnessed in the months prior to the elections failed to deliver the city to the Communists and their allies. It also shows that a majority of the population of the city, including those in poor areas with shantytowns and social housing neighbourhoods were willing, at least for the moment, to support parties that were actively distancing themselves from the dominant leadership in the transition government, at this time the MFA radicals supported by the Communists. Nevertheless, all the major parties had presented political programmes that were virtually indistinguishable when it came to urban policy, in support of strong state intervention and championing the residents’ commissions as a means of democratising the city. The critical contribution of the elections to the trajectory of the urban social movement was not directly connected with the interaction between the Council, the Housing Ministry, the SAAL teams and the residents’ and occupiers’ commissions. Instead, the April 1975 elections affected the political balance of forces at the national level in such a way that had an important impact on the development of the Lisbon urban social movement. The effect of the elections, for all the protestations of the Communists, extreme left and MFA Radicals, was to give the moderate civilian parties a plausible claim to power. After April 1975, the various political factions found themselves irrevocably split, but also lacking the means to achieve a decisive victory over each other. The task now facing the military and civilian factions seeking to control the future of the country was to ensure a power base that would enable them to bring their rivals under control. This provided further encouragement for those who had failed to make their mark at the ballot box to seek alternative forms of legitimation and to appeal to mobilised or mobilisable sectors of the population. If they were successful in bringing those in step with their cause and programme, they stood a better chance of denying the moderates control over the levers of power. Reinforced by the election results, the PS and the PPD redoubled their calls for a stronger representation in the provisional government. Vasco Gonçalves and his radical-­dominated cabinet had to defend themselves against calls for a new cabinet that reflected the electoral results more closely. It is clear from the statements of the leaders of the parties to the left of the Socialists, that there was a growing awareness that their chance of holding on to their position depended on gaining popular support beyond the ballot box. The day after the elections, MDP leader

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and minister without portfolio Pereira de Moura was forced to defend his party’s position, stating that its intention had never been to win a large share of the vote; rather, to encourage voting generally. However, Pereira de Moura stated that more important from now on was the construction of socialism, which necessarily entailed the encouragement of popular mobilisation. At the beginning of May, after calls from the moderates for local elections, the MDP/CDE released a statement attacking the ‘electoralist avidity of some parties who, since the Constituent Assembly elections, insist in multiplying electoral acts’, criticising them for ‘belittling the revolutionary efforts’ of MDP militants, when just a few months before they had benefited from their role in dismantling the fascist administration.84 Since pushing through the MFA-­Parties platform, the military radicals were also developing ideological justifications for their claim to power that would lead them to seek support in the ‘popular movement’, bypassing the election results. One of the first and clearest presentations of this ideology appeared only a few days after the elections in the MFA bulletin Movimento, proposing the necessity of creating avenues for popular participation and to: advance without hesitation in the quest for advanced formulas capable of combining the electoral and revolutionary processes, understanding that the latter commands the former, and that our socialist democracy, if it is not the mechanical application of the socialist experiments of other countries, neither will it be an adaptation of the arrangements of bourgeois democracy.85

Having circumscribed the importance of the recent elections, the article went on to promote the importance of a direct alliance between the military and the popular organisations as the way forward for socialism: It is the action of the popular masses within the alliance People-­MFA that will be increasingly determinant in the development of the socialist revolution.86

The fulfilment of this alliance would imply: the development of popular powers at the local and regional level; in neighbourhoods and factories; in the countryside and in the cities. Socialist democracy has to find formulas of direct participation that are effectively new, democratic and pluralist – not the mere transformation of the structures of bourgeois democracies. This is because socialist democracy is not the formal vote with the addition of nationalisations, but popular power determined by the action of the popular masses and the organised working

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class, democratically and revolutionarily articulated at the level of the different institutions of the State.87

The article concluded by echoing the words that Prime-­Minister Vasco Gonçalves, had repeated so often before the elections: only this way will we avoid at all that which cost the Portuguese people so much to win via the revolutionary way be lost through the electoral route.88

Some days later, on 19 May 1975, the MFA Assembly met, with the radicals in the ascendancy. According to a newspaper report, the Assembly studied a document analysing the political situation that criticised the parties’ electoral strategies, which it saw leading to ‘a dangerous demobilisation of the working classes’. It also denounced attempts to ‘pressure’ the MFA with the electoral results ‘exploiting’ differences of opinion within the movement. For the construction of socialism, the document presented three goals, which it argued the MFA had to define: ‘national independence’, an economic development plan, and a ‘model of society’.89 A committee was charged with the definition of this last goal. When it was published, in July 1975, under the name of Document of the People/MFA Alliance: Towards the Construction of the Socialist Society in Portugal it was the blueprint for a radical council-­ style socialism with military participation at all levels under the banner of the ‘Popular Power’ project that would be put into practice over the summer.90 Nevertheless, its direction was already clear in May, when the MFA Assembly decided the military must: intensify its direct connections with all the structures of political participation being formed – neighbourhood commissions, residents’ commissions, workers commissions – as the means to consolidate the People/MFA ­alliance and overcome political divisions.91

The political parties allied to the MFA radicals at the time, namely the PCP and the MDP/CDE, were developing parallel justifications that would lead them to support the MFA programme, whilst at the same time seeking to build up popular support for themselves on the street. To this end they used the structures they could rely on: City Councils and Juntas de Freguesia. At the end of May 1975, the Communist Party dedicated a large part of its newspaper to the issue of urban grassroots organisations. It announced a forthcoming ‘National Congress of Local Authorities’ whose aim was to ‘stimulate the executive of every Council towards mobilising the population’ to create residents’ commissions that would be represented in the Congress.92 The Communist Party was walking a

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tightrope: while it needed the MFA Radicals to protect its influential position in government, it was also wary of aspects of the MFA programme that bypassed the civilian parties. This made it even more urgent that the Party developed its own connection to the popular movement, competing not only with the moderates and the extreme left, but also with its own allies in the military. These tensions would eventually come to the fore and help explain the somewhat serpentine trail of alliances and positions taken by the Communists during the coming months. The effect of the radicalisation of Portuguese politics following 11 March, and the increasing competition between the major political actors following the elections, enhanced the space into which the urban social movement could grow in size and influence. With no faction being able to claim overall control and looking to recruit support wherever possible, residents’ and occupiers’ commissions found it easier to make alliances and extract concessions. In this environment, more and more commissions were formed and the pattern of diffusion accelerated. The zenith of the urban movement: April to June 1975 March saw a clear change in the composition of new commissions. Whereas until then shantytowns, council neighbourhoods and out-lying run-­down areas had been in the majority, from March onwards, middle-­ class neighbourhoods and old central areas provided the bulk of new commissions. Between March and July 1975, sixty-­six new commissions appear in the sources and roughly two-­thirds belong to these categories. The largest group was composed of commissions formed in middle-­class neighbourhoods, followed by old central areas. The next largest group of commissions were shantytowns, but there were only six neighbourhoods in that category.93 In part, this can be explained by the fact that so many poorer areas had already organised prior to March 1975 and the rate of creation of new commissions in those areas was bound to slow down. Nevertheless, the month with most new shantytown commissions being mentioned for the first time in the sources was still to come, in July. The main reason behind the changes are to be found in the active encouragement of occupiers’ commissions by a new actor inside the urban social movement and the efforts of Juntas de Freguesia to create commissions loyal to the City Council and the MDP-­PCP alliance. The creation of the CRAMO Secretariat In the conducive post-­11 March atmosphere, the city council and Juntas de Freguesia were not the only groups actively promoting the creation

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of new residents’ commissions. Encouraged by the success of the occupations, and in direct competition with the MDP-­PCP alliance, more radical groups began to foster commissions that would provide them with their own grassroots support. The most important example of this tendency was the creation, in late April 1975, of the CRAMO Secretariat. CRAMO stood for Comissões Revolucionárias e Autónomas de Moradores e Ocupantes (Autonomous and Revolutionary Residents’ and Occupiers’ Commissions), an acronym that began to be used by a number of commissions. Building on the occupation of vacant housing, which had in some cases been organised by members of radical left-­wing parties, the CRAMO Secretariat was promoted and supported by the Lisbon Tenants’ Union (AIL).94 The AIL had been a critic of the dictatorship for many years, using the regime’s legal system to defend tenants whilst at the same time avoiding crossing the line that would have led to repression and imprisonment.95 Since the 25 April coup the organisation had often spoken out in favour of tenants and for radical solutions to their problems, calling on occupiers to refuse to leave the houses they had taken.96 The CRAMO Secretariat was openly aimed at creating a federation of neighbourhood commissions that could compete with the growing number of residents’ groups closely identified with the MDP-­PCP Juntas de Freguesia. On 19 April 1975 the AIL and some commissions called a meeting to criticise the publication of the 198-­A/75 law on housing and to organise a demonstration against the government. That meeting passed a vote of no confidence in fifteen Juntas de Freguesia, which were accused of ‘interfering in the residents’ commissions’ and ‘obstructing the revolutionary process’.97 According to the President of the AIL, José Hipólito, interviewed in July, from the beginning of this year [1975], facing persistent problems, people came [to AIL] in order to break the standstill they found themselves in, since the residents commissions connected to the Juntas could not solve their problems.98

According to Hipólito, this was how the AIL ‘whilst continuing to collaborate with the more dynamic commissions, began supporting others unconnected from the Juntas’. For the commissions belonging to this organisation, the CRAMOs, the issue of housing was not to be seen in isolation. The problem with the existing commissions had been that they ‘were only concerned with sectional problems such as garbage, health or housing etc. But nothing was done to resolve the residents’ real problems’. The CRAMOs were concerned with developing a more ‘revolutionary consciousness’ that would be more ‘wide-­ranging’, whose

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strategy would be to depart from the issue of housing to ‘more global perspectives’.99 The 19 April meeting elected a Secretariat to coordinate the work of the occupiers’ commissions, and called a demonstration for two days hence. This demonstration, was, according to one newspaper ‘supported and organised’ by several radical parties, the FEC-­ ml, PRP-­ BR and UDP. The demonstrators attacked the 198-­A law by shouting ‘No to the Bourgeois Laws; Yes to the People’s Occupations’, ‘Socialisation of Housing, Nationalisation of Construction’. However, the same report, by the moderate paper Jornal Novo, also stated that there were only ‘some hundreds’ of demonstrators.100 Nevertheless, the CRAMOs began expanding, keeping as their core the residents’ commission in middle-­ class wards where the majority of occupations of private apartments had taken place: São Jorge de Arroios, Penha de França, Lapa, Prazeres and Santo Condestável.101 By May, the CRAMO Secretariat had produced a ‘Declaration of Principles’ which set out a radical vision and role for the residents’ commissions. This document began by attacking the government, stating that: ‘social reforms represent nothing more than the maintenance of the capitalist state we want to destroy’. For the CRAMO leadership, a socialist society could only be created from ‘the base organisations of popular volition’, including the residents and occupiers’ commissions. These popular organisations were understood loosely, leaving room for committed activism: ‘the concept of the People cannot be understood as being the residents of a particular geographic area’, but rather should include all those ‘who identify themselves with the aspirations of the working class and place themselves at their service in the struggle’.102 It is difficult to establish exactly how many residents’ commissions the CRAMO Secretariat actually represented. According to the sources collated during this research there were eleven commissions which used that acronym. All of these were first mentioned between February and August 1975, although the term CRAMO was only in general use after the creation of the Secretariat.103 All the eleven named commissions were mostly based in middle-­class or old central areas, and although there were also shantytown and social housing commissions that later appear side by side with them, none of these ever used the CRAMO acronym.104 While neither the CRAMO nor the Inter-­comissões could claim to represent the whole of the movement, and many commissions remained unaligned, they were able to position themselves as the voice of the movement.105 The arrival of the CRAMO to some extent crystallised some of the diversity within the urban social movement: it represented

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a constituency with a different geographical focus to the Inter and positioned itself as the more radical and revolutionary organisation. Yet, despite many differences, they were able to combine efforts to coordinate the greatest show of force of the urban social movement in the revolutionary period, which confirmed its status as one of the key vehicles of popular political participation, the 17 May demonstration. Inter, CRAMO and the 17 May demonstration While the CRAMOs developed their federation, the other cross-­ commission organisation, the Inter-­comissões, continued to lobby on behalf of the shantytowns and SAAL-­related areas. It agreed a list of demands, which it delivered to the Prime Minister’s office on 7 April. A month later the Inter representatives returned for another meeting expecting answers, but were disappointed by the response: after waiting three and a quarter hours to be received, the first exchanges showed clearly that nobody had set eyes on our list of demands. [They told us] That the problem was difficult, and that the Government did not have the money, that we should wait (…) We proposed then, that the gentlemen who said this went to live in our shacks and that our roles were reversed, then we would make them wait.106

Following this meeting, the Inter leadership decided to call a mass demonstration of shantytown residents. Contacts were established between the Inter and the CRAMO Secretariat, which decided to support and join the event.107 The Inter also coordinated with groups of residents’ commissions from Oporto, where a parallel demonstration took place, and with a sister organisation for Lisbon’s industrial belt – the Secretariat of the Shantytown Commissions of the Areas Surrounding Lisbon, who also brought its members to the capital. The various organisations agreed a number of slogans, which included: ‘an end to the shantytowns’; ‘the people build the houses, the houses are the people’s’; ‘against unemployment, against self-­build’; ‘yes to the occupations, no to the decree-­law [198-­A]’; and ‘the struggle of the neighbourhoods is one’.108 In preparation for the event the Inter organised groups to plaster posters across the city, produce stickers to be sold for fundraising, printed pamphlets and placards, and asked each residents’ commission to assign a group of stewards to accompany the delegation from its own neighbourhood.109 In terms of organisation, the demonstration was a success. Enjoying the backing of a wide range of parties and organisations, it was widely covered by the media and some reports put the combined Lisbon and Oporto protest at around one hundred thousand strong.110 Most

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reports, however, were more modest, even if they still pictured a very sizeable demonstration: according to the Jornal Novo, ‘in Lisbon the demonstrators … in a total of several thousands of people, mostly women and children’, came down the city’s main boulevard and ended in front of the Assembly and Prime-­Minister’s residence, in São Bento.111 A sympathetic publication, the MES newspaper Esquerda Socialista, estimated around ten thousand demonstrators.112 The demonstrators were received by Captain Cabral e Silva, from the Prime Minister’s Office, and were told six of the items on their list of demands would be met. The first four related specifically to the wishes of the commissions connected to the SAAL scheme and the Inter: the assurance that new neighbourhoods would be built in the same areas  as the existing shantytowns, a cap on social housing rent to one-­tenth of the salary of the head of the family, a rise in the direct grant per house in the SAAL scheme from 60,000$00 to 90,000$00 and that the interest charged on the loans to complete the houses would not be above 3 per cent (the Inter had asked for 2 per cent). The additional two demands agreed to were an investigation of allegations of corruption in housing allocation, and the guarantee of legislation that would support the occupation of empty houses by families in urgent need while the new neighbourhoods were being built.113 This last point was confirmed one week later when the Lisbon City Council, together with the city’s Juntas de Freguesia, the Military High Command (5th Division – loyal to MFA Radicals) and the police services announced that all the vacant houses in the city would be immediately requisitioned.114 This decision was the extension of the practice adopted in the areas near Curraleira and, as in that case, transferred all initiative to the Juntas de Freguesia and the residents’ commissions: together these bodies should identify all eligible houses in their wards and draw up lists of residents according to need. According to the Diário de Notícias this method sought ‘to ensure fair occupations’ and only those occupations achieved through this process would be tolerated.115 It was clear that the government was reacting positively to the demands of the urban movement. In turn, the Inter-­comissões was happy to collaborate with the authorities. According to one of their representatives, Since the demonstration (…) the contacts with Captain Cabral e Silva, from the Prime Minister’s Office, have been frequent (…) We have worked together every week to reach the right solutions and it was promised to us that an appropriate housing law would be written.116

The growing influence of the urban movement was not solely due to the fact that the PCP-­MDP alliance and the Military factions that controlled

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the government were looking to court favour with the mobilised sectors of the urban population. It was also important that, at least for the time being, the moderate political parties continued to be largely sympathetic to the formation of residents’ commissions and the encouragement of popular participation in local structures. They were, after all, social democratic parties whose programmes advocated such ideas, and many of their members were (particularly in the case of the Socialists) involved in residents’ commissions and similar organisations at the ­neighbourhood level. At the time of the 17 May demonstration, the Jornal Novo noted that members and flags of the Socialist Party were part of the demonstration.117 Maybe some of those were carried by Socialist supporters from the Musgueira-­Norte shantytown, as was reported in the party’s newspaper. On the eve of the demonstration, two women from that neighbourhood approached a nearby PS office to ask for assistance in rallying ‘all the Socialists of Musgueira’ for the march. The response of the party betrays no apprehension regarding what was a potent symbol of the mobilisation of the neighbourhoods: by that evening the two women had leafleted their neighbourhood and, with the help of party activists, organised ‘a small public meeting hurriedly gathered in the Musgueira Parish Hall’ at which several local Socialists spoke. A photo of the two women leading a Musgueira-­ Norte delegation at the demonstration headed the article.118 The PPD’s position at this stage was equally sympathetic towards the urban movement and its programme reflected, in general terms, many of the demands made by the demonstrators. At the end of May 1975 the party’s newspaper Povo Livre published an interview with its spokeswoman for Housing, Helena Roseta, calling for ‘democratised planning at all levels, so that it is the organised population who controls the decision-­making’, and the promotion of ‘the creation of residents’ cooperatives and associations’. Furthermore, she called for the ‘seizure of uninhabited or unused housing’ (although, with an eye on the party’s middle-­class vote, safeguarding the right to a holiday home) and showed a critical, yet understanding, attitude towards house occupations, saying they were an expression of ‘the urgency of the situation of those without a roof to shelter their families’.119 The movement at a crossroads: June 1975 The May demonstration was a high-­water mark for the urban social movement. Its various constituents, not just from Lisbon but from across the country, were able to coordinate a large demonstration with

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significant media and political impact. But, in spite of this success and the movement’s own rhetoric of unity, even at the apex of its strength, there were crucial divisions in outlook and strategies between different groups within it. In early July 1975 the newspaper A Capital dedicated a section to the two federations of residents’ commissions. In an interview Mariete Barbosa, a CRAMO Secretariat member, claimed that they are studying ‘possible forms of fusion’ with the Inter. However Albano Pires, one of the Inter leaders, was quick to dismiss that suggestion: .

the CRAMO Secretariat’s desire to collaborate with our movement has been there for a long time. That desire was reinforced after the 17 May demonstration, which they joined. But we have to say the interest is more on their part than on ours, and that we have no interest in the fusion of the two movements. Whether you like it or not, they are residents and occupiers of bourgeois neighbourhoods, while we come from shantytowns and poor neighbourhoods. We do not want to muddle things up.120

Another member of the Inter executive, Alda Silva, went even further, hinting at the influence of political parties in the CRAMO: If that movement were directed by the occupiers, and only by them, we could perhaps review our position; but like this, it is impossible. We can work in parallel, but no fusions.121

While the two organisations showed a degree of distance, and even mistrust, towards each other, both were united in condemning a third group within the movement, those commissions they argued were controlled by the Juntas de Freguesia. In an interview, Albano Pires, of the Inter coordinating commission warned his organisation would not allow ‘commissions from neighbourhoods similar to ours, but dependent on parties and Juntas de Freguesia to join the Inter’.122 It is unlikely that the women and men that began organising their neighbours in the spring of 1974 envisaged how far their actions would carry. By the end of May 1975, there were at least seventy-­six commissions across the city, hundreds more across other Portuguese cities. More kept being created – by the end of June their number in Lisbon had risen to ninety, involving hundreds in their executive committees and thousands in their public assemblies. Having prompted the provisional authorities to promise the resolution of the housing issue, residents’ commissions were also able to establish the principle of residents’ participation, if not control, of key aspects of public urban intervention. Aspects of this practice had, of course, already been trialled in the city but it is unlikely they would have become such a central aspect of the government’s programme had it not been for the mobilisation of the

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urban movement. Similarly, the occupations forced the authorities onto the back foot, walking a narrow line between toleration and repression. Successive decrees and legislation seeking to regulate the private housing market and the allocation of vacant housing are clear signs of the reactive nature of the legislation, which tended to follow, rather than pre-­ empt, the actions of the urban movement. The urban movement was, therefore, an active part in the remaking of Portuguese society. But this central role also placed the movement at the centre of an increasingly contested political arena, a position that often required taking sides and making choices about the future of the country and its political system. If up until now a general a degree of consensus over the central issues – housing, urban conditions and democratic voice – had been possible, the next stage of the Portuguese revolutionary protest would test those alliances. Over the summer of 1975, the choices of movement supporters and organisations would prove critical for its future and for the resolution of the struggle between the various political factions. Notes 1 Centro de Documentação 25 de Abril, Universidade de Coimbra, Fundo de Comunicados e Pamfletos (25 April Archive, University of Coimbra, Pamphlet and Communiqué Collection, hereafter UC/CD25A/FCP), Organizações Populares de Base/Comissões de Moradores II/Lisboa: Inter-­Comissões dos Bairros de Lata e Pobres de Lisboa, ‘Sábado dia 17’, 1975. 2 Josep Sanchez Cervelló, A Revolução Portuguesa e a Sua Influência na Transição Espanhola (1961–1976) (Lisboa: Assírio e Alvim, 1993), 204; Kenneth Maxwell, The Making of Portuguese Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 86–87. 3 Cervelló, A Revolução Portuguesa e a Sua Influência na Transição Espanhola (1961–1976), 200–201. 4 See, for instance, Spínola’s speech on the appointment of the second provisional government, where he repeatedly appeals to ‘civic discipline’ and warns against ‘anarchy’: Fernando Ribeiro de Mello, Dossier 2ª República – 1º Volume 25/4/74 – 25/4/75 (Lisboa: Edições Afrodite, 1976), 54–59. 5 Spínola’s speech is reproduced in Mello, Dossier, 84. 6 Ibid., 86. 7 Ibid., 87. 8 Paul Christopher Manuel, Uncertain Outcome: The Politics of the Portuguese Transition to Democracy (Lanham: University Press of America, 1994), 59–62; Cervelló, A Revolução Portuguesa e a Sua Influência na Transição Espanhola (1961–1976), 206–210. 9 Manuel, Uncertain Outcome: The Politics of the Portuguese Transition to Democracy, 72–74.

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10 José Medeiros Ferreira, ‘Os Militares e a Evolução Política Interna e Externa (1974–1982)’, in O País em Revolução, ed. J.M. Brandão de Brito (Lisboa: Editorial Notícias, 2001). 11 Lawrence S. Graham, ‘The Military in Politics: The Politicization of the Portuguese Armed Forces’, in Contemporary Portugal – the Revolution and Its Antecedents, ed. Lawrence S. Graham and Harry M. Makler (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979), 240–241; Cervelló, A Revolução Portuguesa e a Sua Influência na Transição Espanhola (1961–1976), 216–217; Manuel, Uncertain Outcome: The Politics of the Portuguese Transition to Democracy, 72–74. The terminology of moderates, populists and radicals come from Manuel’s work. Other terms are also often in use, with radicals as ‘Gonçalvists’, populists as ‘Copcon’ and moderates as the ‘Group of Nine’. While all terminology necessarily oversimplifies a complex political spectrum, Manuel’s categorisation is preferred to the extent that it avoids the anachronism of using the term ‘Group of Nine’, derived from events in August 1975, to cover the whole period; in addition the reference to ideological position suggested by Manuel’s terminology, whilst somewhat crude, is also easier to follow for readers not familiar with the complexities of the Portuguese Revolution. For an in-­depth study of the factions within the Portuguese military in this period, see Maria Inácia Rezola, Os Militares na Revolução de Abril: o Conselho da Revolução e a Transição Para a Democracia em Portugal, 1974–1976 (Lisboa: Campo da Comunicação, 2006). 12 See pp. xiv–xix for a full list of acronyms. 13 Marco Lisi, ‘Um Partido Revolucionário na Transição Para a Democracia: O PCP Entre 1974 e 1976’ (Master’s Thesis, ISCTE, 2002), 56–60. 14 A Capital, 29 November 1974, p. 9. 15 Ibid. 16 AHM/AAC/CE 76, Junta de Freguesia de Santo Condestável to Presidência da Comissão Administrativa da Câmara Muncipal de Lisboa, 23 January 1975. 17 AHM/AAC/CE 76, Comissão de Moradores do Tarújo e Casal do Sola to Presidência da Comissão Administrativa da Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, 30 November 1974. 18 Diário de Notícias, 25 November 1974, p. 10. 19 Ibid. 20 UC/CD25A/FCP/Organizações Populares de Base/Comissões de Moradores II/ Lisboa, ‘Porquê e como surgiu a inter-­comissões de moradores dos bairros de lata’, January 1975. 21 Ibid., the expulsion of a SAAL team from a neighbourhood would reveal a complete breakdown of trust between at least some neighbourhoods and the SAAL scheme. However, apart from this one mention it has not been possible to retrieve any information regarding where, when, and under what circumstances this could have happened. 22 UC/CD25A/FCP/Organizações Populares de Base/Comissões de Moradores II/ Lisboa, ‘Porquê e como’, January 1975. On the petititon generated by the Vale Escuro events see Chapter 2, pp. 68–69.

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23 In reality, auto-­construção was meant to cover all forms of residents’ contribution to the building of new neighbourhoods, including both labour and capital investment. 24 UC/CD25A/FCP/Organizações Populares de Base/Comissões de Moradores II/ Lisboa, ‘Porquê e como’, January 1975. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. The fifteen Lisbon commissions were Qta Bacalhau, Vale Escuro & Qta da Letrada, Alto da Eira, Alto dos Moinhos, Quinta das Fonsecas & Bela-­ Vista, Quinta da Calçada, Cascalheira, Quinta da Bela-­Flor & Baltazar, Bairro da Liberdade, Casal dos Machados, Quinta do Leal, São Cornélio, Estrada da Circunvalaçã, Bairro 2 de Maio and Casal Ventoso & Sete Moinhos. 28 ‘Projecto para a intervenção da Intercomissões’, 25 January 1975, reproduced in Conselho Nacional do SAAL, Livro Branco do Saal, 1974–1976 (Vila Nova de Gaia: Conselho Nacional do SAAL, 1976), 114–116. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid. 31 ‘Caderno Reivindicativo dos Bairros de Lata e Pobres de Lisboa’ reproduced in Conselho Nacional do SAAL, Livro Branco do Saal, 116–117. 32 Diário de Notícias, 7 January 1975, p. 2. 33 Decreto-­Lei nº 6/75, 7 January 1975 in Diário do Governo, I Série, nº 5, 2º Suplemento, p. 12–(4). 34 A. Botelho and M. Pinheiro, O Conselho Municipal do Porto – Balanço de uma Experiência (Porto: Cooperativa Editorial Perspectivas Sociais Autónomas, 1977). 35 Républica, 4 February 1975, pp. 12–13; A Capital, 4 February 1975, pp. 1, 24. 36 Diário de Lisboa, 4 February 1975, p. 4; Diário de Notícias, 5 February 1975, p. 5. 37 Diário de Notícias, 7 February 1975, p. 14. 38 Diário de Notícias, 13 February 1975, p. 12. 39 A Capital, 18 February 1975, p. 28. 40 Diário de Notícias, 18 February 1975, p. 9. 41 A Capital, 18 February 1975, p. 28. 42 Diário de Notícias, 19 February 1975, p. 3. 43 A Capital, 20 February 1975, pp. 12–13. 44 Interview with Nuno Portas, reproduced in Jaime Pinho, ‘O Caso de Castelo Velho – Lutas Urbanas em Setúbal (1974/76)’ (Master’s Thesis, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 1999), 250. 45 Diário de Notícias, 20 February 1975, pp. 1, 12. The COPCON had been created by the MFA in order to coordinate several Lisbon-­based military units to be used as public-­order force and its most reliable coercive force. With the police forces still in disarray, the COPCON was increasingly the face of the authorities on the street: Diego Palacios Cerezales, ‘“Fascist Lackeys”? Dealing with the Police’s Past During Portugal’s Transition to Democracy (1974–1980)’, Portuguese Journal of Social Science, 6, 3 (2007): 161–163.

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46 A Capital, 20 February 1975, p. 12; Républica, 21 February 1975, p. 6. 47 A Capital, 17 February 1975, p. 11; Diário de Notícias, 20 February 1975, pp. 1, 12; A Capital, 20 February 1975, p. 12; A Capital, 21 February 1975, p. 13. 48 Joaquim Russinho and Maria Graciette Ferreira, ‘Movimentos Sociais Urbanos Após o 25 de Abril de 1974 – O Movimento Das Ocupações’, Cadernos de Intervenção Social – Associação de Estudantes do Instituto Superior do Serviço Social, 2 (1979): 58. 49 Regarding the rhetoric of democratic unity, Cerezales charts the fragmentation of the post-­coup unity through the characteristics of street demonstrations throughout the transition period. Diego Palacios Cerezales, O Poder Caiu na Rua – Crise de Estado e Acções Colectivas na Revolução Portuguesa 1974– 1975 (Lisboa: Imprensa das Ciências Sociais, 2003), 119–127. 50 Maxwell, The Making of Portuguese Democracy, 109. 51 Vida Mundial, 31 October 1974, pp. 13–14. 52 Républica, 2 November 1974, p. 2. 53 A Capital, 28 December 1974, pp. 16–17; Diário de Notícias, 17 February 1975, p. 9. 54 Diário de Notícias, 16 November 1974, p. 11. 55 A Capital, 2 December 1974, pp. 6–7. The Civil Government was a further tier of the administration with several responsibilities including policing, civil registration and regional coordination. As a governing structure it was a remnant from an age of more difficult communications, created by the First Republic (1910–1926) as a means for the Lisbon government to extend its authority to the rest of the country. 56 AHM/AAC/CE 76, Junta de Freguesia de São João de Deus to Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, 27 January 1975. This correspondence includes a copy of the draft legislation sent to the Juntas de Freguesia. 57 The meeting took place in the São Luís Municipal Theatre and was attended by the City Council President who endeavoured to ‘pass on’ the meeting’s resolutions: Diário de Lisboa, 24 February 1975, pp. 1, 24; Diário de Notícias, 24 February 1975, p. 9; Diário de Lisboa, 25 February 1975, p. 2. 58 The ‘Quarters’ were a bureaucratic division used primarily by the city’s courts, notaries and tax offices. In this case it comprised a group of western Freguesias: Santos, Lapa, Santa Isabel, Santo Condestável, Prazeres, Alcântara, Ajuda, Belém, and S. Francisco Xavier: A Capital, 10 March 1975, p. 18; 14 April 1975, p. 10; Avante, 27 March 1975, p. 9. 59 John L. Hammond, Building Popular Power: Workers’ and Neighborhood Movements in the Portuguese Revolution (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1988), 98–105. 60 Fernando Oliveira Baptista, ‘O 25 de Abril, a Sociedade Rural e a Questão da Terra’, in O País em Revolução, ed. J.M. Brandão de Brito (Lisboa: Editorial Notícias, 2001), 136–143. 61 Law No. 5/75, 14 March 1975, in Mello, Dossier 2ª República – 1º Volume, 230–232.

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62 Cervelló, A Revolução Portuguesa e a Sua Influência na Transição Espanhola (1961–1976), 228. 63 Manuel, Uncertain Outcome: The Politics of the Portuguese Transition to Democracy, 97; Rezola, Os Militares na Revolução de Abril: o Conselho da Revolução e a Transição Para a Democracia em Portugal, 1974–1976, 131– 135. 64 Diário de Notícias, 26 March 1975, p. 8. 65 Ibid. 66 Diário de Notícias, 28 March 1975, p. 9. 67 A Capital, 1 April 1975, pp. 12–13. 68 A Capital, 2 April 1975, p. 12. 69 Ibid.; Diário de Notícias, 2 April 1975, p. 8. 70 A Capital, 7 April 1975, p. 11; Diário de Notícias, p. 6. 71 A Capital, 3 April 1975, p. 24. 72 A Capital, 10 April 1975, p. 24. 73 AHM/AAC/CE 76, ‘Ofício nº43-­VP/75’, Filipe Mário Lopes to Comissão de Moradores do Alto da Eira, 14 April 1974. The background to this exchange lies in a demonstration at City Hall organised by the residents’ commission of Alto da Eira to demand vacant houses be assigned to shantytown residents: A Capital, 11 April 1975, p. 12; Diário de Notícias, 11 April 1975, p. 4. 74 Decree-­ law 198-­ A/75, 14 April 1975, reproduced in Fernando Ribeiro de Mello, Dossier 2ª República – 2º Volume 25/4/75 – 25/11/75 (Lisboa: Edições Afrodite, 1976), 637–644. 75 Ibid. 76 A Capital, 21 April 1975, p. 8. As we shall see below, that meeting would be the origin of the CRAMO, an organisation connecting occupiers’ commissions across the city which would be highly critical of the PCP-­MDP led council and government. 77 Vida Mundial, 8 May 1974, p. 34. 78 Portugal Socialista, 20 April 1975, p. 6. 79 Povo Livre, 3 April 1975, p. 6. 80 Álvaro Cunhal, ‘Discurso no Comício de Amizade P.S.U.A.-­ P.C.P. Na Amadora, 21 De Dezembro 1974’, in Discursos Políticos (Lisbon: Edições Avante, 1975), 198. 81 This statement was made in speech at Sabugo, during an MFA ‘cultural dinamisation’ event, on 20 February 1975. Its tone and warning was repeated often by others and by the Prime Minister himself: Vasco Gonçalves, Discursos, Conferências de Imprensa, Entrevistas (Porto: Author’s Edition, 1976), 169. 82 Ibid., 223. 83 For the 25 April 1975 electoral results, especially for the data disaggregated by freguesia, this and the following paragraphs use Ministério da Administração Interna, Secretariado Técnico dos Assuntos Políticos, Instituto Nacional de Estatística and Ministério da Comunicação Social, Eleições para a Assembleia Constituinte 1975 – I Volume: Resultados por Freguesias, Concelhos e Distritos do Continente e Ilhas Adjacentes (Lisboa, 1975): 35–36, 103–104,

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171–172. Data is also available from the National Electoral Commission: www.cne.pt. 84 A Capital, 8 May 1975, p. 2. 85 This article appeared in the MFA bulletin Movimento and was reproduced in Díario de Notícias, 5 May 1975, pp. 1, 8. 86 Ibid. 87 Ibid. 88 Ibid. 89 Mello, Dossier 2ª República – 2º Volume, 734–737. 90 Chapter 5, below, analyses the contents of the People/MFA Alliance project in more detail. 91 Livro Branco da 5ª Divisão (Lisboa 1984): 332. 92 Avante, 28 May 1975, p. 8. 93 See Table 3.2. on p. 90 for a breakdown of commissions by date of appearance and type of neighbourhood. 94 The AIL’s report of activities for 1975 reveals that this support was not just political, but included allowing the CRAMO secretariat to use its offices and presses, as well as providing money and staff time: A Habitação, ‘Relatório e Contas da Gerência de 1975’, March 1976, pp. 4–5. 95 A Habitação, December 1972, p. 6. 96 A Capital, 21 February 1975, p. 13. 97 A Capital, 21 April 1975, p. 8. 98 Vida Mundial, 3 July 1975, pp. 12–13. 99 Ibid. 100 Jornal Novo, 23 April 1975, p. 9. 101 Vida Mundial, 3 July 1975, pp. 12–13. 102 ‘Declaração de Princípios que Norteiam o Movimento dos CRAMOs de Lisboa e Arredores’, reproduced in Russinho and Ferreira, ‘Movimentos Sociais Urbanos’, 74–75. 103 For instance, the occupiers of the Alto de Santo Amaro neighbourhood (Ajuda) created a commission when they occupied houses in that area in the February wave of occupations, but it is only in July that they are first referred to as the Comissão Autónoma de Moradores e Ocupantes do Alto de Santo Amaro. A Capital, 19 February 1975, p. 16; 16 July 1975, p. 14. 104 There are six ‘middle-­class’ areas and four ‘old central’ neighbourhoods in the eleven CRAMOs (respectively Alto de Santo Amaro, Coração de Jesus, Penha de França, Prazeres, Santo Condestável, São Mamede, and Lapa, Madalena, Pena and São José). The eleventh is Pedrouços/Bom Sucesso, a run-­down brick housing area. 105 By the beginning of May at least sixty-­three neighbourhood commissions had been created. The two federations combined represented, at best, half of that number. 106 Vida Mundial, 31 July 1975, p. 27. 107 Despite its claims to the contrary, the CRAMO Secretariat was very much the junior partner here, considering that at this stage it probably represented less

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than ten commissions and its last attempt at organising a demonstration had been a fiasco. 108 These were distributed in a pamphlet advertising the demonstration: UC/ CD25A/FCP, Organizações Populares de Base/Comissões de Moradores II/ Lisboa, Inter-­Comissões dos Bairros de Lata e Pobres de Lisboa ‘Sábado Dia 17’, 1975. 109 Inter report on its activities, June 1975. Reproduced in Francisco José do N. Branco, ‘Elementos Para a História do Movimento dos “Bairros De Lata E Bairros Pobres” do Concelho de Lisboa (25 Abril 74 – Março 77)’, Cadernos de Intervenção Social – Associação de Estudantes do Instituto Superior do Serviço Social, 2 (1979): 151. 110 Russinho and Ferreira, ‘Movimentos Sociais Urbanos’, 65. The Lisbon based papers refer to ‘many thousands’ but fail to put a definitive number. 111 Jornal Novo, 19 May 1975, p. 10. 112 Esquerda Socialista, 21 May 1975, pp. 6–7. 113 Vida Mundial, 31 July 1975, p. 28; A Capital, 3 July 1975, p. 13. The investigation into the allocation of social housing had already been ordered by the Secretary of State for Housing in January, but that fact is not mentioned in any of the sources that refer to the aftermath of the 17 May demonstration. 114 Diário de Notícias, 24 May 1974, pp. 1, 11. 115 Ibid. 116 Vida Mundial, 31 July 1975, p. 29. 117 Jornal Novo, 19 May 1975, p. 10. 118 Portugal Socialista, 21 May 1975, p. 4. 119 Povo Livre, 28 May 1975, p. 3. 120 A Capital, 3 July 1974, pp. 12–13. 121 Ibid. 122 Vida Mundial, 31 July 1975, p. 26.

5 The street and the ballot box

Street and ballot box: June to November 1975

June to November 1975

The bourgeoisie is looking to take from the residents’ commissions one of the functions attributed by the people (…) The occupation of all vacant housing (…) The decision to only legalise those occupations made by the fascist juntas de freguesia and police is an attempt to make history move backwards. (Statement by a group of lisbon residents’ commissions, September 1975)1 Pseudo-­revolutionary adventurism is trying everything to sabotage the VI Government and bring about its downfall (…) it is looking to institute an insurrectional power based on self-­appointed residents’ commissions, puppet municipal councils, subversive military committees (…) The Lisbon Commune, if it unfortunately comes to pass, will last no longer than those of Paris and Berlin. (Sottomayor Cardia to the Constituent Assembly from the PS benches, October 1975)2

After the April 1975 elections, the conflicting claims between revolutionary and electoral legitimacy, between the street and the ballot box, created an increasingly polarised atmosphere, and claims of imminent coups and plots were discussed daily in the press. These tense times came to be known as the ‘Hot Summer’ of 1975, when the direction of the country hung in the balance, and civil war seemed a possible outcome. The rhetoric from both sides became ever more strident, and the idea of revolution in a more radical, transformative sense than it had taken until then, ran through public discourse across Portuguese society. The urban social movement in Lisbon was no exception. In the summer of 1975, a residents’ commission from the freguesia of Marvila presented a list of demands to the Lisbon City Council. Its concrete demands differed little from those made time and time again by the citizens of Lisbon through their commissions, asking for better housing and urban public services. However, the Vale Formoso Commission framed its demands in terms that had been unheard of just six months previously: The Residents’ Commission of the Vale Formoso Street, given the number and scope of its area’s problems, wishes only to indicate the most urgent

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ones, namely garbage removal, lack of a playground etc. (…) [Other problems] can only be resolved definitely by far-­reaching political measures that advance the Revolution so as to create houses and spaces in accordance to the needs of residents and workers, which are only possible in a socialist society, in the society of workers’ power.3

Over the summer of 1975, many other residents’ commissions articulated their positions in increasingly radical and revolutionary terms. This contrasted sharply with the dominant tone of the urban movement just a few months earlier, which had sought to emphasise its non-­partisan nature. Statements such as this, common throughout the summer, seem to indicate that the movement had chosen its side in increasingly vicious confrontation between the revolutionary and moderate camps. For months the revolutionary press advertised the radicalisation of the urban movement while its opponents talked up the danger of an imminent ‘Lisbon Commune’ where workers’ and residents’ commissions would seize power. Given these expectations, the absence of the urban movement from the confrontation between far left and moderate military forces on 25 November 1975, and its seeming disintegration as a political force in the months that followed has been read by some as confirming the suspicion that it was never more than a ‘paper tiger’ of the far left, unable to garner popular support; for others, it reveals how far the November ‘Thermidor’ was able to halt the revolutionary momentum of the Portuguese people. Strikingly, these readings are based on very little direct evidence from the movement itself. The earlier sections of this work have highlighted the diversity in timings, backgrounds and strategies of various parts of the movement, as well as its complex relationship with the institutions and political actors with whom it interacted. That alone should give grounds for caution over portraying the role of the movement in the climax of the Portuguese Revolution in simplistic, single-­toned terms. With regard to this period two critical questions remain about the part played by the residents’ commissions. First, to what extent did they embrace the ‘Popular Power’ movement? And second, once the ‘Hot Summer’ was brought to an end by the moderate victory on 25 November 1975, why did the movement disappear from the public scene? Addressing these questions can reveal a lot about the role of the movement in the Portuguese transition process: how much grassroots support did the ‘Popular Power’ project actually enjoy? Could a popular revolution developed out of the summer, and if not, what was the position of the urban movement? And what were the causes of its seeming disappearance after November? Was it a forceful demobilisation ‘from

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above’ driven by the reconstitution of state power, or were the residents’ commissions and their supportertes incorporated in some way into the political system? By looking in detail for the first time at the trajectory of the movement in Lisbon, the heart of the revolution, the following sections shows how the urban movement was affected by the polarisation of politics of the period, but also how the actions of many of its supporters contributed to its resolution, showing how the growing radicalism of sections of the urban movement was accompanied by the demobilisation of many of its supporters. What is clearly revealed by the sources is that the urban movement was not crushed by the moderate military victory: by November 1975 large parts of it were left deflated as supporters turned their backs or led their commissions away from the increasingly radicalised and politicised sections of the leadership. To argue this, far from removing the agency of popular politics in the Portuguese revolution, is to recognise the multiple ways in which citizens engage with politics, act upon their beliefs and to observe how social movements are born, grow and whither through the choices of those that give them their strength. Politics and polarisation in the ‘Hot Summer’ The attempts by sections of the military and civilian left to create an alternative revolutionary legitimacy based on the idea of ‘Popular Power’ was key to the urban movement’s fate over the summer of the 1975. In the context of the impasse between the moderate camp, bolstered by April’s electoral victory, and those in the military and beyond who sought to retain control over the political process, both sides sought to find and demonstrate widespread popular support. As a result, the urban movement became increasingly involved in national politics, particularly as the revolutionary camp sought to forge links with the street and develop a network of locally rooted popular assemblies as a parallel form of state, a project kick-­started by the publication of the ‘People-­MFA Alliance Document’ by the radical wing of the MFA. The People-­MFA Alliance document While the radical wing of the MFA’s role in the direction of the revolutionary process had been reinforced by the events of 11 March, the moderate victory in the elections threatened its position at the head of Portugal’s ‘transition to socialism’. The backing given to the Socialists (PS) and Social Democrats (PPD) at the ballot box was a counterweight

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to the MFA’s legitimacy as the instigators and guardians of the April revolution. In order to secure their position, MFA radicals and its allies turned to a set of political ideas and approaches lumped under the heading of ‘Popular Power’. Despite the publication of a ‘guiding document’ – the Alliance People-­MFA Document – the Popular Power ideology never had a definitive canon, being as it was a concoction born out of necessity. As a result, the political blueprint provided by the Alliance People-­MFA document was the marriage of a very pragmatic objective with a series of ideological currents popular at the time, combined in an attempt to give coherence and intellectual legitimacy to the role of the military. On the one hand it drew on the European new left’s infatuation with council socialism and on the recent examples that had become part of its creed, notably the Chilean experience.4 On the other hand, it drew on contemporary far left (particularly Maoist and Trotskyist) themes, especially revolutionary practice, combined with the inspiration of African liberation movements and the revolutionary military government in Peru, both of which provided a model that fitted well into the ambitions and nationalistic ethos of the military.5 The People-­MFA Alliance document was approved by the MFA’s Assembly on 8 July 1975. It purported to ‘satisfy the deepest aspirations of the exploited classes … continuing the work started on 25 April 1974’, its objective was to ‘mobilise the People for the Revolution’, for which it was necessary to consolidate the ‘dual engine of the r­evolutionary process’: the People and the MFA. To this end: it is necessary that the working masses be assured the conditions for active participation, which is achieved through democratic, independent and unitary forms of popular organisation.6

The constitutional design proposed in the document envisaged three pillars: the MFA, Popular Power and the government. The Council of the Revolution, appointed by the MFA, would be the highest sovereign entity. The state apparatus was to be gradually purged and decentralised, with its powers devolved to ‘popular bodies’. These would be composed of a network of local Popular Assemblies gathering residents’ and workers’ commissions alongside other ‘popular organisations’. These local bodies would send representatives to a Municipal Assembly, which would also include delegates from democratic assemblies in local military units. Another two layers of regional bodies would in turn filter representation to a National Popular Assembly. For the time being, the MFA envisaged the system to be built only to the level of Municipal Assemblies, with regional and district-­level assemblies to be activated

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in the medium term and long term, respectively, leaving the National Popular Assembly ‘as a last and distant step’.7 Significantly, the role of a directly elected government in this structure was not mentioned. In effect, this route-­map sidelined civilian leaders and put forward a blueprint for a constitution, ignoring the work of the civilian parties, who were beginning the discussion of their own proposals in the Constituent Assembly. In the short term, the People-­MFA Alliance Document gave all levels of the military a directive to step up the creation of links between barracks and popular organisations: In a first phase the [military] Unit Democratic Assemblies will encourage, through public information sessions, the creation of residents’ and workers commissions where they do not yet exist. Where such structures already exist there will also be public information sessions on the true objectives of the MFA.8

According to the People-­MFA Alliance charter, the popular commissions should be ‘unitary’, that is, independent of political parties, representing sectors of the population or of production, and directed towards the resolution of specific problems. Their tasks would include the dissemination of information, intervention in social issues and control over the means of production, and a role similar to that of militias, watching over key installations and transport networks. In extreme cases the MFA could mobilise them for the ‘self-­defence’ of the revolution. The Popular Assemblies which combined these commissions would ‘transmit to the adequate level of decision the aspirations, opinions and demands of the populations’, as well as intervening in the local planning process and the creation of popular tribunals to resolve non-­criminal cases. At all levels, voting would be through non-­secret ballot. Finally, the military placed itself as the ultimate arbiter of the legitimacy of all popular power organisations: The best guarantee of achievement of this objective [the construction of a socialist society through popular organisation] is to have the MFA, a movement above political factions, accompanying this process; supporting it, integrating it and certifying [popular] organisations.9

By sidelining the civilian parties and giving the military overall control, the People-­MFA Alliance document was clearly intended to ensure that, as prime minister Vasco Gonçalves had warned before the elections, the country would ‘not lose through the electoral route that which has cost the Portuguese so much’.10 But its tone also echoes the discourse of far left ideology, which had been gaining ascendancy over parts of the armed forces. As Gonçalves later recalled, the document represented an

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uneasy alliance between the MFA radicals he headed, and Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, leader of the MFA populist faction.11 From its publication, newspapers close to the far left had begun defending Popular Power as the way out of the crisis created by the conflict between revolutionary and electoral legitimacy. Writing in the magazine Vida Mundial in May, journalist Serras Pereira warned that in the short period of time it had been attempted, the parliamentary system found itself ‘manifestly exhausted’, and that parties were ‘interests opposed to the realisation of socialism’, where workers could never be represented by ‘elements external to the workers’ community’. While he argued that it would not be the military, but rather the mobilised people, who would bring about socialism, he saw the radical wing of the MFA as the most suitable political actor to seize power in order to nurture the development of the organised masses: Not only would such a government have to seek popular support for having burnt its closest bridges (…) with the dominant bourgeoisie, it would also depend on the organisation of that popular support, to which it would become subordinate.12

To seek support on the street was, indeed, the gambit by the left wing of the MFA, which contrasted with the attitude of the civilian parties to ‘popular organisations’. Just a week previous to the publication of the MFA document, the parties had presented their draft constitutions to the Assembly. In contrast to the MFA proposals, these gave the popular organisations little weight in the running of the country. Neither the PPD’s nor the CDS’s drafts envisaged a specific role for residents’ and workers’ commissions, or similar organisations. The Socialists proposed a structure parallel to directly elected local bodies, where grassroots organisations would have the ‘consultative’ function regarding local decisions.13 Even the PCP and the MDP/CDE, the civilian parties closest to the MFA Radicals, were circumspect in their reliance on the masses. The Communist proposal gave grassroots organisations ‘participation in the control of public administration and political life’, and a right to ‘intervene’ in local issues through popular assemblies, but stopped short of defining how this right was to be exercised in practice.14 The MDP was equally vague, emphasising the necessity of ‘cooperation’ between popular commissions, the state and the MFA.15 Only the far left UDP, the smallest party in the Assembly with a single representative, called for Popular Power tout court. It refused to submit a detailed constitution on the grounds that it was for popular initiative to legislate, arguing that the Constituent Assembly should recognise the primacy of the ­deliberative and executive power of popular organisations.16

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Making popular power in Lisbon The Alliance People-­MFA document did not have formal legal status. In the fluidity of the revolutionary process it could be described alternatively (or simultaneously) as a constitutional blueprint, a think-­piece, or a strategy document. It was in this later guise that it had its strongest influence, in so far as it was used by military units close to the MFA radicals and populists to sanction a rush to promote the creation of the ‘Popular Power’ organisations. This brought the military into even closer contact with the existing neighbourhood commissions, which also provided a model for new commissions created with the backing of military units across the city. Particularly active on the street were the army units under the control of the COPCON, headed by the MFA populist Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho. Before the election the government had relied on the COPCON for law and order duties while the Police services were purged and their credibility restored. This had meant supporting the police in evicting housing occupiers, as had happened in February 1975. But at a press conference soon after the elections, Otelo had signalled a change in attitude, stating that: The residents’ commissions that have been organising the occupation of houses represent small cells of the Portuguese people living the Revolution with intensity. As such, I give those commissions my full backing.17

Soon, COPCON units could be seen taking the side of occupiers and grassroots organisations against the police force and even government orders. By the end of May, the far left PRP-­BR’s newspaper could report on the process of occupations in the Freguesia of Lapa where, according to a member of the local CRAMO: The commission was formed to deal with difficulties with the occupations. We got some boys together and went for it. We were going round until four or five in the morning in five COPCON jeeps and one of the occupations was even done with their help.

Reports from other areas across Lisbon, from Benfica to Olivais or in Arroios show the army using its prestige and authority to, in the words of one residents’ commission, ‘unequivocally support’ housing seizures.18 The military’s mounting involvement with grassroots groups was not limited to supporting occupations. From June 1975 several units began trying to realise the Popular Power programme by promoting the creation of local Popular Assemblies combining residents’ and workers’ committees, as well as representatives from military unit assemblies that were being created in barracks.

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The first of these Assemblies took place in late June, organised by the 1st Engineers Regiment, based in Pontinha, just outside the city but next to the wards of Benfica and Carnide. The Popular Assembly gathered fourteen workers’ commissions and twenty-­five residents’ commissions from Campo Grande, Benfica, São Domingos de Benfica and Carnide, as well as from two other wards outside the city boundary. At the meeting, according to a news report in A Capital, Captain Cabral e Silva argued that Socialism would only be built through the takeover of power by the workers.19 In order for this to come about, it was necessary to create and strengthen autonomous and non-­ party political popular power ­organisations, with the twin aims of: the solution of local social problems and the creation of an organisation that, from the grassroots up, grows locally at first, then across the city until it reaches the highest ranks of power.

The panel leading the assembly proceedings also declared its rejection of: the deviations of ‘socialism in freedom’ and social democracy, reminding [the audience] that the false socialists are against the creation of Popular Power organisations.20

On the other side of the city, soldiers from the RALIS, – an emblematic COPCON unit, which had gained mythical status after coming through a bombardment and a siege by right-­ wing insurgent forces on 11 March – were involved in promoting the creation of Popular Assemblies combining residents’ and worker’s commissions in Olivais (June) and Marvila (July). Typically, soldiers would chair the Assembly and the reports often state their election to the executive committees of the new Popular Assemblies.21 The military was not alone in promoting the creation of Popular Assemblies to fulfil the People-­MFA Alliance. Wherever possible, the PCP and MDP bloc were promoting their own structures and, in some cases, supporting those created with military initiative. To this end the communists and their allies used the institutions which they tended to control: freguesia executives and the Lisbon City Council. In early July, the Communist newspaper Avante reported on the first meeting of the Popular Assembly of the Nossa Senhora de Fátima ward, called by the local freguesia executive, which was run by the party and its allies. The paper also called on its readers for participation in Popular Power structures generally, signalling the party now considered these to be the vehicle through which ‘the Revolution is consolidated and moves towards Socialism’.22

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In reality, the Communist Party’s attitude to towards Popular Power was rather more ambivalent. Its support for the programme was driven by the need to keep the Gonçalves government from collapsing and being replaced by a moderate-­dominated cabinet. At the same time, however, the PCP was wary of a course of events that would end up by bypassing the civilian parties in favour of a fully militarised leadership. And so it continued to play the parliamentarian game in the Assembly, tabling constitutional proposals that were far from the ‘popular democracy’ envisaged in the People-­MFA Alliance document. In an interview with L’Humanité, Álvaro Cunhal, secretary-­general of the Communist Party, denied this was a contradictory strategy, since the National Popular Assembly of the Alliance document was a long-­term project. For Cunhal, the ‘electoral process’ could evolve side by side with the ‘revolutionary process’ in the pursuit of that objective.23 A few days earlier, just before the publication of the MFA document, Cunhal had warned in a speech to party members that while unitary forms of popular organisation were ‘irreplaceable in the organisation and mobilisation of the masses’, they could never replace the ‘vanguard party organisation’, i.e. the Portuguese Communist Party.24 This attempt to play on two boards – the electoral and the revolutionary – was risky and, from the PCP’s point of view, required ensuring that the strengthening of the grassroots movement did not happen entirely outside the party’s control. If the revolutionaries in the MFA triumphed over the moderates, the PCP needed to be able to hold sufficient bargaining power to not be subsumed by the military. Hence, it had to compete with the far left and the radical military in encouraging the formation of loyal Popular Power structures, and used its control over local a­ dministrative structures to do so. Before the 11 March coup, and particularly before the April elections, the PCP-­MDP dominated City Council tended to keep residents’ commissions at arm’s length, preferring to see the Juntas de Freguesia, many of which were controlled by loyal appointees, as their chosen preferred means of tapping into neighbourhood politics. Now, the need to create a ‘Popular Power’ base led to a change of attitude. By the summer, Council President Caldeira Rodrigues was hailing ‘unitary’ popular organisations, saluting their ‘growing movement’ and claiming to have ‘never stood in the way of the initiatives of the population of Lisbon’. But more importantly, Caldeira Rodrigues announced the City Council had sent a proposal to the government for its restructuring, giving it ‘greater popular representativeness’ by the creation of a ‘Municipal Council’.25 This proposal had begun to be discussed by the city executive in July.

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Some kind of decentralisation of the powers had been foreseen since at least April 1975, and was widely discussed in the monthly meetings between the executive and the Juntas de Freguesia. In April the plans envisaged the division of the city into seven districts which would be run by representatives of the Juntas de Freguesia in each area. Although one Junta proposed the participation of residents’ commissions in each of these bodies, there is little evidence that this reorganisation aspired to a radical redefinition of powers in the city administration towards forms of direct democracy.26 However, the plan approved on 31 July, which the City Council began putting into effect from late August 1975, was directly inspired by the Popular Power Programme. It envisaged the creation of a Municipal Council which, to all effects and purposes, was a ‘Popular Assembly’ as laid out in the People-­MFA Alliance document. The Municipal Council would control the city executive and would be composed, in its majority, of representatives elected through the residents’ commissions, Juntas de Freguesia, City Council workers, and trade unions from the Lisbon area.27 The Lisbon executive’s announcement of the creation of a ‘Municipal Council’ thus joined the successive reports of the creation of Popular Assemblies and many other revolutionary ‘grassroots’ organisations, which included the PCP-­ led ‘Committees for the Defence of the Revolution’, and the Revolutionary Councils of Workers, Soldiers and Sailors promoted by the far left PRP-­BR28. While neither of these organisations ever gained much weight, either in numbers or influence, they constituted a foothold that could prove useful in the eventuality of the Popular Power becoming a real alternative to participation in government. All these initiatives had the effect of putting Popular Power at the forefront of the political agenda, leading many to regard Portugal as the stage upon which the future of Socialism would be played out. Foreign observers saw blooming in Portugal the hopes that had been dashed in Chile, with Popular Power rising to create a new society. After visiting the country during the summer, Steven Lukes’ analysis captured the dominant uncertainty and hope of the times. Writing in the New Statesman, Lukes argued that Portugal was witnessing the withering of state power and the emergence of Popular Power, ‘crucial for the future of socialism in Portugal, and beyond’.29 The development of the Popular Power project by sectors within the MFA, and the defence of electoral legitimacy by the moderates was part of a struggle for power that led to the polarisation of the political arena. Gone were the heady days of ‘democratic unity’ which had seen Socialists and Communists march together in celebration of the

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first free workers’ day in May 1974. A year later, the Mayday marches were marked by scuffles between socialist and communist supporters.30 By early summer of 1975 the diverse currents within the transition political elites split, and increasingly defined themselves in opposition to each other. As politics became increasingly polarised through the ‘Hot Summer’ of 1975, armed conflict and civil war seemed very close.31 The polarisation of public politics in Portugal As MFA radicals and populists promoted the Popular Power agenda, the moderate parties in the Constituent Assembly, led by the Socialists, began a counter-­attack aimed at establishing the precedence of the electoral mandate against the revolutionary legitimacy claimed by those to their left. One of the Socialists’ preferred line of attack was the internal democratic practice of grassroots organisations, including neighbourhood commissions. This shift in strategy marked the beginning of a process of distancing between moderate political leaders and the urban social movements that gathered pace through the summer. Throughout 1974 and the first half of 1975, the PS’s attitude to grassroots participation had been mostly positive. Now, given the dangers and increasing mobilisation of Popular Power, it distanced itself from the urban movement and focused its criticisms on the Communist Party, its largest rival on the left and mainstay of the 4th Provisional Government. In late June, PS members who were active in local authorities and residents’ commissions issued a statement where they announced that: only those residents’ commissions (…) which have been elected by secret ballot in plenary meetings called for that purpose can have the support of the local population.32

A few days later, PS spokesman Sottomayor Cardia declared in the Constituent Assembly that the institutionalisation of commissions elected without secret ballot was ‘extremely grave matter’.33 A statement published in the party newspaper Portugal Socialista, expanded on what it called ‘the militarisation of political life’: This [the People-­ MFA Alliance] is an openly paternalistic perspective, inspired by the theory of the so-­called revolutionary vanguards, of which history has shown the result. What gives the MFA Assembly authority to make a decision on the future of the country against the wishes of the popular vote?34

The Communist Party, however, saw things differently and accused the Socialist Party Constitution proposal of attempting to ‘neutralise’ the

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commissions. Secret and proportional ballots would mean, according to PCP deputy Vital Moreira, completely forgetting the difference between elected representative bodies and revolutionary organisations born out of the revolutionary participation of the masses on the basis of permanent voluntary participation and control.35

Boosted by the electoral results, which gave them a substantial majority, the moderate parties decided to call time on the 4th Provisional Government. On 16 July, in reaction to the Républica newspaper affair, the Socialist Party abandoned the government, followed a few days later by the PPD.36 A 5th Provisional Government took office without moderate representation, held together by a coalition of MFA radicals and civilian Communists, and the backing of MFA populist army units. Between then and the end of August the political rhetoric continued to escalate, while on the street the military and the radical parties worked to give substance to the Popular Power project. At the same time, sections of the military began to show uneasiness with revolutionary ambitions of the radicals and populists. In early August a coalition of moderate MFA officers known as the Group of Nine issued a document analysing the political situation. Alluding to the development of the Popular Power project, the Group of Nine wrote: We are witnessing the progressive fragmentation of the structures of the State. Wild and anarchic forms of exercising power appear everywhere (even within the military), and that is taken advantage of by experienced parties and organisations that yearn for control over the centres of power. The MFA (…) has become entangled with a political project which does not correspond to its initial vocation, or to the role expected of it by the majority of the population.37

In reply COPCON officers published a long statement spelling out the Populist position, supported by far-­left parties. It vigorously attacked the moderates, both military and civilian, saying that in a country with bourgeois structures, ‘universal suffrage can only result in one thing … bourgeoisie’, and calling the proposals of the Group of Nine ‘right-­wing palliatives’. As a solution, it returned to Popular Power as the route to follow: A revolutionary programme to resolve the situation has to mean, before all else, the fulfilment of the People-­MFA Alliance project (…) It is therefore necessary to raise a structure for the organisation of the popular masses for the creation of councils in factories, villages and neighbourhoods (…)

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These bodies will have to be (…) ultimately, real centres of political power, and the only barrier which can effectively oppose the fascist and imperialist aggression.38

The COPCON statement also attacked the Prime Minister’s wing of the MFA and its communist allies, compromising the alliance between populists and radicals that supported the 5th Provisional Government. It held the ‘dirigisme’ of the PCP partly responsible for the failure of the previous four governments and its emphasis on the devolution of real power to grassroots organisations was meant as a criticism of the PCP’s unwillingness to embrace the Popular Power project wholeheartedly. With rifts in the government coalition growing, the Socialists renewed their attack on Popular Power, now emboldened by the resurgence of the moderate wing of the MFA. In the press, Socialist leaders like Dieter Dellinger accused the left of undertaking a takeover of residents’ commissions, and using them to pack ‘Popular Assemblies’, so that the PCP’s minority position in the Constituent Assembly would be transformed into a majority in a gerrymandered National Popular Assembly.39 At the local level, Socialists on the Lisbon City Council, although in a minority, launched a fierce attack on the increased role being planned for residents’ commissions. One of the PS representatives, Maria Teresa Ambrósio, suggested residents’ commissions were being ‘manipulated by party vanguards’, and expressed surprise at how quickly residents’ commissions had turned from a concentration on local issues to revolutionary national politics.40 While the Socialists were aware that the PCP was not the only (nor the most successful) civilian or military faction seeking to incorporate the residents’ and workers’ movement, it was happy to concentrate its fire on the major force to its left, and it did no harm to stoke the far left’s fear of communist hegemony. The alliance between the far left and the PCP and between MFA Populists and Radicals in the MFA, had always been uneasy. Attempts were made to create a secure basis of support for the 5th Government, but the creation of a ‘Popular Unity Front’ (Frente de Unidade Popular – FUP) failed when the Communists walked out of preliminary meetings, blaming the ‘instability’, ‘desperation’ and ‘radicalism’ of the far-­left parties.41 Unable to forge a solid support base, despite the attempts of the People-­MFA Alliance document and the FUP, the final Gonçalves government fell in early September and, as the left feared, a 6th Provisional Government with a majority of moderates was appointed. The Communist Party did take seats in the new cabinet, headed by Admiral Pinheiro de Azevedo, but its influence was greatly diminished. The far left, which had been a cornerstone of the

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5th Government through its influence on the COPCON and on Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, was left out. Moving quickly, the 6th Provisional Government was able to score important tactical victories against the Popular Power camp, particularly in winning Otelo’s hesitant, but critical, support, leaving the MFA Populists without a champion and allowing the moderates to gradually dismantle that faction’s most important powerbases in the military. At the end of September, several elite military units were removed from the COPCON command and a new structure was created to give the government a military force in the capital. The 6th Provisional Government’s programme emphasised the ‘normalisation’ of political life. It distanced itself from the Popular Power Project, and moved to deny its emerging structures access and influence at every level. Soon after taking power, on 19 September, it authorised a police charge on a demonstration called by the Oporto Municipal Council, a Popular Power organisation which the government-­appointed city authorities refused to recognise as a legitimate representative body.42 In Lisbon, the city executive remained in the hands of the PCP-­MDP bloc, but in a press statement the Ministry for Home Affairs warned that a the creation of a Popular Municipal Council on the terms proposed by the city authorities would not be representative: Regarding the representation of residents’ commissions [on the Municipal Council], there are concerns that they may be manipulated by privileged individuals from the high and even middle bourgeoisie, who naturally have more time to dedicate to such tasks than the working classes, who arrive home tired after an intense working day and lengthy travel in public transport, which unfortunately is not yet totally efficient. Clearly there will have to be guarantees of correct representation and democratic functioning.43

The same evening, speaking on television, Prime Minister Pinheiro de Azevedo blamed the ‘generous revolutionary impulse’ behind the housing occupations for a frontal attack on private property against the wishes of the majority of the population. Without doubting the ‘social validity’ of the principle that there should be no empty houses while there were people without homes, Pinheiro de Azevedo called the occupations ‘an example of apparent revolutionary coherence’ which was ‘more naïve than efficient’, to the extent that they plunged the construction sector into crisis and caused a break in output which far outstripped the gains in housing through occupation.44 With a moderate government intent on rolling back the advances of Popular Power and denied a stake in the running of the country, the far left took an increasingly insurrectional stance, further polarising the political landscape, and mounting fears of a civil war. Within the

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Military, as the MFA Moderates assumed control, radical organisations began threatening mutiny. A clandestine organisation, ‘United Soldiers will Win’ (Soldados Unidos Vencerão: SUV), emerged in barracks across the country, criticising the reactionary command structure of the military, threatening to supply arms to the people, and appearing in Popular Power demonstrations in uniform and wearing balaclavas.45 The PCP, in turn, remained in the Cabinet, but much of the party’s base was being attracted by the positions of the far left, and its actions were often more radical than the leadership’s strategy.46 Having been allied with MFA Radicals and Populists in supporting the 4th and 5th Governments, and even having briefly joined a political alliance with the far-­left parties, many of its supporters, especially the youngest and more recent members, found it difficult to understand the decision whereby the party now found itself sharing power with yesterday’s adversaries. In government, the PCP continued to actively support strikes and street demonstrations by the unions against the government in the hope that a crisis would allow it to carve out a more prominent role for itself. Nevertheless, many of its members and some of the organisations which had been created under its tutelage, often sided with the far left in support of the Popular Power project. It was by no means only the left which was driving Portuguese politics to extremes. In the north of the country, political violence directed at PCP and far-­left party headquarters and supporters increased, and right-­wing paramilitary groups began bombing campaigns against ‘communist’ targets.47 Throughout October and November, the newspapers repeatedly warned of plots and bombings, adding to the feeling that the crisis could easily slip into civil war. At the end of October, the far left PRP-­BR announced that it would return to clandestinity, and its newspaper Revolução began publishing a weekly series of instructions on the handling of military weapons.48 The outlook for the future was bleak, and some in the moderate camp saw the urban movement as building up to something that could have serious consequences. Speaking at the Constituent Assembly on 21 October, PS spokesman Sottomayor Cardia accused ‘pseudo revolutionary’ adventurers of seeking to bring down the ‘democratic and revolutionary’ 6th Provisional Government, replacing it with the authority of ‘self-­elected residents’ commissions, puppet municipal councils and subversive military committees’. This, Cardia predicted, would end up in a: Lisbon Commune, [which] if it unhappily comes to pass, will last no longer than those of Paris or Berlin. In truth it will be even more desperate, and above all unpopular, than those famous historical precedents. But, if it

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happens, it will sound the alarm for the counter-­revolution (…) Many of those who dream of it seek only to demonstrate that revolutions are bloody tragedies and not triumphs of peace. The Carnation Revolution was not predicted by any manuals. [They say:] Let us drown it in blood so they would not be contradicted.49

Cardia’s speech encapsulates the changed stance of the moderates towards popular political mobilisation, which was increasingly portrayed as the result of manipulation and falsification by its adversaries. As part of the popular movement, the residents’ commissions had become a live political issue and, alongside with other forms of grassroots organisation, the pivot of much of the debate between the forces in contention. But how did the commissions themselves participate in this conflict? The sources reveal they were a lot more than bystanders. Radicalisation and demobilisation in the urban movement Popular power defended The polarisation of politics was not limited to speeches and communiqués by political elites; more than anything else it was felt day to day on streets and squares as the contending forces played out their struggle through a succession of street demonstrations intended to show the strength and commitment of their support.50 Over the summer of 1975, many residents’ commissions across Lisbon participated in the ongoing heated political confrontation of the period. After the publication of the People-­MFA Alliance document, several commissions wrote to newspapers announcing they had passed motions of support for the plan, others sent messages of encouragement to Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, or organised parties where songs in support of Vasco Gonçalves, such as ‘Be strong, companheiro Vasco, we shall be a wall of steel’, were sung.51 In July, when the Socialists and the PPD left Gonçalves’ government over the Républica newspaper affair, the residents of Casal Ventoso asked for ‘popular vigilance’ against reactionary forces.52 As the Gonçalves government lived its final days, another commission passed a motion demanding unity from the MFA and persecution of ‘reactionaries’.53 Many of the residents’ commissions created in July 1975, following the publication of the People-­MFA alliance charter defined themselves as Popular Power organisations and looked to participate in the newly created Popular Assemblies. 54 The statutes of the São João de Deus commission, approved on 12 July 1975, are a good example of the revolutionary zeal that was seemingly sweeping the urban movement. The

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commission regarded as its function the ‘enlightenment’ of the population regarding ‘a classless society, based on Popular Power and on the collectivisation of the means of production’, as well as: the defense of the Revolution through: constant vigilance of collective goods … control of community life, particularly regarding the movement of the population; coordinated dialogue and bilateral direct connection to the MFA; organisation of the self-­defense of the population, whenever it is justified; and creation of popular justice tribunals when necessary, in coordination with the relevant MFA bodies.55

Seemingly heartened by the backing of a political project that promised to give grassroots organisations real power, many commissions were moving to act according to ‘revolutionary law’, even against the wishes of Juntas de Freguesia or the city authorities. Without interference of the authorities, and in some cases even their support, residents’ groups were free to direct occupations and organise life in the neighbourhoods. In Pedrouços-­Bom Sucesso, the Revolutionary Residents’ Commission decided to expropriate the houses of landlords who revealed ‘attitudes’ contrary to the people. What these were exactly would be decided by a residents’ plenary, and was put into action by the seizure of the house of a man thought to have belonged to the dictatorship’s secret police. The occupation was suspended by the COPCON while the case was referred to the Department charged with dismantling the secret police. When it was confirmed the owner had indeed been a PIDE agent, the COPCON handed the house back to the residents’ commission.56 It was not only housing that was occupied: the government’s drive for collectivisation was being mirrored in the neighbourhoods. Since April there had been cases of buildings being occupied by residents’ groups to create public services such as schools and medical centres, from July, and with the backing of the military, these multiplied. In Galinheiras a house was occupied to build a first-­aid centre; a villa was taken in Alto de Santo Amaro to start a cooperative nursery.57 The same happened in Penha de França, where the commission justified the occupation not because the villa was vacant, but because the landlord was said to be a ‘large landowner’.58 In Sé, one of the old quarters of the city, a large palace used by the City Council to store unused art collections was occupied by the residents’ commission, which threatened to throw the contents out on the street.59 Although difficult to quantify, this wave of occupations was clearly different from those witnessed in 1974 and in early 1975. Its actions were openly organised by residents’ commissions who had, with the backing of the military and more recently of the city authorities, established their right to intervene in the housing market in

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their neighbourhoods. Whether houses were vacant or not was a secondary issue as to whether the people had a revolutionary right to them or not. The radicalisation of residents’ commission throughout the summer of 1975 was accompanied by rising levels of political conflict within the movement: as the commissions became increasingly politicised, rivalries between the different political groups at the national level were replayed in the neighbourhoods. This was particularly the case as the far left and communists competed to head the growing Popular Power movement. Organisations close to the far left were increasingly vociferous in denouncing both the revolutionary timidity of the PCP Juntas de Freguesia and their supposed attempts to manipulate residents’ commissions.60 In several wards, including São Mamede and Santo Condestável, this resulted in the creation of parallel commissions. In the former, the local CRAMO accused the existing ‘official’ commission of being led by local middle classes, and were accused in turn of being nothing but ‘arriviste defenders of the People’ of no consequence.61 If individual residents’ commissions were becoming more politicised and radicalised, this is no less true of their representative structures in Lisbon, the CRAMO Secretariat and the Inter-­comissões. The occupiers’ umbrella organisation, the CRAMO Secretariat, had from its birth been the more radical of the two. It was close to the PRP-­BR and had counted on the support of the COPCON throughout the Hot Summer. By the end of the summer, in the changed circumstances of the moderate 6th Government, the CRAMO rose to the forefront of the movement. Two factors contributed to this: firstly, the new moderate government’s position towards popular organisations restricted the opportunities of the Inter-­comissões, which had hitherto focused on bargaining with and pressuring the government and city council. Secondly, drawing on the revolutionary rhetoric of the far left, the CRAMO was able to portray itself as the champion of the urban movement against the government’s offensive and the collaborationist betrayal of the Communists. For instance, when the moderate government first allowed a landlord’s case against an occupier to be heard in court, the CRAMO organised an invasion of the courtroom, where, amongst some scuffles, it halted proceedings and took possession of the case files. According to the CRAMO ‘only popular tribunals, and not those of the bourgeoisie, can judge the cases of the People’. Accused by the Século newspaper of stealing the case files, a spokesman for the Secretariat stated: ‘what happened was that the case was transferred from a bourgeois to a popular tribunal. It was not stolen or hijacked’.62 At the beginning of November, when another case was to be tried, the CRAMO mobilised twenty-­eight

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residents’ commissions and invaded the court, leading the judge to postpone the hearing. But this was not enough for the demonstrators, who organised a popular tribunal there and then, acquitting the occupier and condemning the landlord. The sentence passed by the popular tribunal awarded the house to the occupier and accused the landlords of being ‘fascist enemies of the people’, who would ‘be subjected to a popular tribunal once the workers seize power’.63 For the rest of the month, and until the moderates were able to assert control after the 25 November confrontation, popular tribunals backed by the CRAMO continued to prevent the courts from hearing cases against occupiers.64 These successful challenges to the judicial system reveal not only the combativeness and revolutionary stance of the CRAMO and the commissions that were allied to them, but also the relative lack of capacity on the part of the Government to maintain law and order. Despite the blows the moderates had been able to deliver to the left by removing Vasco Gonçalves, and going some way towards dismantling the power of the COPCON, it was still far from being able to control the streets. Residents’ and occupiers’ commissions continued to look to the COPCON to back them against landlords, even as those military units had been formally relieved of their policing duties by the government.65 As the far left became the main opposition to the new moderate government and used an increasingly radical (and violent) tone, it seemed that many residents’ organisations were following its lead. By early November, the CRAMO Secretariat began advocating that residents and occupiers’ commissions be armed to defend themselves against attacks from the government, and promised that ‘soon the weapons will appear’.66 In the context of the times, this was not unthinkable: at the end of September a large cache of weapons under the care of the COPCON had disappeared, presumably distributed to far left sympathisers. When questioned as to the whereabouts of the guns, COPCON commander Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho answered they were in ‘good hands’.67 The Inter-­comissões, the organisation representing shantytowns and poor neighbourhoods involved in the SAAL programme, also became increasingly radical. Having promoted a large-­scale demonstration on 17 May, the Inter’s leadership had chosen to accept the offer of negotiations and collaboration offered by the government at the time. But as time wore on and the promises of the authorities failed to materialise, the organisation was pushed to increase its criticism of the governmental coalition. With the moderate parties distancing themselves from the grassroots movement, this left the Inter with only one possible ally: the CRAMOs and the far left.

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By the second half of June, the Inter was discussing a number of position papers on the role of the neighbourhood commissions which reveal increasingly radical positions. One of the proposals – which defined the commissions as ‘expressions of Popular Power’ – named as their first objective the ‘information and political enlightenment of the working people’, although there were also more moderate proposals tabled.68 By the end of July, in an interview with Républica, the Inter-­ comissões executive expressed public support for the Popular Power project for the first time, revealing it had participated in the Pontinha Popular Assembly and praising its role in working towards ‘a Socialist Revolution’, and arguing that only with a ‘Revolutionary Government’ would the housing problem be solved: It is essential to understand that the problem of housing is not solved without the resolution of the problem of political power in favour of the workers. 69

At the beginning of August, the Inter-­comissões issued a joint statement with the CRAMO Secretariat and the Provisional Secretariat of the Pontinha Popular Assembly denouncing the ‘advances of the reaction’ and proposing the ‘discussion and critical appraisal of the COPCON document, a basis from which to work with newer and stronger methods towards the building of a Socialist Society’.70 This is all the more surprising since as late as the beginning of July the Inter executive had distanced itself from the CRAMO claiming that the interests of shantytown dwellers were different from those of occupiers, and suggesting that the CRAMO leadership was a front for far left political parties.71 Nevertheless, the two organisations became increasingly close, and by November 1975, announced plans to merge and participate in a forthcoming ‘Lisbon Popular Assembly’ alongside Soldiers’ and Workers’ councils from the city.72 Public polarisation, private moderation? As the unity of the Carnation Revolution fragmented into bitterly opposed camps, it seemed that the urban movement had chosen its side. The apparent popular support for radical measures such as collectivisation of housing and agriculture led many to believe that the real revolution was at hand. As several residents’ commissions noted in public statements, nothing could stop the revolutionary momentum because ‘History does not move backwards’.73 With the masses behind it, the revolution could not but run its course. Yet, despite History’s ringing endorsement, the dream of Popular Power was never realised and the city was never run by popular organisations gathered in Popular

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Assemblies. The ‘Lisbon Commune’, the dream of some and nightmare of others, failed to materialise. Neither did any crowds, organised in residents’ or workers’ commissions, come to the defence of the supporters of Popular Power when the final confrontation between the moderate government and insurrectionary revolutionary army units took place on 25 November 1975. If a significant part of the urban movement had publicly stated its commitment to the revolutionary route, how is this absence to be interpreted? The month of November was one of the most tense of the whole revolutionary period. The moderate government, despite initial successes, struggled to exercise meaningful authority: in mid-­November a massive demonstration by construction workers kept the Prime Minister and the cabinet besieged in Parliament for almost two days, while army units refused its orders to disperse the siege by force. Ministers and parliamentarians were only allowed to leave when the government agreed to the demonstrators’ demands. The various factions in the MFA had been preparing for a military confrontation, playing a veritable game of chess with loyal military units and officers. Elsewhere several army units, notably the Parachute regiment at Tancos, whose non-­commissioned officers and soldiers were close to the populist wing of the MFA, threatened outright mutiny. There was open talk of civil war and plans were discussed to move the government and Constituent Assembly to the north of the country. In this tense environment, army units loyal to the various political camps seemed poised to move into action at any minute. The endgame arrived on 25 of November. The exact details of the events of that day are still unclear but, in essence, a military force loyal to the moderate government was able to force the surrender of army units of the far left of the MFA, who had been provoked into, or had planned, an insurrection. After a few hours of uncertainty, military units sympathetic to the MFA radical faction and its civilian allies, the Communists, stood by and allowed the moderate forces a free hand. Although some Communist-­linked citizen groups tried to join up with radical military units, the people’s side of the ‘People-­MFA Alliance’ was notorious in its absence.74 The victory of the moderates allowed for a degree of normalisation in political life as radical and populist MFA officers were removed from the Council of the Revolution and the higher ranks of the military. There were some arrests (particularly of MFA populists), but against the wishes of the right, who sought an outright ban, the Communist Party was allowed to continue to hold seats in Cabinet, even if its MFA radical allies were removed from positions of influence. With the normalisa-

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tion of politics there was an ebbing away of forms of popular control. Gradually much of the land occupied during 1975 was returned to its previous owners. The courts and the police began the process of implementing existing laws in order to evict occupiers of flats and houses in the cities. Many residents’ commissions continued to work, but never attained the levels of mobilisation or influence with local authorities they had enjoyed during the revolutionary period. In short, the revolution ended in November. Had there been any meaningful popular opposition to the moderate military actions, which focused on Lisbon, their victory would not have been possible. After all, popular action had been critical at other points of the revolution. This had been the case on 11 March 1975, 28 September 1974 and not least, on 25 April 1974 when the people of Lisbon rushed to the streets in support of the rebellious captains, tipping the scale against the dictatorship. Just a few months before November 1975, the urban movement had been one of the strongest popular movements on the political scene, extracting numerous concessions from the government, mobilising many thousands of ordinary citizens and proving itself no paper tiger. Yet, despite a growing revolutionary rhetoric and seeming radicalisation throughout the Hot Summer of 1975, the urban movement did not throw its weight behind the advocates of Popular Power. Why? While the contemporary sources suggest that many residents’ and occupiers’ commissions accompanied the radicalisation of sections of the left at party level, does that amount to saying that the urban social movement was, as a whole, becoming increasingly revolutionary? Most of the examples of radicalisation appear in sections of the press that were sympathetic to the cause of Popular Power, or at least to the PCP and MDP. Given the highly politicised media coverage of the period, a direct reading of the available sources is problematic, as it is difficult to ascertain the extent to which they reflect the actions of the urban ­movement, or instead support party-­political objectives. One way in which we can try to sidestep this bias is to look at key moments when the supporters of Popular Power sought to mobilise popular organisations, and seek to establish the extent to which the urban movement answered the call. Pro-­Popular Power demonstrations were key moments where the radical and revolutionary left looked to signal the deep strength of its claim to popular support.75 By looking at which parts of the movement publicly supported them it is possible ask whether there is a particular pattern emerging in terms of the categories through which we have been analysing the residents’ commissions, timing of foundation and neighbourhood characteristics, or whether support for the revolutionary route can be found across the movement.

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To allow a systematic search and comparison, five public demonstrations called by the Popular Power whose topics were particularly close to issues that concerned the urban movement were chosen. While these were not necessarily all the major public events organised by the left, they are those where we would expect the presence and contribution of the urban movement. First in the sample is the Popular Power demonstration of 16 July 1975, called by a group of residents’ commissions and supported by a number of parties on the far left, but not by the PCP and MDP. It called on support for the People-­MFA Alliance, for the dissolution of the ‘class-­collaboration’ government and the installation of a revolutionary government.76 The second, on 20 August, drew between 80,000 and 100,000 marchers in support of the COPCON document on Popular Power, and was described by the moderate Jornal Novo as ‘the largest demonstration since 1 May 1974’. It was also the first time the PCP joined a demonstration promoted by the forces to its left.77 The third demonstration was a failed act: a number of residents’ and workers’ commissions called a demonstration for the 3rd October against the ‘bourgeois’ 6th Government, and in support of workers’ control of the Renascença radio station and the Républica newspaper. While the demonstration was called off because ‘the [necessary] conditions were not met’, instead, a number of residents’ and occupiers’ commissions congregated in an Assembly to show their support for the Républica workers.78 The fourth demonstration was held in Lisbon on 13 October, demanding the institutionalisation of the Municipal Council and popular participation in the management of the city, as had been announced by the Council President a few days earlier.79 The fifth and final demonstration in the sample was initiated by the PCP and the MDP in October to call the advancement of Popular Assemblies, but failed to get the support of the far left.80 These events were the some of the most likely instances when a commission would be asked or driven to publicly state its support for a given political orientation. This was done by writing into newspapers announcing their backing, by passing motions of support at public neighbourhood assemblies, or by marching at the demonstration holding banners and symbols of the organisation, which were then reported by the press. Contemporary newspapers often published the letters of support received for particular campaigns, and accounts of demonstrations listed the organisations present. While the commissions that appear in these sources were not necessarily the only ones expressing radical positions, this sample provides us with highly representative sample, scanning the whole range of the political spectrum of support for the Popular Power programme, including two demonstrations called

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Table 5.1 Commissions supporting radical and popular power positions, July– October 1975 Period founded

Radical

All

% radical

Apr.–Aug. 1974 Sep.–Dec. 1974 Jan.–Apr. 1975 May.–Aug. 1975 Sep.–Oct. 1974 Total

3 3 11 22 6 45

19 13 32 65 23 152

15.8 23.1 34.4 33.8 26.1 29.6

Neighbourhood type Middle-­class Old central Pre-­fab council Run-­down brick Shantytown Social housing Ward level N/A Total

12 12 1 4 8 4 1 3 45

39 27 8 14 33 13 7 11 152

30.8 44.4 12.5 28.6 24.2 30.8 14.3 27.3 29.6

Sources:  Newspapers, AHM/AAC Correspondência Eleitoral 1976.

by the far-­left, two by the Communists and their allies, and a large joint event that brought both those sides together. Table 5.1 summarises the result of this analysis. Residents’ Commissions who appear in the sources voicing support for any one of these demonstrations (often the same commission appear in more than one event), are listed in the column entitled ‘Radical’. These are organised by date of creation and by neighbourhood characteristics, and compared to the total number of commissions in each of those categories. Overall, just under one-­third of all the neighbourhood commissions known to be active in Lisbon by October 1975 were found to have publicly supported pro-­Popular Power demonstrations during the Hot Summer. This is a large proportion of the movement, showing that the support for the revolutionary route was not as insignificant or contrived as its critics, both at the time and in subsequent commentary, would suggest. However, there are some clear patterns that distinguish this sample from the urban movement as a whole. Clearly, residents’ commissions formed after the process of polarisation had begun were more likely to be pro-­Popular Power. Similarly, commissions in middle-­class and central neighbourhoods appear more often in this sample than in the overall tally, reflecting the fact that the majority of commissions founded in the summer of 1975 appeared in these types of n ­ eighbourhoods. The

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categories that accounted for the bulk of the ‘first mover’ commissions (shantytowns and pre-­fab councils) were, conversely, less likely to have ‘radicalised’. Of the shantytown commissions that supported Popular Power, only one (Quinta das Fonsecas) had been created before September 1974, and only a further two were active before March 1975. This strongly suggests that the radicalisation of the urban movement was the result of the militancy of more recent commissions, reflecting the efforts in building grassroots organisation of the military, the far left, and the PCP and MDP alliance, which were most successful in areas that had not yet mobilised, or that had a stronger connection to particular parties (as was the case of the PCP in traditional working-­class areas in old central wards). This reveals that, to a large extent, the urban movement reflected the divisions experienced across Portuguese society at the time. The tendency to present the movement as a unified entity with a clear direction has already been challenged by the findings in the other parts of this work that show it to have been diverse, multi-­faceted, and even at times in internal conflict. The ‘hot summer’ was not different; if anything, these rifts were exacerbated, as is argued below. What happened however is that in the context of the times, it was the more radical commissions which monopolised the public arena, giving the impression that the movement as a whole was committed to Popular Power. Their visibility was reinforced by the lack of an equivalent pro-­moderate mobilisation, which we find only very rarely in the sources. This was a result of the changing strategy of the moderate parties, particularly the PS, which had gone from enthusiastic support for grassroots organisations to repeated warnings that they were a threat to the stability and survival of a democratic revolution. The withdrawal of the moderates from an engagement with urban popular mobilisations had two consequences. Firstly, it may help explain the radicalisation of some commissions frustrated with the slow delivery made by the PCP-­MDP led city council: without a potential ally in the Socialists, they found a willing one in the far left. Secondly, however, without institutional allies outside the Popular Power camp, those residents’ commissions that positioned themselves differently, or sought to keep their distance from partisan politics, found very little space to make their claims heard. Does this mean that other parts of the urban movement did not have a role in the final stage of the Portuguese revolutionary process? In particular, how are these differences and contexts related to the demobilisation of the movement? At the very least it is necessary to ask what happened to the more radicalised parts of the movement, and why they

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did not mobilise in support of the revolutionary left in November 1975. To address these questions we have to go beyond the public representations of residents’ and occupiers’ commissions and explore their mobilisation capacity in the final months of the revolution. Popular power defeated Despite the filter of a politicised press (a great part of it close to the radical and revolutionary left camps), there is evidence that a significant number of residents’ commissions rejected radicalisation and preferred to continue focusing on the immediate issues. This seems to be particularly the case with the ‘first mover’ commissions, who tended to be further down the line in the process of building new neighbourhoods and addressing local issues. In October, for instance, the socialist-­ supporting newspaper A Luta reported approvingly on the work of the Curraleira Commission, which had joined the SAAL scheme and set up a building cooperative, named Novo Horizonte (‘New Horizon’). In the words of members of its executive, the commission had started out as ‘non-­partisan’ and intended to remain so because, ‘if we are still united after 17 or 18 months, it is because we put all that aside, and we decided to focus only on addressing our own problems’.81 While the more radical commissions stepped up their criticisms of the housing services of the City Council and of the SAAL teams, at the same time, the private correspondence between the commissions and the city authorities shows that many neighbourhood organisations continued to have day-­to-­day dealings with those bodies without revealing any antagonism. The issue of auto-­construção (self-­build) is an example of this. Auto-­construção was a principle of the SAAL programme that gave housing cooperative set up by residents’ organisations the option of using their members’ own labour to assist in the building of new neighbourhoods, thus reducing overall financial costs. Both the CRAMO and the Inter-­comissões were resolutely opposed to this practice, calling it a form of ‘double exploitation’, and called on the state to pay unemployed construction workers to work on the new builds. Nevertheless, throughout 1975 a considerable number of residents’ commissions appear in the sources not only willing, but also eager, to use their own labour in neighbourhood improvements. Although none sought to build houses, the projects include school-­houses, street paving, sports facilities or public baths. In contrast to the positions taken to by the movement federations, there are at least thirteen such cases in the correspondence, all but one from residents’ commissions in shantytowns or other poor neighbourhoods.82 There is also evidence, particularly in middle-­class neighbourhoods, of residents organising to depose commission executives that they

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c­ onsidered too radical. In July, the radical residents’ commission of Alto do Pina issued a statement warning of successive boycotts of its plenaries by ‘reactionary elements connected to bourgeois parties’, using ‘petitions and motions whose only objective is to demobilise the plenaries’.83 After the fall of the radical 5th Government, this tendency became more marked: at the beginning of September, around 1200 residents of São João de Brito – the largest assembly reported in the sources – decided to sack the residents’ commission, accusing it of being composed by people from outside the ward and of having organised illegitimate occupations.84 A further example comes from a plenary meeting organised in mid-­ October by the São João de Deus Freguesia to attempt to confirm the appointed executive of residents’ commission. According to the Diário de Notícias, at the time close to the Communist Party, a ‘loud majority’ of reactionaries tried to force the cancellation of the meeting, which was defended by a ‘progressive minority’.85 When a week later residents tabled a counter-­proposal demanding an open election (rather than confirmation) of the executive, the same newspaper reported that the proposal: was for some [of those present] nothing more than a grotesque electoralist manoeuvre, whilst for others a sacred path to a commission supported by them. Members of the current residents’ commission, along with others, tried to argue that a commission cannot be created through elections, as if it were a Constituent Assembly or a President of the Republic. Since the commission has been formed, and has been recognised by superior authority [the COPCON], if there were elections, these could only be for its secretariat.

The meeting then degenerated with both sides shouting slogans across the room at each other: calls of ‘Portugal shall not be the Chile of Europe!’ and ‘Long live the SUVs!’ from one side, were answered with ‘Portugal shall not be the Hungary of Europe!’ [sic] and ‘There is only one Government, the 6th and no other!’ from the other. Following this, the Diário de Notícias continues: the national anthem was sung, after which hundreds of people left the room, this time to the sound of the ‘International’, sung by the progressive forces. These were the conclusions of the sixth residents’ plenary in the São João de Deus ward. We think it was also the last, since it was clearly demonstrated that the vast reactionary sector does not tolerate residents’ commissions. They showed how much they fear Popular Power.86

Elsewhere, the rights of occupiers and the revolutionary legality brought by the commissions were also being contested, with residents refusing to

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enact the sentences of Popular Tribunals set up by the CRAMO.87 On the streets of Lisbon, the radicalisation of some of the neighbourhood commissions did not go unchallenged. This is, admittedly, a very fragmentary picture and it would be rash to see these cases as typical. But they do suggest that there was, at least in some commissions, a growing disaffection with the direction of the movement. The estrangement of the movement’s supporters from its leadership may help explain its strange absence from a defence of the Popular Power movement in late November, a hypothesis that is strengthened by evidence showing that the radical commissions were finding it increasingly difficult to mobilise their supporters. Since April 1974, there had been isolated incidents when individual commissions struggled to rally their members. Such disappointments are part and parcel of community organising, but from the summer of 1975 onwards, the sources show more and more cases of neighbourhood commissions failing to rally their constituencies. Several individual residents’ commissions complained of demobilisation, often blaming political adversaries for the fact. In Chelas, the commission complained that a campaign of ‘libellous pamphlets’ had driven the population away.88 In Alto dos Moinhos, the executive blamed the lack of participation of the population on the residents’ individualism, ‘a mentality which reflects a kind of society based on private property’.89 In September, the São Mamede occupiers’ commission put out a pamphlet pleading with the occupiers to participate: ‘when you stay at home, do not come to ­meetings … you are leaving the path free for the reaction’; the commission worried that occupiers were being duped by contract offers from landlords and warned that for the revolution to succeed, the participation of all was needed, otherwise the consequences could be dire: ‘we will give you an example where the People fell asleep during the struggle … Chile’.90 In October, a City Council official visited the Red Cross neighbourhood, an area of social housing blocks, which had been occupied in February 1975. The official wrote a briefing where she reported asking a commission leader if any public meetings had been held recently. His response breathed disappointment: ‘whoever invented residents’ commissions did not know what they were letting themselves in for as they serve only [for people] to fight one another’. He added that the ­commission executive had resigned.91 If individual commissions were showing signs of demobilisation and demoralisation, it is also clear that the urban poor were not responding to calls for city-­wide mobilisation either and several attempts to organise demonstrations that would repeat the success of 17 May fell flat. Over the summer, the City Council Executive had put forward the proposal

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for a Municipal Council which would give control of the city to residents’ commissions and unions. In early October, an ‘Organising Committee for a Popular Assembly for Lisbon’s Zone 6’, supported by a military unit close to the Communist Party, announced that a demonstration in support of the Municipal Council would be held on 13 October.92 Reflecting the fact that this event was aligned to the PCP-­MDP bloc, a number of Freguesia executives, residents’ commissions from central areas of the city, and some local PCP cells gave their support to the demonstration.93 Despite claims to the contrary in newspapers close to the Communist line, reports from other sources show that the demonstration failed to appeal to the citizens of Lisbon. The Républica wrote that the organisation’s ‘weak capacity for mobilisation was easily attested by any who witnessed the demonstration’; A Capital said that the number of residents present was ‘below expectations’ and that there was ‘enough space left for the same number of demonstrators again’ in the small square in front of the City Hall; while the socialist-­leaning A Luta called it ‘unrepresentative’, with only around 1,000 people present.94 The clearest signs – and admissions – that the urban movement was losing steam came from its umbrella organisations, the CRAMO and the Inter-­comissões, especially as they became increasingly more radical and partisan in their political statements. In early July 1975, the Inter-­Comissões leadership had told a newspaper that ‘mobilisation is good’.95 But by early September, the organisation seemed to be having problems engaging its supporters. On 8 September, A Capital reported on the cancellation of an Inter-­comissões plenary because not enough member commissions were present. Tellingly, the main item on the agenda was to elect new members onto the executive to fill the gap left by the ­withdrawal of some neighbourhoods from the federation.96 A different source gives a fuller account of the problem of demobilisation at the Inter-­comissões. In late September 1975, a newsletter produced by architecture students working with shantytowns and poor neighbourhoods (in all likelihood through the SAAL scheme) published and item entitled ‘What is happening with the Inter-­comissões?’ The piece asked ‘what are the reasons for the diminishing number of commissions, and why are the ones that remain not able to move forward with the work?’ It had several answers: some commissions complained that their interests were not being defended by the Inter. But more importantly, it pointed to the growing radicalisation of its leaders as the reason for the lack of interest from its members: It happened that the Coordinating Commission has been called to take political positions – in support of the struggle of the Renascença radio

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station, going to the celebration of the Républica newspaper and attending the Popular Power demonstration – that do not follow discussion and decisions of the residents of the majority of the neighbourhoods. As such, by dedicating its work to questions other than those which led the neighbourhoods to join the Inter-­comissões, the Coordinating Commission runs the risk of distancing itself from the general opinion of the neighbourhoods’ populations.97

The same newsletter discussed the creation of Popular Assemblies as proposed by the Popular Power camp, and expressed the fear that these could set back the work of the residents’ commissions by neglecting the immediate problems of poor neighbourhoods to concentrate on issues closer to the interests of ‘bourgeois’ commissions.98 Despite these warnings, the Inter-­comissões seems to have continued to have difficulty in maintaining its structures: on 21 November, the Diário de Lisboa mentioned that a meeting to prepare a new plan of action and list of demands to government was again cancelled because it was not quorate.99 The problems faced by the Inter toward the end of the revolutionary period were confirmed some time later, when a 1976 issue of the far left newspaper Poder Popular discussed what it called the ‘great demobilisation’ of the federation during August and September 1975: on one hand there was a loss of momentum in the struggle on behalf of the [Inter-­comissões’] demands (in part as the result of the great instability of political power) and, on the other hand, the impact of the reformists’ attempts to destroy Popular Power by creating shadow Popular Assemblies (…) which had nothing to do with the struggle of the neighbourhoods.100

According to Poder Popular, the rift with its member commissions was such that by October and November 1975 there was ‘a total demobilisation of the Inter as an agent of coordination and unification of the struggle’.101 The CRAMO Secretariat seems to have fared no better. Although very active in organising smaller gatherings that gave it a great deal of publicity, such as popular tribunals and occupations, it had difficulty in mobilising large numbers unless backed by other forces. The CRAMO had gained a lot of publicity through its participation in the 17 May urban movement demonstration, but then it had the backing of the Inter-­ comissões in its prime and a wide range of political parties, including moderates. Equally, the CRAMO-­aligned commissions were very visible in the 16 July demonstration, which was backed by the radical wing of the MFA, the COPCON and even the PCP. But when it tried to organise

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mass demonstrations without their help, the results were negligible, or organisers were forced to back out at the last minute. On 9 July, the CRAMOs, the Lisbon Tenants’ Union and a sister organisation from the city of Setúbal organised a demonstration which proved to be a fiasco, with only five hundred people turning up. José Hipólito, from the Tenants’ Union, was forced to justify the debacle saying that lack of time prevented ‘work at the grassroots’ to mobilise people to a ‘kind of struggle’ they were not focused on.102 On 1 October, a group of CRAMOs and other radical commissions met to call a mass demonstration against fascism and in favour of Popular Assemblies. Claiming that ‘the [necessary] conditions were not met’, the organisers pulled back from a full-­scale demonstration and instead settled for a meeting of residents’ commissions in support of the Républica newspaper.103 Acknowledging these difficulties, the CRAMO Secretariat called a meeting in mid-­November to discuss ‘organisational issues’ and how to conduct the struggle against the 6th Provisional Government. According to one of its leaders, the meeting was motivated by the fact that ‘the commissions are becoming isolated from the people who elect them’. Another participant blamed this on the inability of the people to ‘release themselves from 48 years of obscurantism’. In these conditions, ‘people do not fight for collectivisation, but rather for the bourgeois legalisation of their situation, for the renting of the house after the occupation’.104 Faced with a dwindling capacity for mobilising considerable numbers of residents, the CRAMOs were choosing to blame the people. When the long-­announced confrontation came on 25 November, it ended up as an affair decided between a few military units, with essentially no popular participation. Two weeks later a group of activists close to the far-­left reflected on the ‘lack of coordination’ during the November, recognising that residents’ or workers’ commissions had not come out in support of the revolutionary soldiers. The blame lay, they suggested, was ‘an incorrect connection to the masses’, particularly of the CRAMOs, which they argued had been to narrowly focused on occupations. Overall, they admitted: ‘we could not find a way to tackle the specific problems of each population at the level of their immediate needs and ambitions’.105 Demobilisation, defeat or moderation? Each of these pieces of evidence on the trajectory of the urban social movement is not sufficient by itself to show conclusively that the movement demobilised as a result of the radicalisation of some of its commissions. But together they begin to build a picture that shows that a

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Street and ballot box: June to November 1975 Table 5.2  Voting patterns in Lisbon, 1975–76 (% of total votes Cast)a Local and general elections 1975 general 1976 general 1976 local

Far left

Communists and allies

PS

PPD

CDS

Right

4.6 6.2 6.6

19.9 19.2 20.7

45.8 36.9 35.5

17.1 17.2 15.2

6.8 16.6 19.0

0.8 0.8 0.4

Presidential elections Candidate (Support) 1976

Otelo (Far left) 21.4

Pato (PCP, MDP) 9.18

Eanes (PS, PPD, CDS) 57.32

Azevedo (Indep.) 12.11

Note:  a Individual party results have been amalgamated: ‘Communist and Allies’ refers to the PCP and, when running, the MDP/CDE. In the 1976 local elections it refers to the FEPU coaliton composed of those two parties and the FSP. ‘Right’ includes the PPM and, when running, the PDC. ‘Far left’ includes a number of parties at different stages. In the 1975 Constituent Assembly Elections, the UDP, MES, LCI, FEC (M-­L) and FSP; in the 1976 general election: UDP, MRPP, MES, FSP, PCP-­ML, LCI, AOC and PRT; and in the 1976 local election: GDUPs, MRPP, PCP-­ML and LCI. In the presidential elections, Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho stood with the support of the far left, Octávio Pato with that of the Communists and their allies. The PS, PPD and CDS supported Ramalho Eanes, while Pinheiro de Azevedo ran as an independent candidate without party support. Source:  Comissão Nacional de Eleições, www.cne.pt.

significant part of the movement rejected the polarisation of the political process and tried to chart a more moderate course. The political moderation of the urban movement’s constituency is confirmed by the voting patterns of the city’s population throughout the transition period and the initial stages of the post-­revolutionary period. These show that rather than going through a process of polarisation and radicalisation, the individual preferences of the ordinary citizens of Lisbon remained remarkably stable throughout the period. And these political opinions, which had first been expressed in the Constituent Assembly elections of April 1975, gave a comfortable majority of votes to the parties that sided with the moderates and called for a pluralist democracy, as opposed to a popular democracy. Table 5.2 shows the results for the Lisbon municipal area in the four elections that took place between 1975 and 1976. Notwithstanding its claims to popular legitimacy, the far left failed to make significant inroads into the electorate, despite its explicit backing of a Popular Power project in all the 1976 elections. Nor did the vote of the Communists register an important increase over the same period, and the share held by the moderate parties remained constant, notwithstanding a rearrangement of the votes between them following tactical voting in the Socialist Party at the

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first elections. The only result that stands out is that obtained by Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, former head of the COPCON, in the Presidential Elections of June 1976. The support gained by Otelo’s candidacy to the Presidency took many by surprise, not least the Communist Party, whose supporters snubbed the grey and uncharismatic party choice, Octávio Pato. Otelo’s campaign was decidedly populist and emphasised the importance of the role of grassroots organisations, and received the support of a number of residents’ commissions and CRAMOs from Lisbon.106 Nevertheless, the candidate supported by the PS, PPD and CDS, Ramalho Eanes – an army officer who had risen to prominence by leading the moderate military operation on 25 November – topped the polls in all but two Lisbon wards (Marvila and Charneca). The success of Otelo’s campaign is not easily explained, but the impression remains that it had more to do with the individual charisma and prestige of Otelo than with the loose political programme he presented. This was confirmed by the results in the local elections that took place six months later. Several of the parties that had supported Otelo’s campaign attempted to transform the momentum gained in the Presidential election by setting up local committees, the ‘Groups for the Dynamisation of Popular Unity’ (GDUPs, Grupos Dinamizadores de Unidade Popular) to stand in the local elections. Although some of the parties that had supported Otelo left the GDUPs before the elections (PRP, FSP and MSU), it still put forward candidates in all Lisbon wards and presented a programme explicitly based on Popular Power. Nevertheless, the GDUP failed to make an impact, getting under 5 per cent of the vote in Lisbon, failing even to make an impression in the two wards, Marvila and Charneca, where Otelo had been the most voted candidate. When presented with revolutionary political programmes that implied the relegation of representative bodies in relation to organic, ‘popular democracy’, the people of Lisbon consistently chose to reject them. The portrayal of the urban movement as aligned to the Popular Power camp is certainly exaggerated, as the revolutionary left itself admitted in its more candid moments, reflecting on its failure to bring along a significant part of the urban poor. It was the more recent and brittle commissions, often created with the support of MFA populists and radicals or their civilian counterparts that appear to have suffered the greatest difficulty in sustaining mobilisation. Other parts of the movement continued to work in different ways, with fewer apparent signs of difficulty, at least for the time being. From these observations a number of conclusions can be drawn that qualify and revise the way in which the urban movement has been por-

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trayed in political debate and in the scholarship. It moves the image of the movement way from simplistic portrayals that show it either as widespread popular revolutionary movement, or as the puppet of radicals and far left populists. Instead it shows the experience of the movement to have been varied: a section of the movement, which cannot be simply reduced to activist-­led newly founded commissions. These radicalised commissions did contribute to the polarisation of the ‘Hot Summer’, but a more substantial part of the movement also clearly rejected such radicalisation, both positively, by challenging radical commissions, and negatively, by rejecting their calls for mobilisation. It is worth dwelling on this second aspect, since it speaks to wider debates about the role of popular movements in processes of political transition, and especially democratisation. A long-­running debate has focused on the degree and extent of ‘tolerable’ popular mobilisation during transitions, and its role in supporting or hindering democratisation by moderation or otherwise.107 The broader role of the movement in the Portuguese political process will be returned to in the concluding chapter, but in the context of the ‘Hot Summer’ what the evidence presented here shows is two things. Firstly, that there is great danger in generalising from similarity. Simply because the urban movement addressed a broadly equivalent set of issues and shared central repertoires of action (the residents’ commission, the neighbourhood assembly and even the occupation), that does not mean that it should be treated at all times as a single actor. Only if we are tuned into to the internal diversity of social movements with regard to identities, capacities and strategies can we fully understand their political role. Some parts of the movement acted in ways that contributed to the polarisation of politics and could have endangered the future of Portuguese democracy, especially by making a violent outcome more likely. But many other parts of the movement acted in ways that helped defuse the tension of the Hot Summer and contributed to the moderate victory by denying the revolutionary camp popular support. Secondly, while much of the literature on transitions has discussed the role of demobilisation of popular movements as a feature of successful democratisation, the case of the urban movement in Lisbon is different. It can only be seen as demobilisation if the actions of the radical commissions active in the summer of 1975 is taken as the norm. That was how the moderate camp sought to portray it as part of its strategy of delegitimisation of its adversaries; and also how the revolutionary left looked to present itself. But as Bill Lomax noted, what the far left built (and conversely, what the moderates attacked) was little more than an illusion, the fantasy that it was ‘either leading or representing the

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popular movement’.108 The urban movement as a whole was no illusion, and it did not demobilise as such: most residents’ commissions active before the summer of 1975 were still active after 25 November, but the greater part shows no signs of answering the calls of those promoting the ‘organisations of Popular Power’. Some forms of action, particularly occupations, almost ceased following November 1975, but the evidence shows the urban movement as willing to carry on representing and working for its members well beyond that date. If the movement as a whole did not demobilise following the end of the revolutionary period, it did seem to gradually disappear from the scene as a meaningful political actor, but that was a process that only started, rather than finish, in November. It is to that final stage of the urban movement’s lifespan, and what it tells us about the construction of post-­revolutionary democratic Portugal that we turn to next. Notes 1 Républica, 24 September 1975, p. 5. 2 Diário da Assembleia Constituinte, 1974–1976, Série I, no 067, 22 October 1975, pp. 2098–2099. 3 AHM/AAC/CE 76, Junta de Freguesia de Marvila to Comissão Administrativa da Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, November 1975. This quote comes from the caderno reivindicativo (list of demands) of the Vale Formoso Street Residents’ Commission, which was attached to the Junta de Freguesia’s letter to the City Authorities. The lists of demands is undated, but the commission was active since July 1975 at least, so the document is likely to date from some time between then and late October 1975. 4 There are few works that have engaged with the intellectual history of the Portuguese Revolution. General approaches to defining the intellectual ­spectrum of the period can be found in Fernando Rosas, Pensamento e Acção Política: Portugal Século XX (1890–1976) (Lisboa: Editorial Notícias, 2004); Eduardo Lourenço, ‘A Galáxia Ideológica no Pós-­25 de Abril e as Suas Raízes Culturais’, in Portugal: Sistema Político e Constitucional 1974–87, ed. Mário Baptista Coelho (Lisboa: Instituto das Ciências Sociais, 1989). 5 For an overview of the Portuguese far left, see José Pacheco Pereira, ‘O Partido Comunista Português E a Esquerda Revolucionária’, in Portugal: Sistema Político e Constitucional 1974–87, ed. Mário Baptista Coelho (Lisboa: Instituto das Ciências Sociais, 1989). A good overview of the emergence of the far left in Europe can be found in Gerd-­Rainer Horn, The Spirit of ’68: Rebellion in Western Europe and North America, 1956–1976 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 158–163. Little has been written on the influence of third world Marxism on the Portuguese politics of the transition, although MacQueen points out the radicalisation of many army officers through contact with the ideology of the movements they fought in the Portuguese colonies between

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1961 and 1974: Norrie MacQueen, The Decolonization of Portuguese Africa: Metropolitan Revolution and the Dissolution of Empire (London: Longman, 1997), 83. 6 ‘Aliança Povo-­MFA’, in Fernando Ribeiro de Mello, Dossier 2ª República – 2º Volume 25/4/75 – 25/11/75 (Lisboa: Edições Afrodite, 1976), 773–774. 7 Ibid., 776–777. 8 Ibid., 776. Democratic Assemblies had been instituted by the MFA as representative bodies to the Movement within each military unit. 9 Ibid., 777–779. 10 Vasco Gonçalves, Discursos, Conferências de Imprensa, Entrevistas (Porto: Author’s Edition, 1976), 169. 11 Maria Manuela Cruzeiro, Vasco Gonçalves: um General na Revolução (Lisboa: Editorial Notícias, 2002), 178. 12 Vida Mundial, no 1863, 29 May 1975, pp. 21–24. 13 Diário da Assembleia Constituinte, n. 016S, 11 July 1975 Session, published 24 July 1975, p. 67. 14 Ibid., p. 51. 15 Ibid., p. 32. 16 Ibid., p. 91. 17 Diário de Lisboa, 14 May 1975, p. 7. 18 Diário de Notícias, 7 July 1975, pp. 1 and 8; Républica, 10 July 1975, p. 5; Républica, 16 July 1975, p. 6. 19 A Capital, 30 June 1975, p. 14. 20 Ibid., ‘Socialism in freedom’ was a PS slogan. 21 Jornal Novo, 23 June 1975, p. 11; Avante, 17 July 1975, pp. 1 and 5; Poder Popular, 23 July 1975, pp. 5–7. 22 Avante, 17 July 1975, pp. 1 and 5; Diário de Lisboa, 10 July 1975, p. 9. 23 Report of the L’Humanité interview in Diário de Notícias, 18 July 1975, p. 7. 24 Avante, 3 July 1975, pp. 5–6. 25 A Capital, 22 August 1975, p. 12. 26 A Capital, 8 April 1975, p. 15; AHM/AAC/CE 76, Junta de Freguesia de Santiago, Reports on the debates on the restructuring of the Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, 17 April and 21 April 1975. On the earlier discussions on the role of the residents’ commissions within the municipal structure, see Chapter 4, pp. 138–139. 27 AHM/AAC, Actas de Reuniões da Câmara Municipal de Lisboa 1975, Minutes of the Meeting of the Administrative Committee of the Lisbon City Council, 25 September 1975, p. 2. 28 The creation of these two structures also reveals the distance and rivalry between the groups supporting Gonçalves’ 4th Provisional Government. From their inception, the CRSTMs called for the dissolution of the CDRs, which they accused of being a method of dividing the working class: Jornal Novo, 21 June 1975, p. 9; Républica, 23 July 1975, pp. 10–11. 29 Steven Lukes, ‘Dual Power in Portugal’, New Statesman, 19 September 1975, 325.

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30 Josep Sanchez Cervelló, A Revolução Portuguesa e a Sua Influência na Transição Espanhola (1961–1976) (Lisboa: Assírio e Alvim, 1993), 231–232. 31 My use of the concept of political polarisation follows Giovanni Sartori, who regards it as the emergence of factions defined by a growing ideological opposition and holding mutually exclusive political principles. According to Sartori’s polity model, the emergence of polarisation can work against democratisation by making the formation of the necessary consensus through coalitions and pacts impossible: Giovanni Sartori, Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 134–137. For an application (and revision) of the concept of polarisation in the context of processes of democratisation and de-­democratisation, see Nancy G. Bermeo, Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times: The Citizenry and the Breakdown of Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003). 32 Jornal Novo, 27 June 1975, p. 10. 33 Diário da Assembleia Constituinte 1975–1976, 15, 11 July 1975, Session: 10 July 1975, p. 306. 34 Portugal Socialista, 12 July 1975, p. 3. 35 Diário da Assembleia Constituinte 1975–1976, 17, 16 July 1975, Session: 15 July 1975, p. 386. 36 The Républica was a newspaper close to the Socialist Party. In May 1975 it had been taken over by its workers’ commission, dominated by print workers whose sympathies were further to the left. As the government dithered and troops refused to enact orders to return control of the paper to its editorial staff, the Socialists accused the Communist Party of using the workers’ commission to censor critical voices in the media, using the case as a weapon to denounce the complicity between the Prime Minister and the Communist Party, for an overview see: Ricardo Revez, ‘O Caso Républica’, História, 72 (2004); Francisco Rui Cádima, ‘Os “Media” na Revolução (1974–1976)’, in O País em Revolução, ed. J.M. Brandão de Brito (Lisboa: Editorial Notícias, 2001). 37 Mello, Dossier 2ª República – 2º Volume, 798. 38 Ibid., 851–852. 39 A Luta, 27 August 1975, p. 2. 40 AHM/AAC, Actas de Reuniões da Câmara Municipal de Lisboa 1975, Minutes of the Meeting of the Administrative Committee of the Lisbon City Council, 21 August 1975, pp. 4–5. 41 O Militante, Series IV, 5, November 1975: 14–17. A number of far-­left parties carried on without the PCP and the MDP, renaming the coalitions ‘United Revolutionary Front’ (FUR – Frente de Unidade Revolucionária). 42 Boaventura Sousa Santos, Maria Eduarda Cruzeiro and Natércia Coimbra, O Pulsar da Revolução (Porto: Afrontamento, 1995), 264. The Oporto Municipal  Council, modelled on the People-­MFA Alliance project, had been created by radical residents’ commissions in that city and backed by the military-­ led Provisional City Council. The 6th Government had replaced the City Council and outlawed the Municipal Council: A. Botelho and

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M. Pinheiro, O Conselho Municipal do Porto – Balanço de uma Experiência (Porto: Cooperativa Editorial Perspectivas Sociais Autónomas, 1977). 43 Diário de Notícias, 13 October 1975, p. 6. 44 Mello, Dossier 2ª República – 2º Volume, 902. 45 Cervelló, A Revolução Portuguesa e a Sua Influência na Transição Espanhola (1961–1976), 247–249. 46 Francisco Louçã, ‘A “Vertigem Insurrecional”: Teoria e Política do PCP Na Viragem de Agosto de 1975’, Revista Crítica das Ciências Sociais, 15/16/17 (1985): 160; Pacheco Pereira, ‘O Partido Comunista Português e a Esquerda Revolucionária’, 104–105. 47 Diego Palacios Cerezales, ‘Reacción Popular Violenta y Estado Revolucionario. El “Verano Caliente” Portugués De 1975’, Historia y Política, 7 (2002): 220– 222. 48 Revolução, 30 October 1975, p. 15. 49 Diário da Assembleia Constituinte, 1974–1976, Série I, n. 067, 22 October 1975, pp. 2098–2099. 50 Cerezales’ quantitative analysis of public demonstrations between April 1974 and December 1975 shows a steep parallel increase in the number of partisan demonstrations by both moderates and radicals after March 1975. Diego Palacios Cerezales, O Poder Caiu na Rua: Crise de Estado e Acções Colectivas na Revolução Portuguesa 1974–1975 (Lisboa: Imprensa das Ciências Sociais, 2003), 119. 51 A Capital, 18 July 1975, p. 2; A Capital, 28 July 1975, p. 24; Diário de Notícias, 15 August 1975, p. 4. The Portuguese title of this song was ‘Força, Força Companheiro Vasco – Nós Seremos Uma Muralha de Aço’. 52 UC/CD25A/FCP/Organizações Populares de Base/Comissões de Moradores/ II/Lisboa, Comissão de Moradores do Casal Ventoso, 19 July 1975. 53 Républica, 27 August 1975, p. 9. 54 AHM/AAC/CE 76, ‘Relatório das Actividades do Bairro Santos (Rêgo), em 1975’, 2 March 1976; ‘Comissão de Moradores de Santa Isabel – Regulamento’, 15 July 1975; and Comissão de Moradores de São Cristovão e São Lourenço to Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, 4 August 1975. 55 AHM/AAC/CE 76, ‘Estatutos da Comissão de Moradores da Freguesia de São João de Deus’, 12 July 1975. 56 Républica, 21 July 1975, p. 7; 5 August 1975, p. 8. 57 A Capital, 7 July 1975, p. 12; 16 July 1975, p. 14. 58 Républica, 19 July 1975, p. 6. 59 Diário de Lisboa, 11 July 1975, pp. 12–13. 60 Républica, 17 July 1975, pp. 25–29. 61 A Capital, 5 August 1975, p. 15; 8 August 1975, p. 14.; Républica, 13 August 1975, p. 7; A Capital, 16 August 1975, p. 14; AHM/AAC/CE 76, Junta de Freguesia de Santo Condestável to Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, 15 October 1975. 62 Républica, 7 October 1975, p. 5. 63 Ibid.

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64 Républica, 6 November 1975, p. 6; 20 November 1975, p. 6; 24 November 1975, p. 6. 65 Diário de Notícias, 24 October 1975, p. 6. 66 Républica, 6 November 1975, p. 6. According to Pimlott’s eyewitness account, in late November PRP-­BR members were carrying banners in demonstrations calling for ‘Armed Insurrection Against Civil War’: Ben Pimlott, ‘A Journal of the Portuguese Revolution’, in Frustrate Their Knavish Tricks: Writings on Biography, History and Politics (London: Harper Collins, 1994), 272. 67 Cervelló, A Revolução Portuguesa e a Sua Influência na Transição Espanhola (1961–1976), 249. 68 Reproduced in Francisco José do N. Branco, ‘Elementos Para a História do Movimento dos “Bairros de Lata e Bairros Pobres” do Concelho de Lisboa (25 Abril 74 – Março 77)’, Cadernos de Intervenção Social – Associação de Estudantes do Instituto Superior do Serviço Social, 2 (1979): 153–155. 69 Républica, 22 July 1975, p. 6. 70 Ibid., p. 157. 71 A Capital, 3 July 1974, pp. 12–13; see above, Chapter 4, p. 156. 72 Républica, 24 November 1975, p. 5. 73 Républica, 24 September 1975, p. 5 and 3 October 1975, p. 11. 74 Cervelló, A Revolução Portuguesa e a Sua Influência na Transição Espanhola (1961–1976), 252–260. There are numerous interpretations of the sequence and meaning of the events of that day, particularly over the intentions of the insurrectionary units, and the role played by the Communist Party, with much finger-­pointing between the various actors. For an overview, see the recent collection of interviews see: ‘Dossier 25 de Novembro’, in Público, 25 November 2009 and Maria Inácia Rezola, Os Militares na Revolução de Abril: o Conselho da Revolução e a Transição Para a Democracia em Portugal, 1974–1976 (Lisboa: Campo da Comunicação, 2006). 75 As Charles Tilly notes, demonstrations are public pronouncements of unity, strength in numbers, commitment to a cause and worthiness of claims: Charles Tilly, Social Movements, 1768–2004 (Boulder: Paradigm, 2004), 4–5. 76 Jornal Novo, 14 July 1975, p. 15; A Capital, 15 July 1975, p. 2; Républica, 17 July 1975, pp. 1 and 5; Jornal Novo, 17 July 1975, p. 14. 77 Jornal Novo, 21 August 1975, pp. 1, 9; Républica, 21 August 1975, pp. 1, 8–9. 78 Républica, 2 October 1975, p. 6; 3 October 1975, p. 10; 4 October 1975, p. 11. 79 Diário de Notícias, 11 October 1975, p. 2; 13 October 1975, p. 6; Diário de Lisboa, 14 October 1975, p. 2; A Capital, 14 October 1975, p. 5. 80 A Capital, 22 October 1975, p. 8; 23 October 1975, pp. 1 and 8; 24 October 1975, p. 9; Diário de Notícias, 22 October 1975, p. 13; 23 October 1975, p. 3. 81 A Luta, 3 October 1975, pp. 3 and 10. 82 AHM/AAC/CE 76, various items, and further items in the collections of the Lisbon City Councils Technical Office for Housing (Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, Departamento de Planeamento e Projecto, Espólio do Gabinete Técnico de Habitação, hereafter CML/DPP/GTH). 83 Républica, 11 July 1975, p. 13.

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84 A Capital, 5 September 1975, p. 9; 20 September 1975, p. 6; A Luta 19 November 1975, p. 11. 85 Diário de Notícias, 20 October 1975, p. 4. 86 Diário de Notícias, 28 October 1975, p. 5. The content, and even slogans, of the meeting are confirmed by a report in the Socialist-­leaning A Luta, 28 October 1975, p. 9. 87 Républica, 24 November 1975, p. 6; Diário de Notícias, 24 November 1975, p. 3. 88 Diário de Lisboa, 24 July 1975, p. 11. 89 Républica, 21 July 1975, p. 13. 90 Reproduced in UC/CD25A/FCP/Organizações Populares de Base/Comissões de Moradores/II/Lisboa, ‘Viva a Luta dos Bairros’, 4, August-­September 1975, p. 9. 91 AHM/AAC/CE 76, Josefina Mata to Polícia Municipal, 3 October 1975. 92 A Capital, 10 October 1975, p. 2. Zone 6 refers to a part of the City Council’s devolution plan which, alongside the creation of the Municipal Council, proposed the division of the city into seven groups of freguesias. Zone 6 would encompass the following wards: Ameixoeira, Alvalade, Campo Grande, Charneca, Lumiar and São João de Brito). 93 Diário de Notícias, 13 October 1975, p. 6. 94 Diário de Lisboa, 14 October 1975, p. 10; Républica, 14 October 1975, p. 2; A Capital, 14 October 1975, p. 5; A Luta, 14 October 1975, p. 9. 95 A Capital, 3 July 1975, p. 13. 96 A Capital, 8 September 1975, p. 9. 97 UC/CD25A/FCP/Organizações Populares de Base/Comissões de Moradores/ II/Lisboa, ‘Viva a Luta dos Bairros’, 4, August-­September 1975, pp. 3 and 5. 98 Ibid. 99 Diário de Lisboa, 21 November 1975, pp. 10–11. 100 Poder Popular, 10 March 1976, pp. 4–5. 101 Ibid. 102 Diário de Notícias, 10 July 1975, p. 8; A Capital, 10 July 1975, p. 9. 103 Républica, 2 October 1975, p. 6; 3 October 1975, p. 10; 4 October 1975, p. 11. 104 Diário de Notícias, 15 November 1975: p. 10; Républica, 17 November 1975, p. 5. 105 Républica, 5 December 1975, pp. 8–9. 106 Including the support of the leadership of the Inter-­comissões. See Revolução, 20 May 1976, p. 16; 25 May 1976, pp. 8–9. 107 Adam Przeworski, ‘Democracy as a Contingent Outcome of Conflicts’, in Constitutionalism and Democracy, ed. Jon Elster and Rune Slagstad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 73–76; Nancy G. Bermeo, ‘Myths of Moderation: Confrontation and Conflict During Democratic Transitions’, Comparative Politics 29, 305–307 (1997): 305–307. 108 Bill Lomax, ‘Ideology and Illusion in the Portuguese Revolution: The Role of the Left’, in In Search of Modern Portugal: The Revolution and Its Consequences, ed. Lawrence S. Graham and Douglas L. Wheeler (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983), 121–122.

6 Urban social movements and the making of Portuguese democracy Urban social movements and democracy

Epilogue: the urban movement after November 1975 The Lisbon urban social movement did not disappear on 25 November 1975. Many residents’ commissions remained active even if the movement’s leading federations, the Inter-­comissões and the CRAMO Secretariat, never regained the political influence they had enjoyed just six months earlier. As the new Provisional Government and the first elected Cabinet that followed it progressively removed many of the concessions the movement had gained, they were unable to mobilise their constituency to defend their positions. Residents’ commissions, particularly those in the poorest areas of the city persevered but in a much less overtly politicised manner. They continued to interact and negotiate with the municipal authorities, but tended to focus on local rather than national issues and adopt a less confrontational tone. At the end of February 1976, the commissions representing the shantytowns of Vale Escuro, Peixinhos and Alto da Eira, organised their own surveys and proposed priority rankings of local families waiting for re-­housing in order of need. The list was then approved by a vote in a residents’ assembly and the commission demanded that it was used in the allocation of houses, which the City Council accepted.1 Elsewhere, a number of commissions from shantytowns in the freguesia of Olivais created a residents’ association, looking to access the SAAL scheme.2 It was in middle-­class areas, where many commissions that had appeared over the spring and summer of 1975, that the signs of decline were most evident. In some places local residents mobilised in order to remove some of the more radical commission executives. In São João de Deus, where in October 1975 there had been lively confrontations between a radical commission backed by the Junta de Freguesia and local residents, a public assembly eventually dismissed the executive in January 1976.3 The CRAMO and the Inter-­comissões attempted to regroup after November 1975. The sources show these organisations in reflexive

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mood, trying to ascertain how they had lost support and looking to find ways to recapture the strength of the Popular Power movement. In an interview to the newspaper Républica, the CRAMO leadership acknowledged its failures in mobilising the neighbourhoods in the summer of 1975, and proposed the creation of a single coordinating body for the movement.4 But these renewed attempts to merge the CRAMO Secretariat and the Inter-­comissões came to nothing. The Inter leadership was unwilling to repeat the ill-­fated alliances of the previous year. At the beginning of February 1976, the Diário de Lisboa reported that the Inter-­comissões had been ‘paralysed’ since November 1975 and was looking to re-­launch its activity.5 It revised its statutes, and sought to distance itself from the CRAMOs. The Inter’s new statutes, approved on 28 February 1976, required that member neighbourhoods be part of the SAAL scheme, and individuals ‘alien to the [SAAL] neighbourhoods’ were barred from intervening or voting in its meetings. An addendum to the statutes, also approved by the plenary, stressed the duty of the Inter to ‘prevent the infiltration of fake residents’ commissions without links to the population of the areas they [claim to] represent’.6 Furthermore, a new list of demands was drawn up which was a reiteration of the Inter’s demands from early 1975, with no mention of the ‘Popular Power’ programme.7 Throughout 1976, these organisations and their successors continued to organise protests against the government’s policies on housing. But it was clear that they were on the defensive. The CRAMO Secretariat was re-­launched with a new name, which omitted the contentious term ‘revolutionary’, preferring to put the emphasis on poverty, rather than politics. The new organisation, CLOMP (Comité de Luta dos Ocupantes e Moradores Pobres – Committee for the Struggle of Poor Occupiers and Residents), was launched in April. Its programme was primarily aimed at containing the backlash from government: while it called for an end to the evictions of occupiers and for their rights to be upheld, it did not ask for any more houses to be seized.8 When the CLOMP organised a demonstration on 10 April, the slogans chanted called on occupiers to ‘resist, resist’ and to refuse to leave the houses they had taken.9 Despite these efforts, their mobilisation was never strong enough to force the hand of the government, which was able to carry through a programme of normalisation. In public, the executive took a hard line. A statement from the Interior Ministry from 26 November 1975 emphasised that all residents’ commissions not certified by the authorities in compliance with a November 1974 law were in effect illegal.10 This was, strictly speaking, correct: very few residents’ commissions outside

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the SAAL scheme – which required legalisation to access funds – had formalised their status. But such a statement from a Socialist minister would have been unthinkable a year before. At the beginning of 1976 the government announced an inquiry into ‘unlawful occupations’, to be run by a committee including representatives from the police, the military, the courts, the Lisbon and Oporto City Councils, as well as from the government. There would be no representation from residents’ or occupiers’ organisations.11 In an interview in July 1976, the head of the inquiry, José Maria de Almeida, recognised that many occupations were driven by need, but highlighted the ‘opportunism’ of many others, who engaged in occupations to ‘make good deals with someone else’s property’. Almeida argued that often the victims were property-­owning widows and pensioners for whom the return from rents was the only source of income.12 While the government took a tough public stance on occupations, at the local level the City Council was working to try to resolve many cases amicably. Most of the occupations of social housing were certified by signing a contract with occupying families, while in the private sector the Council sought to use the laws passed in 1975 to encourage the signing tenancy agreements between landlords and occupiers. In March 1976, the city’s Housing Services wrote a note to the President of the City Council stating that: In recent times, the Vice-­ President [of the City Council] has ratified between six and ten contracts each week. This issue is still not being resolved as speedily as we and the interested parties would like, but the number of these cases, c. 1,500 (…) does not allow us to proceed quicker until we are assigned more staff.13

The occupiers’ and residents’ organisations tried to protest against the governmental inquiry, but failed to gather large numbers or achieve consensus between the various groups. The Inter, the CLOMP and other popular organisations met in early April to discuss a joint demonstration, but soon after the Inter issued a statement withdrawing its support. It complained that the CLOMP and ‘CRAMO elements’ had manipulated the meeting so that Inter representatives were in a minority, approving slogans, routes and allowing political propaganda against their wishes. The Inter also denounced claims made in the Gazeta da Semana that it had approved and signed up to the CLOMP programme, as it did not include the Inter’s ‘most important demands’ (i.e. those relating specifically to the SAAL scheme).14 The demonstration went ahead, but it had little impact. The more radical organisations continued to organise sporadic pro-

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tests, but in the new environment they did more to strengthen the government’s hand than to advance the cause of the residents. In late August a small demonstration called by the CLOMP attempted to surround the Department of Housing and keep the minister from leaving until their demands (the suspension of evictions and a say for residents’ representatives on all housing matters) were met. The police broke up the protest but scuffles led to one policeman and one demonstrator being taken to hospital. The government took this opportunity to claim the moral high ground: the Minister for Housing called for the hatreds of 1975 to be set aside and announced the building of 15,000 new homes in the short term, while the Cabinet issued a statement denouncing threats to the ‘social equilibrium’ caused by ‘illegal wildcat occupations’ and warned that it would uphold democratic legitimacy ‘responding with force to violent provocation, if necessary’.15 A few days later, despite gathering ‘some thousands’ of protesters outside Parliament, a further demonstration by the CLOMP and several far-­left parties, failed to gain a meeting with the Prime Minister.16 Encouraged by a lack of effective opposition to its measures on housing, the government moved to wash its hands of the SAAL programme, which it regarded as too closely identified with the far-­left parties. SAAL staff had been particularly politically active in Oporto, and there were close links to far left circles. In a region where the right was strong, the SAAL had become one of the targets of an ongoing campaign of violence against left-­wing organisations. On 14 January 1976, the SAAL offices in Oporto were destroyed by a large bomb and on 4 March another device was placed in the car of a SAAL staff member.17 The government did not trust the scheme, and was coming to see it as a threat to the normalisation and pacification of Portuguese politics. Given the hatreds the scheme generated in Oporto it was no surprise that it was a Socialist parliamentarian from that city (Gomes Fernandes) who led the attack on the SAAL, accusing its staff of incompetence, and of falling prey to party political interests. His intervention was backed by the PPD and the CDS.18 The political campaign against the SAAL culminated in the decision by the government to drop its financial and administrative backing for the scheme, passing over to City Councils all responsibilities regarding the SAAL.19 Given the dire financial situation of the municipalities, this meant an end to any new SAAL projects, although some of those already under way would be completed. Residents’ organisations, particularly the Inter-­comissões, tried to rally one last time to oppose the government’s decision, accusing it betraying the principle of residents’ control over  the building of their own houses.20 A demonstration was set for

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13 November, calling on the ill-­housed from all over the country. While a respectable, but small, crowd turned out (the Gazeta put it at 3,000), this was to be the last event organised by the Inter-­comissões and its executive would never meet again after November 1976.21 The urban movement had run out of steam. Even the issues that had once animated it failed to gain traction. During the campaign for the Lisbon City Council elections of December 1976, several political groups expressed their support for the SAAL scheme, vowing to revive it if elected. The Communists and their allies promised to continue the scheme and use housing cooperatives to address the housing problem. The GDUPs put forward as their mayoral candidate Nuno Teotónio Pereira, an architect and former leading SAAL official, who pledged to continue the scheme and establish City Council control over vacant housing. However, both the PS and PPD candidates criticised the unimpressive achievements of the SAAL and called for a reassessment of the city’s housing policies.22 Maybe because the programme had not been able to progress as quickly as the target populations had hoped, or because the political forces that backed it lacked credibility, it seems that that the SAAL issue had little weight in the result. The Lisbon electorate distributed its votes almost identically to how it had done in the April 1976 general election.23 Despite the fact that scores of residents’ commissions continued to exist, by the end of 1976 the urban movement, so strong a year and a half earlier, was finished as a political force. Revolution, democratisation and the urban social movement Exploring the origins, trajectory and demise of the urban movement in Lisbon has been a way to question and revisit the role of popular collective actors in Portugal’s revolution and transition to democracy. The aim of this book was to reconstruct and analyse the process of mobilisation of one of the revolution’s emblematic social movements taking place in Lisbon, the heart of the political process. In order to understand its role in the context of contentious interactions of the period, three questions were deemed essential: how and why did the urban social movement emerge? What were the movement’s goals, demands and political outlook, and how did these evolve through the process? And finally, how did it subside and how is that related to the resolution of the revolutionary crisis – should we count the movement with the victors, or with the defeated? The movement’s role in the revolution was revealed as having been diverse (just as the movement itself was), evolving and closely related to the dynamics of the broader process with which it interacted. Yet, overall, the extent of its positive contribution to the

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establishment of democratic politics (and the kind of democratic politics established) in Portugal, although limited by several factors, has been greatly underestimated. In essence, the urban social movement was a pivotal actor not merely in the transition from dictatorship to democracy, but in the transformation from one citizenship regime to another. The movement was both the offspring of dictatorships’ growing intervention in social issues, and one of the progenitors of Portuguese social democracy and its commitment to social rights. In the context of the revolutionary process, the mobilisation of the urban poor forced policy responses from the transition powers that took the social commitments of the new regime, once established, much further than those of transitions taking place at the same time or soon thereafter. As some authors have argued, it also helped establish social protest as a legitimate and recognised form of claim-­making, even if the responsiveness of the political system to its demands has not since lived up to expectations. But during the transition itself, the urban movement also helped push the political axis of the transition period much further to the left than could have been expected when Spínola was invited to serve as interim president; but as the analysis of the actions of the commissions in the ‘Hot Summer’ of 1975 shows, its rejection of the programme of the revolutionary left also helped guarantee a moderate victory. The importance of these contributions has been largely forgotten, in part because later political and economic developments, as well as inheritances from the authoritarian past and from the transition itself conditioned, or even worked against, some of those gains. Popular politics in the long view: from authoritarian to insurgent citizenship Analysing the origins of the urban movement has highlighted a key, but neglected, factor in the historical development of citizenship relations in Portugal and, consequently, of the nature of its civil society and its relationship with political institutions. The movement was one of the first instances in Portugal when a large sector of the population, especially from amongst the poor, explicitly mobilised around issues of collective consumption and social rights. It shows a previously excluded public shifting the direction of its claim-­making and mobilisation towards the state, and demanding that housing and urban social services be provided as a right for every citizen. This amounts to a key episode in the nationalisation of politics in Portugal showing that, at least in urban areas, the traditional politics of clientelism and mediation were being superseded by a direct relationship between people and state. Revealing how the  ideas and motivations carried by the movement (and to an extent

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the social basis of its mobilisation) developed before the April 1974 coup highlights longer-­term roots and significance of this shift. This was not simply a letting off of steam caused by conjunctural conditions, but rather the articulation of a new way of seeing state-­society relations. If extrapolated from the urban poor to the wider population, it points towards how and why the regime question was put, and why the dictatorship found it increasingly difficult to shore up its legitimacy vis-­à-­vis an increasingly demanding citizenry. Paradoxically, this new conception of citizenship and the role of the state in it was to a large extent the result of the New State’s increasingly statist intervention, developed as part of its transforming intentions, at first driven by a ‘civilising mission’, later as part of a technocratic modernising project and, its final stages, as an attempt to recast the dictatorship as a right-­based polity. This observation points towards the importance of understanding political transitions in longer historical perspective, and the possibility that different constitutive elements of democratic polities can emerge (if at all) staggered through time.24 Charles Tilly’s model of democracy as a combination of different relational elements is useful in illustrating this point. Tilly proposed seeing democracy as a combination of four dimensions of relationships between states and citizens: the degree of inclusivity of the citizen category, the extent of equality between citizens, the level of protection of citizens against arbitrary action, and the degree of protected consultation through electoral or other means.25 The Portuguese dictatorship established by Salazar was responsible for extensive transformations of these relationships, particularly in the first dimension, without ever intending to cross the threshold towards the creation of a democratic policy. But the expansion of the role of the state brought an increasingly larger share of the population into the category of citizen, not in the sense of a purely formal membership, but an increasingly ‘thick’ relationship involving webs of mutual contact, obligations and expectations between the agents of the state and the population, including housing and other forms of urban welfare. However, this change also transformed the nature of political contention, making a much broader base of the population more available and more likely to engage in state-­oriented claim-­making, since this was a relationship that mattered increasingly for its own life-­chances, as opposed to more traditional relationships to local elites, employers and landowners. But this state-­ directed claim-­ making became potentially disruptive and threatening to the regime to the extent that the growing inclusivity of the category of the ‘social citizen’ was not accompanied by changes in other related dimensions. Firstly, as illustrated by the case of housing, the system was highly inequitable, including an explicit seg-

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mentation between citizens, a facet most apparent in the construction of low quality pre-­fabricated housing and the creation of a gradation of welfare recipients clearly favouring the state-­protected middle-­classes. This segmentation was not restricted to housing, but was reflected in pensions, healthcare and other forms of welfare provision developed by the corporatist authoritarian state.26 The disjuncture between the new meanings and expectations generated by the state’s intervention, and the inequities they produced or tolerated, mobilised what James Holston has called a form of ‘insurgent citizenship’, whose claims were not dealt or absorbed by a system that included very few channels of protected communication between populations and the state.27 Together, these factors contributed to the delegitimisation of the dictatorship, as is evidenced by the increasingly fractious relationship between residents and housing managers even before the coup, ranging from petitions and commissions to tax refusals. While the demands and petitions witnessed under the dictatorship did not amount to what we would call a social movement, they represent an important development that is essential in explaining how a long-­ standing dictatorship fell so quickly and with so little resistance. But more importantly, this context is essential if we are to understand the nature of the political process after the April coup, particularly with regard to the social question, and how the contending political forces had to address it, not only in terms of housing, but also of healthcare, pensions, working conditions and education. A movement of whom, for what? The second set of questions on the urban social movement, on what the movement was and was for, is connected to how these new political values played out during the revolutionary period. The reorientation of popular political beliefs towards the issue of state-­provided rights does not in any way imply a preference for a particular regime type. In April 1974 all options remained open and it is not inconceivable to imagine the promise of social provision being used to legitimate a non-­ democratic outcome. In terms of what the movement was, the characterisation of the urban movement as a far-­left ‘paper tiger’ was shown to be little more than a politically motivated caricature. The number, spread and committed support of the residents’ commissions leave that in little doubt. And while the urban movement emerged and expanded in close interaction with a variety of local and national agents – social workers, priests, army officers, municipal administrators and militant activists – the diversity of background of these brokers and facilitators mean it would be reductive

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in the extreme to see it as the result of some form of ‘manipulation’. On the contrary, it was primarily the enthusiasm and hopes of the urban poor that created the movement, over and above any political allies that assisted them at the beginning or, as was most often the case, sought to involve them in their political project later on. But while the ‘bottom-­up’ or ‘autonomous’ nature of the urban social movement is beyond doubt, establishing what they were mobilisations for is considerably more difficult, particularly when so much that has arrived to us has been filtered by political forces eager to claim their backing. Some interpretations have seen the movement as a potential springboard for the establishment of a radically different society, based on the reading that it not only demanded, but acted out a fundamental alteration of economic structures by questioning the right to private property, and of political structures by demanding local popular control over issues that affected them.28 Others have argued that the mobilisation of the urban movement, like other grassroots collective actors, was essentially driven by a defensive or economicist outlook that required first and foremost the addressing of immediate needs, a call for ‘social integration’ without broader political implications.29 As we have seen, the urban movement was above all diverse, and there were certainly residents’ and occupiers’ commissions from across the city that subscribed to a revolutionary programme when this was offered by both the radical and the far left camps. But the last chapter also showed the extent to which a greater part of the movement combined support for occupations and local political voice with and a rejection of the far left’s maximalist, anti-­electoral stance. How can these two positions be reconciled and the stance of such significant parts of the urban movement understood? Seeing the movement as little more than a call for social integration would imply that there was a full acceptance of the rules of the game, particularly those regulating property and urban governance, seeing the former as sacrosanct and the latter as the function of institutions largely outside the control of local populations: city councils, housing agencies, experts and professional politicians to whom grassroots organisations would end up in subaltern, clientelistic relations in return for access to the benefits of the system.30 Instead, the conditions arose in which subaltern populations were able to articulate demands that went beyond straightforward ‘inclusion’, calling for voice and power over the management of their own lives. While the dictatorship’s urban intervention was critical in shaping the political space, conditions and, in part, the grammar of contention of the urban movement (e.g. the language of rights), the politics

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of the urban poor that emerged in response cannot be regarded simply as a mirror image of its project. As was also noted, the urban poor put forward a critique of the system as it was experienced, something made clear by the fact that the movement was initiated and retained its core not amongst those excluded from the system, but mainly by those who were already part of it, either as tenants of social housing neighbourhoods or residents in shantytowns who had a history of contact with the dictatorship’s urban agencies. Seeing the movement as purely a demand for ‘integration’ does little justice to the extent to which it was also a movement for ‘voice’ in the sense of a fuller democratisation of the city and the participation of the urban poor in the management of their space and life. A closer look at the urban movement in Lisbon reveals that its demands went beyond a simple call for inclusion, extending to a substantive re-­ imagining of urban power and property relations. While there was no rejection of private property as such, there was a strong sense that the right to property was mediated by a ‘moral economy’ which both recognised (and aspired) to the right to property, but which also bounded it through an obligation of fair use.31 As such, the urban poor demanded that social housing be accessible to them as long-­term rentals leading up to full ownership once its value had been paid for in rent, the same terms in which subsidised housing had been offered to the middle classes by the dictatorship. Similarly – and much to the irritation of some o ­ bservers – those who occupied houses were anxious to seek legal validation of their actions and often paid a ‘fair rent’ agreed by public assembly into a bank so that no one could accuse them of opportunism. The justification for seizing property from its ‘legal’ owners – be it land to build self-­run services, housing estates or, ultimately, vacant private apartments, was rarely an attack on private property per se, but on its misuse: corrupt housing allocation practices, asset-­stripping in firms, profiteering by landowners charging rents for shacks while not allowing ‘proper’ houses to be built, or the speculative practice of leaving houses vacant awaiting a better price when there were many thousands homeless. Such claims might not be revolutionary, but neither are they merely an acceptance of the rules of the game as laid out by the dictatorship and the capitalist urban system. The demands and practice of the movement did put forward a legitimate alternative, just perhaps not as alternative as the revolutionary left hoped for. In addition, and perhaps more importantly, the actions of the urban movement also implied, and often explicitly articulated, a different model of political organisation which, while not necessarily ‘revolutionary’ in the sense that the far left attempted to portray it, still amounted

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to a more extensive democratic decentralisation and participatory management of the city.32 From the start, residents asked not only for housing and services, but also for their own active involvement (if not self-­management) of such collective goods. From the beginning of their mobilisation, residents’ groups were clear about their wish not merely to be heard, but to gain actual control of important aspects of the management of their common living. This was expressed in general terms, as the residents of the shantytown of Quinta do Narigão, one of the pioneering neighbourhoods, did in June 1974 when they argued for the delegation of powers and responsibilities to the neighbourhood level, in residents’ commissions and ward executives, as a solution to the ‘unbearable bureaucracy’ of municipal services.33 But, more importantly, residents’ commissions increasingly took the initiative in assuming responsibility for managing their neighbourhoods, building and managing community halls, childcare centres, consumer cooperatives and other facilities; actively participating in the design and management of new neighbourhoods as part of the SAAL programme; deciding on criteria for house seizures and carrying them out; or taking over the responsibility for drawing up re-­housing lists and deciding by public assembly on cases of relative merit and need when allocating homes; as the residents of the Municipal neighbourhood of Grilo did when they voted to attribute a vacant house to a family of a retornado, one of the many thousands of ‘returnees’ from the former African colonies as these gained independence in 1975.34 Whether or not this was ‘socialism’ is of secondary importance: more devolved and participatory forms of democracy are in theory possible under a variety of political systems. And from voting patterns during transition it would seem that at least a large proportion of the Portuguese population found them compatible with social democracy in the western European model. But to what extent were such populations able to inscribe their ambition for a deeper meaning of citizenship through their political mobilisation? The urban movement, the revolutionary process and democratisation This leads us to a more overarching consideration of the role of the movement in the revolutionary period. Reflecting the nature of the urban movement, this role operated in multiple ways, and generated in interaction with other actors. In the immediate aftermath of the coup, the rapid spread of the movement’s forms of action, including occupations, the formation residents’ commissions and the drawing up of lists of demands, quickly established a new model of relationship between ordinary citizens and transitional state that set the tone for the following

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eighteen months. By forcing the hand of the provisional authorities, the urban movement’s ‘first movers’ showed to other neighbourhoods (but also to other forms of popular mobilisation) that there were tangible results available to those willing to show commitment and d ­ etermination – promises of new neighbourhoods, control over local services, and even the tolerance of housing seizures. While the early response of the provisional authorities can be seen as paternalistic and self-­legitimising, the detailed reconstruction of the early months of the movement shows that for most of 1974, the neighbourhoods more or less dictated the response of the authorities, who tended to act reactively to their mobilisation, and often lacked a clear long-­term strategy.35 The creation of the SAAL programme – which elevated previous marginal experiments to the ­ status of the principal urban policy of the provisional governments – was perhaps the only far-­sighted plan enacted that the new authorities were able to muster when faced with a rising tide of mobilisation and their own services in disarray. Other responses intended to quell the mobilisation of the poor neighbourhoods and bring a halt to housing seizures, such as announcements of inquiries into corruption in Housing Services and hasty introduction of a new Rental Law in September 1974, had the unintended consequence of further kindling the movement. By the end of 1974, even the SAAL programme had become the target of criticism by the residents’ commissions, who accused the authorities of inefficiency and unnecessary delays, and claimed further devolution of  ­responsibilities, powers and budgets to the neighbourhoods. For much of the revolutionary period the urban movement was the driver of political developments in many areas that touched on the management of the city. Together with other forms of popular collective action, including the labour movement and the mobilisations in the countryside, it proved that whatever was happening in Portugal was not likely to be addressed by a continuation of the dictatorship’s policies with the addition of elections. The urban social movement was part of what Sousa Santos has called the widest and deepest social movement in European post-­war history, and its mobilisation weakened the position of those in the MFA and outside it who wished for a political transition without any deeper transformation of socio-­economic relationships. To a large extent, they were the makers of the revolutionary crisis.36 The movement’s actions expanded the boundaries of what was in question and in debate after the coup, placing a number of issues on the political agenda that demanded wholesale transformation of the government of society. Without them it is unlikely that political elites would be discussing the role of the state in managing urban land, limitations to the rights of landlords to freely dispose of their property during a housing

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shortage, as well as considering extensive rights of participation and local control for representatives of local communities. Such discussions and debates, put on the table by the strength of the urban movement, included various projects for democratisation of local authorities (to which all parties contributed), new housing initiatives, the Rental Law and, perhaps most lasting of all, the enshrining of key demands of the movement in the new constitution, drawn up over the summer of 1975. Even though it was drafted and passed by the moderate majority in the Constituent Assembly, Article 65 of the Constitution guaranteed as a right of every citizen housing that would be ‘salubrious, comfortable and of adequate size’, and charged the state with delivering these through a variety of means that included land expropriation where necessary, and ‘supporting the initiatives of local communities and populations with a view to addressing their housing needs’.37 The discussion of this article of the constitution took place in early October 1975, during one of the most polarised and antagonistic periods of the process, yet the moderate majority still found it necessary to include much of the spirit of the claims of the urban movement. The only notable nuance – the use of the term ‘local communities’ over ‘residents’ commissions’ or ‘popular organisations’ – resulted from the suspicion of the moderate parties of the ‘connotations these have lately acquired’, especially where they were said to appear in a ‘non-­representative and non-­democratic’ manner.38 As a recent study on the origins of the Portuguese constitution reminds us, its impressive set of political, civic and social rights (one of the most extensive lists of guaranteed rights in written constitutions anywhere) cannot be disassociated from the context in which they were approved. In addition to other reasons leading to the extent of constitutionalisation of social rights, the moderate parties were also aware that outside the assembly there were large constituencies with a role to play in the not yet resolved revolutionary crisis.39 In this sense, extensive social mobilisations over social issues such as those witnessed in Portugal contributed to dramatically increasing two of Tilly’s dimensions of democracy in post-­revolutionary Portugal, to the extent that they created the conditions for an extension and strengthening of the content and reach of social citizenship and through that, created mechanisms to redress extensive inequalities between citizens. In that way they helped shape the institutions of democratic Portugal, and provided evidence of a case where a lack of ‘moderation’ over issues of redistribution was not necessarily an obstacle to democratisation.40 Before any democratic institutions could be put in place, however, the country had to resolve a dangerous crisis caused by the polarisation between the electoral and the revolutionary camps, which brought it

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to the brink of civil war. In this regard, the sources used here provide a novel insight into the workings of the urban movement through the summer of 1975, revealing how the increasingly radical and polarised debate between political leaderships was seen at the street level. While a minority of radical commissions (albeit a significant minority) and their leadership retained public visibility, in the neighbourhoods a different dynamic was being played out. The commissions and organisations closest to the revolutionary factions found it more and more difficult to mobilise their base and bring their neighbourhoods out to support a broader political programme. In addition, many more residents’ commissions chose to keep a degree of distance from the movement to create popular assemblies and other organisations of Popular Power, while seeking to continue focusing on the issues of urban provision and governance established earlier on. There were several processes at work at the neighbourhood level, and if generalisations are ill-­advised, there is a strong basis to suggest that the actions of the movement over the ‘Hot Summer’ reveal a rejection of radicalisation, a course of action consciously chosen and which contributed to a moderate victory by denying the Popular Power camp what it needed most: popular support. Demobilisation: defeat, disillusionment or institutionalisation? A final key question on the history of the urban movement relates to the manner of its demise. The evidence presented here qualifies arguments made by classic liberal ‘transitology’ that a full demobilisation of civil society is a prerequisite for democratisation. Not only did popular mobilisation influence the mode and direction of democratisation, but only a partial, strategic demobilisation was necessary to undermine the claims and strength of the revolutionary camp. Many residents’ commissions, particularly those who had rejected radicalisation, still saw a role for themselves in the exact same terms they had first mobilised. Yet, by the end of 1976, it was clear that the movement was running out of steam, and was no longer considered a legitimate representative of the urban poor by a state intent on ‘normalisation’. But this loss of political influence does not necessarily mean that the movement demobilised fully, and there is evidence to suggest that many residents’ commissions continued in activity. In 1978, around 11 per cent of respondents to a national survey claimed to have been involved in a residents’ commission in the previous year, and given the concentration of such organisations in urban areas, the proportion is likely to have been greater in Lisbon.41 Beyond this period, not only did some residents’ commissions continue in operation, but new ones were created.42 Charting the creation of voluntary associations in Portugal since 1974,

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Branco and Fernandes have found that there has been a steady growth in the number of new neighbourhood associations created since the mid-­1970s, although this does not take into account those which ceased activity. The same authors suggest that these types of organisations have continued to play a consultative role at the level of the locality, although there is not enough systematic evidence to fully confirm this yet.43 But even if such new neighbourhood organisations are consulted on local matters, this is still a long way from the kinds of democratic participation that were demanded by the movement during the revolutionary period. And while the organisations themselves may have continued in existence, and new ones created, the connections and concerted action that made them into a social movement are no longer present. What happed, then, to the urban movement? Drawing on other transitions from authoritarianism, including Spain, Chile or Eastern Germany, several authors argue that social mobilisation declines rapidly following the removal of authoritarian regimes, as social movements either become institutionalised or are marginalised by the new political system.44 The evidence suggest that, in Portugal, the demobilisation of the movement owes more to its marginalisation by the political system and the disillusionment that followed than to any form of institutionalisation, despite the contributions it made to the establishment of democracy. In Spain and Chile, where urban mobilisation featured prominently in the transition to democracy, urban movements were connected to longer-­ term oppositionist strategies by political parties and trade unions, which had used them as a means to destabilise and delegitimise the authoritarian regime. As a result, there were considerable overlaps between urban movements and institutional oppositions, particularly at the level of leaderships.45 Patricia Hipsher argues that as a consequence, the demobilisation of the urban movements in those countries happened as result of strategic actions by party and movement leaderships, who moved towards non-­confrontation and cooperation in a post-­transition settlement. As part of this, both the Spanish and Chilean movements underwent a process of institutionalisation, although in different ways. In Chile this took place through their cooptation into a government housing subsidy programme that offered legal recognition for neighbourhood committees in return for commitment not to engage in political activism. In Spain the process of institutionalisation took place through the transfer of the leadership of the urban movement to elected positions at various levels of local government.46 In Portugal, in contrast, neither form of institutionalisation took place. The SAAL programme was practically extinguished in 1976. Future housing programmes, although eventually addressing the majority of

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the most problematic deficiencies and almost eradicating shantytowns by the mid-­1990s, would be top-­down interventions lacking the participatory mechanisms of the SAAL experiment. In contrast to the Spanish case (and once more disproving the manipulation thesis), the Portuguese social movement also seems to have had very little overlap with formal politics, at least to judge by the very limited transfer of personnel from the one to the other once municipal elections were held in 1976. Given the presence of the residents’ commissions at the local level, it could have been expected that they would have been at the very least a fruitful recruitment ground for politically motivated, experienced, and well connected activists. However, there is a striking absence of overlap between the executives of residents’ commissions and candidates for local office in the first municipal elections of 1976. A comparison of neighbourhood commission executives from 1974 to1975 and Junta de Freguesia executive candidates in 1976 across a sample of city wards reveals an overlap of only 9 per cent between the two groups, showing how few migrated from the social movement to formal political activity. Even fewer were eventually elected.47 This indisputable gap between non-­ institutional and institutional politics in democratic Portugal is critical to the understanding of why the promise of a better, more equal democracy at the heart of the mobilisation of the urban poor in 1974–75 has only been partially fulfilled, and why the movement itself withered away through 1976 to eventually disappear as a meaningful social actor. The trajectory towards demobilisation of the urban movement and the longer-­term legacies of its mobilisation have to be placed in the context of the paradoxical inheritance of the revolution itself on the Portuguese political system and culture. The ‘revolutionary’, or at least insurgent, route to democracy in Portugal was characterised by widespread ‘immoderate’ social mobilisations that have left behind a political culture and set of symbolic references that validate extra-­institutional forms of claim-­making as both legitimate and desirable. However, the paradox lies in the fact that its political system, including state, parties and trade unions, tend to be relatively closed to social mobilisation from outside the institutional sphere, even if they often invoke its rhetoric and repertoires, including marches and demonstrations. The impermeability of the political system to social movements, rapidly reconstituted following the normalisation of politics may help explain the growing disillusionment and demobilisation of urban movement supporters. Contrasting democratic practice in contemporary Spain and Portugal, Robert Fishman argues that in the latter ‘the voices and varied tactics of demonstrators are broadly accepted as normal components of ­politics,

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which merit attention’. For Fishman, in comparison the results of Spain’s ‘pacted’ transition where the old regime was accommodated rather then removed, in Portugal the political system presents itself was open to ‘democratic agitation’, in the words of Jorge Sampaio, President of Portugal between 1996 and 2006.48 One of the examples given by Fishman of the degree of responsiveness of the state to protest is a direct inheritance from the urban movement: in 2005, the state’s housing agency handed a social housing neighbourhood to a philanthropic institution, who was charged with managing the estate. The neighbourhood in question, Amendoeiras in the Chelas ward, included over five hundred dwellings that had been occupied in May 1974 by shantytown residents. The current residents (many of whom had been involved in the occupations) organised a campaign against what they considered the unfair rent rises imposed by the new landlord and, echoing calls from 1974 to1975, demanded that right to buy their homes. The campaign reached the media and parliament, where political parties across the spectrum voted to attend to the protest, resulting in the return of the neighbourhood to public ownership, and the possibility of tenant purchase.49 While Fishman’s argument is very convincing with regard to a rhetorical commitment to openness to protest in Portugal, it is less so when it comes to whether a de facto openness exists, beyond occasional isolated instances. The degree of receptiveness of the state to non-­institutionalised forms of claim-­making is difficult to measure but it is notable that, even two and three decades after democratisation, surveys have repeatedly found that Portuguese citizens regard their state and political institutions as closed to them. These surveys reveal very low levels of self-­reported political efficacy and see power as much more distant than citizens of countries with comparable levels of economic development, a feeling that is particularly prevalent amongst the poorest and least educated.50 Such attitudes are also reflected in political action: using data from 2000, Ingelhart and Catterberg found that the Portuguese, along with the Spanish, were the least likely among western democracies to engage in non-­institutional forms of claim-­making, what they call ‘elite-­challenging political behaviour’, a striking finding, particularly if the level of participation and mobilisation of the transition period is taken into account.51 Some approaches have blamed such low levels of political engagement and participation on long-­standing cultural traits supposedly driven by a traditionalist, catholic and family oriented mentality.52 However, the very history of the urban social movements and other forms of political participation during the revolutionary period show that there is nothing that is culturally fixed about such attitudes. Instead, they indicate that

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when institutions demonstrate a degree of openness to claim-­making, Portuguese civil society is very capable of mobilising to press forward its interests. The causes for this disaffection have to be sought instead in the nature of political institutions. Villaverde Cabral has pointed to the historical trajectory of what he terms the ‘administrative despotism’ of the state in Portugal, a form of bureaucratic domination by the central state aided by continued failure to expand literacy to the great majority of the population until the last quarter of the twentieth century. The Portuguese state developed as a bureaucratic machinery driven by the strategies of political elites, and rarely built up through mechanisms of contractual interaction with the population, making it distant and unresponsive.53 While the transition to democracy operated vast and crucial transformations that opened up the state to popular and democratic input to an unprecedented extent, legacies of authoritarianism have continued to keep the administrative machinery of the state relatively closed to popular influence, diminishing the incentives for mobilisation.54 Just as the reconstitution of the cohesion of the state since democratisation reduced the space for political claim-­making, so have the political institutions created at the time. The electoral and party systems established in 1975 ensured a monopoly of parliamentary representation for political parties (no independent candidates can stand for election unless put forward by a party) and favoured the rotation in power of the two major moderate parties, PS and PPD – the latter renamed as PSD (Partido Social Democrata: ‘Social Democratic Party’). Partially as the result of their competition with each other during the revolution, and with a Communist Party with a strong and loyal urban working-­ class constituency, the moderate parties developed as ‘catch-­all’ parties with weak social roots. Concerns over the fragmentation of the political spectrum and potential ungovernability (fears that were themselves stoked by the climate of the revolutionary period) led to the creation of a party system that is highly centralised and personalised, with party leaderships, not members, having complete control of candidate selection.55 In the state, democratic executives inherited a highly centralised bureaucratic machine which leading political parties have successfully colonised and used as a source of patronage and clientelism, continuing some of the practices of the dictatorship. This system, which some authors have termed a form of ‘neo-­patrimonialism’, has allowed the parties with most regular access to executive power (PS and PSD) to act as principal gate-­ keepers in the relationship between state and society.56 Moreover, the Portuguese Communist Party also established an institutional role for itself that discouraged autonomous civil society

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organisation. Throughout the transition, as was argued in the earlier chapters, the PCP maintained an ambiguous if not outright hostile stance towards grassroots organisations it did not control, preferring to work through institutional channels. This pattern continued after democratisation, with its control over the main trade union organisation, the Confederação Geral dos Trabalhadores Partugueses (CGTP), which in the words of Leonardo Morlino was close to a ‘transmission belt’ for the party, or the incorporation of new political issues through satellite organisations, such as the Green Party, created in 1982.57 Through a variety of mechanisms then, the main political parties in Portugal have also gained substantial influence over substantial sectors of civil society, which are highly dependent on government funding.58 By placing themselves as the unavoidable gate-­keepers of access to the state, both as insiders and outsiders (in the case of the PCP), they make claim-­making by autonomous, non-­institutional actors such as social movements and voluntary associations more difficult.59 This reinforces the monopoly of political parties on representation, but also makes politicians themselves less responsive to popular claim-­making, since ‘the street’ is unlikely to be able to mount a challenge capable of altering political strategies and policies, under most circumstances. The nature of the political system in Portugal, and in particular of its dominant political parties whose influence stretches across the machinery of the state and the space of public society, has placed considerable obstacles to the exercise of voice through non-­institutional means. This can help explain why the political mobilisation of the revolutionary period was not translated into a longer-­lasting engagement via non-­ institutional means of the kind seen in other European democracies. It would be wrong, however, to give the impression of immutability: although limited, there have been elements of reform since the early 2000s that have begun prising open hitherto closed institutions, and there are signs that the shape of Portuguese civil society is gradually changing, with increasing numbers of ‘new social movement’ organisations now appearing.60 At the same time, the emergence of fringe parties such as the ‘Left Bloc’ has helped to destabilise the balance between the parties, creating further opportunities for civil society activism.61 Concluding reflections While the urban social movement itself found itself locked out from the participation and representation, the commitments and rights it helped enshrine are still in force and are supposed to guide the actions of demo-

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cratically elected governments. And they continue to be supported by a remarkable proportion of the population. At the end of the 1990s, 89.9 per cent of the respondents to an international survey in Portugal agreed that the state should intervene to make society more equal.62 Between 1975 and the present day, when the commitment of the Portuguese regime to universal social rights entitlement finds itself threatened by the repercussions of the 2008 global banking crisis, Portuguese citizens were able to enjoy a better minimum and improving standard of housing, education, childcare and healthcare.63 But while these improvements have been marked, and have lifted large sectors of the population from the absolute poverty and deprivation that had characterised their lives for so long, the gains in terms of social and political equality have remained far short of the hopes expressed by popular movements in 1974–75. There are multiple reasons for the limits to the realisation of the promises of equality and democratic participation made through the Portuguese Revolution. Some, such as the shape of many institutions and practices and the legacy of poverty and illiteracy, are rooted in legacies of a long-­lasting and deeply reactionary authoritarian regime which even a period of revolutionary transition could not erase and will take time to fade away.64 Others, such as the pressures stemming from a globalised neo-­liberal economic order, cannot be tackled by any one country alone. But other central concerns were, and are, within the grasp of political action. This is clearly the case with issues of inequality and political engagement – and the two are related. The party system that has rotated in government since the last 1970s has maintained barriers to everyday democratic participation and ownership, retaining centralised power in a way that is impermeable to the meaningful participation of ordinary citizens. Due to a proportional representation list system used at all levels of government, party machines are primarily loyal to the centre rather than to their constituencies, and parties operate as nation-­ wide clientelistic patronage organisations. While the political system itself continues to block a wider participation of the kind that the urban social movement mobilised for – including a more democratic control over the city – that absence of participation is in itself one of the reasons why socio-­economic inequalities remain glaring. With parties able to play the margins of mass national vote, the poorest sections of society, which are also those less likely to vote, find themselves largely forgotten. When popular movements such as the residents’ commissions stepped away from the polarisation of the revolutionary period and its members cast their votes for the moderate democratic parties an implicit political contract was sealed. Democratic rule and political and social equality

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were central to that bargain, but the Portuguese political system has had mixed record in keeping its promises. Thinking of democratisation in terms of degrees, rather than absolutes reminds us that the road which the Portuguese society embarked on in 25 April 1974 is still far from fully travelled, and may have many twists. But it also gives hope that a better, deeper democracy is possible. If the experience of the urban social movement of 1974–75 can teach us anything, it is that we have nothing to fear and everything to gain from a truly democratic participation in building that future. Notes  1 AHM/AAC/CE 76, Comissõa de Moradores do Alto da Eira, Comissão de Moradores do Vale Escuro, Comissão de Moradores da Quinta dos Peixinhos to CML, 19 February 1976; CML President’s Chief of Staff to Comissões de Moradores do Alto da Eira, Vale Escuro and Quinta dos Peixinhos, 27 March 1976.  2 AHM/AAC/CE 76, Comissão de Moradores of Quinta dos Machados, Quinta do Leal and Circunvalação, Comissõa de Moradores of Quinta do Roxo (Associação de Moradores da Quinta das Laranjeiras), ‘Caderno Reivindicativo’, 27 February 1976.  3 Diário de Lisboa, 16 January 1976, p. 6.  4 Républica, 5 December 1975, pp. 5 and 8–9.  5 Diário de Lisboa, 6 February 1976, p. 8.  6 ‘Restruturação da Inter-­Comissões de Bairros de Lata e Pobres da Zona de Lisboa’ and ‘Adenda à Proposta de Reestruturação da Inter-­ Comissões’: motions approved at the plenary of the Inter on 28 February 1976, reproduced in Francisco José do N. Branco, ‘Elementos para a História do Movimento dos “Bairros de Lata e Bairros Pobres” do Concelho de Lisboa (25 Abril 74 – Março 77)’, Cadernos de Intervenção Social – Associação de Estudantes do Instituto Superior do Serviço Social, 2 (1979): 159–160.  7 ‘Programa de Luta da Inter-­Comissões dos Bairros de Lata e Bairros Pobres da Zona de Lisboa’, Branco, ‘Elementos para a História’, pp. 161–162.  8 A Gazeta da Semana, 1 April 1976, p. 13.  9 A Luta, 12 April 1976, p. 4. 10 Jornal Novo, 11 December 1975, p. 11. 11 Diário de Lisboa, 6 February 1976, p. 6. The commission of inquiry had little activity, and was wound down in 1977: ‘Despacho Normativo nº 250/77’, in Diário da Républica, Iª Série, no 297, 26 December 1977. 12 A Luta, 3 July 1976, p. 4. 13 AHM/AAC/CE 76, Direcção dos Serviços de Habitação, Nota de Audiência, 22 March 1976. This was being done by a new moderate City Council Executive, which had replaced the PCP-­MDP dominated administration, sacked by the 6th Provisional Government on 17 November 1975.

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14 ‘A Defesa da Nossa Organização de Moradores Pobres em Luta por Casas Decentes’, reproduced in Branco, ‘Elementos para a História’, 164–166. 15 Diário de Notícias, 31 August 1976, pp. 1, 3; 1 September 1976, pp. 1, 7. 16 Diário de Notícias, 4 September 1976, p. 4. 17 Conselho Nacional do SAAL, Livro Branco do SAAL, 1974–1976 (Vila Nova de Gaia, 1976), pp. 28–29. 18 Diário da Assembleia da Républica, I Legislatura (1976–1980), I Sessão, nº 26, 13 October 1976, pp. 719–720. 19 Diário de Lisboa, 30 October 1976, p. 7. Overall, despite working with fifteen residents’ housing cooperatives by the end of 1975, the final output of the SAAL scheme in Lisbon was modest. When the government passed the SAAL over to the councils, building had hardly started: only 172 houses had begun construction, and the SAAL services expected 840 more to start by the end of 1977. Many of the cooperatives’ neighbourhoods never left the planning stages. By 1995 only 1,852 dwellings had been, or were in the process of being, built. Conselho Nacional do SAAL, Livro Branco do Saal, 1974–1976 (Vila Nova de Gaia: Conselho Nacional do SAAL, 1976), XXIII–XXXIX. Observatório da Habitação, Cooperativas de Habitação de Lisboa – Situação e Perspectivas (Lisboa: Centro de Estudos Territoriais/ISCTE – Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, 1994), 24–26, 35–36, 41–46. 20 ‘Conferência de Imprensa Realizada em Lisboa (Quinta das Fonsecas) pelas Organizações de Moradores Ligadas ao SAAL’, 2 November 1976, reproduced in Branco, ‘Elementos Para a História’, 167–168. 21 Ibid.: 143; A Gazeta da Semana, 18 November 1976, p. 8. 22 A Capital, 10 December 1976, pp. 10–11, 15–16. 23 See Table 5.2, on p. 195, for a distribution of the 1976 local election vote. 24 Giovanni Capoccia and Daniel Ziblatt, ‘The Historical Turn in Democratization Studies: A New Research Agenda for Europe and Beyond’, Comparative Political Studies, 43, 8/9 (2010): 940. 25 Charles Tilly, Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 11–15. 26 Pierre Guibentif, ‘The Transformation of the Portuguese Social Security System’, in Southern European Welfare States: Between Crisis and Reform, ed. Martin Rhodes (London: Frank Cass, 1997), 225–228, José Luís Cardoso and Maria Manuela Rocha, ‘Corporativismo e Previdência Social (1933–1962)’, Ler História, 45 (2003): 132; Irene Flunser Pimentel, ‘A Assistência Social e Familiar do Estado Novo nos Anos 30 e 40’, Análise Social, XXXIV, 151–152 (2000): 478–484. 27 James Holston, Insurgent Citizenship: Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil (Princeton/Woodstock: Princeton University Press, 2008), 309–313. 28 Charles Downs, Revolution at the Grassroots: Community Organizations in the Portuguese Revolution (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989), 105–107; John L. Hammond, Building Popular Power: Workers’ and Neighborhood Movements in the Portuguese Revolution (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1988), 137, 188.

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29 Bill Lomax, ‘Ideology and Illusion in the Portuguese Revolution: The Role of the Left’, in In Search of Modern Portugal: The Revolution and Its Consequences, ed. Lawrence S. Graham and Douglas L. Wheeler (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983); Juan Mozzicafreddo, ‘A Questão do Estado no Processo Politico Português, 1974–76’, Cadernos de Ciências Sociais, 2 (1984). 30 For a development of this argument with regard to integration and autonomy, see Manuel Castells, The City and the Grassroots: A Cross-­Cultural Theory of Urban Social Movements (London: Edward Arnold, 1983), 209–212, 322–325. 31 My use of the term ‘moral economy’ refers to E.P. Thompson’s seminal article. The concept has been explored in the context of the Revolution’s rural land seizure movements by Vester, who argued the land seizures can be seen in part as a response by rural workers to the rejection by landowners of a centuries-­ old contractual relation, and is echoed in Baum’s findings about the political attitudes of former land-­seizure activists. This prompts the thought, unanswerable in the context of this research, of whether such attitudes to urban property could be rooted in the rural origin of many of the city’s poor: E.P. Thompson, ‘The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century’, Past & Present, 50 (1971); Michael Vester, ‘A Reforma Agrária Portuguesa como Processo Social’, Revista Crítica das Ciências Sociais, 18/19/20 (1986): 490– 491, 502–505; Michael Baum, ‘Worker’s Control and Changes in the Political Culture: Portugal’s Alentejo 20 years after the Revolution’, South European Society and Politics, 4, 1 (1998): 1–35. 32 In this sense, the finding presented here support the interpretation of the urban movement put forward by João Arriscado Nunes and Nuno Serra, ‘Decent Housing for the People’: Urban Movements and Emancipation in Portugal’, South European Society and Politics, 9, 2 (2004): 59–60. 33 AHM/AAC/CE 76, Comissões de Moradores da Quinta do Narigão e da Quinta do Alto to CML, 26 July 1974. 34 AHM/AAC/CE 76, Comissão de Moradores do Bairro do Grilo to CML, 5 November 1975. 35 Diego Palacios Cerezales, O Poder Caiu na Rua: Crise de Estado e Acções Colectivas na Revolução Portuguesa 1974–1975 (Lisboa: Imprensa das Ciências Sociais, 2003), 90. 36 Boaventura Sousa Santos, O Estado e a Sociedade em Portugal 1974–1988 (Porto: Edições Afrontamento, 1990), 28. 37 ‘Artigo 65º (Habitação), Constituição da Républica Portuguesa (Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional-­Casa da Moeda, 1976), 43. 38 As argued during the debate on the article by Helena Roseta, PPD spokesperson on housing: Diário da Assembleia Constituinte, nº 60, 9 October 1975, pp. 1835–1836. 39 Filipe Carreira da Silva and Mónica Brito Vieira, O Momento Constituinte: os Direitos Sociais na Constituição (Coimbra: Almedina, 2010), 41, 54–55; Pedro Magalhães, ‘Elections, Parties, and Policy-­Making Institutions in Democratic Portugal’, in Contemporary Portugal: Politics, Society and Culture, 2nd edn, ed. António Costa Pinto (Boulder: Social Science Monographs, 2011) 227–229.

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40 Nancy G. Bermeo, ‘Myths of Moderation: Confrontation and Conflict During Democratic Transitions’, Comparative Politics, 29, 3 (1997): 319; F. Elizabeth J. Wood, ‘An Insurgent Path to Democracy – Popular Mobilization, Economic Interests, and Regime Transition in South Africa and El Salvador’, Comparative Political Studies, 34, 8 (2001). 41 Rui Branco And Tiago Fernandes, ‘Civil Society And The Quality Of Democracy: Portugal 1974–2010’, Paper presented at the 19th International Conference of Europeanists, Boston, 22–24 March 2012. 42 Although no comparable study is available for Lisbon, Helena Vilaça surveyed local residents’ associations and housing cooperatives in Oporto in 1990 and 1991. Most of those in existence in the city at that time traced their origins to the years 1974 and 1975. Many of the organisations created then had since ceased activity; but those that had been able to initiate cooperative house-­ building schemes continued their activity: Helena Vilaça, ‘Associativismo Urbano e Participação na Cidade’, Sociologia – Revista da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto, 1 (1991); Helen Vilaça ‘As Associações de Moradores Enquanto Aspecto Particular do Associativismo Urbano e da Participação Social’, Sociologia – Revista da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto, 4 (1994). Recent work has also highlighted the creation of residents’ associations in squats and shanties of a more recent wave of migrants, this time not rural, but post-­colonial: Ana Paula Beja Horta. ‘Places of Resistance: Power, Spatial Discourses and Migrant Grassroots Organizing in the Periphery of Lisbon’, City 10, 3 (2006): 269–285. 43 Branco and Fernandes, ‘Civil Society.’ 44 Lynn Kamenitsa, ‘The Process of Political Marginalization – East German Social Movements after the Wall’, Comparative Politics, 30, 3 (1998); Patricia L. Hipsher, ‘Democratization and the Decline of Urban Social Movements in Chile and Spain’, Comparative Politics, 28, 3 (1996); Philip Oxhorn, ‘Where Did All the Protesters Go? Popular Mobilization and the Transition to Democracy in Chile’, Latin American Perspectives, 21, 3 (1994). 45 Hipsher, ‘Democratization and the Decline of Urban Social Movements in Chile and Spain’, 284, 88. 46 Ibid., 286; Manuel Castells, ‘Productores de Ciudad: el Movimiento Ciudadano’, in Memoria Ciudadana y Movimiento Vecinal: Madrid, 1968–2008, ed. Vicente Pérez Quintana and Pablo Sanchéz León (Madrid: Catarata, 2008), 30–31. 47 These results were obtained by collating all lists of residents’ commission executives available in either newspapers or the correspondence files, which provided 566 names from neighbourhood executives in 21 of the city’s 53 wards, representing neighbourhoods of all categories. These were compared with the full candidate list for the 21 wards, and only 51 individuals appeared in both. Electoral data from AHM/AAC, Candidatos às Juntas de Freguesia, Eleições Autárquicas 1976. 48 Robert Fishman, ‘Democratic Practice after the Revolution: The Case of Portugal and Beyond’, Politics & Society, 39, 2 (2011): 5. 49 Ibid., 10; Diário de Notícias, 23 January 2006.

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50 Manuel Villaverde Cabral, ‘Despotismo de Estado e Sociedade Civil Real em Portugal: Distância ao Poder, Comunicação Política e Familismo Amoral’, in Razão, Tempo e Tecnologia. Estudos em Homenagem a Hermínio Martins, ed. Manuel Villaverde Cabral, José Luís Garcia, and Hermínio Martins (Lisboa: Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, 2006): 157–161; Pedro Magalhães, ‘Disaffected Democrats: Political Attitudes and Political Action in Portugal’, West European Politics, 28, 5 (2005): 974–975, 80–81. 51 Ronald Inglehart and Gabriela Catterberg, ‘Trends in Political Action: The Developmental Trend and the Post-­Honeymoon Decline’, International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 43, 3–5 (2002): 308. 52 Howard J. Wiarda and Margaret MacLeish Mott, Catholic Roots and Democratic Flowers: Political Systems in Spain and Portugal (Westport: Praeger, 2001), 2–5. 53 Cabral, ‘Despotismo de Estado e Sociedade Civil Real em Portugal: Distância ao Poder, Comunicação Política e Familismo Amoral’, 164–170; for an enlightening set of essays on the development of governmentality in Portugal, see Pedro Tavares de Almeida and Rui Miguel C. Branco, eds., Burocracia, Estado e Território: Portugal e Espanha (Séculos XIX–XX) (Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, 2007). 54 Dimitri A. Sotiropolous, ‘Old Problems and New Challanges: the Enduring and Changing Functions of Southern European State Bureaucracies’, in Democracy and the State in the New Southern Europe, ed. Richard Gunther, P. Nikiforos Diamandouros and Dimitri A. Sotiropolous (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 210–211. 55 Magalhães, ‘Elections, Parties, and Policy-­Making Institutions in Democratic Portugal’, 230; Carlos Jalali and Marco Lisi, ‘Weak Societal Roots, Strong Individual Patrons? Patronage and Party Organization in Portugal’, Revista Enfoques, 7, 11 (2009): 448–450. 56 Jalali and Lisi, ‘Weak Societal Roots, Strong Individual Patrons? Patronage and Party Organization in Portugal’, 454; José M. Magone ‘The Difficult Transformation of State and Public Administration in Portugal: Europeanization and the Persistence of Neo-­ Patrimonialism.’ Public Administration, 89, 3 (2011): 756–782. 57 Leonardo Morlino, Democracy Between Consolidation and Crisis: Parties, Groups and Citizens in Southern Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998): 232–235; Elisabete Figueiredo, Teresa Fidélis and Artur Rosa Pires, ‘Grassroots Environmental Action in Portugal (1974–1994)’, in Klaus Eder and Maria Kousis, eds., Environmental Politics in Southern Europe: Actors, Institutions, and Discourses in a Europeanizing Society (London: Kluwer Academic, 2001): 204. 58 Civil society associations in receipt of government subsidies include not only voluntary organisations that deliver welfare and other social services, but also business, professional and local interest organisations: Jalali, Silva and Silva, ‘Givers and Takers: Parties, State Resources and Civil Society in Portugal’, 65. 59 Carlos Jalali, Patrícia Silva and Sandra Silva, ‘Givers and Takers: Parties, State Resources and Civil Society in Portugal’, Party Politics, 18, 1 (2012): 64.

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60 Branco and Fernandes, ‘Civil Society’; José Manuel de Oliveira Mendes and Ana Maria Seixas, ‘Acção colectiva e protesto em Portugal: Os movimentos sociais ao espelho dos media: (1992–2002)’, Revista Crítica das Ciências Sociais, 72 (2005): 99–127; Carles Feixa, Inês Pereira and Jeffrey S. Juris. ‘Global Citizenship and the “New, New” social movements: Iberian Connections’, Young – Nordic Journal of Youth Research, 17, 4 (2009): 421–442. 61 Marco Lisi. ‘New Politics in Portugal: The Rise and Success of the Left Bloc’, Pôle Sud: Revue de science politique de l’Europe méridionale, 30, 1 (2009): 127–144. 62 Manuel Villaverde Cabral, ‘Percepções e Avaliações das Desigualdades Sociais e Económicas em Perspectiva Comparada: Portugal, Brasil e Outros Paises’, in Desigualdades Sociais e Percepções De Justiça, ed. Manuel Villaverde Cabral, Jorge Vala, and André Freire (Lisboa: ICS, 2003), 54. 63 António Barreto, ed., A Situação Social em Portugal, 1960–1995 (Lisboa: Instituto das Ciências Sociais, 1996). 64 Marisol García and Neovi Karakatsanis, ‘Social Policy, Democracy, and Citizenship in Southern Europe’, in Democracy and the State in the New Southern Europe, ed. Richard Gunther, P. N. Diamandouros and D. A.  Sotiropoulos (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 114–117, 126, 129.

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Primary materials

Archives Coimbra, Universidade de: Centro de Documentação 25 de Abril Fundo de Comunicados e Pamfletos – University of Coimbra, 25 April Archive, Political Pamflets, Posters and Newsletters, 1974–76 (UC/CD25A/FCP). Lisboa, Câmara Municipal de: Arquivo Histórico Municipal de Lisboa/Arquivo do Arco do Cego – Lisbon Municipal Archive, Arco do Cego Archive. Actas das Reuniões da Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, 1974–1975 – Minutes of Meetings of the Municipal Executive, 1974–75. Correspondência Eleitoral 1976 – Electoral Correspondence, 1976 (AHM/ AAC/CE 76). Candidatos às Juntas de Freguesia, Eleições Autárquicas 1976 – Ward Executive Candidates, 1976 Local Elections. Lisboa, Câmara Municipal de: Arquivo Histórico Municipal/Arquivo Fotográfico de Lisboa – Lisbon Municipal Archive/Lisbon Photographic Archive. Lisboa, Câmara Municipal de: Departamento de Planeamento e Projectos, Espólio Gabinete Técnico da Habitação (GTH) – Lisbon City Council Planning and Project Department, Techical Office for Housing Collection. Lisboa, Câmara Municipal de: Gabinete de Estudos Olissiponenses (GEO) – Municipal Historical Research Centre and Archive. Arquivo Matos Sequeira – Press Cuttings (1960s). Arquivo Pastor de Macedo – Press Cuttings (1960s). Lisboa, Santa Casa da Misericórdia de: Arquivo, Lisboa, Comissão de Acção Social dos Bairros Municipais – Archive of the Lisbon Misericórdia, Commission for Social Assistance for Municipal Neighbourhoods, 1938–74. (SCML/CASBM). Portugal, Instituto dos Arquivos Nacionais, Torre do Tombo, Lisboa – Portuguese National Archives, Torre do Tombo, Lisbon. Arquivo do Conselho da Revolução – Archives of the Council of the Revolution, 1975–82 (PT/TT/CR). Arquivo Oliveira Salazar – Salazar Archive, 1933–68 (PT/TT/AOS). Arquivo PIDE/DGS – Political Police Archives, 1933–74 (PT/TT/ PIDE-­DGS).

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Electoral data Ministério da Administração Interna, Secretariado Técnico dos Assuntos Políticos, Instituto Nacional de Estatística and Ministério da Comunicação Social, Eleições para a Assembleia Constituinte 1975 – I Volume: Resultados por Freguesias, Concelhos e Distritos do Continente e Ilhas Adjacentes (Lisboa, 1975): 35–36, 103–104, 171–172. All other electoral data from www.cne.pt and www.stape.pt.

Interviews Filipe Mário Lopes, Vice-­President of the Administrative Commission of the Lisbon City Council, 1974–75 (interview conducted on 26 October 2004).

Official statistics Instituto Nacional de Estatística, Recenseamento Geral da População (1950), Recenseamento Geral da População e Habitação (1960, 1970, 1981) – National Population and Housing Censuses. Instituto Nacional de Estatística, Anuário Estatístico – Statistical Annual (Various Years). Census data, statistical annuals and other data available at www.ine.pt.

Periodicals Parliamentary debates and legislation Diário das Sessões, Assembleia Nacional, 1935–1974. Diário da Assembleia Constituinte, 1975–1976. Diário da Assembleia da Républica (various years). Diário do Governo/Diário da Républica (various years). All of the above are available on-­line at http://debates.parlamento.pt/.

Daily press (1974–76) A Capital A Luta Diário de Lisboa Diário de Notícias Jornal Novo Républica

Weekly press/magazines (1974–76) A Gazeta da Semana. Expresso. Flama. Vida Mundial.

Party newspapers and newsletters (1974–76) Avante (PCP). Esquerda Socialista (MES).

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Luta Popular (MRPP). O Militante (PCP). Poder Popular (MES). Portugal Socialista (PS). Povo Livre (PPD). Revolução (PRP-­BR). Unidade (MDP/CDE). Voz do Povo (UDP). Secondary materials

Accornero, Guya. ‘Efervescência Estudantil: estudantes, acção contenciosa e processo político no final do Estado Novo (1956–1974).’ PhD Thesis, Universidade de Lisboa, 2009. Adães Bermudes, A.R. Projecto Para a Organização d’uma Sociedade Promotora de Habitações Económicas Destinadas às Classes Laboriosas e Menos Abastadas. Lisboa: 1897. Ali, Tariq. ‘Revolutionary Politics: Ten Years After 1968.’ Socialist Register, 15 (1978): 146–157. Álvaro, J. Reis. ‘Auto-­Construção.’ In Colóquio Sobre Política de Habitação, edited by Ministério das Obras Públicas. Lisboa: Ministério das Obras Públicas, 1969. Amenta, Edwin, Neal Caren, Tina Fetner and Michael P. Young. ‘Challengers and States: Toward a Political Sociology of Social Movements.’ Research in Political Sociology, 20 (2002): 47–83. Andrade, A. Ferraz de, J.P. Barata and M. Gonçalves da Fonseca. ‘Aspectos de um Inquérito às condições de habitação em Lisboa.’ Análise Social, II, 6 (1964): 301–307. Anonymous (Grupo de Trabalho de Estudantes de Arquitectura do Porto). ‘O Direito à Habitação.’ In 3º Congresso da Oposição Democrática: Teses, 3ª Secção–4ª Secção. Lisboa: Seara Nova, 1974. Baptista, Fernando Oliveira. ‘O 25 de Abril, a Sociedade Rural e a Questão da Terra.’ In O País em Revolução, edited by J.M. Brandão de Brito. Lisboa: Editorial Notícias, 2001. Baptista, Luís, and Teresa Rodrigues. ‘Population and Urban Density: Lisbon in the 19th and 20th Centuries.’ In Urban Dominance and Labour Market Differentiation of a European Capital City – Lisbon 1890–1990, edited by Pedro Telhado Pereira and Maria Eugénia Mata. Boston: Kluwer, 1996. Baptista, Luís Vicente. ‘Casa, Família, Ideologia; a emergência da política de “moradias unifamiliares” em Portugal nos anos 30.’ Ler História, 34 (1998): 137–164. Barata Salgueiro, Teresa. ‘A Promoção Habitacional e o 25 de Abril.’ Revista Crítica das Ciências Sociais, 18/19/20 (1986): 673–691. Barbosa, A., F.S. Alves, J. Azevedo, M. Sousa Lobo and P. Villas-­ Boas.

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Ocupação do Bairro do Bom Sucesso em Odivelas, por 48 famílias de barracas. Porto: Afrontamento, 1972. Bastos, Susana Pereira. O Estado Novo e os Seus Vadios: Contribuições para o Estudo das Identidades Marginais e da Sua Repressão. Lisboa: Dom Quixote, 1997. Baum, Michael. ‘Workers’ Control and Changes in the Political Culture: Portugal’s Alentejo 20 years after the Revolution.’ South European Society and Politics, 4, 1 (1998): 1–35. Beja Horta and Ana Paula. ‘Places of Resistance: Power, Spatial Discourses and Migrant Grassroots Organizing in the Periphery of Lisbon.’ City, 10, 3 (2006): 269–285. Bermeo, Nancy. The Revolution Within the Revolution: Workers’ Control in Rural Portugal. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986. Bermeo, Nancy. ‘Myths of Moderation: Confrontation and Conflict during Democratic Transitions.’ Comparative Politics, 29, 3 (1997): 305–322. Bermeo, Nancy. Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times: The Citizenry and the Breakdown of Democracy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. Bermeo, Nancy. ‘War and Democratization: Lessons from the Portuguese Experience.’ Democratization, 14, 3 (2007): 388–406. Botelho, A. and M. Pinheiro. O Conselho Municipal do Porto – Balanço de uma Experiência. Porto: Cooperativa Editorial Perspectivas Sociais Autónomas, 1977. Branco, Francisco José do N. ‘Elementos para a História do Movimento dos “Bairros de Lata e Bairros Pobres” do Concelho de Lisboa (25 Abril 74 – Março 77).’ Cadernos de Intervenção Social – Associação de Estudantes do Instituto Superior do Serviço Social, 2 (1979): 132–70. Branco, Rui, and Tiago Fernandes. ‘Civil Society and the Quality of Democracy: Portugal 1974–2010’. Paper presented at the 19th International Conference of Europeanists, Boston, 22–24 March 2012. Brandão, Raúl. Os Operários. Lisboa: Biblioteca Nacional, 1984. Burton, Michael, Richard Gunther, and John Highley. ‘Introduction: Elite Transformations and Democratic Regimes.’ In Elites and Democratic Consolidation in Latin America and Southern Europe, edited by John Highley and Richard Gunther. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Büthe, Tim. ‘Taking Temporality Seriously: Modelling History and the Use of Narrative as Evidence.’ American Political Science Review, 96, 3 (2002): 481–493. Cabral, Manuel Villaverde. Portugal na Alvorada do Século XX: Forças Sociais, Poder Político e Crescimento Económico de 1890 a 1914. Lisboa: A Regra do Jogo, 1979. Cabral, Manuel Villaverde. ‘A “Segunda República” Portuguesa numa perspectiva histórica.’ Análise Social, XIX, 1 (1983): 127–142. Cabral, Manuel Villaverde. ‘Percepções e avaliações das desigualdades sociais e económicas em perspectiva comparada: Portugal, Brasil e outros paises.’ In

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Desigualdades Sociais e Percepções de Justiça, edited by Manuel Villaverde Cabral, Jorge Vala and André Freire. Lisboa: ICS, 2003. Cabral, Manuel Villaverde. ‘Despotismo de estado e sociedade civil real em Portugal: Distância ao Poder, Comunicação Política e Familismo Amoral.’ In Razão, Tempo e Tecnologia. Estudos em homenagem a Hermínio Martins, edited by Manuel Villaverde Cabral, José Luís Garcia and Hermínio Martins. Lisboa: Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, 2006. Cádima, Francisco Rui. ‘Os “Media” Na Revolução (1974–1976).’ In O País em Revolução, edited by J.M. Brandão de Brito, 321–58. Lisboa: Editorial Notícias, 2001. Caetano, Marcello. Renovação na Continuidade. Lisboa: Verbo, 1971. Calhoun, Craig J. ‘“New Social Movements” of the Early Nineteenth Century.’ Social Science History, 17, 3 (1993): 385–427. Capoccia, Giovanni and Daniel Ziblatt. ‘The Historical Turn in Democratization Studies: A New Research Agenda for Europe and Beyond.’ Comparative Political Studies, 43, 8/9 (2010): 931–968. Cardina, Miguel. Margem de certa maneira: o maoismo em Portugal, 1964– 1974. Lisboa: Tinta da China, 2011. Cardoso, Abílio. ‘State Intervention in Housing in Portugal, 1960–1980.’ PhD Thesis, University of Reading, 1983. Cardoso, José Luís and Maria Manuela Rocha. ‘Corporativismo e Previdência Social (1933–1962).’ Ler História, 45 (2003): 111–134. Carolo, Daniel Fernando. ‘A Institucionalização do Estado Providência em Portugal: Da Reforma da Previdência Social de 1962 à actual Reforma da Segurança Social’. Paper presented at the 26th Encontro da Associação Portuguesa de História Económica e Social, Ponta Delgada, 17–18 November 2006. Carreira da Silva, Filipe and Mónica Brito Vieira. O Momento Constituinte: Os Direitos Sociais na Constituição. Coimbra: Almedina, 2010. Castells, Manuel. The City and the Grassroots: A Cross-­Cultural Theory of Urban Social Movements. London: Edward Arnold, 1983. Castells, Manuel. ‘Productores de Ciudad: el movimiento ciudadano.’ In Memoria Ciudadana y Movimiento Vecinal: Madrid, 1968–2008, edited by Vicente Pérez Quintana and Pablo Sanchéz León. Madrid: Catarata, 2008. Castells, Manuel and Nuno Portas. ‘La Question du Logement au Portugal Démocratique.’ Espaces et Sociétés, 13–14 (1975): 199–207. Cerezales, Diego Palacios. ‘Reacción popular violenta y Estado revolucionario. El “verano caliente” portugués de 1975.’ Historia y Política, 7 (2002): 211–248. Cerezales, Diego Palacios. O Poder Caiu na Rua: Crise de Estado e Acções Colectivas na Revolução Portuguesa 1974–1975. Lisboa: Imprensa das Ciências Sociais, 2003. Cerezales, Diego Palacios. ‘“Fascist Lackeys”? Dealing with the Police’s Past during Portugal’s Transition to Democracy (1974–1980).’ Portuguese Journal of Social Science, 6, 3 (2007): 155–169.

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Cervelló, Josep Sanchez. A Revolução Portuguesa e a Sua Influência na Transição Espanhola (1961–1976). Lisboa: Assírio e Alvim, 1993. Chatterjee, Partha. The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. Clijsters, E. ‘Portugal 1974: A Non-­Violent Revolution: Causes, Course and Consequences of the “Revolution of the Carnations”.’ PhD Thesis, European University Institute, 1999. Coelho, Margarida. ‘Uma Experiência de Transformação no Sector Habitacional do Estado – SAAL 1974–76.’ Revista Crítica das Ciências Sociais, 18/19/20 (1986): 619–634. Collier, Ruth Berins. Paths toward Democracy: The Working Class and Elites in Western Europe and South America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Conselho Nacional do SAAL. Livro Branco do SAAL, 1974–1976. Vila Nova de Gaia: Conselho Nacional do SAAL, 1976. Corkill, David and José Carlos Pina Almeida. ‘Commemoration and Propaganda in Salazar’s Portugal: the Mundo Português Exposition of 1940.’ Journal of Contemporary History, 44 (2009): 381–399. Costa, António Firmino da. Sociedades de Bairro: Dinâmicas Sociais de Identidade Cultural. Oeiras: Celta, 1999. Costa Pinto, António. Salazar’s Dictatorship and European Fascism: Problems of Interpretation. New York/Boulder: Columbia University Press, 1995. Cruzeiro, Maria Manuela. Vasco Gonçalves: Um General na Revolução. Lisboa: Editorial Notícias, 2002. Cunhal, Álvaro. ‘Discurso no Comício de Amizade P.S.U.A.-­P.C.P. na Amadora, 21 de Dezembro 1974.’ In Discursos Políticos. Lisboan: Edições Avante, 1975. Cunhal, Álvaro. A Verdade e a Mentira na Revolução de Abril. Lisboa: Avante, 1999. Diani, Mario. ‘“Leaders” Or Brokers? Positions and Influence in Social Movement Networks.’ In Social Movements and Networks: Relational Approaches to Collective Action, edited by Mario Diani and Doug McAdam. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Downs, Charles. ‘Residents’ Comissions and Urban Struggles in Revolutionary Portugal.’ In In Search of Modern Portugal: The Revolution and Its Consequences, edited by Lawrence S. Graham and Douglas L. Wheeler. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983. Downs, Charles. Revolution at the Grassroots: Community Organizations in the Portuguese Revolution. Albany: SUNY Press, 1989. Durán Muñoz, Rafael. Contención y Transgresión: Las movilizaciones sociales y el Estado en las transiciones española y portuguesa. Madrid: Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, 2000. Earl, Jennifer, Andrew Martin, John D. McCarthy and Sarah A. Soule. ‘The Use of Newspaper Data in the Study of Collective Action.’ Annual Review of Sociology, 30 (2004): 65–80.

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Eisfeld, Reiner. ‘Reflexões sobre o murchar dos Cravos.’ Revista Crítica das Ciências Sociais, 15/16/17 (1985): 123–138. Ekiert, Grzegorz and Jan Kubik. ‘Contentious Politics in New Democracies: East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia, 1989–93.’ World Politics, 50, 4 (1998): 547–581. Feixa, Carles, Inês Pereira and Jeffrey S. Juris. ‘Global Citizenship and the “New, New” Social Movements: Iberian Connections.’ Young – Nordic Journal of Youth Research, 17, 4 (2009): 421–442. Fernandes, Ignácio Peres, A. Celestino Costa, J. M. Ferreira da Cunha, José Ruy Gomes, Nuno Portas and J. M. Alves de Sousa. Colóquio Sobre Política de Habitação: Relatório Final. Lisboa: Ministério das Obras Públicas, 1969. Fernandes, Magarida. Terra de Catarina: Ocupação de terras e relações Sociais em Balezão. Lisbon: Celta Editora, 2006. Fernandes, Tiago. Nem Ditadura, Nem Revolução: A Ala Liberal e o Marcelismo (1968–1974). Lisboa: Dom Quixote, 2006. Ferreira, David. ‘Inquilinato.’ In Dicionário da História de Portugal, Vol.III, edited by Joel Serrão. Lisboa: Iniciativas Editoriais, 1971. Ferreira, Maria Júlia. ‘O Bairro Social do Arco do Cego: Uma Aldeia Dentro da Cidade de Lisboa.’ Análise Social, XXIX, 127 (1994): 697–709. Ferreira, Vitor Matias. Movimentos Sociais Urbanos e Intervenção Política. Porto: Afrontamento, 1975. Ferreira, Vitor Matias. ‘A Cidade e o Campo. Uma leitura comparada do movimento social, 1974–1975.’ Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais, 18/19/20 (1987): 549–578. Ferreira, Vitor Matias. A Cidade de Lisboa: de capital do império a centro de metrópole. Lisboa: Dom Quixote, 1987. Ferro, António. Salazar: O Homem e a Sua Obra. Lisboa: Empresa Nacional de Publicidade, 1935. Fialho de Almeida, José V. Contos. Porto: Ernesto Chardron, 1881. Figueiredo, Elisabete, Teresa Fidélis and Artur Rosa Pires, ‘Grassroots Environmental Action in Portugal (1974–1994).’ In Environmental Politics in Southern Europe: Actors, Institutions, and Discourses in a Europeanizing Society, edited by Klaus Eder and Maria Kousis. London: Kluwer Academic, 2001. Fillieule, Olivier. Stratégies de la rue: les manifestations en France. Paris: Presse de Science Po, 1997. Fillieule, Olivier, ed. Le désengagement militant. Paris: Éditions Belin, 2005. Fishman, Robert. ‘Rethinking State and Regime: Southern Europe’s Transition to Democracy.’ World Politics, 42, 3 (1990): 422–440. Fishman, Robert. Working-­Class Organisation and the Return to Democracy in Spain Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990. Fishman, Robert. ‘Democratic Practice after the Revolution: The Case of Portugal and Beyond.’ Politics & Society, 39, 2 (2011): 233–267. Foweraker, Joe. ‘Popular Political Organization and Democratization: A Comparison of Spain and Mexico.’ In Developing Democracy: Comparative

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Research in Honour of J.F.P. Blondel, edited by Ian Budge and David McKay. London: Sage, 1994. Franzosi, Roberto. ‘The Press as a Source of Socio-­Historical Data.’ Historical Methods, 20, 1 (1987): 5–16. Freire, André. ‘Participação e abstenção nas eleições legislativas portuguesas, 1975–1995.’ Análise Social, XXXV, 154–155 (2000): 115–145. García, Marisol, and Neovi Karakatsanis. ‘Social Policy, Democracy, and Citizenship in Southern Europe.’ In Democracy and the State in the New Southern Europe, edited by Richard Gunther, P.N. Diamandouros and D.A. Sotiropoulos. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Gil, José. Portugal, Hoje: O Medo de Existir. Lisboa: Relógio D’Água, 2004. Giugni, Marco, Doug McAdam and Charles Tilly, eds. From Contention to Democracy. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998. Gonçalves, Luiz. A Evolução do Movimento Operário em Portugal. Lisboa: Adolpho de Mendonça & C., 1905. Gonçalves, Vasco. Discursos, Conferências de Imprensa, Entrevistas. Porto: Author’s Edition, 1976. Graham, Lawrence S. ‘The Military in Politics: The Politicization of the Portuguese Armed Forces.’ In Contemporary Portugal: The Revolution and Its Antecedents, edited by Lawrence S. Graham and Harry M. Makler. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979. Gros, Marielle Christine. ‘“Pequena” história do alojamento social em Portugal.’ Sociedade e Território, 20 (1994): 80–90. Guibentif, Pierre. ‘The Transformation of the Portuguese Social Security System.’ In Southern European Welfare States: Between Crisis and Reform, edited by Martin Rhodes. London: Frank Cass, 1997. Hamann, Kerstin and Paul Christopher Manuel. ‘Regime Changes and Civil Society in Twentieth-­Century Portugal.’ South European Society and Politics, 4, 1 (1999): 71–96. Hammond, John L. Building Popular Power: Workers’ and Neighborhood Movements in the Portuguese Revolution. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1988. Harloe, Michael. The People’s Home? Social Rented Housing in Europe & America. London: John Wiley & Sons, 1995. Hipsher, Patricia L. ‘Democratization and the Decline of Urban Social Movements in Chile and Spain.’ Comparative Politics, 28, 3 (1996): 273–297. Holston, James. Insurgent Citizenship: Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil. Princeton/Woodstock: Princeton University Press, 2008. Horn, Gerd-­Rainer. The Spirit of ’68: Rebellion in Western Europe and North America, 1956–1976. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Huntington, Samuel P. The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991. Inglehart, Ronald and Gabriela Catterberg. ‘Trends in Political Action: The

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Developmental Trend and the Post-­ Honeymoon Decline.’ International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 43, 3–5 (2002): 300–316. Inquérito aos Pateos de Lisboa – Anno de 1902. Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional, 1903. Inquérito aos Pateos de Lisboa – Anno de 1905 – 2ª Parte. Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional, 1905. Jacobety, Miguel. ‘A Racionalização na Habitação e na Urbanização.’ Paper presented at the 1st Congresso Nacional de Arquitectura, Lisboa 1948. Jalali, Carlos. ‘A investigação do comportamento eleitoral em Portugal: história e perspectivas futuras.’ Análise Social, XXXVIII, 167 (2003): 545–572. Jalali, Carlos and Marco Lisi. ‘Weak Societal Roots, Strong Individual Patrons? Patronage and Party Organization in Portugal.’ Revista Enfoques, 7, 11 (2009): 441–470. Jalali, Carlos, Patrícia Silva and Sandra Silva. ‘Givers and Takers: Parties, State Resources and Civil Society in Portugal.’ Party Politics, 18, 1 (2012): 61–80. Janarra, Pedro. ‘A Política Urbanística e de Habitação Social do Estado Novo; o caso do Bairro de Alvalade de Lisboa: entre o projecto e o concretizado.’ Ler História, 34 (1998): 105–134. Jorge, Ricardo. Hygiene Social Applicada Á Nação Portuguesa. Porto: Livraria Civilização, 1885. Kamenitsa, Lynn. ‘The Process of Political Marginalization: East German Social Movements after the Wall.’ Comparative Politics, 30, 3 (1998): 313–333. Keil do Amaral, Francisco. ‘O Problema da Habitação em Portugal – Generalidades.’ In 3º Congresso da Oposição Democrática: Teses, 3ª Secção –4ª Secção. Lisboa: Seara Nova, 1974. Koopmans, Ruud and Paul Statham. ‘Political Claims Analysis: Integrating Protest Event and Political Discourse Approaches.’ Mobilization, 4, 2 (1999): 203–221. Leitão, Luís, António Dias, Jorge Manuel, and Laurent Dianoux. ‘Mouvements urbains et comissions de Moradores au Portugal (1974–1976).’ Les Temps Modernes, 34, 388 (1978): 652–684. Levine, Daniel H. ‘Paradigm Lost: Dependence to Democracy.’ World Politics, 40, 3 (1987): 377–394. Lima, Viana de. ‘O Problema Português da Habitação.’ Paper presented at the 1º Congresso Nacional de Arquitectura, Lisboa, 1948. Linz, Juan J. ‘Spain and Portugal: Critical Choices.’ In Western Europe: The Trials of Partnership, edited by David S. Landes. Lexington: Lexington Books, 1977. Linz, Juan J. and Alfred Stepan. Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America and Post-­ Communist Europe. Baltimore/London: John Hopkins University Press, 1996. Lisboa, Câmara Municipal de. ‘Comissão Administrativa dos Bairros de Casas Desmontáveis – Contas da Gerência.’ Anais do Município de Lisboa – 1944 (1945): 280–284.

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Lisboa, Câmara Muncipal de. ‘Grandes Problemas de Lisboa: A Construção de Casas de Renda Económica.’ Revista Municipal, 26 (1945): 33–41. Lisboa, Câmara Municipal de. ‘Inquérito sôbre construções clandestinas – Referido a 1944.’ Anais do Município de Lisboa – 1944 (1945): 273–278. Lisboa, Câmara Municipal de, Observatório da Habitação. Caracterização Sócio-­Urbanística dos Bairros Sociais. Lisboa: Centro de Estudos Territoriais/ ISCTE – Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, 1992. Lisboa, Câmara Municipal de, Observatório da Habitação. Cooperativas de Habitação de Lisboa – Situação e Perspectivas. Lisboa: Centro de Estudos Territoriais/ISCTE – Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, 1994. Lisboa, Câmara Municipal de. ‘Erradicação de bairros provisórios e barracas.’ Boletim do D.G.S.P.H. da Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, 1, 1 (1997): 51–82. Lisboa, Câmara Municipal de. ‘Nota histórica sobre of serviços de habitação.’ Boletim do D.G.S.P.H. da Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, 1, 1 (1997): 11–15. Lisi, Marco. ‘Um Partido Revolucionário na Transição para a Democracia: o PCP entre 1974 e 1976.’ Master’s Thesis, ISCTE, Lisbon University Institute, 2002. Lisi, Marco. ‘New Politics in Portugal: The Rise and Success of the Left Bloc.’ Pôle Sud: Revue de science politique de l’Europe méridionale, 30, 1 (2009): 127–144. Lobato, Luís Guimarães. O Problema da Habitação de Lisboa – Subsídios para o seu Estudo. Lisboa: Instituto Superior Técnico, 1950. Lomax, Bill. ‘Ideology and Illusion in the Portuguese Revolution: The Role of the Left.’ In In Search of Modern Portugal: The Revolution and Its Consequences, edited by Lawrence S. Graham and Douglas L. Wheeler. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983. Louçã, Francisco. ‘A “Vertigem Insurrecional”: Teoria e Política do PCP na viragem de Agosto de 1975.’ Revista Crítica das Ciências Sociais, no. 15/16/17 (1985): 149–62. Lourenço, Eduardo. ‘A Galáxia Ideológica no pós-­25 de Abril e as suas raízes culturais.’ In Portugal: Sistema Político e Constitucional 1974–87, edited by Mário Baptista Coelho. Lisboa: Instituto das Ciências Sociais, 1989. Lucena, Manuel de. Evolução do Sistema Corporativo Português: Vol. I, O Salazarismo. Lisboa: Perspectivas e Realidades, 1976. Lucena, Manuel de. O Estado da Revolução: A Constituição de 1976. Lisboa: Expresso, 1982. Lukes, Steven. ‘Dual Power in Portugal.’ New Statesman, 19 September 1975, 325–26. Machado, J. Reis. ‘Plano de Chelas V – Elementos relativos à população que habita em barracas.’ Boletim do G.T.H., 1, 9 (1965): 441–453. MacQueen, Norrie. The Decolonization of Portuguese Africa: Metropolitan Revolution and the Dissolution of Empire. London: Longman, 1997. Madeira, João, Irene Flunser Pimentel and Luís Farinha. Vítimas de Salazar: Estado Novo e Violência Política. Lisboa: Esfera dos Livros, 2007.

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Index

198– A Law (1975) see Rental Law 2 de Maio (neighbourhood) 118n.15, 159n.27 see also occupations, in Salazar Foundation Estate 25 April 1974 (revolution) 1–2, 4, 7, 10–11, 82, 167, 179, 183–5, 224 11 March 1975 (failed right-wing coup) 9, 24, 141, 185 25 November 1975 (defeat of far-left uprising) 10, 16–17, 165, 184 effect 204–5 African colonies 1, 103, 214 Guinea-Bissau 125–6 War 56, 60 Ajuda 44, 47, 68, 83, 92–4, 162n.103 AIL see Associação de Inquilinos Lisbonenses Aliança Opeária-Camponesa (AOC) 195 Alto Do Pina 92, 114 residents’ commission 190 Alto dos Moinhos 92, 98, 101, 111, 159n.27, 191 residents’ commission 129 Alvalade 54 Amadora 131 AOC see Aliança Operária-Camponesa Associação de Inquilinos Lisbonenses (AIL) 113, 144, 151, 162n.94 Authoritarianism 6, 7, 21–3, 218, 221 barracas (shack dwellings) see shacks; shantytowns

Berins Collier, Ruth 6 Bermeo, Nancy 6, 118n.24 Boavista 48, 63, 66–8, 82, 93–4 occupations 97, 102–3 residents’ commission 66 Bom Sucesso 69 Cabral e Silva, Captain 154, 171 Caetano, Marcello 23, 56 Social State (Estado Social) 57–8 surrender 82 Caldeira, Rodrigues 113, 134, 142, 172 Campo de Ourique 135,136 Campo Grande 89, 92, 118n.12, 171, 203n.92 Campolide 92, 98, 101 Capital, A 34n.78, 95, 97, 102, 136, 142, 156, 171, 192 Caramão da Ajuda 68 Cardia, Sottomayor 164, 174, 178 Carnide 92, 171 Casal do Evaristo 111, 129 Casal do Sola 129 Casal Ventoso 92, 135, 179 residents’ commission 94, 97, 159n.27 Casas Económicas see housing, ‘Affordable Houses’ scheme Castells, Manuel 19, 226 CASU see Centro de Açcão Social Universitário Catholic Church 7, 66, 100 Catholicism 43, 48, 56 CDS see Centro Democrático Social Centro de Açcão Social Universitário (CASU) 67–8 Centro Democrático Social (CDS) 126, 128, 146, 169, 195–6, 207

248 CGTP see Confederação Geral dos Trabalhadores Portugueses Chelas 55–6, 83, 88, 93, 191 occupations 94–5, 98, 103, 105, 115, 220 CLOMP see Comité de Luta dos Ocupantes e Moradores Pobres CM see residents’ commissions CML see Lisbon City Council Comando Operacional do Continente (COPCON) 127, 136, 158n.11, 159n.45, 170–1, 190, 193, 196 role in occupations 114–15, 180–2 statement on Popular Power 175–7, 183, 186 Combate, O 46 Comissão Revolucionária Autónoma de Moradores e Ocupantes (CRAMO) 150–3, 156, 161n.76, 162n.94, 170, 181–3, 189–94, 204–6 Comité de Luta dos Ocupantes e Moradores Pobres (CLOMP) 205–7 Confederação Geral dos Trabalhadores Portugueses (CGTP) 222 Conselhos Revolucionários de Soldados, Trabalhadores e Marinheiros (CRSTM) 173 constitution 17, 20, 57, 124, 139, 141, 145, 168, 169, 216 1933 New State 47, 48, 51, 56, COPCON see Comando Operacional do Continente Costa Gomes, Francisco da 127 CRAMO see Comissão Revolucionária Autónoma de Moradores e Ocupantes CRSTM see Conselhos Revolucionários de Soldados, Trabalhadores e Marinheiros CT see workers’ commissions Cunhal, Álvaro 115, 172 Curraleira 68, 86, 92, 95, 98, 100, 142, 145, 154 residents’ commission 143, 189 democracy 7–8, 23, 27, 48, 148, 171–3, 195, 197, 210, 214, 216, 218–19 transition to democracy 21, 23, 57, 208–9 urban social movements and 1–6, 26, 101–2, 137, 218–19

Index demonstrations 2, 9–10, 25, 56, 151–2, 177–8, 179, 184–7, 191–4, 202n.66, 205–7 28 September 1974, 126–7 17 April 1975 9, 153–6, 160n.49, 161n.73 17 May 1975 153, 155–6 Diário de Lisboa 34n.78, 96, 114, 193, 205 Diário de Notícias 28n.7, 34n.78, 105, 113, 154, 190 Dias da Silva, Augusto 44, 46 Downs, Charles 12, 14, 18–19, 25 Dúran Muñoz, Rafael 20 Eisfeld, Reiner 4 elections 3, 22, 26, 59, 61, 136, 140, 146, 148–9, 150, 164, 166, 168, 170, 215, 219 25 April 1975 (Constituent Assembly Elections) 23, 125, 137, 144–7, 161n.83, 170, 172, 195 25 April 1976 (first post-dictatorship parliamentary elections) 208 27 June 1976 (first post-dictatorship presidential elections) 196 Empresa Pública de Urbanização de Lisboa (EPUL) 132 Encarnação 50 EPUL see Empresa Pública de Urbanização de Lisboa Estado Novo see New State FEC-ml see Frente Eleitoral Comunista– marxista-leninista Fernandes, Tiago 217–18 Ferro, António 48 first republic 46, 155n.55 1910 revolution 42 military coup (1926) 46 Republican Party 42–3 Fishman, Robert 219–20 Frente de Unidade Popular (FUP) 176 Frente de Unidade Revolucionária (FUR) 200n.41 Frente Eleitoral Comunista– marxistaleninista (FEC-ml) 152, 195 Frente Socialista Popular (FSP) 195–6 FSP see Frente Socialista Popular FUP see Frente de Unidade Popular FUR see Frente de Unidade Revolucionária

249

Index Gabinete Técnico da Habitação 55 Gazeta da Semana 34n.78, 206, 208 GDUP see Grupos Dinamizadores de Unidade Popular Gonçalves, Vasco Colonel 126–7, 141, 145, 147, 149, 176, 179, 182 People-MFA Alliance Document 168–9 Graça 114, 139 Group of Nine 158n.11, 175 Grupos Dinamizadores de Unidade Popular (GDUP) 195–6, 205 GTH see Gabinete Técnico da Habitação Hammond, John 14, 30n.32, Hipólito, José 144, 151, 194 Horta Nova 98, 102 occupation 94 ‘Hot Summer’ 27, 124, 164–5, 181, 185, 187, 197 political polarisation 166, 174 rejection of political extremism 209, 217 Housing 36, 42, 57, 61–3, 87, 106–7, 143, 145, 155, 206, 215 ‘Affordable Houses’ scheme 47–8, 50–3, 88 problem 9, 13, 37, 41, 45, 47, 51–4, 60, 85, 104, 112–13, 133, 183, 208 Housing Congress (1969) 58, 106 Illustração Portugueza 45 inflation 60, 95, 112, 122n.100, 129 Intercomissões or Inter see Intercomissões dos Bairros Pobres e de Lata de Lisboa Intercomissões dos Bairros Pobres e de Lata de Lisboa 138, 139, 152–4, 156, 181, 193, 206–8 Creation 129–32, 136 Relationship with CRAMO 156, 182–3, 189, 192, 204–5 JF see Junta de Freguesia Jornal Novo 34n.78, 152, 154–5, 186 JSN see Junta de Salvação Nacional Junta de Freguesia 86–9, 97, 113, 117n.8, 129, 138–40, 143, 146, 149, 150–1, 154, 156, 172–3, 180, 198n.3, 199n.26, 203n.92, 204, 219

Junta de Salvação Nacional (JSN) 83, 95, 97, 103–6, 119n.41, 119n.42 Keil do Amaral, Francisco 61 Lapa 135, 152, 160n.58, 162n.104, 170 Latin America 6 Brazil 17, 109 Chile 17, 109, 167, 173, 190, 191, 218 Peru 167 LCI see Liga Comunista Internacional Leitão, Luís 14–15, 85 liberation movements 1, 120n.64, 127, 167 Liga Comunista Internacional (LCI) 195 Liga de União e Acção Revolucionária (LUAR) 142 Lisbon City Council (Câmara Municipal de Lisboa) 27, 40, 60, 63–4, 67, 82, 94, 112–13, 117n.9, 129, 133, 137–9, 140,143–4, 146, 158n.17, 176, 180–1, 188, 191, 198n.3, 200n.42, 204, 206, 208 Correspondence with commissions and movements 85, 93, 95–6, 99, 104, 125, 129 MDP- PCP alliance and the City Council 149–150, 154, 171–3, 177 Lomax, Bill 4, 197 LUAR see Liga de União e Acção Revolucionária Lucena, Manuel de 15, 51 Lumiar 92, 97, 134, 203n.92 Luta Popular 93, 102 Marvila 55, 89, 92–3, 96–7, 104, 115, 119n.31, 171, 196 residents’ commission 164 Matias, Vitor Ferreira 4, 15, 69 Maxwell, Kenneth 2, 136 McAdam, Doug 20–1 MDP/CDE see Movimento Democrático Português / Comissões Democráticas Eleitorais MES see Movimento de Esquerda Socialisa MFA see Movimento das Forças Armadas

250 middle-class 64, 146, 150, 152, 155, 162n.104, 187, 189, 204, 211 cctivism 24, 36, 67 neighbourhoods 87, 90, 135, 139, 152 Military Police 105, 134 Ministry of Public Works 38, 58 Morlino, Leonardo 222 Movimento das Forças Armadas (MFA) 82, 105, 124–6, 128, 137, 140–1, 147–8, 150, 154, 158n.11, 159n.45, 161n.81, 175–7, 180, 199n.8, 200n.42 moderates 127, 158n.11, 165–6, 175–8 People/MFA Programme 10, 127, 149, 170–3, 179, 186 populists 128, 158n.11, 169, 170, 174–8, 184, 196–7 radicals 145, 154, 158n.11, 166–8, 174, 178, 184, 193, 196 Movimento Democrático Português / Comissões Democráticas Eleitorais (MDP/CDE) 34n.79, 128, 137, 139, 148–9, 169 election results 146, 195 formation 100, 101, 102 Movimento de Esquerda Socialisa (MES) 34n.79, 128, 154, 195 Movimento para a Reorganização do Partido do Proletariado (MRPP) 34n.79, 103, 120n.59, 128, 195 see also Luta Popular Movimento Socialista Unificado (MSU) 196 MRPP see Movimento para a Reorganização do Partido do Proletariado MSU see Movimento Socialista Unificado Musgueira 94, 134, 155 Musgueira Norte 97, 155 Musgueira Sul 92, 96 mutual aid societies 42, 45, 74n.41 nationalisations 2, 24, 131–2, 141, 148, 152 ‘new social movement’ theory 19, 222 New State 36, 37, 39, 47–52, 54, 55–8, 63, 79n.120 Nossa Senhora de Fátima 171

Index occupations 1, 9, 12, 25, 35, 69, 91, 104, 107, 118n.24, 137–40, 151, 155, 164, 190, 193–4, 197–8, 212, 214 in Ajuda, Boavista, Relógio and Horta Nova 93, 94, 97, 162n.103 in Chelas 93–5, 98, 103, 105–6, 115, 220 in Lapa 152, 170 in Salazar Foundation Estate / Bairro 2 de Maio 83, 93–4, 99, 102, 105, 114–15 the authorities and 105–6, 114–16, 133–6, 141–4, 157, 177, 206–7 O’Donnell, Guillermo 4–5, 17 Old Central 88–9, 118n.13 Oporto 18, 133, 153, 206, 227 Municipal Council 177, 200n.42 SAAL and 207 Paço do Lumiar 87, 92 residents’ commission 100–1 Padre Cruz 64, 67–8 Pais, Sidónio 43–4, 46 Palácios Cerezales, Diego 8, 12, 20 Partido Comunista Português (PCP) 3, 128, 137–8, 142, 145–6, 149, 175, 178, 181, 185, 193, 195, 222 and MDP-CDE 101–2, 139–140, 150–1, 154, 171–2, 177, 186, 188, 192 and MFA Radicals 144, 169, 173, 176 Partido Comunista Português – Marxista Leninista (PCP-ML) 195 Partido da Democracia Cristã (PDC) 195 Partido Popular Democrático (PPD) 3, 28n.6, 34n.79, 102, 126, 128, 137, 144–5, 147, 196, 207, 208, 221 election results 146, 166, 195 Partido Social Democrata (PSD) 28n.6, 221 Républica affair 175, 179 see also Povo Livre Partido Popular Monarquico (PPM) 195 Partido Revolucionário do Proletariado – Brigadas Revolucionárias 152, 178, 181, 202n.66 Partido Revolucionário dos Trabalhadores (PRT) 195

251

Index Partido Socialista (PS) 34n.79, 128, 146–7, 155, 164, 174, 176, 178, 188, 196, 221 elections 145, 166, 195 PCP see Partido Comunista Português PCP-ML see Partido Comunista Português – Marxista Leninista PDC see Partido da Democracia Cristã Pena 162n.104, 139 Penha de França 152, 162n.104, 180 Pereira de Moura, Francisco José da Cruz 101, 137, 147–8 PIDE see Polícia Internacional de Defesa do Estado Pinheiro de Azevedo, José Baptista 176, 177, 195 Plano de Fomento 57 Polícia Internacional de Defesa do Estado (PIDE) 93, 180 Popular Power 10, 27, 148–9, 165–6, 179–81, 186, 188, 195–6, 198 defeat 183–5, 187, 189–94, 205, 217 programme 15, 167–9, 171–8 popular tribunals 168, 181–2, 191, 193 Portas, Nuno 99, 104, 106, 113, 115, 128, 133, 135, 163n.113 Portugal Novo housing co-operative 129, 142 Poulantzas, Nicos 4 Povo Livre 145, 155 PPD see Partido Popular Democrático PPM see Partido Popular Monarquico Prazeres 152, 160n.58, 162n.104 pre-fabricated council neighbourhoods 64, 87, 89, 93–4, 96, 98, 104 Provisional Government 10, 113, 126–8, 136, 140–1, 144, 147, 157n.4, 174–8, 194, 204, 215 1st Provisional Government 85, 89, 93, 97, 104–5, 120n.70 2nd Provisional Government, 126 3rd Provisional Government 127–8 4th Provisional Government 141, 174–5 5th Provisional Government 175–6 6th Provisional Government 176, 177–8, 194 PRP- BR see Partido Revolucionário do Proletariado – Brigadas Revolucionárias

PRT see Partido Revolucionário dos Trabalhadores PS see Partido Socialista PSD see Partido Partido Popular Democrático Quinta da Calçada 48, 63, 65–6, 68, 89, 92, 96, 99, 110 Quinta das Fonsecas 92, 96–7, 110, 188 residents’ commission 100, 131–2 Quinta do Alto 92, 95, 97–9, 104 Quinta do Bacalhau 92, 129 Quinta do Narigão 92, 95, 97, 99, 104, 214 RALIS see Regimento de Artilharia Ligeira de Lisboa Ramalho Eanes, António 195–6 Regimento de Artilharia Ligeira de Lisboa (RALIS) 171 Relógio 89, 92, 94, 98–9, 103 Renascença (radio station) 186, 192 Rental Law (1974) 8–9, 113, 143–5, 151–3, 215–16 second wave of occupations and 112, 124 third wave of occupations and 133, 135, 139–40, 142 Républica 34n.78, 97, 114–15, 183, 186, 192–4, 205 affair 175, 179, 200n.36 residents’ commissions 8–10, 23, 25, 27, 35, 83, 86, 89–90, 92, 94–5, 101, 106–8, 109–10, 115, 125, 128, 129, 130–1, 142–3, 145, 147, 149, 151–6, 166, 170–1, 173–4, 176–7, 191–4, 196–7, 198n.3, 200n.42, 208, 211, 215–16, 219 demands 96–8, 104, 116, 164–5, 214 politics and political activity 14, 100, 102, 147, 155, 172, 179, 180–2, 185, 189, 204, 217, 223 ward-level commissions 87, 89–90 Rosas, Fernando 48 Rueschemeyer, Dietrich 6 run-down brick (neighbourhood type) 87, 90, 92, 162n.104, 187 rural workers 140, 226n.31 Rustow, Dankwart 5

252 Salazar, António de Oliveira 46–8, 49–53, 54–5, 59, 70n.125, 93, 210 Salazar Foundation and estate 83, 93, 98–9, 102, 105, 114–15 SAAL see Serviço Ambulatório de Apoio Local Santo Condestável 92, 111, 129, 135, 152, 160n.58, 162n.104, 181 São Domingos de Benfica 92, 171 São Francisco Xavier 139 São João 92 São João de Brito 89, 92, 104, 190, 203n.92 residents’ commission 95, 97–8 São João de Deus 114, 179, 190, 204 São Jorge de Arroios 114, 152 São Mamede 181, 191 Santo Condestável 92, 111, 135, 162n.104, 181 Junta de Freguesia 129 Saraiva de Carvalho, Otelo 128, 169–70, 177, 179, 182, 195–6 Schmitter, Philippe C 4–5, 17 Sé 180 Secretary of State for Housing see Portas, Nuno Século, O 68, 181 self-build 109, 124, 130, 153, 189 Serviço Ambulatório de Apoio Local (SAAL) 9, 14, 130–1, 139, 143, 145, 147, 154, 158n.21, 192, 204, 206–8, 214–15, 218–19, 225n.19 Brigada de Apoio Local (BAL) 108, 122n.95, 122n.99 formation 107–12 Intercomissões and SAAL 129, 132, 138, 153, 182, 189, 205 Setúbal 14, 18, 194 shacks 8, 38–9, 40–1, 63, 69, 72n.18, 86–8, 96, 98, 104, 124, 130–1, 142, 153, 213 see also shantytowns shantytowns 8–9, 90–4, 96–8, 103–5, 107–8, 110–12, 122n.93, 124, 129–30, 132, 134–5, 139,

Index 142–7, 150, 152–6, 182–3, 187–9, 192, 204, 213–14, 219–20 pre-1974 14–15, 38, 40–1, 55, 60, 63, 65, 67–9, 72n.21, 83 classification 85–9 social housing 8, 26, 56, 91–3, 98, 102, 104, 108–9, 114–15, 130, 132, 134, 139, 147, 152, 154, 187, 191, 206, 213 classification 63, 87–90 government and social housing 37, 52–3, 90, 107, 143, 213 socialism 1, 3, 5, 10, 22, 101, 141, 148–9, 166–7, 169, 171, 173, 214 see also Popular Power Soldados Unidos Vencerão (SUV) 178 Sousa Santos, Boaventura 29n.14, 33n.60, 215 Spain 5, 17, 218–220 Spínola, General António de 82, 125–7 SUV see Soldados Unidos Vencerão Tarrow, Sidney 6, 20 Tarujo 92, 101, 111, 129 Technical University of Lisbon 40, 102 Teixeira Bastos, F.J. 42, 45 Tilly, Charles 20, 22, 210, 216 Tocqueville, Alexis de 37 Touraine, Alain 14–15 UDP see União Democrática Popular União Democrática Popular (UDP) 34n.79, 102, 128, 152, 169, 195 União Nacional 101 Vicente Baptista, Luís 49 Vicente Moreira, Manuel 53 Vida Mundial 34n.78, 60, 169, Villaverde Cabral, Manuel 28n.7, 221 Workers’ Commissions 8, 139–140, 149, 167–71, 184, 186, 194 working class 4, 11, 36, 88, 103, 146, 152, 177, 188 movements 14–15, 43–7, 51