ABSTRACT
Antonio Ferro's literary output includes poetry, commentary, short stories, novels and plays and was relatively short-lived: it started at the end of the First World War and came to an end around 1925. There has been a photobiography published by his family, but only the first volume of the planned complete works by Ferro ever came out. The 'legitimate modernism' that Ferro thus personified was fashioned by the aesthetic and political criteria of a traditionalist, Joao Ameal. The Sidonio dictatorship, Ferro's political position suffered a sudden downturn and he forever abandoned his sympathies for historical republican leaders, defeated in December 1917 by the military coup led by Sidonio Pais. 'Politics of the Spirit' in action served twofold aim of the 'aesthetization of politics' and the politicization of art, features common to all totalitarian regimes between the First and Second World Wars.
