ABSTRACT
The exercise of context reconstruction and exploration is very important for the understanding of how and why politically violent organisations came into existence in Portugal in different periods of time and in different socio-political conditions. This chapter focuses on political violence committed by non-state actors. The country went through a democratisation process and the existence of political violence under democracy became an unspoken aspect of the history of armed struggle in Portugal. The chapter describes the historical context in which armed organisations emerged, acted, and dissolved in various periods in Portugal. It argues that former militants' voices and experiences have been silenced due to the whitewashing of the Estado Novo regime and the consequent historical revisionism which took root in Portugal from the 1970s until the 1990s. The chapter provides a timeline of both the main historical events that set the context for the rise of armed organisations in Portugal and the periods when these organisations were active.
