ABSTRACT
The impact of Italian Fascism on the conservative and radical Right in Portugal is the focus of this chapter, which analyses the way in which conservative Catholicism and radical nationalism – two of the main ideological strands in Portuguese conservatism – viewed and related to the Italian experience at the time of the Portuguese republic’s crisis and in the early years of the dictatorship.
First, the chapter investigates the development of Sidonio Pais’ original dictatorship in the last year of the war and its role in the transformation of right-wing Portuguese politics. Second, it analyses the relationship between the Italian and the Portuguese nationalist Right in the 1910s and 1920s, and the relationship between the nationalist Right and Fascism. Finally, it explores the relationship between the Catholic experience in Portugal in the years leading up to the dictatorship and its role with respect to the origins of the dictatorship, by also examining the impact of Italian Fascism and the Lateran Treaty on Portuguese Catholics. The overall picture of these relations outlines a profile of the different currents of the Portuguese Right that ultimately flowed into Salazar’s regime, while also tracing the complex links between this regime and the various currents of Italian Fascism.
