ABSTRACT
The year 2018 marked the centenary of two exceptional events in Portugal. One, the armistice that ended the Great War of 1914–18, in which the Portuguese army fought alongside the allies – France, UK, Italy, Belgium, USA, and Russia – against the alliance of empires headed by Germany and Austria-Hungary. The way they were remembered in 2018 could not be more different. The Great War was the subject of colloquia and official commemorations, among which was the largest Portuguese military parade since the end of the colonial wars in 1974. The “Spanish flu” epidemic of 1918–19 was the largest in the 20th century, and for some, the most important pandemic in human history. However, there are uncertainties about the extent of the mortality, explained by the fact that there are no reliable statistics for much of the world.
