ABSTRACT
The defeat of the military extreme left and of the PCP by the anti-communist faction of the MFA on 25 November 1975 opens up a new period of the Portuguese transition. That event marks the end of the PREC and permits the far right to abandon the underground activity and to enhance new paths of institutionalization. In this sense, the far right improves projects in two different areas: on one hand, the medias with the foundation of weeklies and publishers particularly influent at the end of the 1970s like O Diabo and A Rua; on the other hand, the parties like the Partido da Democracia Cristã (Christian Democratic Party – PDC), the MIRN/PDP of general Kaúlza de Arriaga, the Frente Nacional (National Front – FN) with their attempts to gain hegemony on the right of the moderate Centro Democrático Social (Democratic and Social Centre – CDS) in particular during the general elections of 1976, 1979, and 1980 and the presidential elections of 1976 and 1980. In that period, the competition between the far right and the centre-right parties Partido Social Democrático (Social-Democratic Party – PSD) and CDS explains the shift of the extreme right voters towards the coalition Aliança Democrática (Democratic Alliance – AD) composed by PSD and CDS as well as the co-optation of several far-right cadres coming from the authoritarian regime and the revolutionary period by those mainstream parties and its consequences for the extreme right in the following years.
