ABSTRACT
During the 1930s, the Portuguese authoritarian regime consolidated its system of cultural and artistic guidance by means of a state organism called SPN—Secretariado de Propaganda Nacional (Office for National Propaganda), created in 1933. The director of this organism was the literary author and public intellectual António Ferro, who had been close to the Portuguese artistic avant-garde movements since Orpheu (1915). In his newspaper article “Política do espírito” published in 1932, Ferro coined the expression and the key concept underlying his future political and cultural intervention: all initiatives of the “national propaganda” during the 30s and the 40s were meant to be part of a true “politics of the spirit”. In this chapter, Ferro’s most relevant writings are analyzed, and an argument is developed concerning the insurmountable tension between the Portuguese nationally focused politics of the regime and the international avant-garde background where Ferro’s intellectual and conceptual frame had emerged. In order to map the international dimension of the Portuguese “politics of the spirit” and the European and trans-Atlantic connections of the intellectuals of the time, the chapter also recalls the testimonies of other protagonists of the Portuguese intellectual scenario, namely Júlio Dantas and Fidelino de Figueiredo.
