Military Coup of May 28, 1926

#inthisday May 28, 1926, the military coup began a long period of 48 years of repression and violence in the country.

Ending a Republic in crisis, unable to regenerate, beset by attacks from the authoritarian, anti-parliamentary and anti-democratic right wing, the Military Dictatorship (1926-1933) began within which Salazar and the Estado Novo (1933-1974) would emerge.

Between 1926 and the beginning of the 1930s the first assault of conservative, traditionalist and fascist rights was carried out on the institutions of the Liberal State, and the country has been living bloody years with hundreds of deaths and thousands of political prisoners and deportees. In a kind of “larval and intermittent civil war”, coups and revolts against the Military Dictatorship and the advent of fascism followed.

Improving the repressive apparatus that came from behind and some of its arbitrary practices, the Military Dictatorship intensified repression, especially in the years 1927 and 1928, and set up its network of prisons and concentration camps.

In fact, it is in the year 1928 that the Aljube prison becomes a political prison. For political and social prisoners, Aljube served, in this initial phase, as a depository for prisoners and as a “revolving plate” for the elements of the oppositions that followed for deportation and for inhospitable and precarious concentration camps in Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea or Timor, where the dictatorship massively arrests Republicans, reviralhistas, socialists, anarcho-syndicalists and communists.

48 years of dictatorship corresponded to 48 years of resistance for freedom and democracy. The Aljube Museum Resistance and Freedom pays tribute to all the women and men who heroically fought.

Images:

1. Gomes da Costa parade. Coup of May 28, 1926; Floor 2 Room 2 of the long-term exhibition

2. Parliament closed after the May 28, 1926 coup; Floor 2 Room 2 of the long-term exhibition

3. Aljube Prison. 1890-1945. AML; Floor 0 Long-term exhibition