Summary: | Memory of the Spanish War has a special symbolic role in Europe’s memory of the 20th century’ Portugal is no exception. The conflict played a central role in Salazar’s regime political definition consolidation, in its international setting through a particularly tense stage of the international relations, and brought to Portuguese society very harsh social and political consequences, opening the hardest repressive period of the dictatorship, from which opposition movements were victims, together with, and in a very cruel way, communities living near to the Spanish border, their attitude divides between their fear of repression and their human solidarity towards Spanish Republican refugees seeking in Portugal for protection from the brutal revenge of the Francoists. To this day, Spanish War memory plays an instrumental role in Portuguese and international political and ideological debate.
|