San Francisco Frontiers - New centre puts focus on Portuguese dictator Salazar's legacy

Salazar used a feared secret police and brutal repression of opponents to maintain his "New State" rule from when he seized power in 1932 to 1968, when he became ill and fell into a coma. His legacy is fiercely debated.

The "Interpretive Centre for the New State -- Regime and Resistance" opened in Vimieiro, where Salazar was born in 1889.

Its development has been disputed for two decades. Some historians and rights groups expressed fears that it would help efforts to rehabilitate Salazar's name and that it would become a pilgrimage point for supporters of the New State dictatorship.

The centre is in a school dating from the 1940s near the house where Salazar was born and the cemetery where he is now buried.

It has a library, a permanent exhibition and a copy of a classroom from the Salazar years. Temporary exhibitions, lectures and conferences are to be held there.

"We do not want a museum that glorifies Salazar, nor a place where people bad-mouth this principal figure," said Ines Matos, mayor of Santa Comba Dao, which includes Vimieiro.

"We want a space that is open to everyone" to discuss Salazar, she told the Lusa news agency.

Salazar came to power in a coup and ruled with an iron fist for more than three decades, until sinking into a coma in September 1968. He died 23 months later at the age of 81.

His New State government was finally overthrown in a military uprising in 1974 following mounting opposition to the country's wars in its African colonies.

There are already several museums and institutions devoted to the dictatorship years.

One museum on the struggle against the authoritarian Salazar was opened in a former secret police prison in Lisbon in 2015.

Another dedicated to Aristides de Sousa Mendes, a diplomat who helped thousands of Jewish refugees to escape persecution during World War II, opened in 2024 in his home village of Cabanas de Viriato.

J.Scott--SFF