Fear of the Spanish Red Danger: Anti-Communist Agitation and Mobilisation in Portugal during the Spanish Civil War

Abstract

Between 1936 and 1939 Portugal feared the “revolutionary” contagion from republican Spain, whose Popular Front government represented a dangerous destabilising element for the Portuguese dictatorship, which regarded it as a pawn of international communism. The Portuguese government, ally of General Franco in his coup d’état against the Spanish Republican government, fed the idea that the independence of Portugal depended on the outcome favourable to the insurgents in the Spanish war. During the Spanish civil war, Salazar’s support to the military rebelled against the Madrid government turned the Portuguese territory into the Francoist rearguard, immersed in an atmosphere of fear, agitation and anti-communist mobilisation fostered by the regime to repress domestic opposition, whereas its propaganda cynically contrasted the Spanish conflagration to the Portuguese “haven of peace.”