Ideology and Architecture in the Portuguese ‘Estado Novo’: Cultural Innovation within a Para-Fascist State (1932–1945)

This article challenges the common assumption of the fascist nature of the Portuguese Estado Novo from the thirties to mid-forties, while recognizing the innovative, modernizing dynamic of much of its state architecture. It takes into account the pro-lix discourse of Oliveira Salazar, the head of government, as well as Duarte Pacheco’s extensive activity as minister of Public Works, and the positions and projects of the architects themselves. It also considers the allegedly peripheral status of architectural elites, and the role played by decision makers, whether politicians or bureaucrats, in the intricate process of architectural renewal. The article shows that a non-radical form of nationalism has always prevailed as a discourse in which to express the unique Portuguese spirit, that of a people that saw itself as transporting Christian morality and faith across the world, a civilizing role that the country continued to fulfil in its over-seas colonies. Taking the architectural legacy of the Estado Novo in its complexity leads to the conclusion that, while the dictatorship did not dismiss modernization outright, and though it adopted what could be superficially considered fascist traits, the language of national resurgence disseminated by the Portuguese regime did not express a future-oriented fascist ideology of radical rebirth. The country’s futural orientation would be accomplished by adopting a restrained policy of moderate modernization that lacked the dynamism and utopian ambition of fascism, a conservatism reflected in its architecture.

This article aims to contribute to the debate on the nature of interwar dictatorships and, more precisely, to ascertain whether the apparent embrace of fascism by the Portuguese Estado Novo [New State], from its inception in 1932 up to the aftermath of the Second World War, was an authentic one, reflected in the radicalness and innovation of state architecture. Was it a genuine variant of generic fascism or was it rather a simple emulation of the externals of fascist revolutionary regimes, and thus in the context of new buildings, prepared to adopt elements of Italian Fascism and Nazism1 without any commitment to a veritable 'national revolution'? Although some Portuguese historians recognize the existence of a Portuguese fascist regime,2 researchers in comparative fascist studies usually label the Portuguese New State as a conservative authoritarian,3 pseudo-fascist, fascistized or para-fascist regime.4 The latter argue that, after banishing the fascist National Syndicalists, the regime set about selectively borrowing some of fascism's features, such as the militia, youth movement, leader cult and so forth, a process that has been called 'political hybridization' . masculinity, discipline, authority, and strength. While it could also fulfil this role, fascist architecture and urban planning under Mussolini and Hitler was assigned the particular task of embodying the utopian future into which fascist nations were soon to be transformed. Its paradigmatic examples are the Palazzo della Civiltà e del Lavoro in Roma and the Ministry of Propaganda in Berlin.
Another conceptual clarification is required: according to the most recent scholarship modernism is more than a drive for innovation and experimentation in the artistic and aesthetic sphere; therefore, apart from representing a rebellion against the anarchy, degeneracy and anomie of modernity and, in strictly architectural terms, an 'attempt to create a form suitable for the new machine age' ,8 it is also a socio-political phenomenon in its own right. Indeed, Fascist Italy and National Socialist Germany fall into this category because, as much as communist Russia, they were revolutionary regimes that did not reject modernity as such, but only its 'degenerative' aspects, and strove in their own way to create an alternative modernity.9 The Portuguese history of architecture should overcome the tendency to identify aesthetic modernism, in its strict definition,10 with progress and traditionalist aesthetics with political conservatism.11 To give but one example, Nuno Teotónio Pereia and José Manuel Fernandes claim that the 'rationalist and functionalist models did not have a future within the ideological framework of the regime' .12 As is the case of other regimes, Portuguese modernist buildings, those closer to the functionalist paradigm, could be designed by right-wing architects, and architects with left-wing sympathies could reject 8 Cristopher Crouch, 'Architecture, Design, and Modern Living, '  was an eighteenth-century statesman who was responsible for the political decision to re-build the centre of Lisbon after the 1755 earthquake. This article will focus on those public projects that were built, but also on the utopian projects and other plans that did not come to fruition due to a lack of funding or for some other reason. The analysis concentrates on architecture and urban planning from 1932, the moment Salazar came to power, up to 1943, when Duarte Pacheco, the minister of Public Works, died in a car accident. During this period Pacheco was also de facto Lisbon mayor (1936)(1937)(1938)(1939)(1940)(1941)(1942)(1943), and in this role he made huge efforts to reshape Lisbon in a way that befitted the head of the Portuguese colonial empire, proof of the nation's glorious past and guarantee of its present and future greatness, a vision that coincided with the palingenetic visions of contemporary fascist movements (e.g. in Italy, Germany, Britain, and Spain) and corresponded to the years in which Fascist architecture thrived under Mussolini.
From 1928 onwards, Salazar became Minister of Finances of the Military Dictatorship established two years before, and started to control the state apparatus through his ministry. Salazar had gradually centralized the decisionmaking process, which is particularly clear in the case of the Ministry of Public Work, created in 1932 when he finally became President of the Council. The aim is to assess if there is at any stage the discernible will on the part of Salazar's regime to promote the kind of political fascist modernism which Roger Griffin has identified in the Nazi and Italian states, one which expresses the project to create a new man and inaugurate a new historical era. Was the regime embracing a new language to express genuine political fascist leanings, was it simply imitating what can be perceived as the fascist style to suggest a kinship with the fascist regimes which was no more than a façade? Alternatively, was it in search of an authentic symbolic language for the 'national resurgence' that, in spite of being an innovative, and in that sense modern, was not fascist?

Salazar's Point-of-View: 'An Architecture within our Time'
From the moment Salazar seized power in 1932, he became committed to significantly promote new public buildings as achievements that were in stark contrast with the inertia of the previous parliamentary regime. Countless building programs were carried out by Salazarism: airports, hospitals, schools, public housing, stadiums, and courts of justice. He thought those programs were 'a great opportunity to give a certain unity to the official architecture' , a chance 'to create something new within the national climate' , a new national fascism 7 (2018) 141-174 architectural style, capable of epitomize the 'national resurgence' . The preoccupation with newness was in line with what he stated during the 1940 commemorations: 'We are not just because we were, we do not live just because we have lived, we live to carry out our mission and claim to the world the right to do it.' 18 By this he was somehow projecting his plans for the future, an alternative future that although not being fascist, did not exactly aim to turn towards the past.
It is known that Salazar's first concern was the conservation of traditionalist buildings: 'the meticulous, almost religious restoration of what we had, and was about to be lost forever, or is almost lost already continues without a break: after the temples, the restoration of castles, that is, the monuments of military art. Close by, the museums, the national palaces' .19 Those were testimonies of the Portuguese past greatness that ought to be preserved for future generations.
But, as regards the new, he expressed his regret that young Portuguese architects, 'among whom there are many talented boys' , were not striving to create a new architecture 'appropriate for our time but, at the same time, fitting our race and our climate' . The dictator accused architects of 'subserviently following foreign models' , taking for 'decorative and modern motifs' what was merely 'a defence against certain climates.'20 It is clear that none of the works designed by the Portuguese architects until 1932, and that are those considered the more progressive -the so-called Portuguese first modernism -represented the national resurgence as conceived by Salazar. Specifically referring to modernism's long horizontal windows, Salazar has considered that they had been imagined for 'shady countries, where the light is thin and sad' while in Portugal 'the sun infiltrates into every nook and cranny' and 'light needs to be dimmed' . He had even said the excess of light was responsible for eye diseases in Algarve, an area in the south of Portugal where the climate was sunny.21 Salazar's sense of newness was rather peculiar. When visiting a recently built council residential complex, which was composed of single-family houses, Salazar rejected the prospect of building a skyscraper in Portugal. According to 18 António Oliveira Salazar, Discursos e Notas Políticas, 1938Políticas, -1943 Salazar's defense of an agrarian landscape was not only based on the need to avoid class conflict, but was also rooted in his belief in the corrupting power of modernization: 'Mechanization, the automatism of progress that turns men into machines, isolates them brutally, replacing their tastes and affective impulses by complex and cool gears. The town's man -shaped in his own struggle with others who dispute with him his place in the sun -is, perhaps not noticing it, the incarnation of selfishness.'24 The alternative future Salazar conceived was that of the transformation of the country into an immense rural area even if the expression 'appropriate to our time' means not a revolutionary palingenetic form of expression, but rather an architecture that did not reject the legacy of the past for the sake of a nebulous future.
His traditionalist nationalism led him to comment, whilst passing the neighborhood of an economic housing complex whose houses contained small vegetable gardens: 'What a beautiful cauliflower! What beautiful roses!'25 The concerns he had shown when preparing his move to the official residence of the President of the Council reinforced his conservative, if not reactionary, nature. In an extensive handwritten document that is now held by the National Archives, Salazar meticulously planned how to accommodate chicks, chickens, and rabbits within the palace's premises. He also planned a kitchen to cook for the animals, a compost heap, and a place to channel the dirty water from washing. Further, he established that the 'orderly' and 'peaceful' drivers' home should include a sewing room and maintain a high standard of cleanliness.26 By this means, Salazar had sought to recreate rural life in the urban context. Indeed, he never liked travelling abroad and even less flying, and country was the place where he really felt at home, a feeling that did not change over time.
In 1962, Salazar wrote to the director of the Coca-Cola brand in Europe explaining his opposition to its access to the Portuguese market: it is a matter of what I would call a moral landscape. Portugal is a conservative nation, paternalistic and -may God be praised -a backward country, which I consider more flattering than pejorative. You will risk introducing in Portugal what I hate most of all, i.e., modernism and the famous 'efficiency' . I even shudder at the thought of your trucks at full speed on the streets of our old cities, speeding up, as they pass, the pace of our secular habits.27 The route to the future would have to be slow. But, although having a personal taste and opinion about any topic, the truth is that Salazar lacked the skills required to deal with aesthetics and lacked even more the qualities needed to deal with architecture or urbanization. With a humble and rural family environment, and without an artistic background, his expertise was in law and finances. Not surprisingly, his library, which contained thousands of books, is paradigmatic since it held few books on architecture: the Urban Plan of Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil Presumably, those books were presents, not acquisitions, and Salazar's lack of preparation to choose an architectural language led him to give carte blanche to his Public Works' minister, knowing that Pacheco would have the ability to successfully 'write in stone' the virtues of the Portuguese genius and the efficacy of Salazar's government. Therefore, the minister Duarte Pacheco had become the key motivating force behind the public works' policy. 27 Cited

Pacheco's Iron Fist
Duarte Pacheco had been dean of the Lisbon Instituto Superior Técnico [ist; School of Engineering] (1927)(1928)(1929)(1930)(1931)(1932)(1936)(1937), and minister of Education (1928). As such, he had promoted the new faculty facilities. Contrary to what was common practice, and as a mark of confidence in his technical competence,29 Salazar would issue him extraordinary powers, while the head of government remained (almost) outside the process. The fact that he avoided public speeches and inaugurations confirmed his reputation as a technocrat, even if his role as a politician had been very well documented by a great deal of written sources.30 Yet, Pacheco led the ministry of Public Works with an 'iron fist' and made full use of the authoritarian context by both forcing low interest rate loans to municipalities for public works, and promoting large expropriations. His draconian expropriations policy,31 that has parallels in diverse forms of regime, although much easier to apply in dictatorial contexts of the sort provided by Fascist Italy and Salazarist Portugal, enabled him to take possession of significant amounts of private property. In fact, from 1932 until Pacheco's death in 1943, one-third of the Lisbon municipality was expropriated, most of the plots being designated and valued as rural. Following expropriations, the municipality could sell the land together with urbanization projects, thus benefiting from its valorization.32 Pacheco also created the Comissariado do Desemprego [Commissariat of Unemployment], an institution under his direct supervision that was financed by an income tax for public work funding. The purpose was to fight against unemployment and provide the country with cheap labor, a kind of Portuguese New Deal program that enabled him to fund his intensive building program. Another aspect of his policies that must be taken into consideration is the fact that Pacheco forced all towns with more than 2,500 inhabitants to develop urban plans within three years. Being an engineer eager to establish order and proper hygiene conditions, he realized the problem posed by the shortage of urban planners. Thus, many foreign well-known architects and urban planners were invited to work in Portugal during the thirties, such as Marcelo Piacentini, Calza Bini and Giovanni Muzio, Donald-Alfred Ágache and Étienne de Gröer, and Hermann Diestel. All of them would contribute to enriching the regime's language of national resurgence.
In addition, he consolidated a highly centralized state apparatus that had been already established during the Military Dictatorship (1926)(1927)(1928)(1929)(1930)(1931)(1932).33 Building commissioners directly answerable to the minister would draw up extensive programs to erect hospitals, schools, universities, courts of justice, barns, hydroelectric power plants, ports, prisons and police facilities. These commissions were autonomous, emanating from public institutions with authority over public buildings, but it was mandatory to ask for the non-binding recommendations of certain state advisory bodies. Usually, each commission brought together an engineer, an architect and someone professionally related with the function of the planned building. Often its members were sent throughout Europe and, more rarely, to the usa, to study the example of other countries.
Travelling abroad to learn from experience elsewhere at the expense of the government was a common practice in Europe. According to Beleza dos Santos, a criminal law expert and the head of the commission in charge of studying new prisons to be built by the regime, in order to appraise other penal systems, German technicians had been recently sent to the usa; Greek, English and Spanish technicians had been sent to Belgium; Belgians had visited the Netherlands and England; and Swiss technicians were sent to the Netherlands and Denmark.34 On the periphery of Europe, Portugal would use this way of working in order to properly prepare architects and engineers to make informed, educated choices: Carlos Rebelo de Andrade was sent to Spain to study school buildings (1933) Usually unwilling to compromise, the President of the Council wrote the following dispatch: 'As the minister of Public Works has been responsible for the oversight of the works and discipline of budget, the problem's solution should be entrusted to him' .40 And Pacheco would succeed in imposing his vision, for in the event all the three buildings were erected, and one of them, the Monument to the Discoveries, went on to become one of the most representative buildings of the regime.
This modernization impulse does not mean the minister had ever had any sympathy for modernist aesthetics. Cottinelli Telmo gave us a clue about his office decoration: 'all of us have always had great difficulty in getting out of his office, extensively searching -a long search that endangered protocolthe drapery edge that would discover the exit door and that was mingled with the folds of outstanding velvets, with no apparent way out.'41 If his personal taste was not enough to sustain the argument, Pacheco library's catalogue reinforces it: the single book vaguely related with architecture and urban planning was a second edition of the Urbanistica -Giardini, published by Filipo Basile, an Italian architect from the nineteenth century.42 He had probably bought this book in 1937 when accompanying the architect Pardal Monteiro43 to Italy in order to collect impressions of its maritime stations. Given this disinterest in contemporary aesthetics, the engineer would avoid taking a stand on design matters, opting instead to delegate them to architects and engineers he trusted. Given this, no wonder that, from 1932 up to 1938, Monteiro was Pacheco's righthand man. From 1938 onwards, after a personal misunderstanding between them, the minister replaced Monteiro by Cottinelli Telmo, another important Portuguese architect, even less modern than Monteiro. But the juncture created by Pacheco's appointment could have been an opportunity to embrace a revolutionary modernism written in stone. Why then was Pacheco's intensive modernizing building policy unable to seize the chance for a radical renewal of Portugal's built environment? Why was a modernized version of traditionalism still the dominant language of the New State during this period?

The Material Shape of the 'Spirit of Discovery'
In 1932 Salazar came to the conclusion that the Portuguese architects had been so far unable to create an architectural expression of the 'national resurgence' as Italy had successfully done.44 Considering his abhorrence of the Modern Movement and its geometrical forms, in all likelihood he was not aware of the rationalist architects that were working for Mussolini's regime. Salazar was referring to Piacientini's stripped classicism, considering him and those adopting the same architectural style as the authors of 'monumental fascist architecture' , significantly considering it 'highly debatable, but conspicuous.'45 Therefore, Salazar had overlooked the fact that no single architectural style was established by the Fascist regime, for contradictory proposals coexisted as long as they help to 'create the monumental Rome of the twentieth century.'46 Salazar, as almost all his contemporary Portuguese elites, ignored that a judicious use of volumes, proportions, scale and ornaments, could translate the myth of Romanità into reality.47 Exactly like Salazar, many Portuguese architects were unable to grasp this ambivalence. Indeed, those who adopted both a more international language and a national style praised Fascist architecture, the former for being 'audaciously modern' and the latter for being ' traditionalist' . While one faction could have been attracted by the rationalist style of Giuseppe Pagano and Giuseppe Terragni, others could have become lured by Marcelo Piacentino's severe stripped classical style, which had had many advocates even within democratic nations. If style did not define fascist architecture, what then distinguished its character?
What seems to be the uniqueness of the interwar dictatorships' architecture is the effectiveness with which it conveys the national myths and its projection into an imagined future. This uniqueness was acknowledged by the Portuguese architect Pardal Monteiro. In 1936, Monteiro told to Salazar that what had occurred in politics had happened first in architecture: artistic disorder had been followed by simplicity, embrace of technical advances and purity of the classical spirit. Reacting against the recent past, architecture, like politics, did not wish either to destroy or resurrect the past. In the same way, political institutions or social systems from the past were not recoverable. Realities of modern life prevented it. What could be recovered from the past were eternal elements of the national character. Likewise, in a 'rebirth era' , architecture should be novel in order to regenerate the nation. 'The styles of the past are 44 Entrevistas  , 1927] in rational style, which perfectly fits the definition of aesthetic modernism, here meaning Modern Movement, as it was conceptualized by Richard Etlin: 'pure prismatic forms devoid of applied ornamentation and free of stylistic reminiscences, an architecture intended to reflect the spirit of a new machine civilization' .50 It is necessary to have in mind that those buildings were erected during the Military Dictatorship when Salazar was still a mere university professor in Coimbra, which probably made their construction less problematic. Many Portuguese architects designed radical, even utopian projects that could perfectly fit within the category of revolutionary fascism, as they clearly represent futural visions of Portuguese society. Such is the case of the funicular planned by Monteiro to cross the Tagus River, and stretching over three kilometers (1939-1940?), and the lift rising 150 meters to a platform set right in the Lisbon center that Jorge Segurado had imagined in 1929 would be the site for an image of the first Portuguese King, a monumental statue that would revolutionize the Lisbon cityscape. In the same vein, a modernist project to be built as a monument to the discoveries in Sagres was designed by Rebelo Andrade in 1934, while in 1930 Cassiano Branco designed a beach resort for Costa da Caparica which was located in the outskirts of Lisbon, that included a luxury hotel with 1,500 rooms, another one with two thousand rooms, a casino, two theatres, one of them an outdoor building with capacity for five thousand people, cinema, covered swimming pool, pedestrian bridges, a channel for the practice of water sports, an extensive sports complex, a dock, and an airstrip.
This project incorporated all of Le Corbusier's '5 Points of Modern Architecture' (1926): pilotis, roof garden, free façades, free plan, and horizontal windows. In relative terms, Cassiano's plan brings to our mind the resort Hitler envisaged for Germany, Prora, with its 20,000 beds. Therefore, whether by associating themselves with the Modern Movement or adopting a more or less nationalized variant of a stripped classicism, the 'anthropological revolution' that Roger Griffin claims to be at the heart of fascist political modernism could have had its equivalent in the plans for a new type of Portuguese mass modernity driven by the myth of the Portuguese Discovery and symbolized in daring new architectural projects. fascism 7 (2018) 141-174 As happened in the Fascist cult of Romanità and the Nazi myth of the Aryan race, the Portuguese myth also gave the nation a sense of greatness grounded in the idea that its people were chosen by God to spread His word, and, paradoxically, that the country was also the original source of the European modernity, thanks to its circumnavigation of the Earth.51 Although Portuguese nationalism did not translate into a sense of superiority, at least in regards to other European powers, it was the empire that gave Portuguese nationalism its exclusionist nature.52 The Portuguese colonies were 'living symbols of the nation's sacred legacy' .53 Salazarism used it as a source of legitimacy, and because of that the flag of the House of Aviz, the royal dynasty that promoted the maritime expeditions of the fifteen and sixteenth centuries, was considered by the regime to be 'the flag of the eternal Portugal' .54 The Salazarist cult of civic virtues led to the resurrection of the Discovery spirit. responsible for turning Portugal into a vast empire, in Sagres, the village that was thought to have hosted the school that taught coastal navigation to those involved in the 'Discoveries' . However, none of the architects' proposals seems to have pleased Salazar and his inner circle. What confirms that some Portuguese architects had the potential to realize a revolutionary fascist design in architecture is that these professionals were completely au fait with the latest aesthetics movements that were flourishing during the interwar Europe.

Narrow-Minded Architects?
In 1969 Carlos Ramos stated, referring to the interwar period of architecture, that 'modern theories were not well known by us.'56 This is largely attributable to the backwardness of the schools of fine arts in Portugal that tried to replicate the Parisian École des Beaux Arts.57 However, this claim can hardly be applied to those who worked for the state in charge of designing public buildings. Indeed, the apparently parochial approach to architecture requires a more comprehensive analysis in the context of interwar Europe that can cast light both on the restrained modernism that prevailed, and on the preference for vernacular traditionalism and a nationalized version of stripped classicism, a 'rooted modernism as defined by Roger Griffin within the scope of this special issue' .
It is important to establish how much contact the restricted elite58 who worked for the regime actually had with modernism, since it is perfectly clear that many of the architectural undertakings designed by its members were influenced by the architectural currents informing avant-garde projects in Europe. As mentioned before, architects in charge of governmental building programs benefited from study tours paid by the Portuguese government. But These demonstrate that backwardness and narrow-mindedness are not conclusive explanations for the embrace of either neo-classical or regionalist traditionalist architecture in which modernity is embraced, but the exclusion of designs suggesting radical, future-oriented fascist ideals. In fact, architects were perfectly capable of a fierce reaction against the forms of the past. The reason why this did not take place will be explained in the following section.

'The Victory of Tradition and Regionalism'
The weight of tradition in a country in which pre-industrial forms of agriculture predominated, the industrial revolution had not occurred,63 mass society was non-existent and, in general, economic and social activities were highly dependent on the state,64 was not conducive to the emergence of radical newness, either aesthetic or political, but rather promoted self-restraint on the part of most architects.65 'I have but one purpose: it is to make Portugal continue to follow its normal rhythms of life' , Salazar would claim in 1938.66 Indeed, the ideology and political discourse promoted by the New State were impregnated with traditionalist values and Catholic moral.67 Aided by political repression, propaganda, and the Catholic Church, the regime would partially succeed in imposing this conservative worldview valuing continuity with the past, and, unsurprisingly, material forms mirror it. Not because there was a strict official model imposed by the regime, but because the state apparatus was dominated by technicians and bureaucrats that shared with Salazar his nationalistic principle.68 Even distinguished architects and urban planners with international, modern outlooks were obliged to work within this context and, as they needed public contracts to professionally survive, the state being almost their only client -they would adapt to the situation by repressing any modernist or radical impulses they may have had.
In line with Oliveira Salazar, Raul Lino -a key protagonist of the 'Portuguese house'69 movement that has to be understood within the context of the nationalism that had arisen in Portugal at the end of the nineteenth century70 -was the leader of the nationalist faction among his professional colleagues. Further, he was the one architect who maintained a personal relationship with Salazar, being received by him on a regular basis, and also exchanging private correspondence with the dictator.71 Lino considered that a 'new spirit clothing a centuries-old soul was necessary' and that nationalism was 'an urgent need' for the 'reconstruction of the nation' . He called for an 'official dam' against the 'mechanical and uniform style that disparaged the national spirit' .72 Lino had unequivocally condemned geometric forms and rationalism in architecture,73 which he blamed for diminishing 'the national sentiment' . In his opinion, while a machine could change its ownership without losing characteristics and efficiency, a building was 'rooted in the soil and had to express its owner's feelings' . Lino also thought that 'the machine style' either 'had its origins in strange and distant countries or served as communist propaganda.'74 68 Luís Trindade shows the overwhelming impact that literary nationalism had in the Portuguese regime, namely on the rejection of 'modernity as capitalism '  The fact he had always claimed to have nothing to do with politics did not stop him claiming that architectural rationalism symbolized, if not 'the triumph of Communism' , at least 'a great weakness of intellect and regrettable absence of national consciousness' .75 For that reason, he considered the 'exemplary model' of architecture in Italy, 'a true mirror of the social remodelling of the country: a new spirit to cover a millennial soul' . He also regretted that Portugal still had not find 'the architectural expression of the great work of the resurgence of the Nation' . He then urged for a Latin architectural language as a way to defeat 'the insidious propaganda of dissolving internationalism . . . , which denies all that is traditional.'76 In Lino's view, architectural nationalism was not a matter of taste, but rather a necessity to reconstruct the nation. 'Respect for traditions' , 'rejection of pernicious foreignness' , 're-Portugalization' of architecture were his mottos.77 Lino's disdain for geometric forms was shared by many other Portuguese intellectuals. António Ferro, the chief of Propaganda -whom many wrongly consider a modernist intellectual78 -commissioned a house to build in Sintra adopting the regional style: Portuguese roof tiles and decorated eaves, arched windows, ornaments on the facade, tiles with regional themes and so forth.79 Lino and other traditionalist architects sought to use the symbolic power of architecture to help solve the crisis of modernity expressed in the increasingly amorphous, spiritless, faceless aspect of the Western metropolis by recovering the 'eternal spirit' of the Portuguese people. In principle, the projects that resulted could thus have been far closer in fusion of the traditional with classicism or modernism to those analyzed by Roger Griffin and Aristotle Kallis in relation to Fascist and Nazi regimes.80 But the alternative modernity they 75 Ibid. propose was not revolutionary in spirit, and envisaged no radical transformation either in the landscape or townscape, or in the national character of the Portuguese. The lack of a utopian dimension to Lino's creative imagination is evident by the work he was producing long before Salazar seized power. It is consistent with this that Lino's architecture was not perceived by government agencies as representing the political change politicians were undertaking in the Estado Novo, and so they did not commission any state building from him. For the most part, Lino only designed private houses in an idiosyncratic traditionalist style, sometimes evoking fairy tale scenarios, a kind of 'poem in stone' in which man and nature were in perfect harmony, even if he did not abandon modern functional principles in terms of plan and always reflecting ecological concerns.81 But his work played a crucial role in avoiding any hint of modernism's architectural excesses that would conflict with the conservative nature of the regime and its elites. Their vision of the new Portugal was not reactionary since they were prepared to promote modernization as long as it did not accelerate the pace of change to the point where it disrupted the habits and routines of everyday. Salazar and his supporters saw the solution to the nation's problems in a modernizing conservatism incorporating enough elements of the two fascist regimes to create a strong state protected from liberal chaos and the communist threat, while generating a largely illusory sense of dynamism and modernity. The rebirth they aspired to was a muted, gradual one far removed from the violence of the Nazis' 'creative destruction' . The Portuguese were to live at their own tempo, not one accelerated by radical state policies of regeneration or disrupted by what Walter Benjamin called 'the storm of progress' . Within the paradoxical ethos of decision-making scheme, Lino was the guardian of the Portuguese soul, which had been recently redeemed by Salazar from the chaos of the modern world. In this effort by the state to eliminate any radical architectural initiatives, he was assisted by other key figures within the state building processes.

The 'Little Dictators' of the State Apparatus
Raul Lino was supported in achieving his purpose to build modern structures reflecting traditional values by a host of bureaucrats working in the state intermediary bodies involved in the building policy.82 Lino was himself a bureaucrat who had a decisive role in the decision-making process as architect-in-chief of the office in charge of studies and works for monumentsthe Repartição de Estudos de Edifícios -under the Direcção-Geral de Edifícios e Monumentos Nacionais [dgemn; Directorate-General of Buildings and National Monuments]. His judgments, though not binding, had been decisive in the shaping the material legacy of the New State. For instance, he usually recommended that all windows and doors ought to be surrounded by stone, incidentally bringing them in line with the aesthetic of stripped classical civic buildings of the period.83 Lino also wrote a report on the new mint project in Araújo, 2010 Lisbon expressing his surprise at the lack of ornamentation, and to counteract its austere effect he proposed that a high relief sculpture should be added to the west façade.84 On another occasion, he criticized the project of the Telegraph and Telephone Station, designed by the architect Adelino Nunes to be built in Square D. Luís in Lisbon, which he claimed would not be out of place in any outer borough in New York or in some other city located in the uk or Netherlands: in other words, the project failed to take into account the local conditions and national context. He also had harsh words for the building's industrial, functional style and lack of gravitas.85 Apart from dgemn there were other public institutions involved in the New State's building policy. An important one was the Conselho Superior de Obras Públicas [csop; National Council for Public Works], an advisory body dominated by engineers. In his evaluation of the same mint project, the engineer Ferreira, the rapporteur of the csop, described its external appearance as one of 'modern, simple lines and simple décor' , 'an uncharacteristic style that only architects with higher artistic skills can apply without relapsing into the grotesque' , qualities that in this case the architect did not seem to possess. As the mint would be 'one of the distinctive monuments of the modern cityscape' , he argued that the project must be also submitted to the Conselho Nacional de Belas Artes [cnba; Superior Council of Fine Arts] or to the Aesthetic Committee of the Lisbon Municipality.86 For his part, Cordeiro Ramos, the president of the Junta Nacional da Educação [jne; National Board for Education],87 who was also a Nazi sympathizer, privately wrote to Salazar arguing against the mint project.88 Ramos' negative reaction was shared by José de Figueiredo, member of the National Board for Fine Arts. Figueiredo, a reputable art historian who was also the director of the National Museum of Ancient Art, would argue: 'justifying his design, the architect says that he only planned three windows on the west façade because no more light was necessary. However, it is a pity that, when drawing the site plan, the architect didn't study its projection on the façade. Had he done so, that distorted result would have been avoided' .89 Figueiredo's main concern 84 Report, was with aesthetics and it seems his objections were listened to, for the three initial windows of the west façade would become twenty. There is evidence that the Municipality of Lisbon also interfered in the decision-making process. In response to Pardal Monteiro's designs for the Bank of Portugal's headquarters, a stripped classical building that could, at a stretch, be compared to the work of Speer, some technicians from the Municipality wrote to the governor of the Bank criticizing it, arguing that 'the building had to be built in an architectural language that all good Portuguese people could understand.'90 The project was never built, suggesting again that the prevailing ethos, zealously guarded by state bureaucracy, militated against radical originality or the adoption of any aesthetic that could be seen as alien, provocative or jarringly modern.
This intricate planning and design process partly explains why the currency of fascist modernism and the plurality of aesthetic styles adopted in Italy91 and Spain92 was precluded in Portugal during the thirties. The quasi-uniformity of public architecture would be further reinforced by the small size of the country and the state's overwhelming presence in all societal, economic and cultural realms. 'Fascist visions'93 were never the aim of Salazarism and its supporters. Traditionalism, regionalism and nationalized neo-classicism was what suited them the most. However, the prevalence of these aesthetics is not to be mistaken for an established official style, but rather as the result of a successful campaign in favor of nationalism and against radical currents of internationalism which had been fought since the last decade of the nineteenth century, leading to a standardization of taste perfectly in harmony with Salazarist doctrine.94 If this had not been the case, architects who are conventionally referred to as 'the first modernists' for adopting of rational style during the early 1930s would have not freely constructed for themselves private houses in conformity with the regime's allegedly 'official style' .95 This is the There may also be more prosaic reasons for the absence of variety and daring within Portuguese architecture. The lack of architectural competitions for prestige projects also probably worked against the development of modernism. Architects always campaigned for more competitions,97 but the system of directly awarding public contracts without any administrative procedure had prevailed.98 Architect Pardal Monteiro once explained the process by which he was commissioned by the ist dean, Duarte Pacheco, who would soon become minister of Public Works, to design its new campus: 'you are the architect that the school board and I have chosen. Therefore, I only have two options open: to assign you the project for the Institute or to entrust it to a foreign architect, so you choose.'99 The same architect was commissioned by verbal agreement to design two maritime stations in Lisbon, Alcântara and Rocha do Conde de Óbidos, and no written contract had ever existed.100 Even when competitions did take place, programmes clearly laid down the aesthetic orientation to be followed, a practice that was against the recommendations made by the Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne [ciam; International Congress on Modern Architecture] in 1928. Such is the case of the competition for the new Palace of Justice in Lisbon in the early thirties. In regard to the 'character of the building' , the program stipulates the following: The competing architects, when designing the building, must bear in mind: (a) the prestige and majesty of the institution for which the building is designed and the high function it serves; . . . (c) the monumental fascism 7 (2018) 141-174 character a public building of this nature and the importance it should have; . . . ; (e) the national character of a building designed and executed by Portuguese architects, engineers, artists, and local conditions should also be conveyed; (g) the advisability of employing, preferably, and as widely as possible, Portuguese materials and labor.101 Unlike Fascist Italy, where Mussolini had promoted competitions, and commissions were awarded regardless the style, Portuguese architects were not encouraged to stretch their imaginations due to several factors, such as the elites' parochialism and generally conservative taste, the centralization of the decisionmaking process and the small size of the country. Worse still, many buildings were designed and erected by contractors and engineers rather than architects. In 1937, 715 projects were approved in Lisbon although only sixty-six were designed by architects.102 Architects were not professionally recognized,103 and contractors were more preoccupied with earnings than with functional architecture.
Hampering the modernization of Portuguese architecture (and its openness to modernism) was also the fact that Portugal did not have a steel industry, a significant factor given that steel and reinforced concrete were the basis of modern functional architecture.104 Such activity would be only developed many years after the Second World War: industrial scale extraction began in 1951 and it only acquired a significant dimension from 1961 onwards. Given these conditions, no wonder Salazar's diaries of the thirties show how he and his ministers had spent considerable time discussing how to resolve the issue, which turned out to be even worse as the war drew closer.105 In order to fulfil the country's needs, the government had exchanged tungsten for steel with Nazi Germany and also imported it from the usa. Even so, the import of steel was not enough to supply building industry and technicians did what was needed to avoid its use. Such is the case of an unidentified engineer who suggested that the Estoril's post office should have its flat roof replaced by roof tiles due to the excessive price of reinforced concrete.106 The contemporary architect Siza Vieira who won the Pritzker Price in 1992, confirms the impact of this issue when he states: 'In the 1940s, many Portuguese architects dreamt of building in concrete, persistently more expensive than stone, and of using horizontal windows and terraces, that sometimes let in water. Long battles were fought; walls were erected to conceal the hated roof covered with Marseille tiles that no longer meant progress.'107 Thus, the lack of steel might have been a significant problem for the modernization of Portuguese architecture.
But it is more likely that the general traditionalist pressure of the elites had been responsible for effectively censuring any radical language that architects might have aspired to use. Adding to this conformist pressure was the threat of direct interference by the dictator, although his role should not be exaggerated. Even if Salazar 'was not prepared to discuss or supply architectonical recipes' , and 'he never modified the final result of an architectural project' , he was rarely the final arbiter of architectural matters. A recent study that describes the process by which the National Bank projects were approved, shows that, out of a total of eighty-two buildings, twenty-nine renovations, and thirty-three uncompleted projects,108 Salazar intervened only on one occasion. In the case of a new project for Coimbra, he asked for information in order to be sure that the recommendation of the Public Work Council, which had advised the replacement of a flat roof by Portuguese roof tiles in the house of the bank manager, was followed.109 Coimbra was the University City in which Salazar had studied, taught and developed his Catholic and political militancy, and also the principal school in which the regime's elites were trained. The subject had been brought to a session of the Council of Ministers presided over by Salazar himself, maybe in the context of the new building plans for the university, a topic that had always captured the dictator's attention. 110 In the end, given their high dependence on the state, architects were compelled to abandon their ideals and did what the regime's leader and its inner circles expected: to accept the recommendations of the state intermediary bodies without a fuss. Therefore, their designs were conceived to suit the project's commissioners who, although unconstrained by state directives, discouraged modernist innovation and experimentation. fascism 7 (2018) 141-174

Post-Second World War Portuguese Fascism?
It is only possible to speak of an Estado Novo architecture with regard to some projects that were built from the end of the 1930s onwards, most of which were completed after Pacheco's death and the defeat of the Axis powers, and thus at a time when the 'era of fascism' was over and the regime was struggling to justify its existence that had suddenly became an anachronism. As a result, some buildings of the University of Coimbra and the Areeiro neighborhood, in Lisbon, both planned before the forties and erected after the Second World War, are the most striking examples of a hypothetical Portuguese fascist architecture (see figure 5). This is evident in some common formal elements which are easily recognized: the vast scale of the buildings, the domination of public over private space, neo-classical elements, colonnades, arches, and symmetry.
However, this kind of stripped classical monumental building is part of an aesthetic current of the period that can also be found within democratic regimes. Indeed, there is a significant number of buildings that perfectly fit within this category, such as the main building of Zurich University (1914), Tokyo Palace in Paris (1937), Senate House in London (1932)(1933)(1934)(1935)(1936)(1937). Some of them, for example the Musée de l' Art Moderne, even have more similarity with Marcello Piacentini's Rettorato in the University of Rome than with Coimbra University, which has some parallels with the Medical School of Paris (1936)(1937)(1938)(1939)(1940)(1941)(1942)(1943)(1944)(1945)(1946)(1947)(1948)(1949)(1950)(1951)(1952)(1953). In other words, one must be cautious when identifying affinities between the Universities of Coimbra and Rome, a caution which Portuguese historiography, with rare exceptions,111 has not followed.112 When observing the Coimbra University, in my view, there is not a 'modernist élan towards the future' equivalent to that referred by Roger Griffin when speaking about Piacentini's plans for the eur 42.113 In terms of synesthetic experience, the feeling one gets while walking the spaces of the University of Coimbra is that of the superiority of those who are the custodians of knowledge, one of whom was none other than the former academic Oliveira Salazar. The sense of order, hierarchy, and discipline which the buildings embody convey the importance of the University of Coimbra as the entity which trained the regime's elites, and this contrasts with the emotional appeal of the fascist buildings.114 Such austere emotions are nevertheless somehow softened by the extended use of roof tiles instead of flat roofs, an effect that was even acknowledge at the time. In an excerpt of a report prepared by the Coimbra's agency of the Public Bank, we read: 'Although the author of the project had insisted on retaining the plan for a reinforced concrete roof throughout the construction with the aim of assuring that the impact of the whole building would be enhanced as much as possible, an impact which could in some way be affected by the red patch of roof tiles over a main porch of distinctly classical appearance, the final design was changed in order to replace the flat roof of the indented body by roof tiles.'115 Sculptures, ornamentation, and references to the Portuguese 'spirit of creativity and discovery' also contrast to the architecture of the German and Italian regimes. In the entrance to La Sapienza in Rome, Minerva, a mythological deity, wields a sword and a shield, in a strong, belligerent pose (Arturo Martini, 1935), while in Coimbra the entrance of the university is adorned by three big sculpture of classical authors (Safo, Tucídides, Aristóteles e Demóstenes), as guardians of Letters who contemplate the future with serenity, in the confidence that no revolutions are about to happen.
Coimbra's buildings did not reflect the Fascist slogan 'credere, obbedire, combattere' [believe, obey, fight] as Piacentini's clearly did.116 But these fascistized buildings and plans also did not convey the Salazarist motto 'Deus, Pátria e Família' [God, Fatherland and Family]. The President of the Council dreamt of a country transformed into a vast white village in a rural setting, selectively picking up modern commodities such as roads, schools, and telephone lines. His beloved rural utopia as a response to the harmful effects of modernization117 was unrealizable, for modernization and urbanization were unavoidable and he knew that were both necessary to the regime future survival. The tension between the leader's ideology and the regime's material legacy is well epitomized in the regime's failure to erect a monument commemorating Henry the Navigator. Unlike Mussolini and Hitler, who were directly involved in architecture and urban planning, Salazar's architectural ineptness led him to rely on architects, and these could not find an architectural language that suited the views of the leader and its elites. That is why, as has been pointed out by Vieira de Almeida, the monument was never built.118

Conclusion
From the 1930s to the years immediately following the Second Word War, building activity in Portugal had grown exponentially due to the New State's dictatorial nature, its centralized decision-making process, and the minister Duarte Pacheco's charisma and political strength. Pacheco's achievements were even more conspicuous in a country with a great deal to be done, particularly in the field of architecture and urban planning. However, this exceptional activity in public construction did not give rise to a fascist aesthetics that would have represented a radical political project similar to that of Nazism and Fascism. A mild architectural modernism emerged, but the regime's lack of revolutionary spirit, its attachment to traditionalism 118 See Vieira de Almeida, A Arquitectura no Estado Novo.