Abstract

Portugal’s forty-eight years of fascist dictatorship are one of the darkest periods in the country’s history. Using the State’s coercive force, the fascist dictatorship promoted the centralisation and concentration of capital and the formation of monopoly groups that became the owners and leaders of all fundamental sectors of the national

economy. These groups accumulated massive fortunes based on the over-exploitation, destitution, poverty and oppression of the Portuguese people and of the peoples of the

Portuguese colonies, who were deprived of their most basic rights and saw their natural wealth plundered. Portugal’s ties of dependence to imperialism, in exchange for external support for the regime, promoted the association of Portuguese monopoly groups with foreign monopolies and handed over to imperialism sectors of the economy that it did not yet control.

The April 25, 1974, Revolution was an assertion of national sovereignty and

independence. It was the result of a long and heroic struggle by the working class, working people, the popular masses and the Portuguese democratic forces. It put an end to the fascist dictatorship and the colonial war - recognizing the right to the total and immediate independence of the peoples in struggle, who had been subjected to

Portuguese colonialism for centuries. It brought about profound political, economic,

social and cultural transformations that are components of the democratic regime and of the Portuguese economy and which opened up the prospect of a new period in the

country’s history, marked by freedom and social progress. It profoundly changed

Portugal’s position on the international stage.