Investigating Portugal, Salazar, and the New State: the Work of the Irish Legation in Lisbon, 1942–1945

Abstract

Throughout the 1930s and early 1940s, Portugal and its regime, Salazar's New State, were presented to the Irish public as a model of a new, socially just and Catholic brand of politics. Deliberately ignoring the repressive nature of the New State, Irish defenders of corporativism benefited from the lack of impartial information concerning it. This lack of information, at least in official circles, was overcome through the establishment of a legation in Lisbon in early 1942. Irish diplomats were able to provide a truer account of life in Portugal, countering the earlier propaganda and providing an interesting picture of the New State at work.