«Tudo pela nação, nada contra a nação»; Salazar, the creation of the Department of National Propaganda and Censorship

Abstract

The Secretariado de Propaganda Nacional (SPN) of the Portuguese dictatorship is essential in order to understand how the Salazarist Estado Novo in Portugal was conceived and consolidated. Its role as an instrument of propaganda used to spread the regime’s political ideas, based on the socalled «politics of spirit», had an extraordinary influence on the control of the public opinion and the Portuguese media, which suffered an ironclad censorship that had a very negative effect on freedom of speech and the press. In this article we approach the main elements of the strategy, its structure and the SPN organization in the 30’s, based on several documental sources that provide insightful data on the Portuguese fascist regime.