Commemoration of the centenaries of the foundation and independence of Portugal

In the late 1930s a great monument restoration campaign was developed, to prepare all the country for great celebration in 1940 of the double centenary (foundation of the Portuguese state and restoration of independence after the Castilian domination). While Europe was lacerated by the Second War and neighbouring Spain had been ruined by the Spanish Civil War, Salazar´s regime undertook a magnificent celebration, "the great feast of the Portuguese family" (Anais 1956:115). The double centenary celebration programme included a presidential grand tour around the symbolic monuments, previously restored, and places of the country, an historical procession in Lisbon (beginning with an evocation of Lusitania), a great historical-ethnographic exhibition, and an international congress, among other features, everything personally directed by Salazar (ibid.: 116-50).

Source: Nationalism and Archaeology in Europe / Edited by Margarita Diaz-Andreu & Timothy Champion. Routledge Library Editions: Archaeology.