História e Verdade(s), vol. 23

LUÍS REIS TORGAL
Two "truth". Salazar and Afonso Costa.

The "Truth" is a fundamental ideological concept in Salazarism, as well as the concept of "opposition". Therefore, the first clandestine newspaper of what has been called the "reviralho" ("opposition") was named The Truth (1933-1934). The periodical directed by Costa Brochado after 1934, entrusted by the Propaganda organs of the New State, was also called The Truth. Since the beginning of his rule, Salazar attempted to raise the "truths" and "certainties" of the regime he had formed, and Afonso da Costa attempted to show that those truths were no more than falsities in an interview to a Brazilian journalist in Paris. This way a dialogue was fought between "situation" and "opposition". Salazar was sober in his words (as his tone usually was) but the same was not true about the Salazarists who also tried to point out the falsities in Afonso Costa's "truths".
This article is, therefore, an analysis of the speeches on the "Truth" or the "truths" of the two opposing sectors, symbolized by these two essential figures of the New State (a winner in the political-institutional context of the time) and the First Republic (which fell in 1926), i.e., Salazar and Afonso Costa. In this situation, and since the New State was a clearly assumed authoritarian regime with a "single party", i.e., a "single truth", it is obvious that "Salazar's Truth" was the one to be imposed on the Portuguese territory. And he did it for about 40 years.