Pedro Martins

The acknowledged importance of seaside tourism in the economy of Portugal and in the construction of the country’s international and domestic image has strangely not resulted in broad narratives concerning the history of this phenomenon. The Portuguese seafaring tradition, repeatedly commemorated by public authorities, seems to have eclipsed the importance of a subject that scholars have already studied in other national contexts. This article aims to fill this gap, surveying existing work on the history of sea bathing and seaside tourism in Portugal from the eighteenth century to the 1960s. The focus is on the economic, political and social implications of the evolution of seaside resorts, and the paper addresses topics such as health concerns, transportation, legislation, state intervention and private investments. Considering the Portuguese case in comparison with the evolution of the phenomenon in other countries, this article provides analysis of an array of sources, some of which have not yet been examined by historians in Portugal. Questions intended to promote future research are raised throughout the study, showing that this is a largely unexplored subject in Portuguese and international historiography. Additional research will be invaluable.

To better understand the contemporary age, it has been necessary to study the relation between memory, national identity and political culture. On this field several studies have been produced that focus on the forms that the memory of the past ages has taken on the contemporary age. This thesis will study the representations of medievality that have been built in Portugal by the speeches and actions of contemporary agents. Major attention will be given to the national histories produced by historiographic and political speeches and to the development of memory and heritage politics by State agents. Although the mains focus of the thesis will be the 1930s and the 1940s, it will narrate several aspects of previous and later periods.

Inserido no âmbito de uma dissertação de doutoramento sobre as representações da medievalidade no Portugal contemporâneo, este trabalho tem como objectivo reflectir sobre várias leituras em torno do conceito de Idade Média. Esta será uma abordagem essencialmente teórica, tendo em vista um levantamento de questões relacionadas com os conceitos de “outro”, de “romântico” e de “medievalismo”. Para isso, socorremo-nos de várias leituras importantes sobre estes conceitos nomeadamente a obra de Jack Goody The Theft of History, o artigo de Dipesh Chakrabarty “Histórias de Minorias, Passados Subalternos”, o trabalho incontornável de Michael Löwy e Robert Sayre Revolta e Melancolia. O Romantismo contra a Corrente da Modernidade, bem como o famoso Orientalismo, de Edward Said . Sempre que possível, procurar-se-á remeter estas reflexões teóricas para a história portuguesa, tendo sempre em vista as diferentes visões sobre a Idade Média.

Inserido no contexto de uma dissertação de doutoramento sobre a importância da medievalidade para o Portugal contemporâneo, procurar-se-á neste trabalho analisar os monumentos que representavam a Idade Média no decreto de 16 de Junho de 1910. O objectivo é, por um lado, explicar que critérios presidiram à inclusão de determinados monumentos considerados “medievais” (a categoria é nossa) no decreto e que critérios presidiram à exclusão de outros. No âmbito deste trabalho, focar-nos-emos em três categorias de monumentos, considerados mais simbólicos para a história nacional, pela sua grandiosidade ou pela sua associação a determinados factos ou conjunturas da história medieval portuguesa: as catedrais, os mosteiros e os castelos.

Não obstante a sua proximidade com Lisboa e a sua importância a nível nacional, a Costa da Caparica não tem sido estudada na sua evolução histórica como centro balnear de turismo e de veraneio no século XX, ao contrário da sua congénere Costa do Sol. Contudo, sabe-se hoje que além de se ter tornado como que uma “praia favorita” dos lisboetas, representando um modelo de veraneio de cariz mais popular (em contraposição aos Estoris), foi também um elemento importante na transformação entre um modelo tradicional de praia, associado às elites e centrado no Norte do país, para outro modelo diferente e que hoje conhecemos.
É o objectivo deste artigo demonstrar como as praias da Costa da Caparica terão sido precursoras, a partir dos anos 20, de um novo tipo de turismo balnear em Portugal. Este seria representado por um novo paradigma de praia, “quente” e “lúdica”, voltado para a cultura ar-livrista, para o sol e para a exposição do corpo, que só teria a sua plena expressão a nível social como turismo de massas a partir dos anos 60, com o desenvolvimento do turismo nas praias algarvias.
Com este objectivo, reuniu-se um conjunto de materiais empíricos, tais como relatórios, inquéritos e comunicações da época, fotografias, panfletos e brochuras turísticas, obras de cariz memorialístico ou literário, imprensa local e entrevistas com banhistas e habitantes da Costa da Caparica, a fim de se procurar atingir um quadro da evolução da actividade e das práticas turísticas nesta zona balnear.
O artigo enfocará três níveis de análise: a evolução da Costa da Caparica como estância de turismo entre os anos 30 e os anos 60, tendo em conta o desenvolvimento infraestrutural, a iniciativa privada e a intervenção dos poderes públicos; o tipo de grupos sociais que frequentavam a Costa e que relações desenvolviam com os habitantes da localidade; e que importância tiveram estas praias para as transformações na maneira de encarar o lazer e o corpo em Portugal, nomeadamente no que respeita à exposição do corpo e aos benefícios do sol e do desporto.

The definition of a national collective memory has undoubtedly been one of the most important ways to legitimize authoritarian regimes . The Portuguese dictatorship  was no exception and in this process the Middle Ages were one of the most important historical periods in order to create an image of the national past from which the new regime would be legitimate successor.
Since the first Romanticism, the medieval period had been a major source of inspiration for various Portuguese political tendencies. If the first generation Liberals considered the Middle Ages the source of the national constitution and freedoms, for the authors of the ‘1870s generation’  the medieval period (until roughly the beginning of the 16th century) represented the period of the nation’s greatness, in contrast with the decadence of the following centuries. This dichotomous view (rise/ decline) indelibly influenced Portuguese historiography during the following decades, including authors of distinct intellectual and political fields. The establishment of the Republic (1910), and in particular the effects of the participation in the Great War (1916-18), contributed to the idea among integral monarchists and Catholics that it was necessary to return to whatever in the past had made Portugal’s glory, eliminating the mistakes of past centuries and in particular those committed by the demo-liberal regimes. As stated by the historian David Lowenthal, the recovery of missing and subverted values or institutions from the past usually happens in ‘hard times’ and it is often a remote past that better legitimizes and strengthens the present against a subsequent drift or corruption .
The establishment of the military dictatorship in 1926 echoed the concerns of several of these right-wing political and intellectual sectors with connections to integral monarchism and Catholicism. The Integralismo Lusitano, one of the groups that had been heavily shaken by the death of its chief ideologue António Sardinha in the previous year, had already risen as an ideological movement in early 1926 and shortly after would resume its political activism, suspended since the Pact of Paris . António Sardinha’s ideas, apologist of a corporatist and monarchical medieval Portugal, were central to the process of historical revisionism undertaken by the integralists.
The assumption, shared by many historians, that the historical memory of the Estado Novo in its early stages was deeply influenced by monarchist and legitimist currents linked to Integralismo Lusitano , will serve as the starting point for this presentation. Since 1914 the integralists, through their official periodical Nação Portuguesa, explained their political alternative to a demo-liberal Republic that threatened institutions like the Church and Monarchy, embraced a French-influenced parliamentarism and allegedly turned away from the values of national tradition. These values had, according to the integralists, reached their highest purity and originality at the late Middle Ages, when the municipalist and corporatist monarchy reached its peak and started the overseas expansion. According to the Integralist thought, the parting of these values was the result of a long historical process initiated by humanism, aggravated by the Protestant Reformation and 18th Enlightenment, culminating in liberal, socialist and anarchist disorders of the 19th and early 20th centuries, which caused the political, moral and social decadence of Portugal.
It is my aim in this paper to demonstrate how the Middle Ages were politically exploited during the first years of the Portuguese dictatorship. Writers, historians, scholars, thinkers and politicians of integralist and Catholic background, or influenced by these, took part in this exploitation, divulging a vision of the medieval period with great impact on national memory and on the establishment of ideological values supported by the Estado Novo. The celebrations of the double centenary of the Foundation and the Restoration of Independence in 1940 represent the zenith of this nationalist construction of historical memory, as has been emphasized by several historians who have studied the event. To study this process , I used a range of sources of integralist authors, in particular articles by João Ameal  and Manuel Múrias  in Nação Portuguesa, as well as other historiographic (the works of Alfredo Pimenta  and Manuel Cerejeira ), pedagogic (Antonio Mattoso’s schoolbooks) or openly political works, such as speeches and conferences. I was especially interested to know which main ideas these texts contained about the Middle Ages as a historical period and about their role in Portugal’s history.

"In recent decades several historians have stressed the importance of studying the relation between historical memory, national identity and political culture for a better understanding of the contemporary age. Numerous studies have been conducted in this field, focusing on the forms that the memory of past ages has taken in the contemporary period, as well as the history of the modes and contexts of production of historiography and of their effects on collective memory. The memory of Middle Ages has received particular attention, given its importance to the nation-building processes since the beginning of the nineteenth century and also its large impact on artistic, cultural and literary trends.
As part of this tendency, the purpose of my thesis is to study the relation between medieval studies and political discourse in contemporary Portugal, focusing particularly on the period between 1890 and 1947. From the search of multiple historiographical works, as well as discourses and texts issued by the political power in order to institute politics of memory, I intend to demonstrate to which extent there was an ideological instrumentalization of the memory of the Portuguese Middle Ages. The fulfillment of this objective will contribute to a better understanding of how political action in the present and speeches about the past – from historiography to other practices of memory – are related within the emergence and consolidation of modern politics, of History as a subject and of a sense of national identity.
In this paper I intend to present the contents and structure of my doctoral thesis project to my colleagues at the Forschungskolloquium Vormoderne. For me to profit with the discussion of the project, in the Kolloquium I will present three examples of authors that I have already worked and that I consider essential to the understanding of the topic. After giving a short theoretical background about the debate concerning medieval studies and medievalism, I will give a brief context of the political importance of the Middle Ages to the period which I am studying, with some notes about the people, dates and events of the medieval and contemporary periods in Portugal. I will also briefly describe the structure and methodology which will be employed at the project. At the end of the paper, I will give more detailed biographies of the three authors that I will present in the Kolloquium: Joaquim de Oliveira Martins, António Sardinha and Vitorino Magalhães Godinho."