The resulting workers’ mobilisation turns out to be explosive, literally. On the morning of the 18th, a PCP activist lobs a bomb onto a railway line on the eastern outskirts of Lisbon, causing a train to derail and immediately alerting the government’s military forces that the action is under way. The capital is rocked by more explosions, on Travessa do Cabral in central Lisbon and underneath a tram on Avenida da Liberdade. These actions, however, are not the triumphant herald to anything that could be described as a general strike. There are hubs of action in some Lisbon neighbourhoods, as well as in various towns and cities up and down the country–but the total participation doesn’t rise above a few thousand. In the town of Marinha Grande, workers manage to occupy the town hall and the GNR barracks, but a lack of organised leadership and a real plan for what to do next means the police take control of the situation in a few hours, scattering the armed strikers into the surrounding pine forests. Syndicalists in Almada and Barreiro, south of the Tagus, bring the railways to a halt, and in the town of Silves the cork manufacturers hoist a red flag above the workshops. Ultimately, however, this first salvo from the workers’ movement meets the same end that befell the various republican uprisings: failure, arrests, increased government repression, death. This is the first real test of Salazar’s mettle as de facto head of state, the first glimpse into how the Estado Novo deals with dissent. His answer to 18 January is the creation of the Tarrafal penal colony, its construction proposed in 1934 and the first prisoners shipped out in 1936. Of the 152 men imprisoned when the Swamp of Death is inaugurated, over a third are there due to their actions in January 1934.
The particular brand of fascist authoritarianism implemented by Salazar notably differs from the regimes in Italy and Germany in a few key ways. The violent goons that put Mussolini and Hitler in power are not required for the creation of the Estado Novo, and Salazar remains opposed to an independent paramilitary force–or street thugs outside of his control. Yet the Portuguese far right are itching to imitate the Brownshirts. Salazar sees an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone, directing the ebullience of the would-be street fascists against what he sees as the real enemies of the state. In the mid-1930s the Portuguese press is awash with articles decrying the dangers posed by next-door republican Spain, as well as the increasing influence of the Soviet Union. The year 1936 sees the creation of two organisations designed to combat that influence: the Portuguese Legion, a formal militia integrated into the state through the Ministry of the Interior, and the Portuguese Youth (Mocidade Portuguesa), in essence a youth extension of the former, modelled partly on the Hitler Youth. With these two organisations the Estado Novo can keep a close eye on the more extreme fascist elements in the country, and has another tool of repression against what Salazar calls ‘the great heresy of our time’: communism. From late 1936 public servants are required to make a statement under oath that they repudiate ‘communism and all subversive ideas’.
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