The high Catholic moralism of the Portuguese state had prevented anything close to a ‘sexual’ or ‘feminist’ movement from emerging openly within Portuguese society. In 1968 an outbreak of student protests at the Superior Technical Institute (Instituto Superior Técnico, IST) had declared, among other things, a ‘sexual revolution’ –an indication that, perhaps late in the global context, at least among the youth the moralist grip of the state was beginning to slip. One of the more dramatic confrontations of Marcelo Caetano’s tenure is the case of the Three Marias, which manages to cause waves across the international community. In 1972 Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Teresa Horta and Maria Velho da Costa, in a window of more lax censorship, publish Novas Cartas Portuguesas (New Portuguese Letters, or The Three Marias as it appears in English translations). Novas Cartas Portuguesas is hard to classify–it flits between poetry, essays, letters and fragments, but these combine to paint a harsh picture of the Portuguese woman under the Estado Novo, reflecting on the brutality of the regime and the Church, and the female condition in Portugal. It is almost immediately banned–described as ‘immoral’ and ‘pornographic’ by the state censors–and the Three Marias are arrested, placed on trial at Boa Hora Tribunal and sentenced to prison. The resulting wave of condemnation from international feminist movements, which includes protests outside Portuguese embassies in places like New York, adds another uncomfortable layer to the international scrutiny Portugal is already under.
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