António de Oliveira Salazar

Born Apr. 28, 1889, in Santa Comba Dão, Beira Alta Province, Portugal; died July 27, 1970, in Lisbon. Portguese state figure.

Salazar graduated from a Jesuit school and then from the University of Coimbra, where he was an economics professor from 1917 to 1928. He was one of the founders of the Catholic Center Party (1918) and was elected a deputy to parliament from that party in 1921. For a few days in 1926, after the military coup, and again from 1928 to 1940 he was minister of finance; in 1930 he was also minister of colonies. From 1932 to 1968 he was prime minister and the de facto dictator of Portugal. He was also minister of war from 1936 to 1944 and minister of foreign affairs from 1936 to 1947. In 1930 he founded the fascist National Union Party and proposed a “unitary corporative republic.” He helped draft the 1933 constitution and the addendum to it—the Colonial Act—which gave final expression to the establishment of a corporative fascist state in Portugal. Beginning in 1968 he was no longer active in government because of ill health.