Introduction

Fiercely attached to the colonialist imaginary as a structuring element of Portuguese ontology and teleology, the radical right suffered a severe blow with the overthrow of the dictatorship that had ruled Portugal for 48 years. While the military coup d'état that overthrew the Estado Novo was based on the corporate issues of low-ranking officers, the revolution was mainly about democratizing the country. The idea of democratization was, for the vast majority of the revolution's political agents and for the broad sectors of the population that took to the streets, in the municipalities, neighbourhoods and workplaces, inseparable from the demand for the recognition of the right to self-determination of peoples and the decolonization of the Portuguese colonial empire-proof of this inextricable relationship is the motto of the Armed Forces Movement during the Portuguese revolution: «Democratize, Decolonize, Develop».

Feeling unable to stop democratization and decolonization simultaneously, the radical right -both civilian and military-set about trying to obstruct and prevent the decolonization of Portugal's two largest colonies in Africa, Mozambique and Angola. Initially, until September 28, 1974, they found in the President of the Republic, General António de Spínola, and the military and civil sectors associated with him, essential support in their fight to maintain a pluricontinental Portugal. The failed coup attempt led by Spínola and the radical right on September 28 1974, was aimed precisely at halting negotiations with the Mozambican and Angolan liberation movements -as evidenced by the early and frustrated coup by the European settlers in Maputo (then Lourenço Marques) on September 7 of that year -and removing from power in Portugal all those who advocated the total decolonization of the entire Portuguese empire. Right-wingers always did so in opposition to two national development projects they abhorred: Socialism and Europeanism. In fact, Portuguese nationalism, deeply Atlanticist, abhorred socialism and saw Europeanism as being contrary to the existential and historical nature of the country, necessarily implying the death of Portugal.

Accordingly, this paper seeks to map -through an intensive survey of the press and editorial initiatives of the Portuguese radical right- the different phases this political camp went through between 1974 and 1985, the first decade of Portuguese democracy. In addition, an attempt is made to create an ideological and organizational genealogy of the Portuguese extreme right based on a thorough literature review. This mapping of the radical right, based on a thematically broader study of the sources, will focus in this article on the themes that concern theoretical formulations about national identity and Portugal's historical profile and mission, the structuring axes of Portuguese nationalism and considerations about national ontology and teleology, and the position regarding Portugal's accession to the European Economic Community (EEC). In fact, joining the EEC was a foreign policy objective of the successive constitutional governments of the Portuguese Republic, whose composition was determined by the Socialist Party (PS), the Social Democratic Center (CDS) and the Social Democratic Party (PSD), which in the first legislative elections of Portuguese democracy won more than 75% of the votes cast and around 85% of the elected deputies.

Structurally distinct from the opposition of the radical communist and socialist left to Portugal's entry into the EEC, the Portuguese far right's rejection of Europeanism was essentially based on the defense of the country's historical, religious and civilizational overseas mission and the threat of Portugal's definitive subordination in the great concert of nations. The most radical opponents of the Europeanist project never tired of raising the spectre of a new loss of independence and absorption into the Spanish state. We propose to discuss and characterize the radical right's arguments for rejecting Portugal's accession to the EEC and the discourses and representations about Europe, Portugal and the Portuguese.

1. The radical right in Portugal

The roots of contemporary Portuguese right-wing thinking date back to at least the first half of the 19th century. Although the influences of the right under study came above all from the radical right that marked the 20th century in Portugal, particularly those that centered around the Estado Novo, we must not overlook the importance and weight that the right-wing tradition of the 19th century had in shaping the essential characteristics of the radical right of the post-25th of April period.

It was in the fight against liberalism that the antiliberal, anti-democratic and anti-revolutionary thinking that would inform successive right-wing projects for the country was structured and began to systematize. Only then, since the political challenge to the state of affairs was weak, the concern with theoretical formulations that defended the old order was almost unnecessary. It was only when a political movement arose capable of confronting the system, structure, institutions and way of functioning of the Ancien Régime that there was a need to erect reactionary thinking and to theoretically legitimize the old situation, essentially mimicking and drawing inspiration from French counter-revolutionary thinking.

In this regard, Ernesto Castro Leal begins by highlighting, among the five anti-liberal nationalisms that existed from 1820 to 1940, the counter-revolutionary nationalism of the late 18th century¹. Continuing to follow the five anti-liberal nationalisms highlighted by Leal and organized chronologically, the second, from the 1910s and 1920s, was structured around organizations such as Integralismo Lusitano [Lusitanian Integralism] and Acção Realista Portuguesa [Royalist Portuguese Action]. The third, eminently fascist, in the 1920s, was represented by the Centro do Nacionalismo Lusitano [Center of Lusitanian Nationalism]. The fourth, also fascist in nature and located in the 1930s, was expressed through the Movimento Nacional-Sindicalista [National Syndicalist Movement]. Finally, the fifth was a «syncretic nationalism of the 10s and 20s of the 20th century, which combined elements of anti-liberalism and conservative authoritarian liberalism that converged in the anti-liberal nationalist ideology of the "Estado Novo" Dictatorship))². In addition to reactionary political thinking, all these nationalist movements were also clearly influenced by the ultramontane thinking of Catholicism.

In short, Portuguese legitimist or «miguelista» thinking («counter-revolution, anti-revolution, anti-liberalism, reaction, traditionalism, conservatism, legitimism… the terminological polemic is endless and ancient»³) was profoundly anti-revolutionary, against the separation of powers and in favour of the absolute power of the king. It was also markedly antidemocratic, organicist (or corporatist) and elitist, positioning itself against individual freedom to the detriment of traditional - and tradition as such - and organic freedoms. In essence, a «counter-revolutionary, anti-liberal, corporatist, ultramontane and pro-nationalist discourse (…), the call to denounce the enemy (the liberal) and to mobilize against constitutional governments, verbal and physical violence»⁴.

Integralismo Lusitano captures not only restorationist monarchists but also disillusioned republicans and recent converts to the monarchist ideal⁵. The monarchy defended by Integralismo Lusitano was «organic, anti-parliamentary, decentralizing and traditionalist»⁶. In other words, the integralists were not only opposed to the Republic but also to the Constitutional Monarchy defeated by the Republicans, thus referring to the value of tradition, embodied by the Ancient Régime and King Miguel's fight against liberalism and the influence of the modernizing and liberal cultural, political, social and economic ideas arriving from Europe.

Basically, this was an organicist, traditionalist, anti-parliamentary, anti-democratic, elitist defense of the absolute power of the sovereign, corporatist, municipalist and nationalist doctrine. It was a political project that harbored a deep interest in, admiration for, and mythification of Portuguese medieval history's traditions and legends, and it was seen as a golden age that needed to be recovered. António Sardinha's thinking, particularly in O Valor da Raça (The Value of Race), also conceptualised «a racial nationalism, which was later abandoned, detecting in the imagery of "Homo Atlanticus" the basis of the Portuguese race»⁷.

Regarding the legacy of Integralism, it is clear that, on the one hand, there was the experience of the Movimento Nacional-Sindicalista and the integration of some of its main leaders into the political-administrative structure of the Estado Novo, giving up, at least as an immediate objective, the restoration of the traditional Monarchy. Others, whether or not they came from the Movimento Nacional-Sindicalista, which was then extinct, joined the opposition to Salazarism. The experience and ideas of the integralists also partly influenced the radical right-wing groups of the third quarter of the 20th century in Portugal⁸.

Nacional-Sindicalismo had a very short existence as a legal organization, between 1932 and 1934, and its main ideological pillars were fascist-type nationalism and corporatism, here referred to as syndicalism. Nacional-Sindicalismo «presented […] a composite nature from the organizational point of view, in which a young and radical fascist centre led an organization that in its provincial margins encompassed the most conservative and ultramontane sectors of the local elites»⁹. For António Costa Pinto, Nacional-Sindicalismo represented «a process of fascisation of Integralismo Lusitano»¹⁰. The same author also highlights the movement's profoundly imperialist ideology, the aim of mythologizing Portugal's centuries-old colonial domination and inculcating this awareness of the country's imperial vocation, dimension and power in the identity conceptions of the national elites and the people while also defending «organicist and anti-capitalist» positions¹¹.

During the Second World War, «right-wing extremism was reduced only to the pro-Axis militancy that had gathered, during the war years, around the magazine Esfera [Sphere] and, in the immediate post-war period, around the weekly A Nação [The Nation]»¹², with Alfredo Pimenta as its main ideological inspiration. This new generation of radical right-wing activists emerged in the early 1960s,

It will go through the last fifteen years of the Estado Novo in its own network of movements and initiatives and will also play an essential role in the radical right in the years of the democratic transition (…). It is not an exclusively Portuguese phenomenon caused by national historical contingencies in the 1960s but is part of the broader generational framework defined by some authors as the nationalist baby boom¹³.

Their central guiding ideas were «God, Homeland, Empire, Justice, Authority, Order, Spirituality and Immanence, Tradition and Renewal, Thought and Action»¹⁴. Fundamental to the emergence of this new generation of right-wing activists and their efforts to revitalize the culture of the right-wing regime was undoubtedly the start of the colonial war and the almost total international isolation to which the country was condemned due to the continuation of the conflict and the repeated unwillingness to recognize the right of colonized peoples to self-determination. For Marchi,

The war in Africa provides (…) this generation with that feeling of a threatened homeland that had mobilized previous nationalist generations in the troubled years of the First Republic and the military coup. The feeling of a threatened homeland allows these young people to dream of their own national revolution finally¹⁵.

The colonial war thus set the tone for recovering, deepening and presenting new arguments and myths about the country's imperial vocation and the inseparable nature of its territories and ensuring its loyalty to Oliveira Salazar, who was firmly committed to maintaining Portugal's colonial possessions at all costs. Thus, «EurAfrica is one of the founding myths of Portuguese revolutionary nationalism (…). Europe cannot cut itself from Africa, the European extension in politics, physical geography and traditions»¹⁶.

The remaining political-ideological principles are the same as those we have identified throughout this text, namely the conception of the nation as a absolute value, anti-individualism, anti-liberalism, a profoundly anti-democratic character and also authoritarianism, anti-communism and organicism, among others already mentioned.

From an ideological and cultural point of view, as we have seen, it is essentially a nationalism based on the Portuguese imperial dimension or, as Marchi characterizes it, a «Luso-tropicalist messianism»¹⁷. This «messianism» would have translated into three slightly different currents, corresponding to different periods in the last fifteen years of the Estado Novo. The first characteristic of this generation in the first half of the 1960s, was ethnocentric and based on an idea of the civilizational superiority of Europeans, which «should be the core of imperial construction, the axis of the natural hierarchy between races, the antidote to the purely material exploitation of the Provinces, but should also be implacable against expressions of resentment and anti-white racism»¹⁸.

The second current identified by Marchi refers to the student milieu at the University of Coimbra in the second half of the 1960s and the group of nationalist students there. It developed a new perspective on the colonial question, abandoning, at least discursively, the ideas of civilizational and racial hierarchies. Advocating the full affirmation of the country's pluricontinentalism, It proposed «that the name "Portugal" be reserved only for the Empire as a whole; that the Metropolis be renamed Lusitania; that the capital of the Empire be transferred to Luanda (…). Only with this imperial conformation will Portugal be fully legitimized to fight its war in Africa»¹⁹.

Finally, the third current of «Luso-tropicalist messianism» is embodied by the group gathered around the magazine Política [Politics] (1969-1974)²⁰. This current identifies the

[…] geopolitical decadence of Europe (…). Faced with the progressive decline of Eurocentrism, the geopolitical realism of revolutionary nationalism shares the orientation of the Estado Novo diplomacy of former Foreign Minister Franco Nogueira, for his uncompromising defence of Portugal Empire, opposed to the Europeanist temptations of Marcello Caetano's government²¹.

On the 25th of April 1974, a «prolonged crisis of the Portuguese right» began, in which its members «had to build entirely new organizations and find new leaders, at the same time as reformulating ideologies and programmes and trying to recover dispersed clientele», so that «the recovery of the right was bound to take time»²². Despite the political cleansing of the main cadres of the deposed regime and the economic elites of the Estado Novo's monopoly capitalism, the radicals were «free from the first measures of cleansing and exile, given that they had not played any prominent political roles in the previous regime, [so] it was the young neo-fascists who most quickly sketched out the constitution of resistance parties, taking advantage of the new legality»²³.

On the right, the Christian Democracy Party, the Liberal Party, the Portuguese Democratic Labor Party, the Progress Party -Portuguese Federalist Movement, the Portuguese Popular Movement, the Portuguese Nationalist Party and the Portuguese Action Movement²⁴ emerged in the early months of the Portuguese revolution. The defeat of the coup of 28 September 1974 drove the vast majority of these parties into illegality and, after the also defeated coup of 11 March, into exile and conspiracy against democracy and the revolution. Essentially concentrated in Madrid and supported financially and, above all, logistically by forces linked to the Francoist regime- which feared the spread of the revolutionary winds to the Spanish state - they created terrorist organizations such as the Portuguese Liberation Army and the Democratic Movement for the Liberation of Portugal²⁵. These movements launched a wave of terror and violence against communist headquarters and activists; trade unions and other parties and organizations (including bookshops) of the revolutionary left and even public services associated with the left. They destroyed buildings by fire and bombs and killed several left-wing activists in their attacks²⁶.

Once the military left and the socialist path of the revolution had been defeated on 25 November 1975, the terrorist cycle closed, and the democratic regime was institutionalized; the doors were opened to the return of the fugitives and those who had fought against the revolution. The revolutionary tensions and fervor gradually disappeared, and the new circumstances once again confronted the right-wingers with the need to reflect on the forms of intervention favored by the new political framework.

Many of the militants of the radical right, for reasons of political pragmatism, ended up joining the parties of the democratic right, the Social Democratic Party (PSD) and the Social Democratic Centre (CDS), concluding that the conditions for the creation and electoral success of a party of the more ideological right were not met - as the failed experiments of the PDC, the Independent Movement for National Reconstruction/ Party of the Portuguese Right (MIRN/PDP) and the National Front (FN) proved²⁷. The latter turned to academic life or cultural and ideological intervention, either in their own periodicals or with the general media and mainstream right-wing cadres. In this context, for example, the magazine Futuro Presente (Present Future) appeared, with the collaboration of the leading thinkers of the Portuguese new right²⁸.

In A direita nunca existiu²⁹ [The right never existed], Marchi studies the intervention of the extra-parliamentary right in the 1976 legislative and presidential elections, supporting the CDS and Ramalho Eanes, respectively; the evolution of the PDC and the internal dissensions that uninterruptedly marked the life of the party in the chronology in question; the emergence and evolution of the MIRN/PDP; the emergence and ephemeral existence of the Partido da Aliança Portuguesa [Portuguese Alliance Party] (PAP), the Frente de Ressurgimento Nacional [National Resurgence Front] (FRATERNA), the Frente de Libertação Nacional Sindicalista [National Syndicalist Liberation Front] (FLNS) and the FN; describes in detail the participation of the radical right in the 1979 mid-term elections and the 1980 legislative elections and discusses their position vis-à-vis the Democratic Alliance³⁰.

The Associação de Estudos e Intervenção Política -Impulso [Association for Political Studies and Intervention - Impulse] introduced the new right to Portugal³¹. However, the main disseminators and defenders of this political current in Portugal were the intellectuals who organized themselves around the magazines Futuro Presente and Terceiro Milénio (Third Millennium) - whose publication began in 1980 and 1981, respectively.

2. The radical right on country and national identity

First, it is essential to understand what philosophy and history have reflected on and proposed regarding the notions of Portugal and Portuguese national identity, which, in some cases, are treated under the concept of «portugueseness». Sousa situates the idea of portugueseness in this way: «seen as a form, "portugueseness" is mythical; as a concept, it must be seen as being in the realm of politics. (…) When this issue is raised, it refers to an alleged "soul of nations" and the nature of peoples»³².

Accordingly, decolonization occupied a central place in post-revolutionary Portugal's political and cultural debate. Almeida even speaks of an obsession with portugueseness that was most expressive between 1976 and 1980³³. Lourenço considered, on the other hand, that «the Revolution neglected national sentiment to an excessive degree, leaving the future right, after the comfortable hibernation it offered them, to exalt and frantically exploit it»³⁴.

Concerning the reflection on national ontology and teleology, Real emphasizes that:

Throughout modernity and contemporaneity (…), Portugal oscillated between two supremely conflicting visions of the world:

1) The messianic providentialism of the Church and State: believing in the perfectibility of the elites (…) and in the cultural and political uniqueness of Portugal compared to the other European countries, as if the Portuguese had constituted themselves as God's second chosen people;

2) The European rationalism and empiricism: mental attitude that led to the secularization of the state, the scientific spirit, political democracy and universalist cosmopolitanism, of which Portugal was the vanguard at the dawn of the Discoveries³⁵.

Rui Aragão, in an essay on national psychology and identity, considered that the Portuguese national identity is formed by the negative: «What distinguishes and identifies the Portuguese is the situation of being against the Moors, and also against Castile (…). It is, in fact, the bloody struggle against an external enemy that gives an "active raison d'être" to the national community»³⁶. However, this characteristic is detrimental to national psychology and has repercussions «in the anguish or permanent fear of being assimilated and absorbed from outside»³⁷ and in the inability to form characters of their own that ensure effective national independence and autonomy.

In fact, for the right, Portugal's European location is just a geographical reference. The country's place is the seas and the globe. Seeing itself as a second people chosen by God and with a unique vocation in the world to colonize, evangelize and civilize, to return the nation to its European borders was to make it stagnate, to deny the very essence of the Portuguese people - destined and uniquely qualified to be spread across the planet. Portugal was not just Portugal; Portugal was all the territories it administered, and the Portuguese diaspora spread throughout the world.

The providentialist view of the role of the Portuguese and Portugal in the world is a recurring theme in reflections on national identity. Eduardo Lourenço considers that «the deep feeling of national fragility -and its reverse, the idea that this fragility is a gift, a gift from Providence itself, and the kingdom of Portugal a kind of continuous miracle, an expression of God's will- is a constant in Portuguese mythology, not only historical political but also cultural»³⁸. However, even though he admits that this providentialist and messianic representation is very strong in Portugal, he acknowledges that this «sacralization of "origins"»³⁹ also exists in other peoples as a mythological dimension.

In this central category of contemporary Portuguese thought, Real highlights the main lines that have guided some of its greatest authors: for example, Teixeira de Pascoaes' «philosophy of longing, Leonardo Coimbra's "creationism", Álvaro Ribeiro's "Aristotelian creationism", António Quadros' "golden project' of "patriosophy" or António Braz Teixeira's "Atlantic Reason"»⁴⁰.

Basically, behind ideas such as Lusophony -and this is not common to all its advocates- is the deep conviction of the Portuguese language as the Fifth Empire, as the intangible fulfilment of Portugal's imperial and civilizing destiny, of its Atlantic and pluricontinental nature, as, in fact, the only way to get Portugal out of its European borders and its reduced international importance and make it a great empire once again, now linguistic and spiritual.

In this version of being Portuguese, the country is defined beyond its borders as the space that has been touched by Portuguese culture, in other words, it is determined by the idea of portugueseness, actualized in the idea of lusophony. This extreme maritime option is linked to a solid symbolic charge: the empire is not understood primarily as a resource but as a sign of the Portuguese way of being: adventurous, dialogical, and admired by the Other⁴¹.

This providentialist representation of Portuguese history, of the civilising mission that the Portuguese would have had in the world and the idea that the national destiny would be fulfilled in the overseas presence, once the former colonies had been lost, would give way to a new salvific myth of the country's greatness -Lusophony. The creation and defense of a lusophone space (in this case, the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries), «like other post-colonial communities- British, French (la francophonie)»⁴². On the one hand, this makes it possible to compensate for the loss of effective control over previously occupied territories, thus providing «a reasonable narcissistic gratification, a reasonable nationalistic pride» in Portugal as a nation that creates nations⁴³. On the other hand, for its defenders, it attests to the greatness of the civilizing mission of the Portuguese - in this case, through the dissemination of the language. Thus, «after 1974-1975, there was a subtle but constant change, with the Portuguese language now taking on the task that for many years had been that of the territories. Portugal became a small country, but with a specific agent, the Portuguese language, which allowed it to recover its "greatness"»⁴⁴.

Santos also analyzed the tendency of essentialist thinkers to mythologize the past and historical characters. He argues that «the excess of mythical interpretation of Portuguese society is largely explained by the prolonged and unextended reproduction of cultural elites with literary roots, very few in number and almost always far removed from the areas of political, educational and cultural decision-making»⁴⁵. For her part, Joana Miranda believes that «resorting to these myths was a way of counterbalancing the national inferiority complexes» and, above all, those of the elites or power that formulated them⁴⁶.

Although the defenders of the colonizing vocation have often spoken of a crisis of national identity and of the «death» of the country regarding decolonization, these diagnoses don't seem to have materialized. Thus, «the reduction of Portugal to its European dimension after decolonization did not cause the country the trauma that might have been expected»⁴⁷. So, when compared to the national upheavals that the loss of other empires caused in the colonizing societies, «we lost an empire, that's true, but we lost it less in reality than it might seem because we already had it mainly in our imagination»⁴⁸.

Even though, for the majority of the Portuguese population, decolonization did not represent a traumatic phenomenon or a generalized crisis of identity, for the «returnees» and for the defenders of the theories of the Portuguese universalist mission and the one that advocates that the national destiny is fulfilled only through the Portuguese presence in the world (thus, in colonialism), the end of the imperial cycle was indeed experienced as a scourge and represented a deep existential trauma:

When, in a blink of an eye (…), we lost our "colonial empire", when the quantitative size of our territory was abruptly reduced to a small rectangle at the western tip of Europe, and when our "civilizing mission" in Africa was demystified (…) they realised (…) that the idea of the "greatness" of their homeland (…) could only be maintained at the cost of a fixation or an effective attachment to the historical past (the "psycho-historical regression")⁴⁹.

Regarding the idea of Europe and Portugal's place in it, Ribeiro points to the weight of the doctrines of Portugal's imperial vocation and destiny as justification for the feeling of distance on the part of the country's intellectual elites -especially until joining the EEC⁵⁰. Aragão argues that «the Discoveries and the Inquisition created among us economic habits and attitudes towards science that were not in keeping with the capitalist spirit that was nascent in Europe at the time», which distanced us from it⁵¹. Ribeiro adds that this intellectual distancing was caused by Portugal's inability to enter modernity in the image of Central and Northern European states. Thus, between the 17th and 20th centuries,

Portugal's perception of mismatch and distance from Europe became more acute. (…) Europe seems omitted or absent from the national imagination (…). The national identity configuration remains self-centred and enclosed within the circle of the overseas empire. Portugal's peripheral condition is emphasised, often translated into the idea of decadence⁵².

Despite the attempts to get closer to the European cultural and political reality at the end of the 19th century, undertaken above all by the Generation of the 1870s, Eduardo Lourenço believes that these efforts were unsuccessful, in that «this Europe from which we expected the messiah, instead of stimulating us, melancholic or symbolically humiliated us»⁵³.

3. Structuring axes of Portuguese nationalist thought and considerations on national ontology and teleology

The radical right emphasized the fact that the founding of the kingdom was inextricably linked to the rejection of Castilian tutelage, that this opposition was expressed militarily, and that independence was won by force of arms. They also emphasized the peculiarity that the first Portuguese monarchs found a way to ensure this political autonomy by expanding southwards, antagonizing the Moors. Moreover, as Quadros stressed, there was a conviction on the right that national independence was achieved as a result of a double tension between defense against Castile's expansionist pretensions and territorial expansion, first on the Peninsula and then in the world⁵⁴.

Therefore, the political will of a national people should be matched by a charismatic and mobilizing leadership, aware of the path to be followed and determined, in its role as a guide, to maximize national power. On the other hand, as Quadros defended in relation to post-25 April Portugal, this political will -a criterion for the independence and survival of nations- should reflect a «vital impetus», a «mental health» and a «creative energy» that would have to be expressed in a «paideia» that would provide individuals with certainties and perennial truths and recover their spirit from the materialism in which they had been plunged. Thus, «Portugal>s autonomy in the Peninsula and in Europe and its projection in the world are due solely to the Portuguese will - that will which, at different times, had a voice to express it and hands to execute it»⁵⁵.

Portugal was then, for the radical right, more than the physical area of its territory and its institutions and rulers. Above all, it was a spirit, a will, a sense, a way of being in the world and a culture. It was essentially valuable for its immaterial expression, as well as the people who shaped it - a population conceived abstractly to coincide, in its characteristics, with the national morals and design. In this sense, «Homeland is not chosen, it happens. (…) Homeland is not a stirrup. Homeland is not an accident. Homeland is not an occasion. Homeland is not a hindrance. Homeland is not a burden. The Homeland is a duty from the cradle to the grave, the two forms of total love it has to receive us»⁵⁶. It would, therefore, be up to the state and its leaders to develop a new national project capable of mobilizing the people.

The exaltation of past successes, the understanding of the national essence as being fundamentally marked by the Catholic faith, the adventurous spirit and the ecumenical inclination, the refusal of self-condemnation for the damage that the Portuguese colonial enterprise might have caused and the apology of this fearless and ingenious, proselytising and tolerant Portugal, which fulfilled itself by spreading across the globe, should allow the awareness to be regained that

[…] being Portuguese is an honor and a responsibility. (…) In fact, the dead are in charge and their lives, their labor and example are an insistent voice calling out and pointing to a path of sacrifice and fidelity that will launch everyone into building a future that is in line with and follows on from the greatness of the past. Nobody should be stuck in the past. Nobody should forget the past. It holds a venerable lesson. The glorious, constructive, progress-promoting past serves as an example to follow⁵⁷.

Inspired by this lesson, the Portuguese should relaunch themselves in the country's secular work, rejecting and abolishing everything that, in the present, distances them from this ideal of portugality, attacks the nation's perennial values and heroes and vilifies the memory, deeds and men of the foundation, expansion, restoration of independence and defense of the colonial empire. For the far right, it was urgent that «the voices of hatred be silenced once and for all! Let those who despise our history and traditions be treated as traitors and renegades!»⁵⁸ and that every possible effort be made to save what could still be saved of the Portugal idealized by Portuguese nationalism.

It is also important to emphasize that the conviction that Portugal has a mission, or at least a universalist vocation from which it cannot escape, is not exclusive to the radical right. Neither, especially until the country joined the European Economic Community, it was the discussion about Portugal's political project and its direction and purpose. Regardless of the different arguments, foundations and worldviews, the thinkers who started from an essentialist conception of nationality tended to favor the defense of the historical predisposition for realization overseas or beyond the narrow territorial confines of the Iberian Peninsula and the periphery in relation to Europe - Atlanticism. Those who opposed these ideas argued that national destiny and viability depended on a (re)rapprochement with Europe, seeing active participation in the continent's political, economic and cultural life as the path to the country's progress and development- Europeanism.

The Portuguese reason and way of being were not only vital to the survival of the nation and independent of the formulation and conscious adherence of individuals to this homeland ideal, but were also rooted, in some cases, in historical realities that predated the formation of the nationality and the common path that began at that founding moment. It was a perennial imperative from which individuals could not disengage or evade; otherwise, they would kill the nation; it was also not susceptible to adaptation, transformation or inversion. As Quadros emphasized, «each people is proposed a different ideal for the realization of humanity», so the only rational attitude and loyalty to the mission entrusted to Portugal and the Portuguese would be to accept and comply with this destiny and worldview. This would be determined by the ethnic composition of the national population, the degree of linguistic unity and structure, the cultural framework, «its system of ideas, myths and affective tendencies», the way, pace and direction of its organic and territorial evolution and, finally, the set of experiences lived collectively in a logic of hereditary accumulation⁵⁹. From a providentialist and mystical viewpoint of history, Quadros argued that the Portuguese was the direct descent of Atlantean man that would justify and explain «the first mystery of the Portuguese maritime land, sacred land, where […] the culminating metamorphosis of the cave and magical man into the travelling and spiritual man took place»⁶⁰.

If the archetype of the Portuguese man was the Atlantean and if the way of being and the mission to be carried out in the world were the same as those of Atlantis, then it would be natural for the country's dreams and aspirations to have been centered on the Atlantic from an early age - settled at the western end of Europe, Portugal would have seen the sea as a natural extension of its land and the promise of its development, expansion and fulfilment in the world. In this way, the Portuguese would be heirs to a civilization that had already given rise to others through its ecumenism. So, the country would feel this drive as a genetic burden and imperative.

In Quadros' reflection, we find the fundamental elements about the nature and mission of the country that, with different degrees of theoretical elaboration, we identify in right-wing authors: the antiquity of the Portuguese genius and spirit, a maritime vocation, an adventurous inclination, a propensity for crusading, material detachment, an affectionate attachment to the territory of origin, a tendency to expand throughout the world, a tolerant and inclusive temperament and a proselytizing character. In this idiosyncrasy lay the particularity and exclusivity of the Portuguese case.

In the right-wing view of Portuguese colonial expansion, and by virtue of its supposed tolerance, openness to difference and the different, respect for local customs and traditions, the absence of any feeling of racial superiority, one could hardly speak of colonization, at least in the sense of European imperialism. Pretentiously without concerns or interests of a material nature, the country expanded into the world for the love of its mission, of other peoples and, above all, of God. What's more, national action would not be animated by any aspiration or dream of imperial power; the magnitude of its work would be of a spiritual and cultural nature, and this would be eternalized in the history of humanity, being its measure of greatness.

Accordingly, «Brazil displayed a Lusitanian colonizing capacity that can only be paralleled in the history of Rome, but it was to Africa (…) that Portugal always felt most strongly bound by ties that seemed indestructible»⁶¹. In fact, the African continent is regularly presented as the geographical space to which the Portuguese would have devoted the best of themselves and for which they would have developed an instant attachment and bond. However, rather than reflecting Portugal's real colonial priorities since the 15th century, this right-wing narrative mainly echoes the nationalist diegesis of the late 19th century.

Thanks to the doctrinal construction of a supposedly exclusivist and particularism ontology and teleology, the right-wing sought to make the Portuguese, in some cases, the second people chosen by God to fulfil His will and His plan for humanity. Thus, the Portuguese were imbued with a disinterested and naïve attraction to unknown cultures and peoples, an inner vertigo that drove them towards maritime adventures and national fulfilment through global expansion. It is a psycho-historical narrative that portrays the Portuguese as being naturally tolerant and ecumenical in spirit, eager only to spread the Word and the national culture, so devoid of prejudice or feelings of racial superiority that they had mixed with the indigenous peoples to the point of forming a single community and culture. They would have achieved this by progressively integrating these peoples into the universalist values of Portuguese thought and way of being, respecting local customs and traditions and producing a syncretic culture. In this way, and thanks to their way of being in the world, it would have been their mission and their design - all the more imperative and structuring as they attributed their origin to divine will and selection - to spread the humanist faith order and civilization.

4. Against Portugal's adhesion to the European Economic Community

Given the importance the radical right attached to the discussion of a new national project, it is understandable that it devoted a lot of attention to alternative proposals to its own and that it endeavored to refute these ideas. Europeanism was therefore the project most contested by the right. The right-wingers criticized the belief in Portugal's eminently European nature; the idea of Europe as a geographical reality capable of uniting in political, economic, social and cultural terms; the proposition that Europe could be an alternative to empire or the possible compensation for its loss; the definition of the objective of entry into the EEC as the only solution for national development; how the negotiations between the Portuguese state and the EEC were conducted; the lack of information regarding the assumptions of these negotiations, as well as the failure to hold a popular consultation to ratify the adhesion; the lack of attention paid to the impacts of joining the EEC by political leaders in terms of the country's economic sovereignty and, above all, in terms of maintaining its political independence.

About the «myth» of European unity, its utopian character and the panacea of progress that they believed was being demagogically associated with it, the radical right dedicated itself to denouncing it, essentially by confronting the historical evidence of the constant tension that has marked relations between the various European states over the centuries and the bloody outcome of all the attempts that, by force of arms or the art of diplomacy, have tried to bring the whole of Europe under one government. In an article reproduced by the weekly A Rua [The Street], it was argued that, firstly, «geographical Europe» was an indisputable reality and that, therefore, the Common Market could not invent or add anything to it. Secondly, «economic Europe» essentially corresponded to the productive capacity and infrastructure network of each of the individual European states. Therefore, this unity would also predate the signing of the European treaties.

Moreover, regardless of multinational cooperation agreements, trade relations between European countries have always run smoothly, only disturbed by cyclical war clashes and the severing of political ties between states through bilateral economic diplomacy. Finally, as for «political Europe», it would be the fundamental and omitted objective hidden under the discourse of economic cooperation through participation in the Common Market. Concerning the elections to the European Parliament, it was envisaged that Community structures would become increasingly bureaucratized and centralized, no longer run by the various national representations of the member states but by supranational political families of a partisan and ideological nature. This change would represent, in the right-wing view, the transfer of the vices and sins of the «partidocracia» [the dictatorship of the parties] to the heart of the EEC and, even more seriously, a reduction in the individual relevance, and therefore sovereignty, of the national states, which would now be subject to the acceptance of a Community agenda and policy marked by the volatility of the electoral majorities that would be formed at each moment at European level.

For the radical right, Europe «is a highly diverse entity for which it is not easy to find common denominators)). Until very recently, natural physical barriers would have limited contact, the movement of goods and people and trade between the various European states, which, at the same time, sought the path of their extra-continental expansion as the preferred option for development, rather than building a myriad of projects of European cooperation and articulation, thus managing to form and preserve autonomous cultural and political identities. In fact, the only successful attempt to unify Europe, and only until the Protestant Reformation, was carried out under the guidance of the Vatican, which was mainly spiritual. Despite the reservations about the Europeanist project, it is recognized that the Common Market may have contributed to progress and to the economic and technological development of the member countries. However, «while it has certainly produced benefits, it has concentrated them […] in the most developed regions», so that it was already «an instrument in the hands of the strongest to preserve that position of strength». Furthermore, Brussels's growing centralism and power over the nations that were part of the Community asserted itself to the detriment of local particularisms and the effective sovereignty of the less powerful states. Thus, instead of cancelling out the gap between the most developed and most backward countries in the Community and bringing peripheral states closer together and effectively integrating them, to the detriment of strengthening the more prosperous member states, the Common Market would increasingly become an instrument at the service of the most powerful nations⁶².

For Silva, too, «the history of Europe is the history of a series of peoples who, for a thousand years, have tried to situate themselves definitively (…) in a certain type of space (…). The Common Market is fundamentally based on this European unity, which is purely fictitious, a unity of convenience)). Such a union would be unrealizable in the light of the insurmountable racial and cultural contradictions and incompatibilities that separate the Anglo-Saxon and Latin peoples in particular⁶³.

Franco Nogueira, former Minister for Foreign Affairs under António de Oliveira Salazar (1961-1969) and a model figure for the Portuguese far right in the post-25 April 1974 period, questioned the correctness and benefits of Portuguese membership of the EEC, stressing the mythological essence of the unifying process. In fact, he said, this would be one of the greatest political myths of the century, warning that to speak of a European community, it was first necessary to specify very clearly what the term «Europe» meant. Did it only refer to the geographical reality of the continent? Even if this were the case, it would have to be determined whether, in the east, Europe ended in Poland or whether it extended as far as Russia. Was it, then, «Europe as a human mass creating civilization and a distributing center of progress and technology»? In that case, we would be dealing with a millennia-old reality that dates back to the civilizational experience of the Greeks and Romans. It has always displayed a single «permanent characteristic: it rejects any unitary process. A Europe united by economics or force has never been possible; therefore, it must be concluded that it is not viable. Only a diverse, multiple, pluralist Europe in national terms has been possible and viable». On the other hand, he emphasized that contrary to what was propagandized by pro-Europeans, the Treaty of Rome was not eminently economic in nature. On the contrary, profound political objectives were hidden underneath the announcements of strong economic growth. In the past, this politically united Europe had been «the dream of Charles V, as it was later, in other terms, of Napoleon, of Hitler, of all the conquerors, and we all know what tragedies Europeans have been led to by such dreams». Once politically integrated, this «would no longer be the Europe of cultural diversity, of national pluralism, of the creative roots of a diverse matrix, of the vigor of each homeland defending what is essential to it. The moment a federal or confederal Europe was created would be the moment of Europe's greatest weakness»⁶⁴.

Pinto contested the arguments of the defenders of the European project, which were based on the idea that the EEC was an organization that, through inter-state solidarity, sought to progressively reduce the asymmetries between the most and least developed nations. Therefore, a few days after the signing of the adhesion treaty, he said that the Community was «a political and economic association where, as in all associations, unions, seas or common aquariums, the larger fish will discipline and dispose of the smaller ones to the extent of their interests or needs». Moreover, a unit forged around the myth of shared economic prosperity could never be strong enough to constitute itself as an alternative political bloc, totally independent from the United States of America and the Soviet Union. It would lack the dimension of a «community of dreams, projects and ideals», and it would be questionable «the value and duration of a community of dreams around the price of butter or the "war" over pork meat». What's more, such a community would lack what only historical tradition offered each nation: the shared and moralizing heritage of history, legends and national heroes. These, in turn, would have been formed, in the vast majority of cases, as a result of the wars and conflicts that opposed the various European states. As a result, he concluded, «the "Europeans" as such only appear that way to "the others" when they have discovered, conquered or dominated them»⁶⁵. Indeed, the dreams of prosperity and joint development, of solidarity cooperation, aimed at eliminating regional and national asymmetries, of sharing knowledge and technological tools for the benefit of the community, would have perished in the face of the national interests and agendas of the most powerful states and the inability of the EEC to prove immune to the economic crises of the world markets.

Despite the doubts he expressed about Portugal joining the Common Market over a decade, it was Júdice who, in the right-wing press, showed the most sympathy for, or at least the slightest rejection of, the European project - a confidence that, however, gradually waned over the years. In June 1980, he described the EEC as «a dream of achieving, in a gradual and non-hegemonized way, a European unity and a club in which interests are an essential brake on evolution». In addition, favoring the process of European integration would play a role in the fact that geopolitics increasingly enshrined the great spaces. Finally, he stated that, at the time, the EEC would already be «the world's largest market», would have «the greatest concentration of culture creators», would have the best conditions for establishing relations with African nations and would have, in terms of scientific knowledge, means and men that put it on a par with the United States of America and at a more advanced stage of development than the socialist bloc. However, in December 1982, Júdice already reduced the EEC to a strictly economic dimension, as it was increasingly clear that it was «a reality in which economic integration coexists with a lack of political integration since political unity continues to depend on the coincidence of the national interests of the determining countries». In addition to this contradiction between discourse and practice and this insurmountable submission of political integration to the primacy of national egoisms, there is also «the fact that the EEC is really in crisis, its members don't understand each other and, in essence, only maintain the EEC because they really have no other practical alternative to separation»⁶⁶.

The objections raised by the far right to Portugal's adhesion to the EEC were significant and deserved constant meditation in their press. In the first place, there was an instinctive rejection of Europeanism resulting both from the experience of the Estado Novo - a tradition of opposition to the Europeanism of the regime's technocrats - and from the perception that the European and Atlanticist projects were irreconcilable and mutually exclusive. Therefore, as staunch defenders of Portugal's maritime and African destiny, the right-wingers rejected the idea that, once the empire was lost, the project of restoration and national resurgence that they so coveted could pass through the Common Market. It was, therefore, clear to the radical right that

Portugal, the Portuguese, will soon have to make a historic decision, which can be summed up in these words: choose between being the cloaca of Europe, returning to the path that existed before April 25, now under the sign of pluralism and social democracy, but in conditions of much greater dependence on international philanthropy […]; or choose a Portuguese path, not without sacrifices and difficulties, but in which the Portuguese build their own path, neither proudly alone nor proudly accompanied, but instead proudly accompanied, but rather proudly aware that they must be responsible for their destiny⁶⁷.

If Portugal chose to be the «cloaca of Europe», it would be giving up its autonomy and sovereignty, accepting that it was a mere colony administered from Brussels, taking as its only counterpart the promises of economic prosperity. Choosing the Common Market would then be a resignation on the part of the Portuguese from their own identity, mission and destiny as heirs to the caste of heroes who, over the centuries, have made the most extraordinary sacrifices to build, maintain and defend the nation. By joining the EEC, Portugal would be giving up on itself and doing so in the name of a myth that would prove its unsustainability day after day. These illusions, fed by Europeanist propaganda, would make the Portuguese believe that the country's integration into the European Economic Community would constitute «a pledge of our rapid progress, protection from our permanent idleness, a guarantee of our wealth». It was thus criticized for what it considered to be the sacrifice of national independence to a myth, the lack of public discussion of this decision and the fact that adhesion was being promoted as the only and ultimate opportunity for the country's development and modernization. As a result, integration into Europe has been «presented as an end in itself, as an objective that is fulfilled and exhausted by the very fact of entering the common market, as if, beyond that entry, no other policy was required - or as if the country were finished))⁶⁸.

A choice had to be made between Europe and the Atlantic. For Valdez dos Santos, Portugal, due to its peripheral geographical position and the vast Spanish territory that separated it from the other European nations, would have remained «always on the margins of European events». After maritime expansion and colonization, this distance from the continent became even more pronounced, and the Portuguese developed an identity matrix and a national project that were necessarily different from the European spirit and culture. Thus, «China, with its border with Macau, says more to us than an alliance from which only death and destruction can come. South Africa, with over half a million Portuguese, is closer to us than Sweden, Austria or even the United States»⁶⁹. For the radical right, Portugal could only refuse to give up its essence and the meaning of its historical existence; otherwise, by turning to Europe, it would cease to be.

From a political point of view, the secrecy with which the negotiations were conducted, the lack of confidence in the «partidocratas» [the dictators of the parties] to look after the national interest and the absence of any consultation to the population about joining the EEC led the right to conclude that, for the second time since April 25, 1974, the democrats were imposing a policy of fait accompli on the country concerning the most crucial issues for the future existence and present livelihood of the country. They, therefore, warned that «after an "exemplary decolonization", the criminal results of which are plain to see and are already being denied by almost everyone concerned, we don't want a similar "exemplary integration"!»⁷⁰. The cost of joining the Common Market should not be paid with the loss of national independence or raison d'être.

As a point in its favor, accession would represent the possible means for the country's capitalist recovery and the neutralization of some revolutionary legislation⁷¹. Despite his initial optimism, in 1980, Júdice was already criticizing the mythical nature of European integration. It had been elevated to the status of a redemptive myth that sought to present itself as a miraculous and instantaneous remedy for all the country's problems. The vision was that «in a country in crisis, (…) [the adhesion represented] the possible way of being Pangloss»⁷².

Also in disfavor of the European integration project was the possibility of Spain joining the EEC, simultaneously or not. If this were to materialize, it would quickly lead to the forming of a «Peninsular Customs Union». Evoking the historical example of the German Zollverein and the centuries-old expansionism of Castile, Melo considered that it would not be possible, «at the risk of favoring a policy of national suicide, to defend Portugal's integration into the Common Market», since this would irremediably result in the country being absorbed by the Spanish state. It was therefore urgent to «put aside this provincial prejudice of integration at any cost»⁷³. Thus, the fear of Portugal being absorbed by the Spanish state was one of the main reasons the radical right opposed European integration. For them, joining the Common Market was ill-considered, unconditional and unpatriotic. On the other hand, Portugal's consecration to the European project would only be possible because it had given up Africa and its empire. In this way, Portugal's entry into the Common Market had not only already cost its colonial empire as an a priori condition for its candidacy but would now threaten its very existence.

The right-wing weekly A Rua also argued that, «with its national body cut up, stripped of everything that made it great on an extra-European scale, the inert homeland succumbs to continental centripetalism»⁷⁴, considering that the decision to join the Common Market would have harmful effects on Portugal's already weak condition. It was emphasized that although, geographically, Portugal is «by fatality» European, its secular development has always taken place autonomously and with its back turned to the continent, which is why the Europeanist discourses that were based on a supposed historical and cultural identification of the country with Europe were false⁷⁵. Historically, Portugal had always voluntarily distanced itself from European affairs and conflicts; it had never made Europe the main focus of its aspirations and interests, and, when it did attempt this Europeanisation, in the 19th century and at the beginning of the First Republic, it ended up dependent on British protection and with its sovereignty seriously diminished. As a result of decolonization, «we live in a strangely new country. We threw ourselves into the sea to seek the power we lacked on land. At a time when international greed is shamelessly pouncing on the Azores, we find ourselves helpless, knocking on Europe's door. We no longer represent world interests. We are a remnant»⁷⁶. The redemptive and providential discourse surrounding Portugal's accession to the Common Market hides the real impacts and costs of European integration.

Múrias denounced what he saw as one of the main dangers of Europe's economic integration: political unification and the creation of a United States of Europe⁷⁷. In a federal solution, Portugal, due to its small territorial and demographic size, would quickly become a mere peripheral and irrelevant province, with no power and no ability to influence decisions taken on a supranational scale. The National Front, of which Múrias was one of the founders, issued a political position on the matter in July 1980. A Rua echoed this communiqué, which was structured around four points: i) Portugal's vocation and destiny was the overseas empire, so prioritizing its realization in the context of the European continent was a grave historical and political mistake; in order to be able to aim for a relevant position in Europe, the country first had to regain its economic and political power with the former African colonies; ii) a rational analysis of the benefits and losses that would result from joining the EEC showed that it would entail more negative aspects than positive ones, namely in terms of the country's autonomy and political, financial and productive sovereignty; iii) entry into the Common Market would also mean a drastic reduction in Portuguese political sovereignty, which, in order to be taken as legitimate, would have to be subject to a popular plebiscite; iv) pragmatic integration into Europe would only be «possible once a Luso-African Customs Union has been institutionalized that joins the Common Market as a bloc»⁷⁸. Concerning the probable repercussions on the national productive apparatus of Portugal's entry into the Common Market, the right-wingers highlighted, above all, agriculture and fisheries, as well as some specific sectors of industry.

In addition to issues of economic sovereignty, there were those of political independence. In fact, right-wingers were extremely concerned that Portugal and Spain joining the Common Market could weaken the country's position in the face of the proverbial Spanish expansionism. They thought that once the economic barriers between the two Iberian states were removed, the Portuguese economy would be totally absorbed and dominated by the Spanish state. As Franco Nogueira warned, […] it is important not to be naive in this regard (…). When there is a great disproportion between the partners, any enterprise and any company (…) will end up being economically and financially controlled and dominated by the stronger partner (…). And we mustn't forget (…) that economic domination is always followed by political domination⁷⁹.

Everything had to be weighed up and considered; every scenario had to be foreseen and considered. We also had to listen to the people's will, formulate and compare alternative national projects and, above all, not let the Atlanticist and African vocation of the Portuguese people be subjugated to an occasional Europeanism. However, for some members of the far right, not even the prospect of membership conditional on fulfilling all these safeguards for the national interest was tolerable. For them, European integration would always be detrimental to the national interest, plan, essence and future. As such,

[…] the battle against Portugal's integration into the EEC is shaping up to be an authentic border defense war, thus placing us at a historical crossroads that will only be paralleled by the crises of 1383, 1580, 1640 and the French Invasions. Such integration would undeniably mean the "disintegration" of the sovereign and independent nation that we have been for almost 900 years⁸⁰.

Therefore, in addition to the firm fight against integration, the only thing left to do was to pray that «God our Lord will allow there to be still time for the winds of Europe to sweep us across the Atlantic»⁸¹. However, neither the right-wing opposition had the desired effect, nor were their prayers answered. In the summer of 1984, after lengthy negotiations between the EEC and Portugal, it was announced that the treaty to join the Common Market would be signed in June of the following year and come into force on 1 January 1986. Nine years after applying to join the EEC, Portugal joined the Community simultaneously with Spain. On the eve of the treaty's signing, Múrias fatalistically exclaimed, concerning the ceremony in the Jeronimo’s Monastery, that «if the old stones felt it, the Jerónimos would burn down tomorrow. Joyfully, our death certificate is signed there amid applause and fanfare. We are (definitely) the remnants of a people on the road to national dissolution»⁸².

Conclusions

In fact, with more or less concessions to the legitimacy of the European project, the radical right showed itself to be opposed to Portugal joining the Common Market right from the start of the negotiation process. It did so not only because it defended a different kind of national design, one that was eminently nationalist, Atlanticist and neo-colonial in nature, but also because it felt that placing Europe at the center of Portugal's international relations and affiliation, as well as its existential aspirations, would culminate in the dissolution of national consciousness, essence and bonds of solidarity. Aimed at the unknown, the sea, the great African spaces, missionization and colonization, Portugal could not relinquish political and economic sovereignty over its territory to access the European panacea of unlimited prosperity and development. After the loss of the colonial empire, this right-wing claim was reinforced by the fact that the Iberian rectangle was the last stronghold and the last remaining material expression of that great, mighty, adventurous and multi-continental Portugal that the far right had always evoked and glorified.

On the contrary, for the three parties that took part in the government between 1977 (the year in which Portugal was asked to join the European Economic Community) and 1985 (the start of the government of Cavaco Silva, prime minister elected by the Social Democratic Party), joining the EEC was seen as the necessary and natural alternative to the colonialism that had been definitively left behind in 1975 (when the last African colonies declared their independence). The right, center-right and center-left shared the European matrix and saw the EEC as the quickest way to modernize the Portuguese economy and improve the Portuguese people's living conditions.

In short, the right-wingers rejected the European project because: i) it was just a panacea; ii) it was based on a mythical project of cooperation and economic and social development that ignored the prevalence that national interests and selfishness would always assume; iii) it would lead the country to an irrelevant and peripheral status within the framework of the Community, which would deprive it of any possibility of having its opinion heard and its needs met, including in matters that directly concerned it; iv) the people had not ratified it; v) it would mean the destruction of a significant part of Portugal's economic fabric; vi) it would create the conditions for first economic and then political domination of Portugal by Spain; vii) it was profoundly contrary to the national vocation and design.

Although they didn't become, over time, the biggest enthusiasts for Portugal's membership of the EEC and, later, the European Union, several of the radical right-wing figures we've mentioned ended up accepting and recognizing the advantages that membership had brought to the country. On the other hand, once the African dream was exhausted -and all plans to return to Africa definitively abandoned - the country's maritime vocation, national ontology and teleology and Portugal's presence in the world would become centered on an overvaluation of the social and cultural role of the Portuguese language in South America and Africa and of the mythical Lusíada culture. Finally, the Portuguese diaspora around the globe began to be understood as fulfilling Portugal's historical mission: to be spread throughout the world.