REVIEW
Museums
Remembering the Struggle , Learning from the Past : The New National
Museum of Resistance and Freedom – Peniche Fortress
Ricard Conesa Sánchez Historian , National University of Distance Education ( UNED ) Project manager , EUROM
50 years later
On 27 April 2024 , the doors of the new national museum were opened . The President of the Portuguese Republic , Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa , presided over the official ceremony as part of the 50th-anniversary celebrations of the Carnation Revolution . Half a century after the prisoners were freed , the terrible Peniche Fortress has finally become an essential museum for understanding the longest dictatorship in Western Europe and celebrating the Portuguese people ’ s fight for freedom .
To the sound of Grândola , Vila Morena , the Armed Forces Movement ( MFA ) succeeded in ending Marcelo Caetano ’ s dictatorship on 25 April 1974 . Citizens from all walks of life protested outside prisons and detention centres . In the early hours of the 27th , the prisoners of Peniche were released . This marked the beginning of the Ongoing Revolutionary Process ( PREC ), which would last until the military counter-coup of November 1975 and the adoption of the Constitution in April 1976 . During that period , a wave of popular political participation would lead the last great revolutionary movement of the 20th century , capable of challenging the capitalist order in Western Europe . As historian Fernando Rosas explains , although the revolution ended in 1976 , its political achievements and social advances would shape the country ’ s constitution and its later democratic system .
Fernando Rosas , in addition to being a renowned scholar of the dictatorship of António Oliveira Salazar ( 1926 / 1933 – 1968 ), is one of the many people who shares his testimony as a political prisoner in Peniche Fortress . But before this prison became a museum where the voices of regime opponents could be heard , a long time had to pass - years of citizen protests and mobilisation to prevent the site from disappearing altogether .
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Observing Memories Issue 8