Censorship and Sacralisation of Politics in the Portuguese Press during the Spanish Civil War

The Spanish Civil War was a period of ideological crystallisation for Salazarism, as the Estado Novo instrumentalised the conflict to refine its ideology and public image. Print media was a crucial medium via which Salazarism was constructed and contended during the civil war, when Salazarist discourses increasingly appropriated Catholic imagery and symbolism to confer Salazarism with sacred dimensions. This paper asks: how did Salazarism seek to sacralise itself during the 1930s, and how did censorship contribute to this process? Using a qualitative critical discourse analysis methodology, this paper analyses discourses in the regime’s official mouthpiece, the Diário da Manhã, to illustrate the sacralisation of Salazarism, then discusses an article from the Diário de Lisboa, which was partially censored by the Estado Novo, as an example of an attempt to subvert the sacralisation of Salazarism. The paper concludes that censorship and propaganda functioned in tandem to sacralise politics during the Spanish Civil War.