Responses to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions under authoritarian rule: a comparison between fascist Italy and Portugal during the Estado Novo

Abstract This paper seeks to examine how two authoritarian regimes in Europe handled earthquake and eruption disasters, and the extent to which deep-seated continuities in vulnerability and resilience are revealed which continue to affect responses regardless of the regime in power. In the middle decades of the twentieth century Italy and Portugal were both under the control of authoritarian regimes: Mussolini’s Fascism in Italy (1922–1943) and the Estado Novo (i.e. New State) in Portugal (1932–1974). The Estado Novo also had a powerful leader, António de Oliveira Salazar (1889–1970), who dominated Portuguese politics until 1968, with the regime continuing to control the country after his death. Although both regimes enjoyed success in managing post-disaster responses and longer-term recovery; apart from their authoritarian character, reactive management style, effective news management and lack of any democratic accountability for their actions, the two regimes and the societies in which they operated were quite different. In the case of disaster management in Italy, style was as important as substance, the two coming together successfully in the post-1928 rebuilding of Mascali in Sicily. This mixture was less successful when disasters were larger-scale affairs, with costs that strained the regime’s longer-term commitment to rebuilding. In Portugal and in common with Italy, peripheral areas were not central to the regime’s concerns. Successful responses to the 1957/58 emergency on Faial and to the 1964 earthquake, both in the Azores, still depended critically on the effectiveness of local leaders who encouraged the central government to act effectively. It was only following the 1969 earthquake in the Algarve, when changes had already taken place in the personnel serving in the cabinet and their priorities, that the regime was able to mount an effective policy without any prompting by local leaders.