Portugal is not a small country

During the Estado Novo (1733-1974), Portugal embarked on a propaganda mission to show the world and its citizens the importance of their nation, trying to regain its former glory. Like Franco's slogan "One, great and free!", they sought to demonstrate the unity of the Portuguese empire, where there were no colonies, but a single country spread over four continents. 

The Salazar regime sought to point to the 1926 coup d'état as the turning point for the revival of Portuguese culture, whose decline it blamed on the liberal and anti-nationalist ideas of the 19th century. With this objective, they wished both to dominate the colonies and to bring about a pacifying, constructive and civilizing constitution with a moral, political, spiritual and economic unity among all Portuguese territories. Based on this, the first article of the 1933 constitution stated that the Portuguese territory was not a possession of the state, but of the nation. This was an idea present in the constitutions of 1822 and 1838 as well as in constitutions of other countries. Thus, Portugal comprised the regions on the Iberian Peninsula, the archipelagos of Madeira and Azores, which form today's Portugal; the archipelagos of Cape Verde and São Tomé and Principe, Guinea, Angola, Cabinda, Mozambique and the fortress of São João Baptista de Ajudá (which it had already lost) in Africa; the state of India and Macao and, finally, the island of Timor and its dependencies in Asia and Oceania.

Earlier, at the 1931 Paris International Colonial Exposition, Portugal, together with other colonial powers, tried to show its civilizing mission. There it showed that Portugal was an indivisible pluricontinental unit whose form was a product of Portuguese nature and history. It was explained that Portugal had an expansionist vocation and that, with no Muslim territories to conquer and limited by a Christian state, it set its sights on the sea. Thus, its territories beyond Europe were extensions connected by the ocean. However, the one who really went over the top in his statements at the exhibition was the high colonial official João de Almeida, who claimed that the Lusitanian ancestors were descendants of the Homo-Atlanticus, Atlanteans who conquered the Iberian Peninsula, thus remarking on their mythical oceanic nature. This expansion, they defended, was not limited to the increase of the extension between their borders, but to a civilizing mission where assimilation with the natives predominated and any racial antagonism was excluded. 

The expositions sought to be a loudspeaker of Portuguese diversity and unity. In 1934, the 1st Portuguese Colonial Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in Oporto showed how the greatness of the nation could only be achieved through the empire. At the 1940 Portuguese World Exposition, strategically held next to the Tagus River and the Jerónimos Monastery, near the Belém Tower, the Portuguese nation was extolled as the oldest and greatest in the world. Its celebration coincided with the eighth centenary of the foundation of Portugal, and the third centenary of the recovery of its independence. It temporarily exhibited the Monument to the Discoveries and the reproduction of a Nao, seeking to reinforce and justify sovereignty over its territories. With it, they wanted to instill pride in the Portuguese and show themselves to the world as a great nation. 

Of course, this territorial unit was also taught in schools. However, instead of dividing between the metropolis and the overseas territories, they made a third partition where they included the island territories of Madeira and the Azores. This indoctrination was practically exclusive to mainland Portugal and those assimilated in the colonies, since the conditions of unity and equality preached by national propaganda did not reflect the reality outside Europe. Fernando Monteiro de Castro Soromenho's trilogy of Terra morta (1949), Viragem (1957) and A chaga (1970) presents the real division between the colonists and the natives, with the assimilados as privileged natives who acted as intermediaries, but whose position depended on the colonists

Source

• Cairo, H. (2006). “Portugal is not a small country”: Maps and propaganda in the Salazar regime. Geopolitics, 11(3), 367-395.