The project to create a museum to the Salazarian years – one of the many dark periods in Portugal’s long history – has run into a new issue. PS Socialists believe it’s just not the right time to open what many see as a monument to fascism. There is too much “flourishing” in the form of totalitarian ideologies.
Centre-right MPs disagree. They believe history ‘should not be white-washed’.
This essentially academic debate came up in parliament yesterday as MPs considered a new petition – this one signed by around 11,000 people – demanding that work on the project be categorically abandoned.
The last we heard of the ‘Interpretative Centre of the Estado Novo’ (as the museum is to be called) was that work had indeed stopped – due to rotten roof beams (click here).
These have not been mentioned in this latest story which revisits political feeling, both for and against, for a monument to the long-dead dictator in his hometown of Santa Comba Dão.
Explains Observador, petitions are not voted on in parliament “but parties can associate draft resolutions or laws to the debate, which is not what happened in this case”.
In other words, the issue may not be consensual, but the rotten roof beams may already have become the deciding factor.
