‘Living Normally’: Everyday Life Under Salazarism

In this article we propose a problematizing overview of daily life under the Salazarist dictatorship (1926–1974), linking the corporative, educational and propagandistic contexts. We examine how institutionalized, controlled, negotiated and/or repressed leisure was spread throughout the smallest interstices of daily life in Portugal. We also analyse the dichotomous realities and policies for the people and elites (in education and reading, cultural production, circulation and consumption), for women and men (social and cultural roles), etc., and compromises with an expanded mass culture. The article directs attention to specific examples of sociocultural negotiations between civil society and the state, as happened in sports (para-)folkloristic festivities and parades (e.g. the ‘popular marches’) and in certain mass culture productions (e.g. revue theatre, cinema, broadcasting and television). Similarly, our ‘bottom-up’ approach focuses on evidence of subversive or alternative sociability and cultural achievements, demonstrating that, in some areas, elements of civil society were able to express open resistance and/or alternative views to the dictatorship.