Costa says we must remember to resist dictatorship to preserve democracy

Outgoing Prime Minister António Costa said this Sunday during a visit to the Museum of Resistance and Freedom in Peniche that the memory of the struggle against dictatorship must be preserved if democracy is to be preserved.

The National Museum of Resistance and Freedom in the Leiria area “is a very important legacy of all those who resisted, all those who fought, and I would say that this is the last stage of the struggle for resistance and freedom, which leaves this testimony of life, this testimony pain and this is a testimony to what the dictatorship was like for the generations that will follow us, and that they will never be able to forget and will never be able to live again,” said António Costa.

In the year celebrating the 50th anniversary of freedom and democracy in Portugal and in one of his last speeches as Prime Minister, Costa emphasized, surrounded by former political prisoners Fernando Rosas and Domingos Abrantes, that “it is important not to forget the 48 years of dictatorship that preceded these 50 years of democracy, and remember those who were decisive.”

Costa recalled the “Captains of Abril” and members of the anti-fascist resistance between 1926 and 1974 who “kept the idea of ​​freedom and democratic aspirations alive.”

“We owe it to them that the values ​​of freedom and democracy were not lost in history and were carried into the future,” he emphasized.

“This is a museum of anti-fascist resistance and its goals are to awaken democratic consciousness and educate young people in the principles of defending freedom, a reality that has tormented us for 48 years and which we hope will not happen again,” Domingos Abrantes emphasized. , political prisoner for nine and a half years.

Historian Fernando Rosas, a former political prisoner and member of the executive committee responsible for monitoring the museum’s work, spoke of the importance of “protecting history at a time when Portuguese democracy is the target of its greatest threats.”

Both spoke of daily life in the former political prison, where prisoners were “humiliated” and “annulled” as people and kept in cells for 21 hours, often without books or newspapers, but where there was also a struggle against a dictatorial regime. ready.

A month before the opening of the museum, António Costa recalled the movement that prompted his government in 2017 to abandon the idea of ​​making Fortaleza de Peniche available to private individuals for tourism purposes and to continue work to expand the space to eventually house the Museum of Resistance and Freedom. “a space of memory and remembrance of the fight against resistance.”

Antonio Costa refused to answer other questions from journalists.

In February 2022, the Peniche fortress was closed for work to install the museum. The investment amounted to 4.3 million euros with the support of public funds.

In April 2017, the government approved a plan for the restoration of the Peniche fortress, according to which the museum will be housed in a former prison of the New State dictatorship intended for political prisoners.

In September 2016, the Peniche Fortress was included by the government in the list of historical monuments subject to concession to private parties under the Renaissance program, but two months later it was removed due to the controversy it had caused, leading the Assembly of the Republic to defend its reclassification ,Alternatively.

The fortress, classified as a national monument since 1938, was one of the prisons of the Estado Novo, from where, among other things, the historical general secretary of the PCP, Alvaro Cunhal, managed to escape in 1960, starring in one of the most striking episodes of the fight against the dictatorial regime.