Santa Comba Dão
António de Oliveira Salazar, who was the Prime Minister of Portugal from 1932 to 1968 and leader of the "Estado Novo", was born in Vimieiro, Santa Comba Dão on 28 April 1889.
António de Oliveira Salazar
A trained economist, Salazar entered public life with the support of President Óscar Carmona after the Portuguese "coup d'état" of 28 May 1926, initially as finance minister and later as prime minister. Opposed to democracy, communism, socialism, anarchism and liberalism, the ideology of Portugal was conservative and nationalist in nature. Salazar distanced himself from fascist dictatorships, which he considered a pagan Caesarist political system that recognised neither legal nor moral limits. Salazar viewed German Nazism as espousing pagan elements that he considered repugnant.
Salazar also promoted Catholicism, but argued that the role of the Church was social, not political, and negotiated the Concordat of 1940. One of the mottos of the Salazar regime was ""Deus, Pátria e Familia"" (meaning "God, Fatherland, and Family").