António de Oliveira Salazar
António de Oliveira Salazar (; ; 28 April 1889 – 27 July 1970) was a Portuguese statesman who served as Prime Minister of Portugal from 1932 to 1968. He was responsible for the "Estado Novo" ("New State"), the corporatist authoritarian government that ruled Portugal until 1974.
António de Oliveira Salazar
The Portuguese literary historian António José Saraiva, a communist and a fierce lifelong political opponent of Salazar, claimed that one who reads Salazar's "Speeches and Notes" is overwhelmed by the clarity and conciseness of style, the most perfect and captivating doctrinal prose that exists in Portuguese, underscored by a powerful emotional rhythm. According to Saraiva, Salazar's prose deserves a prominent place in the history of Portuguese literature, and only political barriers have deprived it of the place. Saraiva says it is written with the clarity of the great prose of the 17th century, cleansed of all the distractions and sloppiness that often obscures the prose of the Portuguese scholars.