Titled ‘A voz nascia na tribuna…’, this illustration by João Abel Manta belongs to the set of works that visually punctuate José Cardoso Pires’s tale Dinossauro Excelentíssimo (Most Excellent Dinosaur) (Lisbon: Arcádia, 1972), a satirical history portraying the Estado Novo and António de Oliveira Salazar’s career from his education in Coimbra until the collapse of the regime. Included in the second part of the book, the drawing addresses the origins and characteristics of the exercise of power, and Salazar’s personal and political style of government. The setting is the Praça do Comércio, described by the writer as Praça dos Acontecimentos (Events Square), where the rostrum of the dictator, the ‘Emperor’, stands within a tower – named in the same work as the ‘Realm of the Hermit’.

The illustration is part of a set of works that Abel Manta made of Portuguese monuments. Here though, in contrast to the majority of the other works on this subject, the artist uses a drawing rather than a photograph of a real tourist monument. Photography and collage are present in the work, but they are used to create a unified image that shows an indistinct mass of individuals around the lofty and monumental tower. These individuals, standing before the plinth that supports the rostrum, express reverence and adoration towards both the isolated figure of the dictator and the national monuments that played such aglorified and valued part in the construction and identifying image of the nation and the Estado Novo regime as an institution. The satirical stamp of the cartoon is also evident in the parallel drawn between this episode of public support for the regime’s leading figure and religious gatherings, with the public below, shown as a mass of followers, enveloped in a blanket of umbrellas, yet also apparently unaware of the figure of authority represented here as a black, spectral silhouette, distanced from reality and isolated within his pulpit.

Sandra Vieira Jürgens

May2015