Political chaos, several strikes, harsh relations with the Church, and considerable economic problems aggravated by a disastrous military intervention in the First World War led to the military 28th May 1926 coup d'état, installing the Second Republic that would later become the Estado Novo in 1933, led by António de Oliveira Salazar, which transformed Portugal into a pro-Fascist leaning state, which later evolved into some mixture of single party corporative regime. India invaded and annexed Portuguese India in 1961. Independence movements also became active in Angola, Mozambique and Portuguese Guinea, and a series of colonial wars started.

Not all who claim that the negative view historians have taken of this period are sympathizers with the later Fascistic regime (saudosistas), but most agree that Salazar and Caetano's corporative regime installed by the military coup d'état of 1926 was a repressive dictatorship, though the regime was slowly trying to democratize and to solve the problems of the colonies. Portugal, never an outcast, was a founding member of OECD, NATO and EFTA.

After the death of Salazar in 1970, his replacement by Marcelo Caetano offered a certain hope that the regime would open up, the primavera marcelista (Marcelist spring), however the colonial wars in Africa continued, political prisoners remained incarcerated, freedom of association was not restored, censorship was only slightly eased and the elections remained tightly controlled. The regime retained its characteristic traits: censorship, corporativeness, with a market economy dominated by a handful of economical groups, continuous surveillance and intimidation of all sectors of society through the use of a political police and techniques instilling fear, such as arbitrary imprisonment, systematic political persecution, and assassination.

The largely symbolic opening up of the 70s was meant to reduce social pressures generated by poor living conditions and to send a positive signal to the international community from which Portugal had been marginalized.

The solutions envisioned for the colonies, called ultramarine provinces following the French precedent, it is said it was to remove the concept of colony and the idea of Portugal from Minho to East Timor.

The Third Republic

The Carnation Revolution of 1974, an effectively bloodless left-wing military coup, installed the Third Republic. Broad democratic reforms were implemented. In 1975, Portugal granted independence to its Overseas Provinces (Províncias Ultramarinas in Portuguese) in Africa (Mozambique, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe). In that same year, Indonesia invaded and annexed the Portuguese province of Portuguese Timor (East Timor) in Asia before independence could be granted. The Asian dependency of Macao, after an agreement in 1986, was returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1999. Portugal applied international pressure to secure East Timor's independence from Indonesia, as East Timor was still legally a Portuguese dependency, and recognized as such by the United Nations. After a referendum in 1999, East Timor voted for independence and Portugal recognized its independence in 2002.
Treaty of Accession of Portugal to the European Communities
Enlarge
Treaty of Accession of Portugal to the European Communities

With the 1975–76 independence of its colonies (except Macao, because it hadn't any independence movement), the 560 year old Portuguese Empire had already effectively ended. With it, 15 years of war effort also came to an end. Also many Portuguese returned from the colonies, coming to comprise a sizeable sector of the population and starting an economic recovery, thus opening new paths for the country's future just as others closed. In 1986, Portugal entered the European Economic Community and joined the Euro in 1999.

Timeline

    * Paleolithic
          o Modern Humans make way into the Iberian peninsula, coming from Southern France.
          o Extinction of the Neanderthal Man in its last refuge - Portugal.
          o Pre-historic art in the Valley of Foz Côa.
    * Mesolithic
          o The European population, sheltered in Iberia due to the Ice Age, migrates and recolonizes all of Western Europe during the Allerød Oscillation.
    * Neolithic
          o Development of Agriculture in Iberia.
          o Beginning of the Megalithic European culture.
    * Bronze Age
          o First wave of Indo-European migrations into Iberia, of the Urnfield culture (Proto-Celts).
          o Bronze culture of the Castro Villages in the Northwest of Iberia (modern Galicia and northern Portugal); Bronze culture of Portuguese Estremadura; Bronze culture of Portuguese Beira Alta; Emergence of Tartessos in Andalusia.
    * Iron Age
          o Phoenician colonization and influence of Mediterranean Iberia.
          o Tartessian civilization in southern Iberia.
          o Emergence of towns and cities in the southern coastal areas of western Iberia.
          o Second wave of Indo-European migration into Portuguese territory (Celts of the Hallstatt culture).
          o Greek colonization and influence in eastern Iberia.
          o First forms of writing in Portugal, the Southwest script, part of the Tartessian script.
          o A new wave of Celts (of the La Tène culture) establish themselves in Alentejo.
          o The Lusitanians inhabit central Portugal, the Calaicians or Gallaeci northern Portugal, the Celtici are in Alentejo and the Conii are in the Algarve.
    * Roman Lusitania and Gallaecia
          o 218 BC - Invasion of Iberia by the Roman Republic as part of the offensive against Carthage during the Second Punic War.
          o 200 BC-150 BC - Several Lusitanian rebellions against Roman conquest.
          o 147 BC-139 BC - Lusitanian War against the Romans under the command of Viriathus.
          o 137 BC - The Romans conquer Gallaecia.
          o 114 BC - Praetor Gaius Marius is governor of Lusitania; the Lusitanians resist with a long guerrilla war.