António de Oliveira Salazar

António de Oliveira Salazar taught political economy at the University of Coimbra before entering government as finance minister after the 1926 coup, stabilizing Portugal's currency and producing the first of many budget surpluses within a year. By 1932 he was President of the Council of Ministers, reframing the military's Ditadura Nacional as the corporatist Estado Novo—a regime opposed to communism, socialism, liberalism, and capitalism alike, rooted in conservative nationalism and the motto "God, Fatherland and Family." He kept the military out of politics, the Church at arm's length throug…