Illustration by Global Voices featuring the Monument of the Discoveries (Wikimedia Commons CC BY 4.0) This story is part of Undertones, Global Voices’ Civic Media Observatory‘s newsletter. Subscribe to Undertones. When in Lisbon, images of ships and references to Portugal’s seafaring past are ubiquitous. Caravelas, the signature sailing ships used during Portugal’s early voyages to West Africa and Brazil, are seen on Lisbon’s flag, in restaurant names and on cobblestone pavements, posing as touristic buses, and, in a more stylized fashion, in the Monument of the Discoveries, built during Salazar’s dictatorship in 1958. This enormous monument features renowned explorers, cartographers, navigators, and missionaries. It exemplifies how a rewriting of Portugal’s history of colonization was taking place. For scholars and activists, narratives that emerged during Salazar’s dictatorship still linger in Portuguese society. They mingle pride in an expansionist, colonialist past, all the while denying any internalized racism. Recent incidents sparked debates on racism in Portugal. The first art installation commemorating the lives of enslaved Africans in Lisbon is facing pushback from the local authorities, sparking criticism in July that Lisbon’s mayor was “boycotting” the event. In September, President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, during a visit to Canada, described Portuguese identity in words that, for some Portuguese, evoked Salazar’s slogan, “Futebol, Fado e Fátima” (Soccer, the musical style of Fado, and the apparition of the Virgin of Fatima). In October, a Black anti-racist activist was fined for defaming a self-proclaimed neo-Nazi. “[For many], the positive view of colonial times is internalized,” Civic Media Observatory researcher Leon Ingelse says. “The narratives from the Salazar dictatorship seem to be normalized across the political spectrum.” For anti-racist activists, a common narrative is: “Portugal is not dealing with its colonial past”. Joacine Katar Moreira, a Portuguese politician born in Guinea-Bissau, shared her discontent with the Portuguese pride around colonial history on X. She criticizes how “every national reference is linked to Portugal’s colonial past”, like the words “Navegadoras” (the nickname of the national Portuguese women’s football team). She asks whether the Portuguese are proud of anything else. Most comments are hateful and racist, Ingelse notes. The comments say that the author is racist for saying such a thing, that she should be thrown out of the country, and that she is ungrateful as Portugal ‘took her in’. Some comments underline their pride in the colonial past of Portugal. This item received the positive score of +2 out of +3 on our civic media scorecard, because the message is anti-racist and important for the discussions about racism in Portugal. However, there could have been more explanation and background information. The item above mentions “luso-tropicalism”, a concept adopted by Salazar’s dictatorship to evoke pride in Portugal’s historical identity and keep its African colonies. After World War II, Portugal was facing mounting pressure to amend its imperial narratives and release its grip on its territories overseas. Portugal played a preponderant role in Europe’s history of colonization and human trafficking. In the 15th century, Portugal launched and dominated the trans-Atlantic slave trade, capturing and bringing nearly 6 million Africans to Brazil, more than any other European nation. Brazil gained independence from Portugal in 1822, while Guinea Bissau, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Principe, Angola, and Mozambique obtained freedom in 1974 and 1975 after violent wars. After two decades in power, Salazar started to embrace the concept of luso-tropicalism coined by Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre. Before that, Portuguese politicians and colonial administrators most often thought of colonialism as a white civilizing mission for “inferior races.” A historical revision was taking place. Luso-tropicalism contends that the Portuguese empire was more humane than other European colonizers, namely the British. Freyre and other contemporaries argued that the Portuguese were inherently friendlier, less violent, and prone to mixing with local populations. Rui Braga, a researcher at the Tamera Peace Research & Education Center in Portugal, wrote in 2020 that “in the 1950s, at a time when colonial empires were collapsing all over the world, the regime faced the need to justify its colonial presence in Africa.