"Making the New Lourinhã a European Lourinhã": Democracy, Institutional Culture, and the Urban Development of Lourinhã, Portugal, 1966–2001

This paper examines Portugal’s transition from the authoritarian Estado Novo to a European social democracy by focusing on urbanization between 1966 and 2001 in Lourinhã,  a small town to the north of Lisbon. Lourinhã’s urbanization involved, and indeed required, a shift in its institutional and political culture. Before 1974 its citizens were obliged to participate in local development at a cultural, political and financial level, acting as substitutes for non-existent state mechanisms for development. By the late 1980s, the impetus had shifted to regional, national, and European institutions.  These drowned out local voices and marked dramatic change in how citizens engaged with the state.

At the center of this shift was a debate about the nature of Portugal’s transition to democracy, which happened as a result of the Carnation Revolution of 1974, a military coup that toppled the Estado Novo.  Most modern academics and pundits ask whether that change represented “evolution or revolution” for Portugal. Was Portugal on the path to democracy before 1974? And, given contemporary problems, was the rapid shift to European social democracy the blessing it appeared to be by the 1990s? Did democratization disenfranchise the Portuguese in important ways? Are commentators like Jorge Silva Melo, a Lisbon playwright who began his career in the Estado Novo years, correct in asserting that, “under the dictatorship there was hope … that was in ‘72/’73. Nowadays, it’s exactly the opposite: there is no hope”?

During the late twentieth-century, Lourinhã’s urban landscape was transformed.  From a rural town with little infrastructure and few institutions in 1966 emerged an ostensibly modern European town by 2001. Ultimately, this paper highlights key moments of urban development and argues that over these forty years Lourinhã’s political culture became more institutionalized, leaving less room for, and decreasing the expectation of, citizen participation in local development.