Republican political mobilisation of the working classes in southern Portugal: the district of Évora between 1908 and 1915

Abstract

The chapter analyses how Portuguese republicanism at the beginning of the twentieth century promoted various forms of collective action to mobilise the popular classes to defend, first step, their political demands against the monarchy and, later, the achievements reached during the construction of the new republican regime. Specifically, through the analysis of local and regional newspapers, this chapter traces and studies the most important expressions of collective mobilisation promoted by republicanism in the district of Évora, a region in the interior of the country, between 1908 and 1915, among which rallies, festive demonstrations and popular riots stand out. In short, as in the rest of the chapters of the book, this text provides evidence that shows that the grassroots groups in the rural regions of the interior of the Iberian Peninsula actively mobilised to promote democratising political changes during the ‘long’ nineteenth century.