Censorship in Portugal - Present Day

Present Day

Freedom of expression was one of the achievements of the Carnation Revolution. It also quickly led critics to protest against the "excess of liberty" that was taking hold of newspapers, magazines, television, radio and cinema. Movies that had until then been forbidden started being screened, some of them many years after being filmed. Social and political satire became common in television and theater, a prime example being teatro de revista.

The Portuguese Constitution of 1976 once again included freedom of expression and information and freedom of the press in its text. Following revisions of the constitutional text have extended freedom of expression to all the media.

However, incidents of censorship still occur occasionally, in the form of appeals to entrepreneurial groups, to the government, or to lobbies, to exert their influence on the media. For example, Herman José, in 1988, had his TV series "Humor de Perdição" suspended by the RTP Management Council. The Council, then headed by Coelho Ribeiro (who had been a censor during the dictatorship) justified the action by the supposedly undignified way in which the "Historical Interviews" segment (written by Miguel Esteves Cardoso) portrayed important figures in Portuguese history. References to the supposed homosexuality of King Sebastian are frequently cited as the main reason for the termination of the series.

In 1992, Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Souza Lara, who had final say on applications from Portugal, prevented José Saramago's "The Gospel According to Jesus Christ" from participating in the European Literary Award, claiming that the work was not representative of Portugal, but was instead divisive of the Portuguese people. As a result and in protest against what he saw as an act of censorship by the Portuguese government, Saramago moved to Spain, taking permanent residency in Lanzarote in the Canary Islands.

In 2004, the so-called "Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa affair" became public. A former leader of the PSD, Rebelo de Sousa, was a political commentator for the TVI television station when he was pressured by the station president, Miguel Pais do Amaral and by the Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, Rui Gomes da Silva, to refrain from criticizing the government so sharply. This was regarded as unacceptable by the press and prompted Rebelo de Sousa's resignation from TVI and an investigation by the Alta Autoridade da Comunicação Social (High Authority for the Media - the media regulator) into the station which found proof of "pressures from the government and promiscuity between political and economical powers".

In 2006, Portugal was ranked at number 10 on the Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders, number 8 in 2007, number 16 in 2008 and more recently number 30 in 2009.