During a ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of the Constitution, in Parliament, André Ventura said that there were more citizens arrested after the 25th of April than before the Revolution. The phrase generated a reaction, with constituents invited to the session standing up in protest, leaving the room. Does the data match up right? SIC Verifies.
The Chega leader’s speech shook the benches and generated reactions and indignation. Some of the constituent deputies present at this Thursday’s solemn session, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Constitution – including Helena Roseta and Jerónimo de Sousa – left the Parliament galleries during the Chega leader’s intervention, returning after the end of his speech.
André Ventura said that there were citizens who, “already with this Constitution or on the verge of this Constitution, already after the revolution or close to the revolution, [que] they were arrested without warrants, they were killed in FP-25 attacks”.
Apologizing for the “lack of courtesy”, Ventura went further and asked “what future generations will say” when they learn that “a Parliament amnestied a left-wing terrorist group that had on its list the deaths of babies, human beings, couples, at the hands of the extreme left”.
“Shortly after the 25th of April, there were more political prisoners than there were before the 25th of April 1974, that is the truth“, he assured.
But… is it really?
In a book written by who died in 2025, realize that the regime deposed on April 25th had almost 4,400 political prisoners, 127 of which were in mainland Portugal and the rest in the colonies, at the time of the Revolution. With greater precision, the site and points out 128 “oppositionists” released from prisons in Caxias and Peniche, and 4,249 political prisoners in the colonies.
Furthermore, the historian Irene Flunser Pimentel counted more than 12 thousand political prisoners during the dictatorshipbut estimates that, in total, they could be more than 30 thousand prisoners during this period.
SIC Verifica spoke with Irene Flunser Pimentel, who dismantled the narrative: “It’s a false idea, it is a narrative from the extreme right and some right and that, deep down, it is worth ignoring that we lived in a dictatorship until April 25, 74“.
“I studied at Torre do Tombo, I don’t see these historians, some are even historians, but politicians, deputies, I never saw them at Torre do Tombo, looking at the PIDE archives, and I I spent six months just to count the prisoners from 45 to 74. [Estamos a falar de] 12,800 and anything“, explains the historian, adding that this accounting does not account for all foreign prisoners or immigrants.
But, in addition to these almost 13 thousand, Irene Pimentel remembers that in “1933, when the first political police of this dictatorship was formed, because there were previous ones – the PVDE – there were many more”.
“In various phases, 30 thousand, 40 thousand [presos políticos]“, says the historian.
And after April 25th?
On the day the Revolution occurred, the Portuguese political police, PIDE/DGS, would have about who began to be detained in the days and weeks following the revolution and for more than a year in which they lived without any formal accusation.
In July, in a statement, the PIDE/LP SCEs reported that they were thousand prisoners former PIDE-DGS agents. Later, in December 1976, there were records of 118 prisoners for involvement in the 25th of Novemberthese would be released in the same year.
Irene Flunser Pimentel explains those who were detained in the days following April 25th were members of PIDE.
“The only people killed on April 25th were four Portuguese who were shot by PIDE/DGS on António Maria Cardoso Street at 8am on April 25th. Therefore, they are the only people killed. And 45 were injured. From then on it was impossible, because It was not part of the program to arrest PIDE members, but they committed crimes until the end. And, therefore, those who were on Antonio Maria Cardoso Street trying to defend that headquarters began to be arrested and, later, over the months, many informants and other PIDE elements, all those who did not flee. So these are the political prisoners [do pós-25 de Abril]”says the historian.
Of these, “some were [presos] six months, others stayed a little longer, the biggest torturers stayed longer“, but “There were no trials of these people” because only with the Constitution was the judicial apparatus created and this stipulated that “there would never be political trials again.”
SIC verifies that it is…
André Ventura provoked outrage when he stated that there were more political prisoners after the 25th of April than during the dictatorship. However, the narrative is false, as confirmed by historian Irene Pimentel. TO dictatorship had around 30 thousand political prisoners and in 1974 close to 4,400 political prisoners were identified in Portugal and the colonies. In the post-Revolution period, mainly former PIDE agents were detained, in a significantly lower number.
