Did you know that hats played a crucial role in the labor movement to make the revolution? The Hat Museum explains why, in detail, with a new exhibition.
“There are many hats”said Vasquinho Leitão, starring Vasco Santanain the film A Canção de Lisboa (1933).
But those who helped make April 25th are particularly special. The Hat Museum opens on Friday an exhibition on the contribution of the workers’ movement in this industrial sector to the struggles that culminated in the revolution, in São João da Madeira and the rest of the country.
According to the director of this cultural facility in the district of Aveiro and Porto Metropolitan Area, Tania Reisthe exhibition, open to the public until March 28, 2027, brings together documentation and testimonies that demonstrate that the local working force had “a central role in the formation of the Portuguese labor movement between the end of the 19th century and the middle of the 20th century”.
Proposing a reflection on industrial work in the city that for decades was the capital of Portuguese hat production, the exhibition “O Movimento Operário Chapeleiro” addresses the collective organization of the largest companies in the sector and the social struggles of their workforce.
“A The real revolution didn’t just happen on April 25th – was the result of small fights that later culminated on that date. Fights for labor rights, for better working conditions and, consequently, for better living conditions”, declares Tânia Reis to Lusa.
The curator of the exhibition, Inês Resendeadds: “The hatter’s job, demanding and highly specialized, it was associated from an early age with forms of collective organization. It was in this context that a working class with strong professional and class consciousness asserted itself, responsible for the creation of associations, cooperatives, union structures and the working press, and protagonist of demands and conflicts that marked the Portuguese labor movement from the beginning of the 20th century”.
In addition to testimonials about the concrete experience of those who lived and worked in this industry, which include personal accounts of child labor, the exhibition “The Hatter Workers Movement” It also presents the workers’ press of the time, “historical documents of union structures” from the period under analysis and paintings in which the shoe manufacturer and local painter Armando Tavares (1931-2021) portrayed the working reality of the municipality.
Part of the exhibition’s content is the result of research carried out by Inês Resende herself, who, born in São João da Madeira, graduated in History precisely because of her family origins linked to the working-class industry and a childhood marked by reports of the factory experience. It was this early contact with the world of work and its material and immaterial heritage that further awakened his preference for collecting and valuing oral testimonies like those he retained from an early age from his grandparents and great-grandparents.
“São João da Madeira occupies an unavoidable place in this history [do movimento operário nacional]. As the capital of Portuguese hatmaking, the city concentrated most of the national production for decades and housed a large and participatory working communityso this industry profoundly shaped the socioeconomic and urban development of the territory, structuring rhythms of life, work relationships and forms of sociability”, states the researcher.
Inês Resende also notes that, in a context of “unequal industrialization and strong social asymmetries”, hat workers managed to assert themselves as “protagonists of strikes, protests and other forms of collective mobilization”.
Tânia Reis highlights that the exhibition “O Movimento Operário Hateiro” is the starting point for future exhibitions on the research being carried out by the Museum on the history of workers in the hat industry.
“We are talking about hatters found in PIDE records and were from São João da Madeira. And we are also talking about women who marked the trajectory of female millinery resistance”, he anticipates.
“There are many hats”but like those in São João da Madeira, not so many, “you idiot!”.
