mmunity of Vimeiro near Santa Comba Dão, located in the Dão valley, where much wine was made. Here hi father was a bailiff on a local estate. His mother was very religious, as most Portuguese people are, and Salazar himself was educated at the seminary in Viseu right up until he went to Coimbra University to study in 1910. Here he studied law and economics, where he became a professor and wrote a thesis on the gold exchange rate, and many papers on the wheat problem and on controlling the public expenditure. There were only two solutions that he saw upon taking office in 1928: financial solvency and strong government (Bradford 80). He had two objectives: balancing the domestic budget and reducing the external debt. He accomplished this within his first year in office, when there was a budget surplus.
             Salazar became Presidente do Conselho (prime minister) in 1932. He held this office under all the successive presidents, until a stroke forced him to do otherwise in 1968. He had a vision, a vision of a new Portugal and that of a new beginning. This new beginning was the creation of the Estado Novo (New State) under the Corporative Constitution of 1933. The New State was, and is, authoritarian, hierarchical, and strongly centralized. All political parties were banned, the only authorized group being Salazar's União Nacional, called a civic association, which supported the régime (Bradford 81).
             In his latter years, more specifically his last, his achievements and that of the régime's were remarkable. When Salazar came into power, the country was virtually bankrupt, internally troubled, and internationally a nullity (Bradford 84). Economically, the situation had improved greatly. The escudo was backed by large reserves of gold and foreign exchange, became one of the hardest currencies in the world. Due to his carefully planned financial policies, the country was protected from the inflation...