Museu do Aljube – Resistência e Liberdade
Why is it significant?
The building in front of you looks like any other old house on this street, with small windows and thick walls. For centuries it was a prison, and between 1928 and 1965 it held political prisoners of the dictatorship.
Key Facts
| Place | Museu do Aljube – Resistência e Liberdade |
|---|---|
| Address | Rua de Augusto Rosa 42, 1100-059 Lisboa, Portugal |
| Geo Coordinates | 38.71020, -9.13260 |
| Part of Walk | Mouraria, Cradle of Fado: From Maria Severa to Amália in Lisbon |
| Generated | Generated |
The building in front of you looks like any other old house on this street, with small windows and thick walls. For centuries it was a prison, and between 1928 and 1965 it held political prisoners of the dictatorship. Since 25 April 2015 it has been the Museu do Aljube, the museum of resistance and freedom.
Inside those walls the political police, the PIDE, kept people in tiny isolation cells, some no bigger than a wardrobe, without light and often without trial. Students, communists, trade unionists, Catholics who dissented, writers. The regime of António de Oliveira Salazar lasted from the early 1930s, and his successor Marcelo Caetano kept it going until 1974.
And fado? Its relationship with the regime was complicated. From the late 1920s performances were subject to censorship, and fado lyrics had to be submitted to the censors before they could be sung. Singers needed a professional licence, and fado moved from the street into licensed fado houses. Critics on the left later said the regime ruled with three Fs, fado, Fátima and football, to keep people quiet. It is a catchy line, but the truth is messier.
In the early 1960s Amália Rodrigues recorded Abandono, with words by the poet David Mourão-Ferreira, about a prisoner far away by the sea. People heard in it the political prisoners held in the fortress of Peniche, and it became known as the Fado Peniche. The same singer was accused by some of serving the regime and quietly helped some of its opponents. Fado contained both.
When freedom came, it came with a song. Just after midnight on 25 April 1974 a Catholic radio station broadcast Grândola, Vila Morena by José Afonso, the agreed signal for the soldiers to move. Within a day the dictatorship fell, and the political prisoners of Caxias and Peniche walked free. Now walk east along the lanes below the cathedral and into Alfama, about three hundred metres, to a square guarded by a fragment of the old Moorish wall.