Portugal's Deadliest Floods of 1967 That Salazar Tried to Hide

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About 6,000 secondary and college students responded to the victims of the flash floods of November 25-26, 1967, with medical and social assistance. It may be that more than 700 lost their lives in the neighboring municipalities of Lisbon, such as Loures, Vila Franca de Xira, Alenquer, and others.

The exact number remains unknown, partly because of the difficulty of reclaiming bodies from the mud and partly because of censorship of António de Oliveira Salazar's Estado Novo, according to Primaveras Estudantis: Da Crise de 1962 ao 25 de Abril (2022), Commemorative Committee for the 50th Anniversary of April 25th. The censor's pencil cut headlines with death tolls. Also prohibited were texts talking about the government’s responsibility in the tragedy.

Poignant photographs, for example, showing people crying, also were forbidden in an effort to downplay the catastrophe.

"The cause of so much misfortune wasn't the rain. It was the misery. The social conditions in which many people lived in this city were laid bare, but also the government's inaction," said Danilo Matos, a volunteer who attended Instituto Superior Técnico, according to Renascença (2017).

"The government was late, paralyzed, only managing to send the National Women's Movement, (created in 1968 by groups opposed to the Estado Novo and of which journalist Maria Lamas was a driving force) to the field, which would only hinder progress, and the GNR (National Republican Guard), which was a police force prepared to repress and not to save the people. This inaction generated enormous revolt among the population."

Successive Storms Today

For more than two weeks, Portugal has been battered by consecutive storms, which has caused 14 deaths, the loss of homes and businesses, and the lack of water, electricity, and food for hundreds of thousands, reported Expresso (February 7). Storm Ingrid passed the baton to Joseph, who passed it to Kristin, who passed it to Leonardo, who passed it to Marta. On this day, Sunday, there may be a break. However, next week, heavy rainfall returns and "critical days" are expected, and rivers "from north to south" have a high potential for flooding, reported Civil Protection, according to SIC Notícias (February 7).

Portugal has seen this before, even worse.

Deadliest Disaster Since Lisbon's 1755 Earthquake

During the nearly five four decades of the Estado Novo, there were many causes championed by students, including Portugal’s most fatal flood of November 25-26, 1967, in the Lisbon metropolitan area affecting 14 municipalities. The flood's death toll was the country’s deadliest natural disaster since the 1755 Lisbon earthquake.

Extreme poverty and high birthrates had led to a rural flight toward the main cities of Portugal, particularly Lisbon. Some of these newcomers had built houses illegally on flood plains and riverbanks, according to the paper, The deadliest storm of the 20th century striking Portugal: Flood impacts and atmospheric circulation, Journal of Hydrology (October 1, 2016).

“The authoritarian regime, incapable of providing help and almost admitting its negligence, tried to cover up the situation, censoring the news coverage of the floods,” according to Primaveras Estudantis.

Historian Miguel Cardina, who co-authored a study of the political and social impact of floods in the Lisbon region, acknowledged that the history of the 1967 catastrophe has not been written as yet, reported Renascença.

Miguel Cardina blamed censorship, responsible for a constrained media which never fully revealed what happened that night. However, he also blamed the fact that the tragedy befell poor, rural areas, far from the center.

António Araújo, a lawyer and historian, added that "the classism which led to all those people dying and being forgotten persists to this day because there was no destruction of centers of power or symbolic places. The symbolism there was the shantytowns", reported Renascença.

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"We'd put two or three bodies in the van, and I had to come back here because they weren't tied up. I'd stand on top of them to keep them from falling until we got to the barracks," said Abílio Rodrigues da Silva, a firefighter from Odivelas, according to Renascença.

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A War Zone

Joaquim Letria was a journalist at Diário de Lisboa. That night, when it started to rain inside his house, he called the fire department and knew that something serious was in the making, reported Renascença.

"Our arrival in Quintas looked like landing in a war zone. What we found was horrific. Countless dead. I had never seen anything like it. We entered by boat with the firefighters from Santarém. It was a sea. People were without help for days. There was no communications, no access.

Part of the journalist's reporting was cut by censorship. Furthermore, much information was simply denied as not true.

"The Diário de Lisboa clashed with the Ministry of the Interior, because they were trying to downplay things, and we had the opposite idea. So, Vitor Direito, who was the editor-in-chief, ordered me and Pedro Alvim to count the dead. We got close to 700."

Shock of Students at Misery

A broad network of about 6,000 student volunteers, both in the student union movement and in Catholic groups, worked to help people after the flood, reported Student Movement in Portugal Throughout the ‘60s. Many, who were middle class, awoke to the social reality of the country, which led to increasing politicization of university youth. Fernando Rosas, a leader in the 1962 and 1969 student uprisings and a flood recovery volunteer, recalled:

“. . . the shock felt by students as they came into contact with a misery unknown to them. The floods . . . it was the waterproofing of the urban soil, which took the swirl of mud to Greater Lisbon. Greater Lisbon was the greatest misery you can imagine. There were no houses, there were shanties. . . .There were absolutely primitive living conditions, entire villages, and that was the real Portugal. . . . Salazar banned the release of the death toll in the country. And we went there to help, to remove the mud from peoples’ houses, to dig up the corpses in the mud, to try to organize people a little too. Help those massively illiterate people.

“What we did was to disclose and spread (what was going on). We made information bulletins about it. That’s why the government started banning students from going to the floods.”

Diana Andringa, a second-year medical student and member of the student association, became one of the editors of Solidariedade Estudantil (Student Solidarity), the newspaper where students reported what they found on the ground, reported Renascença. One issue printed 10,000 copies. Many readers did not expect the paper to be distributed and would climb the stairs of Instituto Superior Técnico to pick up their copy, said Andringa, who left medicine for journalism.

High School Students

Students were not limited to universities, reported Renascença.

In many high schools in Lisbon, students also came forward. Jorge Wemans was 14 years and attended Padre António Vieira High School.

"The Religion and Morality teacher, who was a priest, was organizing already various actions at school, and it was through this group that we became aware of the scale of the tragedy, and that it was possible to do something. The organization brought together people involved in the university student association movement with some Church structures, namely the Catholic Action movements. That's how I went to Odivelas and Benfica with a group of friends from high school."

Wemans does not remember how many days he spent there.

"The strongest memory I have is of mud, very heavy mud that we had great difficulty removing. There were many dead animals, but I never saw human corpses. I remember the weight, the very silent people, an atmosphere as heavy as the mud. People felt so abandoned that they were immensely grateful for the presence of 14-year-old children."

General de Gaulle Donated His Own Money

In the days following the floods, news was transmitted mainly by word of mouth and through the media, although under the supervision of the censorship services, reported National Geographic (February 5). Newspaper editorial offices received telegrams and phone calls with instructions on what should be written about the tragedy.

News crossed borders and sparked international solidarity, reported Renascença. Great Britain, Italy, Monaco, France, Switzerland and Spain sent donations and vaccines against typhoid fever. French President Charles de Gaulle contributed a personal donation of 30,000 francs.

Cause of Floods

The year 1967 was a dry year. Geographer Francisco Costa, who has studied the phenomenon of floods, said that it was "an abnormal phenomenon, exceptional even on a centennial scale, of great concentration of rain", according to Renascença.

In just five hours, from Cascais to Alenquer, passing through Oeiras, Lisbon, Odivelas, Loures, Alhandra, Alverca and Vila Franca de Xira, one-fifth of the total annual rainfall was recorded, its peak occurring between 7 p.m. and midnight, while many were sleeping in bed.

Neighborhoods and villages were swept away by water and mud, 20,000 homes were damaged and the losses were estimated at $3 million at the time -- about $20 million in 2017.

The damage is unparalleled even compared to other floods in Greater Lisbon. Francisco Costa cited the 1983 floods, which caused the death of seven people and damaged 650 homes, reported Renascença. He also cited the toll of the 2008 floods, which resulted in one death, one missing person and traffic problems.