On the PSD’s 50th anniversary, CNN Portugal spoke to António Capucho, who tells the party’s history from Francisco Sá Carneiro’s social democracy to the present day
“We understand that in this hour of liberation it was necessary to seek to live up to this responsibility together with all authentically democratic forces”. 50 years ago, on this same day, Francisco Sá Carneiro announced to the country the creation of a social-democratic political group, alongside Francisco Pinto Balsemão and Joaquim Magalhães Mota, following the overthrow of the dictatorial regime. Thus, in a short space of time, the Popular Democratic Party (PPD) was born, which later spread to the Azores and the rest of the country.
But what is social democracy, according to the vision of the founders? In the political program presented on May 6, 1974, it is described as “considering the worker as a subject and not as an object of any activity”. “The Portuguese man will have to free himself and be freed from the condition of object in which he has lived, to assume his own position as an autonomous subject responsible for the entire social, cultural and economic process”, it reads.
In his blog, “Abrupto”, CNN Portugal commentator José Pacheco Pereira explains that that thought does not come from Marxism, socialism or leftism, but “from the social doctrine of the church as it materialized in the social democracy that wanted to be established ”. “It demarcates the PSD from the PS, the PCP, but, above all, from those who in the place of the ‘worker’ put ‘companies’, the ‘economy’ or other variants of any power that does not ‘liberate’”, he writes. “This is the old PSD, but this is also the part that is not ‘modernizable’”.
In June 74, Sá Carneiro appeared as secretary general of the PPD in an “authentic celebration to honor the men who made the revolution” two months earlier. According to the official page of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), the following period was marked by the creation of its youth group (JSD), the launch of the first edition of its official newspaper “Povo Livre” and the arrival of the PPD in Madeira. But the culmination of this entire political initiative took place at the Pavilhão dos Desportos, in Lisbon, as part of the party’s first major national rally in which around 15 thousand people were present. “Today we are many, tomorrow we will be millions”, the famous words of Carlos Mota Pinto are currently mentioned by several social democrats.
The change to the name we know today began two years after the founding of the political group at the Hotel Estoril Sol, at a meeting of the National Council, after the first legislative and regional elections. António Capucho was 31 years old at the time, he was deputy secretary general and was in charge of adapting the symbol to be included in the minutes.
With a degree in Business Organization and Management, the former president of Cascais City Council (2001-2011) joined the party precisely in the historic year of its foundation. “I’m number 326”, he says in conversation with CNN Portugal. He was elected general secretary in 1979, during the leadership of Sá Carneiro, and later of Pinto Balsemão and Nuno Rodrigues dos Santos. He went on to preside over the PSD parliamentary group five years later.
In the VIII Constitutional Government of Francisco Pinto Balsemão he held the position of Secretary of State assistant to the Prime Minister, rising to Minister of Quality of Life in the IX Government of Mário Soares, the so-called “Central Bloc”. Between 1987 and 1989, he was part of the Government of Aníbal Cavaco Silva as Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, before taking on the coordination of the European PSD group and being elected Vice-President of the European Parliament. Nine years later he returned to the general secretariat of the party, which was led by Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.
About to turn 80, António Capucho now reports on the most memorable moments of the Social Democratic Party’s five decades of life and the main changes that the party has undergone since the great creation of Francisco Sá Carneiro.
It is common knowledge that António Capucho was a political activist before the 25th of April. What do you remember from that period?
Before April 25th I was an opponent. In the two legislative elections that took place immediately before the 25th of April, 69 and 73, I was a modest activist for CEUD and CDE afterwards. From CEUD, which was a movement that competed alternatively to the CDE, led by the communists, and then on the unity list that was achieved in 73. And, therefore, it was already quite likely to pay attention to the 25th of April.
He ended up finding in the PSD, in 1974, a new way of using his activism. How did it get there?
Mind you, I was already married at the time with children, but I actually had a great impulse to participate in that movement to renew the country. And, therefore, here in Cascais, which was where I lived, we had a variety of meetings between very close people, center-left, in essence, some of whom oscillated between the Socialist Party and the Social-Democratic Party. And that was where, firstly, the Cascais section emerged, of which I am a co-founder, and later I was called by the party leader in October to collaborate in the implementation of the party, and in February 75 I was already general secretary deputy, and shortly afterwards general secretary.
So, were you invited by Sá Carneiro himself?
I worked in a private, family-owned but large company, I was general director. And he had Júlio Castro Caldas as his lawyer, with Vera Jardim and Jorge Sampaio, I think. And when there is a desertion, so to speak, there is a member of the PSD’s national leadership, who leaves abroad and who had administrative and financial responsibility, Júlio Castro Caldas suggested my name, Sá Carneiro didn’t know me anywhere . He called me and invited me. I went there to meet him, at his request and at Conceição Monteiro’s request, of course. It was curious, because when I got there he apologized profusely because he couldn’t see me at the office and asked me if I minded driving to Belém with him, because he had a last-minute audience with the President of the Republic. And it was on this route, from Duque Loulé, PSD headquarters, to Belém, that we met, and that I said yes, that in principle I accepted, but I could only go in the morning, because I had my responsibilities in the afternoon. Something that, in fact, took very little time, because the work and enthusiasm were so great that I quickly became full-time.
What did you think of the party founder during this conversation?
I already knew him, I already had the notion that he was a man who, ideologically, was very close to my ideals, basically abbreviating social democracy to Swedish, a very humanist, very personalist social democracy. And that’s it, I thought he actually had enormous charisma. I quickly realized that he was deeply committed to leading a process of democratization in the country, rejecting the return to any totalitarianism, which was on the right, which was not envisaged at the time, but fundamentally avoiding the return of a totalitarianism to the left that was imminent, and which was only aborted on November 25th.
Can we say that it was a more left-wing social democracy than the one we know now?
There’s no comparison. We were going to call ourselves the Social Democratic Party from the beginning, we were going to, at the request of Sá Carneiro, join the Socialist International, and that just didn’t happen because there was a veto from the PS, so there were veto rights for parties from the same country that already were there, and we ended up joining the liberals. Anyway, the entire party program, if you look at it, the JSD newspaper led by Guilherme Oliveira Martins was called “For Socialism”. But the Socialist Party was much further to the left than us, because it had a variety of almost extreme left-wing movements within it that later disappeared and were integrated into the Socialist Party. We have Jorge Sampaio and many who came from the Communist Party, therefore, they were much more on the left than ours, which was much more moderate, much more interclassist.
What most captivated you to accept joining the party?
Your program and leadership. I identified perfectly with the program, and Francisco Sá Carneiro, in fact, captivated us with relative ease, because we could see in his charisma and desire to