By: CHRIS GRAEME
EVERY COUNTRY has a watershed date, a defining event that changed it politically, socially and culturally forever.
For the French it was the 1789 Revolution, for the United States it was the 1776 Declaration of Independence, for Russia the 1917 Revolution and for Britain it was arguably either the English Civil War of the 1640s, 1815 and the Battle of Waterloo or 1914 and the First World War.
But for Portugal the defining moment between the past and the way things had been
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for centuries and the future contemporary world was 1908 – the year they killed the king. Without that there may have been no Republic in 1910, no Salazar in 1928 and no Carnation Revolution in 1974.
But how far was King Dom Carlos I responsible and what kind of man was he? The answers to these questions are, in some measure, addressed in a number of exhibitions around the city to mark the 100th anniversary of the Regicide, which occurred in Lisbon’s Terreiro do Paço Square on February 1, 1908.
The King was a constitutional monarch with the power to dissolve parliament and sack governments that were seen as factious, inept and unpopular – and there were plenty of those leading up to and after the Regicide.
Did the Regicide solve anything? Arguably not. The First Republic was a disaster and ultimately led to the reinstatement of a personalised autocratic style of rule – a king without a crown – in the form of the dictator António Oliveira Salazar in the 1930s-1960s.
Family man
One can have a great deal of sympathy for Carlos I, an amiable kind of buffoon, not without intelligence, a talented amateur artist, a patron of the arts and sciences, not completely blind to the poverty of the masses in a largely agrarian and backward rural society struggling to deal with an increasingly modern, industrialised world.
What one does get from this exhibition is a sense of a hands-on family man trying to juggle and steer his nation through impossibly turbulent waters and small contentious political parties that could agree on precious little.
The exhibition at the National Coach Museum focuses on the personal qualities of the King and highlights the milestones in his education, development and constitutional rule.
The childhood of the young Príncipe Real are evoked by a small exhibition at the Palácio Nacional da Ajuda while the King and Queen’s wardrobe and court dress are on display at the Museum do Traje (Costume Museum).
What: Dom Carlos I – The Man and His Times
Where: National Coach Museum, Belém
Cost: 3 euros (1.50 euro concessions)
Opening Times: 10am-6pm Tuesdays to Sundays
Also: Palácio Nacional da Ajuda, Largo da Ajuda, Belém. Daily (Closed Wednesdays), 10am-5pm. 5 euros; Museum do Traje, Largo Júlio de Castilho, Lumiar. Daily (Closed Mondays), 10am-6pm. 4 euros.
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