beyond imagination

Salazar, the former Portuguese dictator, once remarked that the Portuguese tend to learn rapidly - so rapidly that they do not feel the need for detailed, long term, study of any issue. Their opinions are thus frequently superficial and based on hearsay, even among educated people. Their preconceptions about their own history, often rooted on ideological disputes, are beyond imagination. It may be because - as Einstein once said -, imagination is more important than knowledge.

Recently, I gave an interview to Visão magazine in which I said what any person with a little care for reality, and a little time to search statistics - they are available on the internet - is supposed to know, namely, that the regimes of Salazar in Portugal, Franco in Spain and Pinochet in Chile were true economic miracles. In 1973, for example, one year before Salazar´s regime fell, the Portuguese economy grew by an astounding 11.2%, making the front page of the Financial Times as an economic miracle.

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I knew beforehand how polemical my statement would be. There is nothing more polemical in this country governed by ideology, rather than fact, than simple truths about its own history, even recent history. Thus, in the current issue of Visão, in a letter to the Editor, a reader, after calling me fascist (The Portuguese like to classify people and put labels on them), states categorically that everybody knows that Salazar was responsible for the impoverishment of the country. (During Salazar´s regime Portugal came from about the 50th position in the World to the 24th. It is now 29th, as measured by ONU´s Human Development Index).