Afonso Costa prime minister again

On 29 November 1915 President Bernardino Machado entrusted the office of President of the Ministry, that is, prime minister of Portugal, to Afonso Costa, leader of the Democratic Party. That day José de Castro’s cabinet, which had governed since June, left office. Portuguese lists of governments give the date as 29 November, although in some compilations the new term begins a day later. Costa took office as prime minister for the second time. As in his first government, he also kept the ministry of finance for himself.

Castro’s resignation

José de Castro’s cabinet had been on its way out ever since Machado assumed the presidency. The new president wanted to play the role of a “moderating power”, an arbiter above the parties, and he had won the August election thanks to the votes of the moderate Evolutionists. The government was also locked in disputes with parliament, among other things over how many officers and officials linked to the overthrown regime of General Pimenta de Castro should be removed from their posts. According to the Portuguese historian Damião Peres, matters came to a head on 18 November. Castro then submitted his resignation to the president without warning the other ministers. He gave as his reason a dispute over a decree reforming the police.

Machado did not want to impose a candidate of his own on the country. He sought a government that would have the backing of all the republican groupings. The Evolutionists and Unionists, however, declared once again that they would not join a cabinet together with the Democrats. Only then did the president conclude that a government of national unity was impossible, and he summoned the leader of the party that had held a clear majority in Congress since the June elections.

The return of the “mata-frades”

Costa was 44. He was born in 1871 in Seia in central Portugal, and was a lawyer and professor of law. Already under the monarchy he had made his name in parliament as one of the fiercest republican speakers. After the revolution of 1910, as minister of justice, he carried laws that expelled the Jesuits from the country, introduced divorce and compulsory civil registration, and in 1911 separated Church and state. From then on his opponents called him “mata-frades”, “the friar-killer”. In 1912 he took the lead of the radical wing of the republicans, which formed the Democratic Party. He headed his first government from January 1913 to February 1914 and went down as the minister who managed to balance the budget.

In the summer of 1915 Costa, the real winner of the June elections, was the natural candidate for prime minister, but an accident put him out of politics for several months. On 3 July a short circuit and an explosion occurred on a Lisbon tram. Costa took it for an assassination attempt and jumped from the moving car. He suffered a fractured skull and spent a long time recovering, partly abroad. During this time the government was formed by men close to the Democrats, while Costa remained outside the cabinet. By the end of November he had recovered.

A government of Democrats

All the ministers of the new cabinet belonged to the Democratic Party. Several carried over from the previous government: Augusto Soares remained foreign minister, José Norton de Matos minister of war, João Catanho de Meneses minister of justice and Alfredo Rodrigues Gaspar minister of the colonies. The ministry of the navy went to Vítor Hugo de Azevedo Coutinho, who at the turn of 1914 and 1915 had himself been prime minister for a few weeks, and the ministry of development (fomento) to António Maria da Silva, one of the leaders of the May rising against Pimenta de Castro. Despite its party composition Costa called his cabinet a national government and promised not to engage in party politics. The government appeared before parliament on 2 December.

The most important matter was the war. Since 1914 the Democrats had wanted Portugal to fight alongside Britain not only in Africa but also in France. London long remained cool to the idea, and the previous government had failed to obtain either British consent to Portugal’s entry into the war or a loan. The country was struggling with high prices, strikes and food riots. The breakthrough came a few months later. At the request of the British, Costa’s cabinet in February 1916 requisitioned some 70 German ships that had been lying in Portuguese ports since the start of the war. On 9 March 1916 Germany declared war on Portugal. A few days later Costa made way for the “Sacred Union” government of António José de Almeida, in which he became minister of finance. In 1917 the Portuguese Expeditionary Corps sailed for France.