José de Castro becomes prime minister of Portugal

On 19 June 1915 José de Castro became the full prime minister, or more precisely President of the Ministry, of Portugal. That day President Teófilo Braga dismissed the government appointed in mid-May, after the fall of General Pimenta de Castro’s dictatorship, and appointed a new cabinet. Castro had already been running the government for a month, but only as a stand-in. The prime minister designate, João Chagas, did not take office because on his way to Lisbon he was shot by a senator. On 17 May the acting leadership of the government was taken over by Castro, who had earlier been named minister of education. Chagas was formally dismissed on 29 May, and some lists count Castro’s full term from that day. Portuguese lists of governments, however, hold that until 19 June he was only acting prime minister in Chagas’s cabinet, and that only now did he head his own.

The new prime minister was 67 years old. He was born in 1848 in Valhelhas near the town of Guarda, studied law at the University of Coimbra and was a lawyer in Guarda and Lisbon. He started out as a monarchist in the ranks of the Progressive Party, but in 1881 he joined the republicans. He was a journalist and in 1882 founded the first republican newspaper published outside the big cities, “O Povo Português”. He was also a high dignitary of Portuguese Freemasonry, deputy grand master of the Grand Orient Lusitano (PL). His son Álvaro de Castro was among the leaders of the May rising against the dictatorship.

The change of government was the result of the parliamentary elections of 13 June. The Democratic Party of Afonso Costa won about two-thirds of the seats in both houses of Congress, and the moderate republicans, the Evolutionists and the Unionists, announced that they would not join mixed governments with the Democrats. Chagas’s May cabinet was meant to be national and above party. In the new one most portfolios went to Democrats, among them Augusto Soares at foreign affairs, Vitorino Guimarães at finance and José Norton de Matos, one of the leaders of the May rising, at the colonies. Castro himself, a politician without a clear party affiliation, also kept the ministry of war and, temporarily, the ministry of the navy. Costa, the de facto leader of the victorious camp, did not join the government.

The most important issue facing the cabinet was the war. Pimenta de Castro had halted preparations for sending troops to France, and since the autumn of 1914 the Democrats had wanted Portugal to take part in the fighting on the side of the Entente. Castro’s government favoured the Allies, but Portugal did not formally enter the war in Europe, although its troops had been clashing with the Germans in Africa since 1914. The cabinet lasted until the end of November 1915. It resigned a few weeks after Bernardino Machado took office as president, and the new government was formed by Afonso Costa. Portugal entered the war with Germany only in March 1916.