On October 5, Portugal remembers the revolution of 1910 that ended the constitutional monarchy and inaugurated the Republic. But more than a commemoration of regime change, the anniversary offers an opportunity to revisit a larger and more enduring question: does the Republic still understand itself as res publica—the common good entrusted to citizens?
There are dates that belong to history and others that history continually returns to the present. October 5 is both. On that morning in 1910, after armed confrontation in Lisbon, the Republic was proclaimed from the balcony of Lisbon City Hall, ending centuries of monarchy and beginning a political experiment that sought not merely to replace a king, but to redefine citizenship, sovereignty and the relationship between the individual and the State. A provisional government led by the Azorean Teófilo Braga followed, and the Constitution approved on August 21, 1911 established the institutional architecture of the First Republic.
Portuguese republicanism had been developing throughout the final decades of the nineteenth century, gaining particular strength after the British Ultimatum of 1890 and amid growing dissatisfaction with the monarchy and the country’s political instability. The regicide of King Carlos I and Crown Prince Luís Filipe on February 1, 1908 further destabilized the system, although many republicans publicly distanced themselves from the assassinations. By October 1910, republican civilians and sectors of the military had moved from political opposition to revolution. The monarchy fell, the royal family departed Portugal, and a new political vocabulary entered national life.
The Republic also created new symbols through which Portugal sought to imagine itself anew: a different flag, a new national anthem and eventually a new constitutional order. The Constitution of 1911 affirmed national sovereignty and the separation of legislative, executive and judicial powers, although the new system remained far from the universal democracy understood today: women, illiterate citizens and some military personnel were excluded from electoral participation. The First Republic itself would prove turbulent, ending with the military coup of May 28, 1926 and giving way eventually to decades of dictatorship.
That complexity is precisely why October 5 should be more than a ritual celebration. History loses much of its usefulness when anniversaries become exercises in self-congratulation. The Republic need not be treated as an immaculate founding moment, just as the monarchy that preceded it cannot be reduced to a caricature. Political systems must ultimately be judged by what they permit human beings to become: whether institutions protect liberty, whether citizenship carries meaning, whether power remains accountable and whether the common good is more than a phrase invoked on ceremonial occasions.
An earlier reflection by journalist Santos Narciso approached October 5 from precisely this uncomfortable perspective. His argument was not that monarchy was inherently preferable to republicanism, but that no constitutional form guarantees justice or progress by itself. There are successful monarchies and failed republics, just as history provides examples of the reverse. What matters is the political culture inhabiting the institutions—the quality of citizenship, public service, democratic responsibility and the capacity to resist the transformation of public power into private possession.
This brings us back to the ancient meaning contained within the word itself. Res publica: the public thing, that which belongs to everyone and therefore cannot morally belong exclusively to those who temporarily govern it. The question acquires particular relevance whenever societies become polarized and political opponents cease to recognize one another as legitimate participants in the same civic community. A Republic survives not merely because elections continue to occur, but because citizens accept limits on power, institutions remain worthy of trust and disagreement does not destroy the possibility of belonging to a common political home.
The historian Ernesto Castro Leal once reflected upon the republican effort after 1910 to create new symbolic places of memory and a new civic education. That raises an enduring dilemma: collective memory can educate, but it can also be manipulated. Jacques Le Goff expressed the responsibility memorably: history should seek to preserve the past so that memory may serve the present and future—and ultimately human liberation rather than servitude.
Perhaps that is the most meaningful way to commemorate October 5 in 2026, 116 years after the proclamation of the Republic. Not by asking citizens to inherit uncritically the passions of 1910, nor by reopening the ancient argument between monarchy and republicanism, but by recovering the deeper civic question that survives every regime.
Who does the Republic belong to? If the answer is still “everyone,” then October 5 remains unfinished work. Because a Republic is not preserved simply by flags, anthems, monuments or anniversaries. It is renewed whenever public power is understood as service, disagreement remains compatible with citizenship, memory is protected from manipulation, and democracy belongs as fully to the next generation as it did to those who stood in Lisbon on that October morning.
The Republic is not merely something Portugal proclaimed in 1910. It is something each generation must decide whether it still deserves to call res publica.
Based on a story in Atlântico Expresso. The photo is also from AE.