On October 5, 1910, a revolution carried out by republican forces, integrating military and civilians, defeated the monarchy and instituted the Republic in Portugal. In a Europe where monarchic regimes were the rule, the new republican government found it difficult to ensure government stability, which became even more complicated with the beginning of World War I and the entry of Portugal into the war in 1916. After 16 years in power and 45 different governments, the republicans were removed from power by a military revolution, on May 28, 1926, which instituted a military dictatorship. Perceived by some military and civilian politicians as a parenthesis in the existence of a republican and liberal regime, the Military Dictatorship ended up evolving into an authoritarian and conservative regime, commanded by António Oliveira Salazar, the Estado Novo, established in 1933. This paper aims to compare the way in which the republican forces, in 1910, and the military forces, in 1926, dealt with the police institutions and the police personnel they encountered when they came to power. We start by looking and discussing the architecture of the police system and the nature of police institutions. While in 1910 the republicans planned a more comprehensive change in the police system, with the creation of a national gendarmerie and the amalgamation of the more than twenty urban civil police forces into a single urban national police, sixteen years later the military adopted a more pragmatic relation with the police system they found in operation. If constant political and governmental instability had voted to failure most republican proposals on the reorganization of the police system, with the exception of the constitution of the Guarda Nacional Republicana, the Military Dictatorship would be more successful with the long-discussed centralization of the urban civil police and the institucional autonomization of criminal investigation. In a second moment, we look at the attention given by republicans and military to the personnel of the different police forces in each of these two moments. When they came to power on October 5, 1910, the republicans promised a complete purge of police officers deemed to be "monarchic" sympathizers. The following years, however, showed the limited character of police purges, which became more frequent not to expel elements considered "monarchic" from the police forces, but to place in them elements loyal to the different republican factions that were alternating in power. With the arrival of the military to power, a more successful purge of the police forces took place between 1927 and 1929, with the attention of police leaders then turning to new policies aimed at building the police of the new dictatorial regime, the forces of the dictatorship gave much more attention to training police officers, with the creation of schools and police publications, and to the socialization of new elements in spaces such as the “guard room” in police facilities and public parades of police forces. Unlike the republicans the military placed much attention in the individual figure of the policeman. Finally, a third moment of this paper will make a more comprehensive comparison on the way in which the two regimes, implemented in 1910 and in 1926, dealt with the police institutions and the policemen. While the Republic had, as a result of the constant change of governments, difficulties in «republicanizing» the police forces, with some republican currents promoting implementation of informal para-police forces to ensure security and order, as is the case of the “white ant”, the Military Dictatorship quickly understood that its survival depended on its ability to control the police forces, transforming them into disciplined and faithful entities that would collaborate in controlling the country's streets and in imposing the order defended by the Dictatorship. Thus, while the republican regime, marked by dissension and the succession of governments, dealt ambiguously with the police forces, which was reflected in a lack of public recognition and confidence in its authority, the Military Dictatorship acted from the first moment in the material and symbolic reinforcement of police institutions, and, in particular, in the figure of the policeman, in order to overcome the much ridiculed “civico”, fostering the affirmation of a new police, young, professional and capable of imposing its authority.

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Policia,GNR,Polícia Civica /PSP