They can be left or right, defenders of a minimal state if they are Europeans, or of an interventionist state if they are North Americans. In Portugal, they were slow to assert themselves in their own name. Because it is not a suitable ground? “The Portuguese do not assume liberal attitudes.”
Does any thread still link the 1820 Revolution to the 21st century Portuguese liberals today? “Citizenship sovereignty”, Tiago Mayan Gonçalves, a founding member of the Liberal Initiative, responds promptly.
“There is some connection, but it is necessary to understand that the state that exists today has very little to do with what existed in 1820, which was much smaller and restricted in its intervention”, underlines, on the other hand, the economist Nuno Palma.
Historian António Costa Pinto identifies a single bridge, as the 200-year-old revolution refers to economic liberalism “in the sense of the abolition of ancestral real rights, in favor of property rights and individual rights, regardless of their origin ”.
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