1933 Portuguese constitutional referendum

The Portuguese constitutional referendum was held on 19 March 1933. A draft of the Constitution had been published one year before and the public was invited to state any objections in the press.[1] These tended to stay in the realm of generalities and only a handful of people, less than 6,000, voted against the new constitution.[1] With its passage, women were allowed to vote for the first time in Portugal and given a voice in the National Assembly.[2] Secondary education was a requirement for women suffrage, while men needed only to be able to read and write.

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According to a dispatch from the British Embassy in Lisbon, prior to the referendum: "Generally speaking, this novel constitution is receiving the marked approval which it deserves. It has a certain Fascist quality in its theory of 'corporations', which is a reversion to medieval from the 18th-century doctrines. But this quality, unsuited to our Anglo-Saxon tradition, is not out of place in a country which has hitherto founded its democracy on a French philosophy and found it unsuited to the national temperament". The British Embassy also pointed out that Portugal's illiteracy made elections difficult and illusory.[3]

The constitutional referendum was held on 19 March 1933.[4] The new constitution was approved by 99.5% of voters,[5] in a referendum in which abstentions were counted as support votes.[6] It institutionalised the Estado Novo one party state led by António de Oliveira Salazar, and provided for a directly elected and President and National Assembly with a four-year term.[6]

There have been conflicting accounts of the results of the referendum. Michael Derrick, in 1938, gives 1,292,864 Yes; 6,090 against; 660 spoilt and 30,654 abstentions 30,654.[7] Colonel Clement Egerton, in 1943, provides the same names as Derrick.[8] Peter Fryer and Patricia McGowan Pinheiro state that official figures were 580,376 in favour; 5,406 against and 11,528 abstentions.[9] Hugh Kay provides, in 1970, 719,364 favour; 5,955 against; 488,840 abstentions in a registered electorate of 1,214,159, in line with the results published in the Diário de Notícias of March 20, 1933.[10]

Fryer and McGowan Pinheiro state that the Constitution was railroaded through not letting more than a handful of people vote "no" but the authors do not explain how the potential "no" voters were restrained.[1] What is quite clear is that abstention numbers where high.[1] Hugh Kay points out that abstention might have been due to the fact that voters were presented with a package deal to which they had to say "yes" or "no" with no opportunity to accept one clause and reject the other. [1]

In this referendum women were allowed to vote for the first time in Portugal -The women's right to vote had not been obtained during the First Republic, despite feminist claims – however secondary education was a requirement for their suffrage, while men needed only to be able to read and write.[11]