The fortress of Peniche is to be transformed from a municipal museum into a national museum of resistance against Salazar's dictatorship and the 'Estado Novo' regime.
After a Council of Ministers meeting in Peniche today, the Minister of Culture, Luís Filipe Castro Mendes announced that the project is part of a restoration of Portugal’s heritage and demonstrates the political will to create a national museum of resistance against the dictatorship."
The museum project "will demonstrate the history of fortitude, the political prison itself, the art of resistance and other cultural, educational aspects that will be developed."
Luís Filipe Castro Mendes said that the project remained part of the Revive Program, which aims to rehabilitate abandoned State-owned buildings, but it will not ignore the historical, aesthetic and architectural value of the site. The value "is not only in the building, it is also in the memory of repression, the struggle for democracy and the struggle for freedom," said the minister.
The goal is to inaugurate the museum before the end of the legislature in 2019 and Castro Mendes does not exclude the contribution of any local initiatives, determined by the city council, "which is always rich and productive" in finding ways of making the site pay its way through shops, crafts or a restaurant service.
Last October, the Minister of the Economy, Manuel Caldeira Cabral, included Peniche in the Revive programme to offer degraded national monuments to private businesses on 30-50 year leases to be run as tourism businesses.
The backlash from the Communist party was immediate and vicious. MPs were livid at the plan to include the fort in Peniche which was a political prison that housed militant communists such as Álvaro Barreirinhas Cunhal who made his famous escape in 1960.
In November, 2016, the Minister of Culture had a sensible rethink on including the 'Forte de Peniche' in the Revive list. Luís Castro Mendes justified the removal of the fort from the list by saying it is necessary to "respect and to perpetuate the memory of the struggle for democracy," offering no explanation as to why the fort had been put on the list in the first place.
The fort served as a prison for the Estado Novo (between 1934 and 1974), where the opponents of the Salazar (pictured above) regime were sent, mostly for being members of the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP).
On January 3rd, 1960, there was an escape from Peniche by Álvaro Cunhal (general secretary of the PCP), Joaquim Gomes, Carlos Costa, Jaime Serra, Francisco Miguel, José Carlos, Guilherme Carvalho, Pedro Soares, Rogério de Carvalho and Francisco Martins Rodrigues.
Cunhal and the other prisoners drugged a jailer and abseiled down the walls to waiting getaway cars.
This 'Great Escape' was one of the most spectacular jail breaks during the Salazar years, mostly because Peniche was considered one of the most secure prisons in the country. The Peniche escape was unmatched until December 1961, when another seven PCP prisoners drove straight out of the jail at Caixas, near Lisbon, in an armour-plated car.
The Minister of Planning and Infrastructures, Pedro Marques, said that the new project will have an investment of €3.5 million, noting that €3 million in EU funds will be used, the remainder coming from the taxpayer.
The Council of Ministers was held at the fort to mark the 43-year anniversary of the release of political prisoners held there, following the 25th of April revolution in 1974.
