Today Portugal celebrates the Republic: 5 October, the public holiday that briefly disappeared

Portugal · Culture

On 5 October 1910 the Republic was proclaimed from the balcony of Lisbon City Hall. Today it is a national public holiday, although for a few years that was not the case.

Portugal has a day off today. On 5 October the country celebrates the Implantação da República, the establishment of the Republic. It is one of the mandatory national public holidays in Portuguese labour law, the Código do Trabalho.

Nine in the morning, from the balcony

The revolution began in Lisbon in the early hours of 4 October 1910, writes the museum of the Portuguese presidency, the Museu da Presidência da República. The fighting lasted until the following morning and stretched from the Terreiro do Paço to the Rotunda, today's Parque Eduardo VII. On the morning of 5 October the Republic was proclaimed from the balcony of Lisbon City Hall.

The library of the Portuguese parliament gives the exact moment: at nine o'clock the republican José Relvas proclaimed the Republic there. According to parliament, this brought an end to 767 years of monarchy. The new regime also brought new national symbols: the national anthem and the flag.

The museum of the presidency describes the run-up. Republican ideas reached Portugal in the last decades of the nineteenth century and gained new momentum after the British Ultimatum. From 1900 onwards they were spread systematically, in republican centres and at gatherings of thousands of people. On 1 February 1908 King Carlos I and his crown prince were assassinated, parliament reports.

The public holiday that briefly disappeared

That 5 October is a day off today was not always a given. In 2012 four national public holidays were suspended: two civil ones, 5 October and 1 December, and two religious ones, Corpus Christi and All Saints' Day. In 2016 they returned, the Portuguese government reports.

The law that brought them back, Lei n.º 8/2016, was published on 1 April 2016 in the official gazette, the Diário da República. It put the four days back on the list of mandatory public holidays. According to the government, Prime Minister António Costa said at the signing on 28 March 2016 that there are "lasting values above the conveniences of the moment".

A striking parallel: in Italy, 4 October, the day of Francis of Assisi, has again been a national public holiday since this year. There too, a previously scrapped public holiday returned.