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No Entertainer. The man responsible for this choking repression was born in Vimieiro, a small village of whitewashed cottages with red tiled roofs and rose gardens in the prosperous Santa Comba Dão wheat and vineyard country of central Portugal. The son of the bailiff of a large farm, Salazar attended a Jesuit seminary, seriously considered the priesthood before choosing economics. He took a law degree at the University of Coimbra in 1917, accepted a chair there a year later as professor of economics and finance.
He was elected a Catholic deputy to the National Assembly in 1921, but soon gave up his seat in dismay at Portugal's political factionalism—and at his colleagues' indifference to the Salazar plans for economic reform. Though the leaders of a 1926 military coup d'état tried to bring him into the government as Finance Minister, he refused because the army would not give him all the powers he demanded. Like France's Charles de Gaulle 20 years later, he went into self-imposed retirement until he could return to hold undisputed sway. Salazar has rarely ventured outside Portugal, travels only occasionally even inside the country. Instead he cloistered himself with his books and papers in his high-walled home behind Lisbon's National Assembly. "One cannot entertain the crowd and govern them all at the same time," he once insisted. He never married. Dona Maria da Piedade Caetano, 73, for more than 40 years his housekeeper, organized his routine and became known, only half-jokingly, as the one person who could tell him what to do.
"Ultras or Technocrats." Last week the Portuguese were floundering because, for the first time in almost 40 years, there was no one to tell them what to do. Salazar never designated a successor. "No one could succeed him," says one possible inheritor. "Whoever follows will have to share authority."
There is always the possibility of a takeover either by rightist "ultras" of the army and the secret police or by apolitical military and civilian technocrats. The current favorite in Lisbon speculation, however, is Marcello Caetano, 62, a personable law professor and long a collaborator of Salazar's.
He is believed to be somewhat more progressive than Salazar, while still conservative enough to keep the military happy. His choice would hardly bring immediate change to somnolent Portugal. Without Salazar, the country may nonetheless emerge from its long hibernation—perhaps into turmoil.