ReLembrar / UnForgetting
On April 25, 1974, at 00:20, a song on the radio launched the revolution that ended Portugal’s 41-year-long Estado Novo dictatorship.
But for years before, music spoke between the lines, carrying meanings that slipped past the censors to those in the know, os entendidos.
This platform gathers the memories of those who listened.
About
ReLembrar UnForgetting is a digital platform that collects testimonies of how people in Portugal received, constructed, and decoded political meaning in music during the Estado Novo dictatorship (1933-1974).
Under censorship, songs broadcast, recorded, and performed in public could still carry hidden meaning and protest if listeners knew how to hear it. This platform gathers the memories of those who lived through the dictatorship, as well as those who inherited its memory, to document this political listening and to hear these songs again.
I collect testimonies through interviews and online submissions. To share your own, click here.
This platform was conceptualized by Mariana Da Silva Gabriel in 2026 as part of her doctoral research at the University of California, Davis, and seeks to contribute to the memory of the Portuguese dictatorship and to wider conversations about human rights and the reparative nature of memory.