Democracia y cultura de inteligencia en Portugal (1974-2019): una relación compleja

This article addresses intelligence in the aftermath of the Portuguese so-called Carnation Revolution of 1974, which would end up in the birth of a new democratic state in April 1976. It maps all the legal transformations of intelligence in democratic Portugal and analyses the main ones, putting into evidence its historical evolution, organization, and democratic control, arguing that there are three critical moments. The birth of civilian intelligence only in 1984, the 2004 reform that led to a modern and effective intelligence system, and the recent attempts to access to metadata in 2017, which show that the authoritarian legacy of PIDE-DGS is finally fading away among the political decision-makers. The double legacy of the authoritarian regime and the revolutionary process of transition to democracy influenced until very recently the Portuguese intelligence culture, being its democratic structure, a political outcome conducted by the politics of memory.