Duncan Simpson - «Tenho o Prazer de Informar o Senhor Director...»

Were the Portuguese merely victims of the PIDE and the oppressive policies it imposed, or, in reality, as under any authoritarian regime, did they interact with this police force, serving it or being served by it?
Created in 1945, in a merely cosmetic reformulation of its predecessor (the PVDE), since the latter was too closely associated with the "fascist era," the PIDE (acronym for International and State Defense Police) maintained the extensive arbitrary powers of the PVDE in its triple mission: to guarantee the "security of the State" (eliminating political dissent), to control the borders, and to act as an intelligence service. To this end, it was necessary to create a network of informants.
To this day, the bibliography dedicated exclusively to the PIDE continues to focus on the mechanisms of repression exercised over the small minority of opponents of the regime, as if this were the only form of relationship between society and the PIDE. The main consequence of this type of approach was to reduce the bulk of the population to the status of "victim people," who passively endured the repression exercised by the PIDE.

However, the reality is much more complex, as this work aims to demonstrate. The relationship between Portuguese society and the PIDE has always been much more active and multifaceted than has been recognized until now. The Portuguese were never a simple "victim people" passively and fearfully enduring the repressive impetus of the PIDE. On the contrary, Portuguese society actively adapted to the presence of the political police, and this book intends to illustrate the ways in which ordinary citizens freely interacted with the PIDE, often (but not always) instrumentalizing it to fulfill personal interests or satisfy basic day-to-day needs.