Coimbra 1971-1974: student resistance and counterculture

Abstract

At the end of the Estado Novo, the university student movement in Portugal grew as a way of criticising the education system and challen­ging the regime. In Coimbra, after the “academic crisis” of 1969, roughly between 1971 and the April Revolution, the movement entered a new phase characterised by politi­cal radicalisation, the production of new forms of organisation, increased police repression, greater coordi­nation with the student movement in the rest of the country and the affirmation of a new culture of opposition to the dictatorship, its values, and the Colonial War.