Portuguese Democratic Movement
political party

The Portuguese Democratic Movement/Democratic Electoral Commission (Portuguese: Movimento Democrático Português / Comissão Democrática Eleitoral, MDP/CDE or just MDP) was one of the most important organizations of the democratic opposition to the Estado Novo. It was founded in 1969 as an electoral coalition meant to run in the non-democratic and widely manipulated parliamentary election.
History
In 1973 the MDP took part in the Democratic Congress of Aveiro, the largest meeting of democratic militants during the dictatorship. After the Carnation Revolution in 1974, it was made part of every provisional government, with exception of the 6th and in 1979 it ran in coalition with the Portuguese Communist Party in the FEPU and later in APU, achieving important electoral results.
In 1986, disagreements with the PCP arose, the coalition was dissolved and the MDP was later disbanded. A fraction formed the political association Democratic Intervention (Portuguese: Intervenção Democrática) and another group formed a new party, the Politics XXI (Portuguese: Política XXI) that now is part of the Left Bloc.
“Portuguese Democratic Movement” enters the record as political party. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Portuguese, Democratic and Movement can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Portuguese Democratic Movement” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Portuguese, Democratic and Movement provides the most credible route into that argument.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q613464. VIAF identifies the subject as 156637863. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1969, 1973, 1974 and 1979.
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This entry incorporates text from “Portuguese Democratic Movement” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.