Portugal, where Salazar's almost 40-year reign began in 1932, was a pioneer in imitating the German model. In September 1936 all Esperanto societies were closed. The sudden annihilation of the Portuguese move- ment, which had a distinctly proletarian color, was obviously influenced by events in neighboring Spain, namely the newly exploding Civil War; at least for the duration of that war one risked arrest if one sought recruits for Esperanto in Portugal.[465] After a period of relaxation, on 11 August 1948 a decree from the Ministry of Internal Affairs confirmed the pro- hibition of 'any Esperantist activities or publications' and two months later the Ministry of Education banned the teaching of Esperanto; 1 [466]one argument was that the language had a deleterious influence on the purity of the Portuguese language.[467] Agents of the secret police (PIDE) carried out a search of the homes of Esperantists, took away Esperanto material and, in August 1949, confiscated the property of the Portuguese Esperanto League. The police also announced that they would confiscate letters arriving from abroad bearing Esperanto stickers.[468]
Only by stealth could the Esperantists succeed in spreading their lan- guage at all. For example, they produced bars of a green soap that they called 'Esperanto' and sold in packages of six. The packing included a short Esperanto lesson.[469] A definitive change came only with the April Revolution of 1974, after which the Portuguese Esperantists could finally inform their friends abroad that the weight had been lifted: 'Esperanto in our country will no longer be the dangerous language'.[470]
The reasons why Esperanto encountered official disapproval in Spain only partly resembled those in Portugal. Before the explosion of the Spanish Civil War, during which the fascists more or less indiscriminately identified the Esperantists with the enemy camp, conflicts with state power occurred not because of the waging of class war through Esperanto but—seemingly paradoxically—because of the use of the language for nationalist goals, more precisely its implication in Catalan aspirations for autonomy. As early as 1905 the society 'Unio Catalanista' adopted Esperanto for its international relations,[471] and from the beginning the leadership of the Catalan Esperanto movement was firmly in the hands of people who saw validity in the maxim 'the Catalan language first, Esperanto second'. Spanish, the official language of the country, was sys- tematically marginalized in the pages of the journal Kataluna Esperantisto, and contacts with the international movement were maintained directly, rather than through the Spanish Esperanto Association in Madrid.[472] As a result, particularly during the military dictatorship of Primo de Rivera (1923-30), the Catalan Esperantist Federation was often accused of sepa- ratist activity against the Spanish state. When in 1928 a general with jurisdiction over Barcelona required that the Federation no longer call itself Catalan and promote fraternity with the other regions of Spain, the Catalan Esperantists, instead of submitting to the order, decided to suspend the organization's activities and await more favorable circum- stances. After the fall of the dictatorial regime in 1930, a more positive period did indeed begin, and by the following year a second edition of Kataluna Antologio could appear, in which more than 50 authors elo- quently pleaded for their language and people in prose and verse trans- lated into Esperanto.[473]
But soon came a new and more terrible test afflicting more than the Catalan Esperantists. The rebellion of Francisco Franco's troops against the government of the People's Front in July 1936 limited and, after the rebellion's success, cut off all opportunities for action throughout the entire Spanish Esperanto movement. Examination of the contents of a number of Esperanto-language periodicals makes it easy to establish on which side most Esperantists found themselves during the bloody Civil War. The best known of these periodicals was a journal published by the 'Grupo Laborista Esperantista' in Valencia, Popola Fronto. In the period of a little more than two years during which the journal was published, it sought to galvanize its readers in Spain and beyond, using a style of Esperanto unprecedented in its bellicose language . [474] In addition, press releases from the Catalan government appeared in Esperanto, 1 28 along with the anarchist Informa Bulteno and other more short-lived periodi- cals, illustrating the heterogeneous composition of the anti-fascist camp by arguing energetically among themselves.[475]
Esperantists struggled against the perils of fascism in many other ways too: the International Brigades attracted numbers of the almost prover- bial 'pacaj batalantoj',[476] making their way to Spain from ten or a dozen countries; Esperanto courses were also organized under the auspices of the Brigades.[477] The most outstanding Esperantist brigade member was the German writer Ludwig Renn, who delivered an Esperanto-language greeting to Esperantist fellow-combatants over Radio Barcelona.[478] As for the Spanish, among the fighters on the Republican side was the president of the Spanish Esperanto Association, Colonel, and later General, Julio
Mangada Rosenorn, who was known as the publisher of a booklet by Zamenhof on Homaranismo (1913) and as the author of fragile poems in Esperanto.[479]
On the island of Mallorca, three members of SAT were murdered. Persecution of Esperantists seldom occurred simply because of their activities for Esperanto, though this was often an element in the charges against them. The editor of Heroldo de Esperanto was on one occasion the recipient of an insistent plea from a Spanish Esperantist that people stop writing to him in Esperanto 'because it is mortally dangerous'.[480] On the other side, there were also Esperantists who supported Franco's rebellion. In August 1936, Republican militia members murdered Father Joan Font i Giralt, who for a number of years was president of the International Catholic Esperantist Union; but again it is unlikely that the murder had to do with Esperanto.
For several years following Franco's victory, Esperanto was regarded with suspicion by the authorities,[481] but in 1947 conditions permitted the re-establishment of the Spanish Esperanto Federation. However, when efforts were made to set up an Esperanto course in the University of La Laguna (Tenerife), a Falangist student newspaper ensured its rejection by publishing a hostile article.[482] Only in 1951, after an interval of 14 years, did Esperanto courses begin again in Madrid. Subsequently there were no further obstacles, and, in 1968, almost 30 years after the end of the Civil War, the capital hosted the 53rd World Congress—under the honorary sponsorship of Generalissimo Franco.
For many years, Italy under Mussolini was cited by the neutral move- ment in support of the proposition that the International Language could survive even under extreme nationalist regimes; the strong position main- tained by the Italian movement during the first 15 years of Mussolini's regime caused many to believe that fascism and Esperanto could live in harmony. The Italian Esperantists could point to frequent support from the authorities, who saw the language as a useful tool for informing the world about Italy's touristic beauties. The culmination of such support came with the organization of the 27th World Congress in Rome (1935). Franz Thierfelder, the energetic opponent of Esperanto in Germany, was not entirely incorrect when he observed that the makers of Italian lan- guage policy attributed to Esperanto, because of its Latin elements, an indirect advertisement for the Italian language.[483]
Not long after the Rome Congress, the efforts of the Italian movement to secure ongoing official favor took on a more compromising charac- ter. Beginning in 1936, the journal of the Italian Esperantist Federation (IEF) called on the Esperantists of the world to show their support for Italy in its war of conquest in Ethiopia.[484] In 1938 the delegate of the IEF provoked an incident during the inauguration of the 30th World Congress in London when he refused to greet the Congress because of the presence of a representative of the Spanish Republic.[485] By this time, winds less favorable to Esperanto were blowing across Italy. In 1936 and 1937 permission was refused for the organization of a national congress; that of 1938 did indeed take place, but with the subject 'Esperanto as a Means of Tourist Propaganda'. As of September 1938, Italy, in part because of pressure from Germany, approved anti-Jewish laws. At that same time anti-Esperanto propaganda began to appear in the columns of the newspapers. Il Popolo dltalia suddenly discovered that the existence of a Zamenhof street in Milan 'is an insult to Rome, which has other bridges for relations with other peoples' than Esperanto.[486] IEF advised its Jewish members not to renew their membership for 1939, and in this way the Federation succeeded in escaping persecution. As of 1939, IEF's bulletin ceased publication. Bureaucratic rumor-mongering prevented the organization, in September 1939, of the previously announced con- gress in Turin.