ریشه های روابط عمومی در پرتغال: تغییر پارادایم قدیمی  Roots of public relations in Portugal: Changing an old paradigm

1. Introduction Despite the evolving historiography of European PR, Portugal is still lagging behind in this field for little is known about how, when and why public relations actually developed in the westernmost nation of Europe. Due to the lack of archival research, the founding milestone usually presented is the inception of the first PR departments in the 1950s, involving the National Laboratory for Civil Engineering (LNEC) and a number of foreign companies operating in the oil and gas industry, namely Shell, Mobil and BP. This narrative has been repeated and republished for the last 30 years, based mainly on oral testimonials and some personal assumptions which have been reproduced as undisputed facts in textbooks (Fonseca, 2001, 2011; Lampreia, 1988; Soares & Mendes, 2004; Tojal, 2006) and scientific articles (Soares, 2011). No political, economic, social, cultural or technological explanation has, however, been provided as to why PR started in Portugal in that specific time period or why LNEC and the above mentioned companies had the need to communicate with stakeholders. To move on from this paradigmatic narrative, exploring the early beginnings of PR in Portugal, and to place the history of Portuguese PR on the map of European PR historiography, extensive archival research was deemed necessary. A two-step methodology was used. The first one consisted of consulting a large sample of business reports and accounts issued from 1900 to 1950 (encompassing the last 10 years ofthe constitutionalmonarchy andthefirst 40 years oftheRepublicanregime), which are deposited in the National Library of Portugal.When propaganda or public relations activities/departments were identified in such reports, a second step was then performed involving the practice of extensive research on the private archives of each company. The main archival sources were the Historical Archive of the Portuguese Communications Foundation and the Documentation Center of the EDP Foundation/Electricity Museum. This methodological approach was complemented by researching the house organs and a number of institutional brochures of the principal companies (either public or privately owned) operating in Portugal between the 1900s and the 1950s and by searching a set of keywords – “relac¸ ões públicas [public relations]”; “relac¸ ões com o público [relations with the public]” and “propaganda” – in the PORBASE (the Portuguese National Bibliographic Database) digital catalogue. All the methodological procedures revealed the special importance of two companies: the Anglo Portuguese Telephone Co. Ltd. and CTT (the Portuguese Postal Company); both operating in the communications business. Additional research was carried out in the government field; focusing only on the Foreign Ministry archives. The selection of this specific Ministry was made under the assumption that its potential exposition to foreign practices would make it the most prone to pioneer PR practices and structures in Portugal. Acknowledging the fact that the development of PR depends largely on the global context and idiosyncrasies of each society (L’Etang, 2008), a special emphasis was put on explaining the framework of political, social, economic, cultural and mass communication conditions from which public relations emerged in Portugal.