About António Salazar António de Oliveira Salazar, GColIH, GCTE, GCSE (Portuguese pronunciation: , April 28, 1889 – July 27, 1970) served as the Prime Minister and dictator of Portugal from 1932 to 1968. He also served as acting President of the Republic for most of 1951. He founded and led the Estado Novo ("New State"), the authoritarian, right-wing government that presided over and controlled Portugal from 1932 to 1974.Salazar was born in Vimieiro near Santa Comba Dão to a family of modest income. His father, a small landowner, had started as an agricultural labourer and became the manager of a distinguished family of rural landowners of the region of Santa Comba Dão, the Perestrelos, who possessed lands and other assets scattered between Viseu and Coimbra. He had four older sisters, and was the only male child of two fifth cousins, António de Oliveira , (17 January 1839- 28 September 1932) and wife Maria do Resgate Salazar (23 October 1845 17 November 1926), whose paternal grandfather was a landowner and a nobleman; despite the knowledge of his ancestry Salazar always preferred to claim humble origins. His older sisters were Maria do Resgate Salazar de Oliveira, an Elementary School teacher, Elisa Salazar de Oliveira, Maria Leopoldina Salazar de Oliveira and Laura Salazar de Oliveira, who in 1887 married Abel Pais de Sousa, whose brother Mário Pais de Sousa was Salazar's Interior Minister, sons of a family of Santa Comba Dão, Santa Comba Dão.