August Annotations

Dom Duarte Pio: Portugal’s King-In-Waiting
By Harold Schmautz

Portugal was the first country in the 20th century to lose her monarchy, yet the pretender to the Portuguese throne hopes the country will be the first in the 21st century to win back the Monarchy. Dom Duarte Pio, Duke of Bragança, is confident of re-gaining the throne that was taken away from the Royal House of Bragança in 1910 because recent opinion polls demonstrated that up to 30 percent of the people would not mind having a King instead of a president. This high approval rate for a Crowned Head of State is not just nostalgia, but is to a large extent Dom Duarte’s good reputation as someone who cares about the country and the environment.

Since the 1970s he has advocated organic farming, he is an outspoken critic of the destruction of the landscape in rural areas, where holiday homes replace farm houses. He travels the country and listens to the people, but not as a politician who wants to catch their votes, but as someone who cares. Though the Monarchist People’s Party (Partido Popular Monárquico – PPM) has deputies in the national assembly, the King in waiting keeps his distance even to his most loyal supporters. He knows as King it would be dangerous to be affiliated with a single party. He is above party lines and has supporters in nearly all democratic parties.

On the other hand he formed a non-partisan organisation, the Causa Real, the Royal Cause, which has 10,000 members all over Portugal. Recently the organisation elected a new chairman: Paulo Teixeira Pinto. He had served Portuguese presidents and prime ministers in the last 30 years before quitting politics and becoming secretary general of Portugal’s Central Bank. Then he joined the country’s biggest finance group. After leaving the Millenium Bank he re-organised his personal life and became a solicitor. He seems to be determined to promote the Cause Real to a new level and make it a vehicle for Dom Duarte’s claims to the throne.

Born on 15th May 1945 in Berne/Switzerland, Dom Duarte and his family were banned from entering Portugal until in 1950 the National Assembly repealed the laws of exile. In 1951 Dom Duarte visited Portugal for the first time accompanied by his aunt the Infanta Filippa. In 1952 he moved to Portugal permanently with his parents and his two brothers. From 1957 to 1959 Dom Duarte was enrolled in the Colégio Nuno Álvares in Santo Tirso in Northern Portugal. In 1960 he entered the Military College in Lisbon. He attended the Instituto Superior de Agronomia (now part of the Technical University of Lisbon) where he received a degree in agricultural sciences. Later he attended the Graduate Institute of Development Studies of the University of Geneva.

From 1968 to 1971 Dom Duarte did military service and worked as a helicopter pilot in the Portuguese Air Force in Angola. In 1972 he participated with a multi-ethnic Angolan group in the organization of an independent list of candidates to the National Assembly. This resulted in his expulsion from Angola by order of the then Portuguese Prime Minister Marcelo Caetano.When Dom Duarte married the Portguese noblewoman Isabel de Herédia on 13th May 1995 the country enjoyed the first royal wedding since the marriage of King Dom Luís in 1862. The ceremony, televsed throughout Portugal and other Portuguese speaking countries including Brazil, Angola and Mozambique, was celebrated in the Monarstery of Jerónimos in Lisbon and presided over by the Patriarch of Lisbon, Cardinal António Ribeiro, and attended by the president of the republic, Mário Soares, the president of the National Assembly, the then prime minister Aníbal Cavaco Silva, who was elected president of Portugal in January 2006.

The birth of Infante Afonso, Prince of Beira, on 25th March 1996 was the first royal birth since the birth of Dom Manuel II, Portugal’s last King, in 1889. With two more children born in 1997, Infanta Maria Francisca, and Infante Dinis, Duke of Porto, in 1999 the succession is secure and the Portuguese Royal Family will florish in the 21st century, ready to ascend to the throne.

Links:

Official website:
http://www.casareal.co.pt

A Royal Family Video:
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=5K_VpFaUDwA&feature=related

The Royal Wedding in 1995 (in 18 parts!): http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=N6QI5nDbrpA

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Harold Schmautz is a German journalist and monarchist who resides in Melbourne, Australia. Harold supports the work of the Australian Monarchist League and founded the newsgroup “Monarchie der Zukunft” (The Future of the Monarchy).