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The end of Portuguese colonial rule in 1975 led to the return of many settlers to Portugal, including those born in Africa and Africans
married to Portuguese nationals. Initially, the "retornados" posed challenges for the fledgling Portuguese democracy, but according to subsequent sociological studies, they ultimately contributed to changing the country. Here is the cover of a magazine reproducing a photo of the arrival of a group of retornados from Angola at the docks of Lisbon in October
1975. Mos eere white, but there lso were frican wives and mulatto children. One author describes the retornados, "Inside the terminal, hundreds of returnees stand in groups, sit on their luggage, or camp on the floor. White people, black people, brown people. Men, women, children, all ages. We see them filing paperwork, we see volunteers handing them sandwiches and donated clothes, we see a message board through which those who have lost track of their loved ones try to reunite. These people look like refugees. Or maybe they don’t?" 【Kalter】 More than 0.5 mostly white settler flooded into Portugal (1975). They were mostly from newly independent Portuguese colonies, priasrily Angola and Mozambique. They were called 'retornados' (returnees), but that is not exctly correct because many were born in Africa. They seem more like refugees, rather like the ethnic Germans that flooded into Germany after World War II. But refugee is also not quite right s the United Nations tended to defind refugees as 'persons outside the country of their nationality'.” For the most part they hastily fled the colonies they had called home because they were afraid of one party, black majority states created after independence. They had lost their racial and social privilege. And civil wars were shaping up with violenc and the breakdown of basic infrastructures. It was a collective panic, albeit commonly justified by the situation on the ground. Most arrived in Portugal peniless with little more than the shirts on thir backs and a suit case or two. Some had larger bundles. Many were pripoerty owners, but few were able to sell their property before fleeing. They arrived in Portugal at a time of great political crisis. The Carnation Revolution had unseated the Estado Novo givernment (1974), but Portugal was still only beginning to createcastablke new gvernment and the economy was declining. Portuguese auhoritis established a new legal category--Retornados. These were people holding Portuguese citizenship and unable to 'integrate' on their own into Portuguese society. They qualified for assistance offered by a new givernment agency--the Institute for the Support of the Return of Nationals (IARN).
Kalter, Christoph. "The strange case of Portugal’s returnees,"in Madina Thiam, ed Histories of Refuge>/i> (undated).
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