From Cable Zero to Freedom, is an exhibition dedicated to the use of telecommunications and postal services to gain and maintain power. The exhibition is composed of artefacts that provide a historical testimony to the period stretching from 1933 to 1994.

Across this timeline, Portugal was dominated by a dictatorship (from 1926 to 1974), achieved democracy (after the revolution on 25 April 1974), attained democratic normality from 1976 onwards (with the approval of a constitution) and then joined the European Economic Community, later the European Union, in 1986.

Political decision-makers in Portugal always understood the strategic value of communications during these decades, employing a strategy to control and mould public messaging.

One of the tools used to control the public was Cabo Zero, a system that can be seen in the exhibition that was used by the political police under the dictatorship to listen to people’s telephone conversations. Stamps were also used for the purposes of propaganda.

After the start of the War of Independence in Angola in 1961, which then spread to other Portuguese colonies in Africa and Asia, an aerogramme service was created and run by the National Women’s Movement (MNF), which became the main source of communication between soldiers and their families.

The “Revolution of the Captains”, which took place on the night of 24 April 1974, could not have achieved its goals without a complex system of military communications, which can also be seen in this exhibition.

The modernisation of the technological, professional and trade union conditions within the communications and postal sectors from 1975, as well as the change in ownership of the share capital of the businesses involved, are also examined.

With this exhibition, the Portuguese Communications Foundation (FPC), in collaboration with the Portuguese Commission for the Commemorations of the 50th Anniversary of the 25 April 1974 Revolution, has contributed to preserve our social identity, understood as the creation of the social and emotional ties that should keep us bound together forever.

Free admission.