User:BunnyyHop/Radio Free Portugal

Radio Free Portugal (portuguese Rádio Portugal Livre or RPL) was a radio station in Portuguese, created in 1962, broadcasting on shortwave from Bucharest during the authoritarian right-wing dictatorship of Estado Novo, functioning as the armed antenna of the Portuguese Communist Party.

The first broadcast took place on March 12, 1962, at a time when it was illegal to be opposition in Portugal, and when the PCP and other opposition forces were moving underground. The choice of Bucharest reconciled a number of technical and logistical conditions, since opposition movements abroad were common in Romania. However, there were those in Portugal who assumed that the broadcasts came from the Serra da Estrela. Unlike Rádio Voz da Liberdade, which used the facilities of Radio Algeria, the RPL operated underground.

The radio reproduced interviews with opposition figures and showed the progress of the struggle for democracy, against the dictatorship, by issuing appeals from workers in the factories and from housewives in the neighborhoods. The radio functioned as the voice of the PCP, making integral readings of the newspapers Avante! and O Militante.

The station closed in October 1974, after the VII Extraordinary Congress of the PCP, on the 20th of that month, a few months after the Carnation Revolution, and the arrival of freedom in Portugal and on the radio.