
During the years leading up to WWII, the basic freedom we know as the “freedom of expression” was prohibited in many parts of the world. In fear of people spreading information that could weaken the government, many forms of censorship were established. Many countries censored what was published during this time period, including: Germany, Italy, The United States, Spain, Portugal, among others. In the case of Pereira Declares, a novel written by Antonio Tabucchi, the act of censorship by the Portuguese government on their people was a major factor in the development of the plot. In Pereira Declares we meet a quiet newspaper writer named Pereira. At the beginning of the novel he is uninterested in politics and world events, but upon meeting a young boy named Monteiro Rossi, who is a political activist, we see his interests rise about what the Portuguese government is censoring in the press and hiding from its citizens. Come the end of the novel Pereira makes the courageous move to get around the censor and publish a story revealing the assassination of Rossi. By taking a look at Pereira’s reaction to censorship and Tabucchi’s use of historical references, it can seen that Antonio Tabucchi was commenting on how censorship can limit the formation of public opinion as well as the spread of information to the general public.

Around 1938, the year in which the novel takes place, Portugal was under a dictatorship known as the Estado Novo. Although the government was democratically elected, in reality the system was heavily rigged so that the official party would win almost every election by a landslide. One of the ways that the political regime would ensure that they won the elections was through censorship. In 1933 decree 22 

469 was passed which established censorship for newspapers and other forms of press when writing on political and social issues (1933 Portuguese Constitution. Decree 22 469). This made spreading any information that criticized the government or exposed its wrongdoings nearly impossible. As shown in Pereira Declares anything that has a small hint of political commentary would be censored. For example, we see this when Dr. Cardoso asks Pereira “forgive me for asking but exactly what is an independent newspaper these days in Portugal? A newspaper not connected with any political movement, replied Pereira” (Tabucchi 28).  Dr. Cardoso continues to further this point when he exclaims “every day, before your paper appears, the proofs are examined by the censors, and if there’s something they don’t like don’t you worry it won’t be printed, they leave blank spaces” (Tabucchi 28). This is one of the main comments that Tabucchi makes throughout the novel, he shows that censorship is taking away people’s ability to spread information and ideas. This forces Pereira to be conservative with his writing by eliminating controversial topics from what he is allowed to write about. He has to hide his true opinion when talking about anything that is not pro-Portugal. We see this when he translates The Last Class and he writes “Vive la France!”. He gets attacked by the owner of the newspaper for writing something as simple as “Vive la France!”. We also see him mention how he cannot talk about certain subjects when he tells us that he cannot write about the man getting shot by the police in the market for being a socialist. A civilization cannot grow when this happens and Tabucchi repeatedly shows this throughout the novel. The acts of the government and its censorship are the driving factor for the plot of the novel which can be seen when Pereira takes a stand against the government and its censor by publishing his final story about the assassination of Monteiro Rossi.

Next, Pereira Declares also shows how political opinion is affected by government censorship. The lack of political opinion is one of the most destructive effects that censorship has on groups of people. Public opinion or the thoughts of a large group of people on a matter that is related to them can be affected in many ways, but the most effective way to affect public opinion is to control mass media. Mass media includes: television, movies, radio, advertisements, magazines, and in the case of Pereira Declares, newspaper. As newspaper was the most common way of releasing news and ideas during the late 1930’s, censoring it had major effects on the news and opinions that writers released to the public. As John Sturrock of Oxford University puts it “The effects of this censorship were enormous. Some writer, in order to get their words published, practised a kind of self-censorship, but others were able to publish only after 1974” (Sturrock). This self-censorship caused writers to hold back the truth about events or thoughts that they may of had on a certain topic, especially those that contradict the ideology of the political regime. In Pereira Declares, Pereira argues with his friend Silva on the importance of uncensored journalism on public opinion “But I’m a journalist, said Pereira. So what?, said Silva. So, said Pereira, I must be free to keep people properly informed” (Tabucchi 14). As a result of the writers inability to publish freely, many people were unaware of events that were taking place in their country and around the world. In the novel Pereira is forced to get his news about the outside world, like news about the civil war occurring in Spain, from a waiter at a cafe who has access to foreign newspapers. Kyaw Thu, wrote in a report titled The Impact of Censorship on the Development of the Private Press Industry in Myanmar/Burma “Censorship certainly does have an impact on the quality and scope of reporting. Journalists are always going to be reluctant to chase and report on topics that they know are likely to be censored” (Thu). As a result of the lack of information being spread people were not aware of any specifics of the fighting that was going on around Spain or about the assassinations that the police had been committing. 

As the plot of the novel progresses we see Pereira get more and more interested in the government and how they are censoring the press. At first he stayed out of questioning these things, but upon meeting Rossi, Pereira became more and more interested about the shady things the government was trying keep quiet. At the end of the novel he decides to work around the censor to publish the highly controversial piece exposing the police for assassinating Rossi. Being prohibited from writing about banned topics made Pereira want to write about them more and more. It’s similar to how when a child is told not to touch a hot stove, he or she wants to touch it more. We see this in Margaret Roberts’ analysis of how censorship has affected China “Whereas a protest may be uninteresting without government censorship, efforts by the government to censor the information might cause an increased spike in interest about the protest event” (Roberts 6). What was said before makes sense. As they say the more you are told not to do something, the more you want to do it and we see this with Pereira. Over almost the entirety of the novel it is ingrained in his mind that he cannot write about real and meaningful news because it will contradict what the government wants people to hear about, until finally, at the end of the novel when he decides to write the story about the murder of Rossi.

Antonio Tabucchi’s novel Pereira Declares makes major comments on how censorship affects the press and public opinion. The context of censorship in the novel can easily be related to how it took place in Portugal during the time leading up to WWII. By analyzing censorship in the past and in today’s world we can see how Tabucchi comments on the past in his novel Pereira Declares.
