The political activists who were anti-Salazar used to be investigated and persecuted by PIDE-DGS, the secret police, and according to the gravity of the offence, were usually sent to jail or transferred from one university to another in order to destabilize oppositionist networks and its hierarchical organization.
Marcelo Caetano, distinguished member of the Second Portuguese Republic and a reputed professor at the University of Lisbon Law School, was the 9th Rector of the University of Lisbon from 1959 on, but the Academic Crisis of 1962 led him to resign after protesting students clashed with riot police in the university's campus.
Caetano would be appointed the successor of António de Oliveira Salazar, the mentor and leader of Estado Novo, in 1968.
However, between 1945 and 1974, there were three generations of militants of the radical right at the University of Coimbra and other universities, guided by a revolutionary nationalism partly influenced by the political sub-culture of European neofascism.
The core of these radical students' struggle lay in a stalwart defence of the Portuguese Empire.