| Summary: | The 1918-19 flu pandemic was the deadliest disease of all times. It is thought to have affected one out of three of the planet’s inhabitants, causing in just two years a number of fatalities that is similar to the two World Wars combined. This article deals with its incidence in Portugal, where, with more than 130,000 estimated deaths, the mortality rate (22 per thousand inhabitants) was higher than in most European countries. This article frames several aspects of this catastrophe in its historical time, highlighting the social asymmetries of its incidence, the difficulties that the health system had to deal with the disease, the attitudes of the authorities and the silencing to which the disease was voted in the public space.
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