Summary: | This article focuses on the repression of homosexuality in the city of Lisbon during the first decade of the Estado Novo regime, based on an investigation carried out on all Criminal Investigation Police (PIC) cases dating from 1933 to 1943. We have sought to determine the practices of both the police force that arrested homosexuals (PSP) and the police of investigation that was also in charge of their summary trials (PIC). We are interested in establishing the police methods and the circumstances of the arrests, in outlining the profile of the defendants, and in trying to figure out what these police records unveil about the experiences of homosexuality at that time. Our findings point to evidence of a systematic monitoring of strategic places by police officers in plain clothes, namely public urinals. Essentially working-class men were the ones caught in the act by the police and held in custody until being presented to a summary trial. The legislation invoked to convict them was both the legal figure of indecent outrage and the law against beggary.
|