The house where a comeback was planned

An ousted rector plotted his return from a Linhó house

In 1958, Marcelo Caetano was a man without a job in government. He had resigned as a minister years earlier and was serving as Rector of the University of Lisbon. That year he started spending time at his summer house in Linhó, Sintra, a village a short walk from where you stand.

The house did not stay quiet. Caetano used it to meet with allies and plan his path back into power. For a decade he built support out of public view, in a village known then for its country estates rather than politics.

The plan worked. In 1968, Caetano was named prime minister of Portugal, the 101st person to hold the office. He inherited the Estado Novo, the authoritarian regime built by António de Oliveira Salazar, and led it for six more years.

The dictatorship he led fell in the Carnation Revolution

Caetano's government fell in April 1974, when the Carnation Revolution ended nearly five decades of dictatorship in Portugal. He was the last man to hold the office under that regime.

A street in Linhó still carries his name. Efforts to change it, given his role in the Estado Novo, have not succeeded.

Plague killed five town scribes recorded in Sintra

Long before Caetano's house existed, the plague found this village. The Black Death reached Sintra in the 14th century. It killed nearly half the population of Europe. Sintra's own town hall lost people to it. Five municipal scribes died of plague in 1350. Probably more residents died without being recorded. The mountains around Sintra were cold and damp. They seemed to hold the disease close rather than let it pass.

That is the oldest fact this ground carries. Power and record both broke here once. This happened six centuries before anyone plotted a comeback in a summer house nearby.

A closed Bilderberg Meeting convened on the same hillside

Caetano's old plotting ground kept its habits after he was gone. In 1999, the Bilderberg Meeting held its annual gathering here. This is a closed meeting of politicians, bankers and executives. It convened at the Ritz-Carlton Penha Longa Resort in Quinta da Penha Longa. That is one of Linhó's gated estates. The meeting runs by invitation only. It releases no minutes. It picked this same stretch of hillside to do its talking away from cameras. A rector did the same thing forty years earlier. He met a short distance from it.

Hillary Clinton opened a school named for an American diplomat

In 1998, Hillary Clinton was First Lady of the United States. She inaugurated a newly built campus in Linhó. It became the Carlucci American International School of Lisbon. The school later took its name from Frank Carlucci. He was the American ambassador to Portugal from 1974 to 1978. Carlucci went on to serve as deputy director of the CIA. He also served as U. S. Secretary of Defense. He steered American relations with Portugal through the chaos after the revolution. That revolution ended the regime Caetano once led. His name now sits on a school gate in the same village. That is where that regime was quietly put together.