Habermas in Portugal

When the 84-year old Jurgen Habermas visited Lisbon on October 28, 2013 to speak about democracy in Europe, he was greeted with a full house in the main hall of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. The following day the main newspapers of the country reported his words approvingly. This was a sign of the times and of the changes that had taken place in the Portuguese academia. Habermas career began in the late 1950s and he achieved international recognition in the early 1960s. In Portugal, however, Habermas remained virtually unknown before the 1970s and it is only after the 1990s that he became a relatively well-known name. Why such a late reception? The question must be answered in the light of the major discontinuity in the political history of contemporary Portugal.