When the Portuguese police began to investigate, in 1967, an illegal prostitution network, they ended up stumbling upon a huge secret that could shake the foundations of the republican regime: a select group of prostitutes who organized parties with teenage girls to secretly satisfy the sexual desires of bankers, politicians, ministers, aristocrats and powerful businessmen: the Ballet Rose Case.
**A series that resurrects one of the biggest skeletons in the closet of the Portuguese Second Republic.**
Unlike the monarchist times, where the sexual antics of kings and queens fluctuated between the picturesque and the grotesque, the successive republican regimes in Portugal were very weak of bedroom peccadilloes. We don't have things like that French president who died in a sexual act with a mistress in the Presidential Palace, nor do we have anything like the scandal that shaken Bill Clinton's term in the White House. We are a very moralistic, Catholic country, which gives importance to appearances and which seeks to keep their peccadilloes in the intimacy of closed walls. Therefore, the impact of the Ballet Rose Case is understandable, and also the way in which, even today, it is discussed in a low voice. It is one of those cases where power breeds impunity. It involved several crimes, such as prostitution, pimping, sexual abuse of minors, pedophilia, abuse of power and obstruction of justice, and affected several high figures within the Salazar government, who was furious with all of this, dismissed (or coerced his dismissal) those people and tried to hush things up: thus, as the Police investigated, supported by the Minister of Justice, João Antunes Varela (who would resign in protest against the cover-up), the political police tried to cover up all that.
The details of the case are still very shocking today, and are even worse if we consider the conservatism of values proclaimed by the so-called "Estado Novo": in addition to resorting to prostitutes, who encouraged other women to prostitute themselves, young pre-adolescents and adolescents girls were also recruited, some of them taken by their mothers, to parties where they danced almost naked or ran through the gardens with the men, in erotic games where they were later “initiated”. The list of presumable regulars of these parties included the Minister of Economy, José Correia de Oliveira (one of Salazar's eventual political successors, who went into exile in Paris some years later and killed himself) the Minister of the Navy, Quintanilha Mendonça Dias, and the Minister of the Interior, Alfredo Santos Júnior. The range of suspects widens and includes notable moneyman, representatives of the former monarchic aristocracy, administrators and diplomats: Prince Victor Emanuel de Savoy (exiled heir to the Italian crown), Henrique de Verda-Bairros, Jorge Cardoso de Melo and Faro (director of National Overseas Bank and Count of Monte Real), Bernardo Mendes Almeida (director of Pinto & Sotto Mayor Bank, businessman and Count of Caria), Júlio Calheiros (director of Borges & Irmão Bank and Count of Covilhã), João Filipe de Meneses Pita (4th Marquis of Graciosa), Rogério Silva (director of Espírito Santo Bank), Alípio and João Antero (managers of the real estate A Confidente), Teodoro dos Santos (owner of the Casino Estoril), Manuel Anselmo (diplomat linked to UNESCO), John Pringle (director of Lobito Mining Company) and Manuel da Silva Carvalho (director of Industrial Company of Portugal and Overseas). It seems that there were also members of the Church's high hierarchy. The names are many, they all sound loud, they all belong to people who had power, money, respectability and a lot of influence. Most were not even pronounced, and those who were ended up innocent. The scandal (which sounded more abroad than at home) was a mountain that gave to zero.
Leonel Vieira's series is happy in the way it recreates environments and scenarios from the time, and in the way it shows the police's effort to seriously investigate, and the effort that was made to hinder these investigations. The real names of the suspects, which are now widely known, were changed to other names, perhaps because this series assumes that they are all entirely guilty and did not want to offend the living relatives and descendants, who, of course, are not to blame for what happened. . The series was also happy with its casting choice, with a wide range of very competent actors. I especially highlight the notable João Lagarto, Rui Mendes, João Perry, Canto e Castro, Ana Zanatti, Ana Padrão and Sofia Alves.