The Strike

Pêro Pinheiro, 1965. Against Salazar rise the women and men made of stone.

Five thousand workers. Hundreds of factories, workshops and quarries. Twelve days of protest. Only violence remained for the regime. 

In May 1965, five thousand workers from hundreds of factories, workshops and quarries paralysed for 12 days the extraction and processing of lioz, the unique stone of the Pêro Pinheiro region, in the north of the municipality of Sintra, with which some of Portugal's most emblematic buildings were built over its nine centuries. For the forces of order, at the height of the Salazarist dictatorship and faced with the prospect of political embarrassment, only the usual remained: lies, threats, GNR cavalry charges and countless arrests and tortures carried out by the PIDE. It was, nevertheless, the largest strike the Estado Novo had ever faced. 

Based on real events, Luís Corredoura, author of A Recriação do Mundo, O Segredo de Wuhan and A Bomba de Lisboa, once again shares with the reader his sensitive and expert eye, detailing the terrifying contours of violence and torture with impact, leading the reader to the homes of the protagonists and to the meticulously recreated atmosphere of the public (and private...) places of the 1960s in Pêro Pinheiro and around Lisbon. An unforgettable journey to a Portugal without fear, to the thoughts and hearts of men and women who showed the Estado Novo what they were made of: stone (lioz, to be precise).