In March 1934, Abel Salazar left for Paris to work with Professor Christian Champy (1885-1962) at the Paris Faculdade de Medicina [School of Medicine], a pioneer in histophysiology and sexual endocrinology. This six-month exile in Paris was important for his intellectual and civic development. There he became interested in Viennese neopositivism; it was in Comte’s country that the International Congress of Scientific Philosophy was held in 1935, and AS eagerly read the French translations of texts from this movement. AS went on to promote it, writing some fifty articles on “Contemporary positive thinking” in a somewhat chaotic and dogmatic style. António Sérgio would say that this was a poor dissemination of ideas, omitting the difficulties and criticisms of the philosophical problems, of which only the conclusions were presented, which would generate a short controversy. AS would also become interested in the activities of the Centre de Synthèse, directed by Henri Berr, which brought together scholars from all areas of knowledge in a perspective that sought unity. In fact, in his book The Crisis of Europe (1942), AS quotes extensively from books in the collection, begun in 1920, Bibliothèque de Synthèse historique, L’évolution de l’humanité. AS, in Paris, collaborated with various associations, such as the Union Rationaliste, and witnessed political and economic tensions first-hand. Germany, Italy and the USSR were then under totalitarian regimes. In 1934, as a result of the Great Depression, unemployment was high in France. On 6 February, the anti-parliamentary far right demonstrated in Paris; the repression of the riot resulted in dozens of deaths and thousands of injuries and the fall of the Daladier government; the Left interpreted the riot as proof of the fascist threat and organised counter-demonstrations; On 6 March, the Committee for the Vigilance of Anti-Fascist Intellectuals is created; the regrouping of the Left leads to the Popular Front government in 1936. AS’s book Paris in 1934 reflects this situation.

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