Seen in the light of the ideological framework of the republican movement to which Teles belonged, the existing situation was the result of the Bragança dynasty’s inability to foster a spontaneously collective movement that would be reflected in the revival of the homeland. To Teles this lack of capacity announced the end of the monarchical regime and not the dissolution of the nation.

The book Do Ultimatum ao 31 de Janeiro, in which he set out his theories on Portugal’s destiny, provides us with elements that are precious to an understanding of his thinking on this subject: the determination to leave a testimony of his participation in the events that led up to the 1891 revolt in Porto is an unequivocal declaration of his belief that the insurrectional movement would be the best solution to the state of affairs the country was experiencing at the time (Do Ultimatum..., p. 166). Indeed, prior to this, in his Memórias Políticas (Political Memories), Teles had already developed this question of the revolution, which he saw as the inevitable fight between two ideals: conservatism and democracy, from which the latter would inevitably emerge the winner because “all democracy, wherever and whenever it exists, marches unconquerably towards the complete fulfilment of its programme” (Memórias Políticas, 1895, 127). Hence the challenge he threw down to his fellow-believers: “the Republican Party in Portugal, today, is either revolutionary or it is nothing” (Idem, 116). He thus repudiated any other political solution – above all the proposals that entailed reaching an understanding with the monarchical forces (the “Progressives”).

Although he was sceptical about the revolutionary instincts of the Portuguese people (as a result of the disillusionment he had suffered in 1891), Teles had nonetheless not stopped believing in the inevitability of the democratic process, and consequently in the need for the members of the party (especially his contemporaries from Porto) to begin to act. From a doctrinal point of view, as postulated by political progressivism, the idea that the Republic was a higher (and better) step in the process of progress than the Monarchy justified any attempt to speed that process up, legitimising the coup d’état that Teles recommended with an eye on the example of the 1889 Brazilian revolution (Macedo, 1990, 195). These two works by Basílio Teles – Memórias Políticas and Do Ultimatum ao 31 de Janeiro – have been seen as being written with the same objective: “that of offering Portuguese republicans a useful guide to the revolutionary action they would sooner or later have to unleash anew” (Domingues, 2007, 53).

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