Francisco de Barcelos Rolão Preto, GCIH (12 February 1893, Gavião – 18 December 1977, Hospital do Desterro, Lisbon) was a Portuguese politician, journalist, and leader of the Portuguese National Syndicalists Movement (MNS), a fascist organization. When in 1934 Salazar decided to ban the National Syndicalist Movement, Preto was briefly detained and later exiled. While in exiled and in Madrid, he was a guest in the house of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, with whom he collaborated in formulating a program for the Falange. In the eve of the Second World War he published a new editions of his work on Italian Fascism with high hopes on the Berlin-Rome axis. After World War II, Rolão Preto abandoned fascism and joined the left-wing forum Movement of Democratic Unity In 1949 he participated in General Norton de Matos’s 1949 presidential election campaign. He also backed more liberal candidates for the Presidency, such as Quintão Meireles, Francisco Higino Craveiro Lopes, and, ultimately, had a particularly important role (campaign press manager) in the 1958 campaign of another Salazar's opponent, General Humberto Delgado. In 1994, the Portuguese President Mário Soares granted him, posthumously, the Great Cross of the Order of Prince Henry the Navigator. The national syndicalists The national syndicalists, also called the "Blue Shirts" (camisas azuis), following the tradition of uniformed right-wing paramilitary groups, was an organisation advocating syndicalism and unionism, inspired by Benito Mussolini's brand of Italian fascism. As Rolão Preto wrote in July 1922, "our organic syndicalism is essentially the basis of current syndicalist thought among Mussolini’s friends". MNS was also built on previous allegiances to Integralismo Lusitano, but it was not inspired by the Action Française as alleged by their adversaries. He advocated especially the personalism of Emmanuel Mounier and some of the aspects of unionism. His unionist platform was based on leftist ideas of social justice, such as "a minimum family wage", "paid holidays", "working class education", and a world in which workers are "guaranteed the right to happiness". Early life Cutting short his lyceum studies, Rolão Preto left for Galicia in Spain, where he joined the monarchist army officer, Henrique Mitchell de Paiva Couceiro, in his 1911–1912 failed attempts to topple the Portuguese First Republic. He then left for Belgium and worked for the integralist magazine, Alma Portuguesa, while completing secondary studies at the Liceu português in Louvain and then attending the Université Catholique there. Rolão Preto had to flee