cult of force through direct action, the principle of the superiority of state political power in social life, [and] the propensity for organizing masses behind a single leader" as fundamental differences between fascism and the Catholic corporatism of the New State. The British Embassy informed London with some satisfaction stating that the Portuguese National Syndicalist Movement took "its inspiration from the Italian Embassy" and described Preto as a "vain man with a strong sense of intrigue". Preto ended up opposing the Salazar's regime for being too moderate and due to Salazar's refusal to turn the emerging corporative state into a truly fascist regime. Preto resided, for a while, in Valencia de Alcántara, near the border with Castelo de Vide, and then in Madrid, as a guest in the house of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, with whom he collaborated in formulating a program for the Falange. Preto returned to Portugal in February 1935, and was once more detained after instigating a September rebellion with the crew of the Bartolomeu Dias and the garrison in the Lisbon-area Penha de França. Again exiled, he fought in the Spanish Civil War on Francisco Franco's side. Preto returned, once more, to Portugal in the eve of the Second World War and published new editions of his work on Italian Fascism originally written in 1922. Preto placed high hopes on the Berlin-Rome axis, and in his introduction to Fascism (O Fascismo), he attacked the Salazar regime and exalted Italian and German Fascism. With the rise of Nazism in Germany and Fascism in Italy, Rolao Preto was optimistic about the future of European fascism, he pinned all of his hopes on an Axis victory, and confronted those who were not "real fascists" but wished to adopt aspects of fascism. After World War II, Rolão Preto abandoned fascism and joined the left-wing forum Movement of Democratic Unity, and he published a volume entitled A Traição Burguesa ("The Bourgeois Betrayal"). The book criticised fascist regimes for becoming victims of social and political compromises with the bourgeoisie. In 1945 he thought that "neither the glorious clarions of nationalist mysticism nor the powerful social projections of Nazi efforts can make us forget what Nazism represented — the deception of the revolutionary hopes that gave birth to National Socialism". In 1949 participated in General Norton de Matos’s 1949 presidential election campaign. He also backed more liberal candidates for the Presidency, such