Antonieta Garcia is the wife of the Ex-Mayor of Belmonte, who grew up as a Marrano in the late 20th century. She writes on the expulsion period and the forced conversion of the Portuguese Jews during the Inquisition: ‘It is estimated that at most five thousand people left the country, out of 75,000 Jews who originally lived in Portugal, and possibly 120,000 exiles more from Spain... Some of these became New-Christians, Marranos... terms that are still current today in Belmonte. The term Marrano has a pejorative connotation, since it refers both to a pig and to the Jewish-connotation. The source of the obscurity and overlap is very old, as we are taught by Padre Frei Francisco de Torregoncillo:[3] “in the past these terms were used especially to greet those who are worse than dogs, like Marranos... which means pigs in Spanish, and this is because of what characterizes both the Marranos and pigs, that if one of them snores or grunts, all the rest rush upon hearing the snoring.” The First Republic in Portugal was established in 1910-1926, and Garcia explains that with Schwartz’ arrival in 1917, it triggered an openness amongst the community. The Crypto-Jews no longer needed to hide their faith. Until the dictatorship of António de Oliveira Salazar from 1926 to 1974. It was easier to identify who a ‘Crypto-Jew’ was because they had come out of hiding. To avoid arousing suspicion, Garcia explains: “On the Jewish holidays, the men would go out into the street to avoid arousing suspicion. But it was up to us – the women who stayed inside the house – to take care of everything. We sang and we recited the prayers only after putting the young children to sleep. If they had heard us saying the prayers, they might have unintentionally repeated what they heard at home when out into the street. Only after they were mature... [for example when they began] to keep all the fasts, did we include them in our ceremony. Not only that: when we didn't come to church for mass, and other people bothered us because of that in school, we were trained to say that we had heard mass on the radio, or on television.” (44-46) The Carnation Revolution on April 25th, 1974, marked the end of the anti-semitic period in Portugal’s fascist political landscape. Garcia notes that this marked a period where the behaviors