Com o final da Segunda Guerra Mundial, Portugal conheceu um crescimento económico invulgar, o que potenciou o reforço dos impérios dos poderosos grupos económico-financeiros que se evidenciaram durante a ditadura, protegidos pelo regime salazarista. Mesmo que discretas, as vidas dos membros das elites eram de luxo. As famílias mais ricas do Estado Novo viviam desafogadamente, num valorizado universo simbólico: constatar-se-á a omnipresença da tradição familiar, tal como as ideias de berço, de cultura, de elite, de estilo de vida, de posição social, de identidade, de peso do sobrenome. Esta dissertação pretende analisar e descodificar os sentidos das principais práticas sociais que uniam os elementos dessa elite: as idas ao Teatro Nacional de São Carlos para a ópera e para o ballet, as caçadas, o desporto hípico, o golfe e o ténis, os passeios de iate, as idas à neve, os almoços no Hotel Ritz, os dias na Parada de Cascais, os encontros no Turf Club, a escolha de peças de alta-costura e as requintadas festas em quintas e grandes vivendas. Tudo isso representava o pretexto ideal para que esta rede de pessoas circulasse pelos mesmos espaços e mantivesse exactamente os mesmos interesses, que passavam de geração em geração.

By the end of World War II, Portugal met an unusual economic growth, which boosted the reinforcement of the empires of the powerful economic and financial groups that stood out during the dictatorship, protected by the Salazar regime. Discrete as they may have appeared, the lives of the members of the elite were luxurious. The richest of the Estado Novo (New State, designation for the Salazar regime) enjoyed a worry-free environment, in a valued symbolic universe: it is worth noting the ubiquity of family traditions as well as the birthplace status, cultural, elite, lifestyle, bylaws, identity, weight of the surname. This dissertation aims to analyze and decode the meanings of the significant social practices that bounded that elite: attendance at the São Carlos National Theatre for opera and ballet, hunting, horsemanship, golf and tennis, the luxurious yachting, snow trips, the lunches at the Ritz Hotel, the days at the Parada de Cascais (center of Cascais, a city known for hosting some of the richest people in Portugal), meetings at the Turf Club, the haute couture pieces choice and the exquisite feasts on farms and mansions. All this represented the idealistic veil that made this network of people circulating in the same circles and keeping the exact same interests, which inevitably passed on from generation to generation.