Francisco Rolão Preto

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.

After the Revolution of April 25, with Gonçalo Ribeiro Telles, Henrique Barrilaro Ruas, João Camossa de Saldanha, Augusto Ferreira do Amaral, Luís Coimbra, among others, he founded the People's Monarchist Party.

In 1994, the Portuguese President Mário Soares granted him, posthumously, the Great Cross of the Order of Prince Henry the Navigator.