Américo Tomás

Owners of Portugal

Owners of Portugal is a documentary about one hundred years of economic power. The film portrays the State protection to families that dominated the country's economy, their strategies for power and wealth accumulation. Mello, Champalimaud, Espírito Santo - big families intersect by marriage and integrate by finance. Threatened by the end of the dictatorship, their power is restored under democracy, through privatization and promiscuity with politics. New economic groups - Amorim, Sonae, Jerónimo Martins - grow on the same basis. As the crisis unravels the limits of Portuguese economic development model, this film presents the actors and the main choices that brought us here.