"Salazar was never a soldier, but a prestigious professor of economics and public finance at the University of Coimbra. In 1928, at the age of thirty-nine, he first entered the Portuguese government as finance minister (and, in fact, was the one who, in 1929, authorized our life insurance company to operate in Portugal). The military junta had desperately turned to Salazar with the challenge of putting the public accounts in order, which he fully achieved. This success gave him immense political prestige, to the point that he became prime minister (and acquired absolute power) in 1933. Thus, in contrast to Franco, Salazar came to power by peaceful means, at a younger age (though he was three years older than Franco), and with a well-earned reputation as an academic and a manager."