Forthcoming in Environment and History ©The White Horse Press http://www.whpress.co.uk Anti-Nuclear Mobilisation (ANM) and environmentalism in Europe: a view from Portugal (1976-1986). Stefania Barca Ana Delicado Abstract The article addresses the rise of antinuclear mobilization (ANM) in Portugal in the 1970s against the backdrop of similar movements across Western Europe. After performing a brief review of the literature on social mobilisation against nuclear energy, an overview is provided of the available sociological literature on environmental mobilisation in Portugal, mostly developed in a comparative southern-European perspective. The second section adds new empirical evidence on Portuguese ANM, and its connection with environmental mobilisation, based on in depth research conducted through both archival scrutiny and oral history interviews. In the conclusion, a fresh perspective is offered on the contribution of the Portuguese case to the advancement of research on the relationship between anti-nuclear and environmental mobilisation in Western Europe INTRODUCTION On the morning of 15 March 1976, a crowd of about one hundred people gathers at the church square of the Portuguese village of Ferrel, roughly 100 km north of Lisbon, and marches towards a place called Moinho Velho (Old Mill) where, against the will of local citizens and administrators, constructions have begun for the first nuclear power plant of Portugal. Celebrated as the birthplace of the Portuguese environmental movement, Ferrel is also an emblem of the many different, at times contradictory elements which, for the first time in the country’s history, converged towards the common goal of opposing the nuclear option, and thus also de facto connected Portugal with the broader scenario of anti-nuclear and environmental mobilisation in western countries. 1 1 This article draws on research carried out under a project funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology: Nuclear Portugal: Physics, Technology, Medicine and Environment (1910-