Her husband was elected President a second time, in 1925. By then, the political decline of the First Portuguese Republic was accentuating and, in May 1926, a military coup initiated a dictatorial regime. Elzira Dantas Machado again accompanied her husband into exhile, in France and Spain. During the Second World War and the Fall of France, in 1940, Salazar's government allows the Machados to return to Portugal.