You are wrong, at least about Portugal.

Most of the people I know, that lived back in the day, openly say that life under the previous regime was better. A lot better.

Obviously, members of the current oligarchy, trade union professionals and members of the current parties, always try to pass across Estado Novo as some sort of totalitarian nightmare, forgetting that they at the time most of them were pushing for die-hard communism. The country these people looked up to as a model was communist Albania...

The 2nd Portuguese Republic started as military dictatorship. In 1933 it became a constitutional system, with a constitution sanctioned by popular vote. Contrary to what people normally think, Salazar wasn't the head of State. The head of State was the President of the Republic - elected by popular vote up to the fifties, by which time the system changed to an electoral college, due to communist sabotage and violent agitation during the presidential elections.
The PoR was elected for seven year periods and had the power to appoint the Government, particularly the President of the Council of Ministers (Prime-minister). That's how things worked when Salazar died: the President consulted whomever he saw fit and decided to appoint Marcello Caetano, which, by the way, had a leftist reputation in more conservative circles. There were three Presidents during the 2nd Republic.

Salazar proposed his own resignation a few times to the Presidents. However, Salazar was an absolutely brilliant statesman, besides being an extremely competent and scrupulous with money and finances. He single-handedly assumed the jobs of the ministries of War and Foreign Affairs during the 2nd World War. It's him Portugal owes being saved from that catastrophe. To an extent so does Spain. The people loved him and that is undeniable. Even recently, no more than ten years ago, there was a silly tv show to the purpose of electing the greatest portuguese person of all times. Salazar won. This is hard to understand without knowing the state of the country left by the 1st Republic. A lot of people became salazarists because of the simple fact that they started to get their pensions paid regularly.

Anyway, as far as repression goes, it's undeniable that censorship existed. For several reasons it was never abolished, even though there were plans for it. In the establishment of the regime, it was deemed necessary to control agitation and maintain order. Then came World War 2, an extremely delicate situation that warranted the control provided by press censorship to maintain the cooperative neutrality with the Allies Salazar wanted. Then, when finally there seemed to be a glimpse of an opening in the 50s, started the soviet and chinese-sponsored terrorist operations in Angola, with the 1961 massacre in the North.
Beyond this point, press censorship was used mainly control enemy propaganda, which was mainly all communist.
Still it was a known fact and the government didn't hide it or denied it. Compare this to the sort of veiled censorship practiced in the UK but especially in America, in matters pertaining the wars in which they recently were involved.

Salazar, and other important figures of the 2nd Republic, weren't against democracy as such. They were against parliamentary democracy with parties. They were against political parties and were against control of the executive branch by the legislative branch. They felt the stability and long-term vision necessary to govern a country can't be provided by changing governments and policy every four years. I think they were right. Reality proves so, at least in the case of Portugal.
That doesn't mean they didn't felt popular legitimation unimportant. Like I said, the President was elected, and so were the deputies of the National Assembly. The difference was that the government didn't have to have a majority in this assembly to govern. The trust of the President was enough.

This isn't more widely known because of communist propaganda. What people in the US need to understand is that leftist over here isn't quite the same as over there. Here we have an active and parliamentary represented Communist party. There is even another one to the left of it. As usual, they play the poor, worker, green, lgbt, etc, "progressist" cards. But they never say what they actually would do if they obtained power. Presumably, they would implement a communist system like all the others.
In fact, we had a glimpse of it in 1975 when they managed to obtain power for the larger part of the year. They nationalised all industry and arrested or chased all the capitalists off the country, essentially decapitating portuguese economy, that never recovered since. The country would soon be requesting IMF assistance in 1977. It did so for two more times, in 1983 and 2012. For comparison, bear in mind that in 1974, just before the coup that ended the 2nd Republic, Portugal had, apart from several foreign currency reserves, a reserve of 800 tonnes worth of fine gold. The escudo was a stable a strong currency. The commercial scale was balanced. All this despite sustaining military defence operations in Africa. Portuguese economy was rapidly growing, both in Europe and Africa, at about 6 to 8 percent. Three years later, it was bankrupt.
They also immediately created a political police under military control called the COPCON, that issued capture warrants with the name field blank... Thousands were arrested for being "reactionary", meaning they weren't communist. The public administration, from state bureaucracy to teachers, was, as they said, "sanitised" from people that weren't "progressive" enough. The previous regime PIDE/DGS was more akin to an intelligence and counter-intelligence service. However, it couldn't arbitrarily keep people arrested. Although the police could deduce accusation, the suspects had to be presented to a judge, and a judicial process would be open. It wasn't anymore repressive than the McCarthy's era FBI.
It has to be understood that the regime was highly academic and legalist. Most of the Government figures were university Law professors. Everything was done strictly according to the law. Arbitrary and irregular actions like COPCON's blank named capture warrants would never ever be permitted in any circumstance.

Basically, the whole of the political spectrum in Portugal today is leftist. The people on the so called parties on the right, all have extreme-left backgrounds. A paradigmatic example is the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Durão Barroso, member of the portuguese social-democrat PSD (one of the big two parties). In the 70's he was proper fist-in-the-air maoist[1], part of the MRPP - Portuguese Workers' Communist Party (this isn't the orthodox soviet communist party PCP, we had lots of them besides the 'real' one). Ironic isn't it?
The preamble of the current Portuguese Constitution still says that Portugal is on it's way towards a socialist society... Contrary to the 1933 one, this constitution wasn't subject to popular vote. It was imposed as "the will of the portuguese people" to the people.
A lot of the structural problems affecting Portugal can't be solved without constitutional amendment, something that is and has always been opposed by the left, led by the Socialist Party (the other of the big two parties). Only in the eighties was private banking allowed by constitutional amendment, for example.

The truth is, parliamentary democracy was bad for Portugal. It is true that it could have been different. But it was what it was. Presently, what happens is that the big two alternate in fucking up the country, raising taxes, privatising everything (how things change, heh? But now they need the money) in ruinous deals for the treasury, while the communists, who control the unions, make sure protests don't go out of hand, being given places all over the public sector for their cronies in return. Everybody wins. Except the taxpayer, of course.
Why don't people vote differently? Well, because the media is in bed with the regime, and to campaign you need money. Same as everywhere I guess.

Salazar used to call the 2nd Republic an organic democracy. Besides the National Assembly, there was the Corporative Chamber, where all the significant trades and industries were represented. All laws passed by the Assembly required consultation of this chamber. This is reminiscent of the Courts of so called absolutist monarchy in Portugal, which gathered representatives of trades and industry, clerical representatives, nobles (military), and the municipalities. This was put an end to with the civil war[2] in the nineteenth century between absolutists (called miguelists, because they supported D. Miguel) and constitutionalists that wanted a constitutional monarchy. The constitutionalists won, but not without heavy international support from financiers and foreign government in the form of money and mercenaries. However, the wounds open at the time haven't really healed and they still divide monarchists to this day.

[1]: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GfHGyLKkpFQ/Tn2RrRJMcHI/AAAAAAAAA1...

[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_Civil_War

EDIT: corrected the right century of the civil war. Not eighteenth but nineteenth.