This paper provides a contribution to the history of physicsHistory of Physics in the period between the two worldWorld wars, examining relations between the physics laboratories of the University of LisbonLisbon Faculty of Science and the Instituto Superior Técnico in LisbonLisbon on the one hand and the Laboratoire CurieLaboratoire Curie, the Collège de FranceCollège de France and other prestigious scienceScience institutions on the other hand. The location of the two Lisbon laboratories on the so-called European peripheryEuropean periphery did not mean that they did not produce knowledge. While the latter laboratory was equipped with the most advanced scientific instruments of the era, such as a spectrograph and a Zeiss microphotometerZeiss microphotometer, at the former a research school with international standing was established from 1929 to 1947. AnalysisAnalysis is carried out in accordance with the historiographical methodology known as ‘following the money trail’, involving the study of funding, conducted in depth, from an impartial standpoint, which has the potential for producing new findings and leading to the reanalysis of established interpretations. In this paper, we examine the funding granted to these two Portuguese physicsPhysics institutions by the Junta de Educação Nacional (National Education Board)National Education Board, established in 1929, which enabled PortugalPortugal to play a part in the European and American movement for the creation of scientific planning and funding institutions following World War IWorld War I. This focus on the support provided by the dictatorial regime in Portugal to the two LisbonLisbon laboratories also reveals the existence of resentmentResentment among scientists and resistance within these institutions, which limited the findings that they produced.