The role of education for citizenship promotion has been an issue since the transition for democracy in Portugal in the mid‐seventies. However, fears of ideological inculcation derived from the authoritarian past have always been present, with a clear tension between those advocating a vision of citizenship education as an emancipatory project and those emphasising a more conservative approach; additionally, there was also an intense discussion between the role of knowledge, competences and action in the organization of citizenship education in the curricula. Our paper analyses the evolutions in the curricular framing of citizenship education in basic education and discusses how a political perspective is apparently missing from the current practices, based on a series of focus groups interviews with teachers that discuss their views and experiences in the implementation of citizenship education.