In this study the case of the 1958 translation of William Faulkner’s Sanctuary into European Portuguese is used to access some of the ways in which mechanisms of censorship operated in Portugal during the dictatorial regime. The case of this novel, whose title refers to the religious framework Faulkner so often works within, is particularly relevant for the author’s purposes since it is, according to the critic Michael Millgate, a book which was notorious for its “violence, physical realism and sexual pervasion” – all of them non-ideological aspects that were nonetheless bound to cause a negative impression on the censors, working “to protect” the country’s moral values. The author looks at specific parts of the novel which are likely to be more problematic in terms of what was considered unacceptable, both in terms of language and content, and identify the strategies used by the translator to overcome restrictions imposed by censorship. This analysis allows the author to argue for the role of censorship not only as a means of delaying the arrival of the novel in Portugal but also as a reason for its first retranslation.