Glossary

The strike from classes with which university students protested, at a time when the dictatorship banned strikes. Decided at a plenary meeting or an assembly, it was the weapon of the great academic crises of 1962 and 1969.¹³

In 1962, after the Government banned Students’ Day and the police charged the students, the student associations of Lisbon and Coimbra declared mourning on 26 March.²¹ On 7 May it became “luto académico total” (total academic mourning), with a strike from tests and exams as well; on 15 June, at a plenary meeting at the Instituto Superior Técnico, the students voted to suspend it.⁴

It was declared again in Lisbon in December 1968, when the Government ordered the Técnico to close, and in Coimbra, by an Assembleia Magna (general student assembly), in the crisis of 1969, which went as far as a strike from exams.⁵³

The liberation movement of Guinea and Cape Verde, founded by Amílcar Cabral and others. It waged war on Portuguese colonialism from January 1963 and proclaimed the independence of Guinea-Bissau on 24 September 1973.¹

It was born on 19 September 1956 as the African Party for Independence and took the name PAIGC in October 1960. The armed struggle began on 23 January 1963, with an attack on Tite, on the bank of the Geba river.¹ From 1967, its Rádio Libertação (Radio Liberation), run by Amélia Araújo, carried Cabral’s voice to more people.² Cabral was assassinated in Conakry on 20 January 1973, months before the proclamation of independence; Portugal only recognised it after 25 April, in September 1974.¹³

The Aljube Prison, in Lisbon, was a political prison from 1928 to 1965. Prisoners of the political police were held there while their cases were being investigated, awaiting trial or deportation.¹²

The name comes from the Arabic al-jubb — a dry well, a cistern, a dungeon or a prison — and the building was nearly always a gaol: ecclesiastical, for women and, finally, political.¹ In 1934 it came under the direct administration of the PVDE, and from 1943 it acquired the “curros” (pens), thirteen isolation cells on the second floor.² It closed in the summer of 1965, after protests that had spread abroad, and the prisoners were taken to Caxias.³²

Since 2015 it has been the Aljube Museum – Resistance and Freedom, dedicated to the memory of the resistance to the dictatorship.⁴

The movement of officers that overthrew the dictatorship on 25 April 1974. It was born among career captains, weary of a colonial war that, after more than ten years, had no military solution.¹

It began as the Captains’ Movement, at the meeting of 9 September 1973 at Monte do Sobral, in Alcáçovas, against two decrees that sped up the transfer of conscript officers into the permanent cadre.² In December, at Óbidos, it took the name Armed Forces Officers’ Movement and decided to extend itself to the Navy and the Air Force.³ At the Cascais meeting, on 5 March 1974, some two hundred officers accepted the coup d’état as irreversible.⁴ The revolution was made around the programme of the “three Ds”: democratise, decolonise and develop.⁵

After 25 April, the MFA was at the centre of power. In March 1975 it was institutionalised, with the Council of the Revolution and the MFA Assembly.⁶

The armed wing of the Portuguese Communist Party, active between 1970 and 1973, whose aim was to fight the colonial war and overthrow the dictatorship.¹

Its first action was claimed on 26 October 1970: two explosions left the ship Cunene, which was carrying weapons and supplies for the troops in Africa, flooded and immobilised in the Alcântara dock.¹ Others followed, among them the destruction of helicopters at Tancos Air Base and the cutting of radiotelegraph and telephone communications.¹

The clandestine newspaper of the Portuguese Communist Party, published since 15 February 1931. Printed on presses hidden in clandestine houses and distributed by activists, it came out without fail from 1941 until 25 April.¹

The early years were irregular: at one point it stopped for two years, after the police arrested leaders and seized the press, and in the years of the Spanish Civil War it printed up to 10,000 copies. With the reorganisation of the party it came out again in August 1941, and never stopped again. The Aljube Museum considers it unique in the world: a clandestine newspaper published for so long.¹

On 17 May 1974 the first legal Avante! (Forward!) came out.¹

Caxias Fort, in Oeiras, was one of the political police’s own prisons and the gaol where all women political prisoners were held — on remand, while serving their sentences and while subject to security measures.¹

It had been a prison since 1916. The South Redoubt passed to the political police in January 1935, for men; the North Redoubt in May 1938, for women.² The women prisoners lived two to a room for months or years and saw their children only through a pane of glass.³ On 4 December 1961, eight communist prisoners escaped from the fort in the armoured car that had served Salazar.⁴ After the Aljube closed, in 1965, Caxias took in its prisoners, and in 1971 the DGS’s continuous interrogations moved to the South Redoubt.²

The political prisoners of Caxias were released on the night of 26 to 27 April 1974, after negotiations between a committee of lawyers and the National Salvation Junta, and under pressure from those waiting outside.²

The cutting, before publication, of anything that might go against the regime: news, books, plays, films. The censors struck through newspaper proofs with the famous “blue pencil”.¹

It began as early as June 1926, with the censors installed in the Carmo Barracks.² On 11 April 1933, the day the Constitution of the Estado Novo (“New State”) came into force, Decree-Law No. 22,469 regulated the prior censorship of newspapers. It was forbidden to leave blank the space of a news item that had been cut; the censor could suspend publications and had to approve newspaper editors, on information from the political police. To avoid cuts, many journalists censored themselves.¹

Marcelo Caetano kept it, with the colonial war as his argument, and the press law of 1971–1972 gave it another name: “Prior Examination”.³ It ended with 25 April. On 26 April 1974, the censorship headquarters, on Rua da Misericórdia, was stormed by the people — 48 years after censorship had begun.⁴

An armoured car of the Portuguese Army, used in the colonial war. On 25 April, it was in a Chaimite, the “Bula”, that Marcelo Caetano left the Carmo Barracks after surrendering.¹²

On the morning of 25 April 1974, before 07:00, the “Bula” was already in front of the Army Ministry, in the Terreiro do Paço, with the column from the Cavalry Practical School in Santarém. In the afternoon, in Largo do Carmo, the machine guns of one of them fired bursts at the façade of the barracks; at 18:30, Salgueiro Maia had the “Bula” backed in through the main gate.³ Caetano and some ministers were taken in it to the command post at Pontinha.² Days later, at the airport, Álvaro Cunhal, back from exile, climbed onto a Chaimite to speak to the crowd.³

The war the dictatorship waged in Africa, from 1961 to 1974, against the movements fighting for the independence of the colonies. It began in Angola in 1961 and spread to Guinea in 1963 and to Mozambique in 1964: it was the longest and deadliest of Portugal’s wars.¹

Salazar refused any negotiation and announced that they would “go rapidly and in force” (andar rapidamente e em força) to Angola.¹ The war took hundreds of thousands of soldiers to Africa, and colonial violence fell on the African populations from the start — as in the Wiriyamu massacre, in Mozambique, in 1972.²¹ Around 9,000 young men deserted, and it is estimated that between 10,000 and 20,000 refused to go.³

Weariness with a war that had no military solution brought the captains together in the movement that carried out 25 April.⁴ The Revolution put an end to the war and opened the way to decolonisation: between 1974 and 1975, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe and Angola became independent.¹

The State body for equality between women and men, created in 1975 by Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo, then Minister of Social Affairs. It has changed its name twice and is today the CIG.¹

It had its roots in a working group on the situation of women that Pintasilgo had led since 1970, still in the time of Marcelo Caetano. After 25 April, the Commission on the Status of Women was born in February 1975, still “in its setting-up phase”, and was only institutionalised in 1977.¹ It began by surveying the forms of discrimination against women and was behind the first laws to end them — in the 1976 Constitution and in the 1977 reform of the Civil Code.¹

In 1991 it was renamed the Commission for Equality and Women’s Rights (CIDM); in 2007, the Commission for Citizenship and Gender Equality (CIG).¹

The treaty that the Estado Novo (“New State”) signed with the Holy See on 7 May 1940. It restored civil effects to Catholic marriage and took away the right to divorce from anyone who, from then on, married in church.¹²

Thirty years after the Divorce Law of 1910, Catholic marriages became indissoluble again; those who married only in a civil ceremony could still divorce.³² The ban applied to both spouses, but it weighed far more heavily on the wife, the socially, economically and legally weaker party.⁴ The Concordat also required teaching in state schools to be guided by the “principles of Christian doctrine and morals”, and Catholic religion and morals classes to be given there to pupils whose parents did not ask for an exemption.¹

After 25 April, an Additional Protocol, signed on 15 February 1975, changed the article on divorce and left the rest of the Concordat in force.¹ In May, a new law allowed those married in church to divorce in the civil courts.⁴

The parliament elected on 25 April 1975, in the first free elections held by universal suffrage, to write the new Constitution. It worked for ten months and approved it on 2 April 1976.¹²

In the elections, 91.7% of voters cast their vote; the PS won with 37.9%, ahead of the PPD, with 26.4%, and the PCP, with 12.5%.³ Of the 250 deputies elected, only 20 were women; with replacements, 27 women sat in it, among them Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, the only one who chaired a committee.⁴ It met in the Palácio de São Bento from 2 June 1975, alongside the other powers of the revolution: the President of the Republic, the Provisional Government, the Council of the Revolution.⁵ Before the elections, the parties had committed themselves to the MFA, in a pact, to write the Council of the Revolution and the MFA Assembly into the Constitution; after 25 November, the pact was revised and the MFA Assembly was left out.⁶

On 12 November 1975, a demonstration by construction workers besieged the palace and kept the deputies from leaving for 36 hours.⁷ The Constitution was approved with the CDS voting against, and came into force on 25 April 1976.²

A special intervention command of the Armed Forces, created in July 1974 and headed by Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, which was present at many of the revolution’s moments of tension.¹²

It was born on 8 July 1974.¹ On the night of 27 to 28 September that year, a COPCON operation arrested the organisers of the “silent majority” demonstration, called in support of Spínola.²³ On 28 May 1975, it arrested more than 400 MRPP activists.⁴ In the summer of that year, the “COPCON Document” argued for a political role for the popular assemblies.⁵

In September 1975, the Government withdrew its powers of intervention to restore public order. On 27 November, after 25 November, Otelo was removed from the command.⁵

The organ of sovereignty, made up of members of the armed forces, that from March 1975 replaced the National Salvation Junta and the Council of State and took over their powers. It remained in the 1976 Constitution, with fewer powers, until 1982.³¹

It was created by Constitutional Law No. 5/75 of 14 March, immediately after the failed coup of 11 March, and was sworn in on 17 March 1975.¹² It brought together the President of the Republic, the prime minister, the military chiefs and representatives of the Armed Forces Movement, and it inherited the powers to make constitutional laws, to oversee the Government and to govern the Armed Forces.¹ The same MFA assembly that decided to create it, on the night of 11 to 12 March, also decided to nationalise the banks and insurance companies.³

The isolation cells of the Aljube Prison, which the prisoners also called “gavetas” (drawers): cubicles about a metre wide, in half-darkness day and night, where prisoners were kept alone for months.¹

They were built from 1943 onwards, on the second floor — thirteen cells, each closed by two doors, one barred and the other of wood with a spyhole. The bunk, when lowered, left the prisoner no room to walk. In the first period of isolation, which could last six months and be extended by the Minister of the Interior, there was no pen, paper, books, newspapers or watch.¹ Memória Comum points to the curros as the prime example of the isolation the political police used to cut prisoners off from the world and diminish them.²

They went out of use when the prison closed, in 1965.¹ Isolation in the curros is recalled today on the second floor of the Aljube Museum.³

The opposition coalition that stood in the 1969 elections to the National Assembly, bringing together socialists, progressive Catholics, liberals and communists.¹ It was one of the most important organisations of the democratic opposition before 25 April.²

In the elections of 26 October 1969, the new rules for overseeing the vote stayed on paper: opposition candidates went on being arrested, their propaganda seized, and the single party won every seat.¹ In Lisbon, the CDE’s activists included, among other women, Isabel do Carmo and Helena Neves, who was arrested that year.³⁴ In 1973, the CDE took part in the Congress of the Democratic Opposition, in Aveiro.²

After 25 April it was renamed the Portuguese Democratic Movement (MDP/CDE) and was part of every provisional government except the sixth.²

A women’s association founded in 1968, at an assembly in the Padaria do Povo (People’s Bakery), in Lisbon, which brought together the heirs of the National Council of Portuguese Women and of the Portuguese Women’s Association for Peace in the struggle for peace, for freedom and for women’s rights.¹

Its founders included Maria Alda Nogueira and Isabel do Carmo.¹² While the dictatorship still stood, on 21 October 1973, it brought 250 women together at its 1st National Meeting, in Cova da Piedade, which demanded the release of women political prisoners, an end to discrimination at work and the right to legal abortion.¹

After 25 April it opened its doors and spread across the country. Maria Lamas was its honorary president.¹

The opposition list, dominated by socialists, that stood in the 1969 elections to the National Assembly in Lisbon, Porto and Braga.¹

The opposition went into those elections divided: the CEUD brought together mainly socialists, and the other list, the CDE, mainly communists.² Among the women who stood for the CEUD were Maria Barroso and Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen; the Assembly of the Republic regards it as the beginning of the Socialist Party.³ Fraud and censorship continued, and the single party won every seat.¹

The dictatorship of Salazar and, later, of Marcelo Caetano, from 1933 to 1974. A regime without parties, without free elections and without freedoms, with power concentrated in the head of government.¹²

It grew out of the Military Dictatorship established by the coup of 28 May 1926 and was formally instituted by the 1933 Constitution, approved in a plebiscite in which abstentions counted as votes in favour.³² It was anti-liberal, anti-party and anti-parliamentary: there was a single party, the National Union, and freedom of expression, of assembly and of association were at the mercy of “special laws”.² It rested on the political police, censorship and the Portuguese Legion, and on organisations that regimented young people, workers and women.⁴

In 1968, after Salazar was incapacitated, the Government passed to Marcelo Caetano, who attempted an opening, but the regime proved incapable of change. It fell on 25 April 1974, overthrown by the Armed Forces Movement, with immediate popular support.²

The suffragist association born on 12 May 1911 from a split in the Republican League of Portuguese Women, which was divided over which women should have the right to vote.¹

It was founded by Ana de Castro Osório and Carolina Beatriz Ângelo, who presided over it; it was born in the latter’s surgery.³⁴ On 24 July 1911 it petitioned the Constituent Assembly for votes for women; two days later, the article of the draft Constitution on women’s civil and political rights was struck out.¹ Between 1912 and 1913 it published the magazine A Mulher Portuguesa (The Portuguese Woman).⁵ It belonged to the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, the international alliance for women’s suffrage.⁶

The anarcho-syndicalist workers’ confederation founded in September 1919, whose organ was the newspaper A Batalha (The Battle). It led many workers’ struggles under the Republic and the Military Dictatorship, and many of its activists were imprisoned and deported.¹

It was born at a time of great social unrest, under the impact of the Russian Revolution and the end of the First World War.¹ Its anarcho-syndicalists organised, with communists and socialists, the general strike of 18 January 1934, against the “fascisation” of the trade unions imposed by the National Labour Statute.² Under the Estado Novo (“New State”), anarcho-syndicalism lost strength, unable to adapt to underground life; A Batalha was brought back to the news-stands after 25 April by Emídio Santana.¹

The association of the students who came from the colonies to universities in metropolitan Portugal, founded in 1944 under the regime’s tutelage to foster in them the spirit of “imperial unity”. Instead, it became a centre of anti-colonial and anti-fascist political education, and was closed down by the PIDE in 1965.¹²

Between 1943 and 1944, students’ houses had been set up for Angola, Macau, Cape Verde, India and Mozambique; the regime feared they would become seedbeds of nationalism and merged them into one, under the authority of the Ministry of the Colonies and the sponsorship of the Portuguese Youth (Mocidade Portuguesa).¹ The project failed almost at once: many members joined the MUD Juvenil (Youth Movement of Democratic Unity) in 1946, and the House took part in the academic crisis of 1962.¹ Its publications and the bulletins Mensagem (Message) and Meridiano (Meridian) hold the origins of the Portuguese-language African literatures.¹

Among those who passed through it were founders of the liberation movements — Amílcar Cabral and Luís Cabral, of the PAIGC; Agostinho Neto and Lúcio Lara, of the MPLA; Marcelino dos Santos and Joaquim Chissano, of FRELIMO; Alda do Espírito Santo and Miguel Trovoada, of São Tomé and Príncipe.¹

The movement of Portuguese and Spanish exiles set up in Caracas in January 1960 to overthrow the two Iberian dictatorships through armed action. Its most spectacular action was the seizure of the liner Santa Maria, in January 1961.¹

It brought together people from the National Independent Movement of Humberto Delgado and from the Spanish opposition in exile. Henrique Galvão, who had escaped from the Santa Maria Hospital in 1959, signed for the Portuguese side.¹ The DRIL never operated on Portuguese territory; it organised actions in Spain and, in Delgado’s name, “Operation Dulcineia”, which seized the liner in Caribbean waters and renamed it Santa Liberdade (Saint Liberty).¹²

The coordinating body of the trade unions that, from October 1970, came together to challenge the Government’s control over union life. Banned in 1971, it went on meeting half in secret until 25 April.¹²

Its founding act was the notice of 1 October 1970 calling a meeting on the 11th of that month, at the headquarters of the Lisbon Bank Workers’ Union. The Government banned meetings between unions on 26 June 1971; in the years that followed, the influence of the PCP in them grew.² After the revolution, it organised the May Day (1 May) rally of 1975, at the Estádio 1.º de Maio, and was one of the targets of Mário Soares at the Fonte Luminosa rally, in July.³⁴

One of the organisations that, in the 1960s, chose direct and armed action to bring down the dictatorship. It became known for its first action, the raid on the Bank of Portugal in Figueira da Foz, on 17 May 1967.¹²

The raid, “Operation Mondego”, led by Palma Inácio, was meant to finance the struggle; the raiders escaped in a light aircraft and reached France, where the LUAR claimed it.¹ That year it also diverted weapons from the headquarters of the 3rd Military Region, in Évora.² Palma Inácio was arrested in France in August 1967, and disagreements over the money and the strategy ended up splitting the organisation.¹

After 25 April, the LUAR remained among the organisations of the revolutionary left, alongside which it took to the streets.³

The regime of the military men who overthrew the First Republic in the coup of 28 May 1926 and governed until 1933, when the new Constitution gave rise to the Estado Novo (“New State”).¹

Parliament was closed and the 1911 Constitution remained valid only on paper.² After weeks of struggle between generals, the upper hand went, from July 1926, to the conservative group of Sinel de Cordes and of Óscar Carmona, who was elected President in 1928 as the sole candidate. That year, António de Oliveira Salazar joined the Government as Minister of Finance; in July 1932 he became head of government.³

They were years of “latent and intermittent civil war”, writes the Aljube Museum: republican revolts — the “reviralho” (turnaround) — hundreds dead, thousands imprisoned and deported to Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea and Timor.¹ Censorship began as early as June 1926, and the Aljube became a political prison in 1928.⁴¹

The organisation through which the Estado Novo (“New State”) regimented women, created in 1936 to spread the role the regime assigned them: mothers devoted to their families and household tasks, wives obedient to their husbands, the “head” of the family.¹

Known by the acronym OMEN, it was, with the Portuguese Youth (Mocidade Portuguesa) and the FNAT, one of the mechanisms through which the regime controlled the population.¹ Maria Guardiola, headmistress of the Liceu Maria Amália Vaz de Carvalho and one of the first three Portuguese women deputies, held leading posts for many years in the Mothers’ Work and in the Women’s Portuguese Youth (Mocidade Portuguesa Feminina).²

A Maoist party founded in September 1970, very active among Lisbon’s students in the last years of the dictatorship. Its youth organisation was the Federation of Marxist-Leninist Students (FEML).¹²

It published Luta Popular (People’s Struggle) from 1971.¹ The law student José António Ribeiro Santos, an FEML activist, was shot dead by a DGS agent at the ISCEF on 12 October 1972.² Aurora Rodrigues and Maria José Morgado, MRPP activists, were arrested and tortured in 1973.³⁴

After 25 April it remained very active; on 28 May 1975, a COPCON operation arrested more than 400 of its activists.³ In 1976 it was renamed the Portuguese Workers’ Communist Party (PCTP/MRPP).¹

The great legal organisation of the opposition after the Second World War, created in October 1945. It brought together figures from across the political spectrum and was the most important and broadest legal organisation of anti-fascist unity under the dictatorship.¹

It was born in a room of the Almirante Reis Republican School Centre, in Lisbon. Persecution began as early as 1946, with arrests and dismissals — the mathematician Bento de Jesus Caraça lost his professorship.¹ Isabel Aboim Inglez was the first woman on its central committee.² Young people had their own MUD Juvenil (Youth Movement of Democratic Unity), set up on 28 July 1946, which organised student strikes and protests and to which Mário Soares belonged.³

In March 1948 it was notified of an order declaring it illegal, on the grounds that “the so-called Communist Party” was collaborating in it. Even so, its supporters took part in the candidacy of Norton de Matos in the 1949 presidential election.¹

The front that united the opposition to the dictatorship from December 1943, presided over by General Norton de Matos. It included republicans, socialists, communists, Catholics, liberals, monarchists, Freemasons, anarcho-syndicalists and independents.¹

It was born as the Second World War was beginning to turn in the Allies’ favour and the country was living through hunger, rationing and waves of strikes; the PCP had adopted, at its congress, the “frontist line of anti-fascist unity”.¹ It brought together the Portuguese Republican Party, the Socialist Party, the Socialist Union and the PCP.¹ With the end of the war, the opposition organised itself openly in the MUD, in 1945.²

The movement that fought for the independence of Mozambique, founded in 1962 by Eduardo Mondlane through the merger of three nationalist movements. It began the armed struggle in September 1964; independence came on 25 June 1975.¹²

The war began in the north, with attacks in Cabo Delgado and Niassa, and spread to Tete, where the building of the Cahora Bassa dam forced the Portuguese Army into a huge defensive effort.¹ Mondlane was killed by a parcel bomb on 3 February 1969; from 1970, FRELIMO was led by Samora Machel.¹ After 25 April, the Lusaka Agreement of 7 September 1974 set independence for the anniversary of FRELIMO’s founding.²

The parliament of the Estado Novo (“New State”), from 1935 to 1974. It had a single chamber, only National Union deputies and little power: in practice, it was the Government that made the laws, by decree-law.¹²

The first National Assembly was elected in 1934, by a very restricted vote, and the first three Portuguese women deputies sat in it. Alongside it was the Corporative Chamber, a consultative body in which economic and local interests carried weight. The constitutional revision of 1945 made the Government the “normal legislative body” and the Assembly the “exceptional legislative body”.¹ It met in the Palácio de São Bento, where the Assembly of the Republic sits today.³

It met for the last time, without a quorum, on the morning of 25 April 1974.¹ Law No. 2/74 of 14 May abolished it, together with the Corporative Chamber.⁴

The commission, set up in 1969, that supported political prisoners and their families and denounced repression. Its members included, among many others, the poet Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen and former women prisoners such as Conceição Matos and Aida Magro.¹²³

In 1970, in a telegram to Marcelo Caetano, it held the Government responsible for the suicide of Albina Fernandes, two years after she had left Caxias.⁴ In 1973 it supported the Capela do Rato vigil and protested against the arrest of those who took part.⁵ In the days of the release of the political prisoners, in April 1974, it was to the military and to the commission’s lawyers that the prisoners communicated their decision: either they all left, or none did.⁶

The most important and longest-lasting Portuguese feminist association of the first half of the 20th century, founded in 1914 by the doctor Adelaide Cabete and closed down by the police in 1947, after 33 years.¹

It presented itself as “non-political and non-religious” and fought for women’s rights in education and in the family: protecting poor women and children, caring for pregnant women, ending regulated prostitution. In the 1920s it joined the major international women’s organisations and, in May 1924, organised the country’s first feminist congress. For 32 years its headquarters was in Adelaide Cabete’s surgery, in Praça dos Restauradores.¹

With Maria Lamas in its leadership from 1945, it grew across the country; the Exhibition of Books Written by Women, in 1947, led the regime’s press to accuse it of linking feminism to communism. On 28 June 1947, the police closed its headquarters, which had moved to Amoreiras, “without prior notice”.¹

The movement that, after the candidacy of Norton de Matos in 1949, kept part of the democratic opposition united in the struggle for freedoms. It was presided over by the mathematician Ruy Luís Gomes until it came to an end, late in 1956.¹

In October 1949, its central committee — with Maria Lamas and Virgínia Moura, among others — took a position on the elections for deputies.² In December, the members of the central committee were arrested for protesting against the arrest of one of them.¹ There was also a National Democratic Women’s Movement: the doctor Cesina Bermudes was arrested in October 1949 for belonging to its central committee.³

In 1951, the MND put forward Ruy Luís Gomes as a candidate for the Presidency of the Republic; a last-minute change in the law gave the Council of State the power to reject the candidacy, and that is what happened.¹

The organisation through which the Estado Novo (“New State”) filled workers’ free time, created on 13 June 1935 on the model of Mussolini’s Dopolavoro and Hitler’s “Strength through Joy”. It organised holidays, excursions, sport and culture for members of the national syndicates, the Casas do Povo (People’s Houses) and the Casas de Pescadores (Fishermen’s Houses).¹

It opened holiday camps, such as the one at Caparica, in 1938, and in 1959 it inaugurated its stadium in Alvalade, in Lisbon.¹ On May Day (1 May) 1974, the Lisbon march ended at this FNAT stadium, which was renamed Estádio 1.º de Maio (May Day Stadium).² On 3 April 1975 the FNAT was renamed INATEL; since 2008 it has been the INATEL Foundation.¹

One of the three movements that fought for the independence of Angola, led by Holden Roberto. Still under the name Union of the Peoples of Angola, on 15 March 1961 it launched the attacks in the north of the country which, together with those of February in Luanda, marked the start of the war; in 1962 it was renamed the FNLA.¹²

It was born in July 1954 in Leopoldville, in the Belgian Congo, with mainly Bakongo cadres, and became a nationalist movement in 1958.¹ The attacks of March 1961 on the coffee plantations killed settlers and African workers, and their brutality gave the Government in Lisbon the images with which it called the country to war.¹ Weakened by splits, it signed the Alvor Agreement and was defeated by the MPLA at Quifangondo, in November 1975, on the eve of independence.¹

The propaganda body of the Estado Novo (“New State”), created in 1933 and headed until 1949 by the journalist António Ferro. It spread the regime’s achievements and ideas through posters, films, radio programmes, exhibitions and prizes, combining a modern language with official conservatism and ruralism.¹

Ferro called this programme the “Policy of the Spirit” (Política do Espírito): re-educating the Portuguese according to the official ideology, promoting and at the same time controlling artists and writers.¹ In 1944 the SPN gave way to the National Information and Popular Culture Secretariat (SNI), which brought propaganda, tourism, the press and censorship together in the same hands; in 1968, these services passed to the Secretariat of State for Information and Tourism.²

At the end of the regime, the Secretariat of State had its headquarters in the Palácio Foz, in Restauradores. On 28 May 1974, around a hundred artists entered the palace courtyard and covered the statue of Salazar that stood there with a black cloth.³

The security force of a military nature created by the First Republic in 1911, with its general command in the Carmo Barracks, in Lisbon. During the dictatorship it was part of the repressive apparatus: it was sent against strikes, demonstrations and opposition campaigns.¹

It was born on 3 May 1911, as an elite corps of the new regime. In 1927 there were also GNR men among the revolts against the Military Dictatorship; the regime purged it and, with General Farinha Beirão in command from 1927 to 1939, made it a loyal force. It fought labour unrest in Barreiro, in Lisbon’s industrial belt and in the Alentejo, the campaign of Humberto Delgado in 1958 and the academic crisis of 1968–1969.¹ It was a GNR lieutenant who shot dead the harvest worker Catarina Eufémia, in Baleizão, in 1954, during a strike.²

On 25 April 1974, Marcelo Caetano took refuge in the GNR barracks in Largo do Carmo, and it was there, late in the afternoon, that the regime fell.³¹

The military body that the Armed Forces Movement placed at the head of the country when it overthrew the dictatorship, on 25 April 1974. It received the powers of the President of the Republic, the Government and the National Assembly, all of which were removed from office or dissolved.¹

It was presided over by General António de Spínola and brought together military men from the three branches of the armed forces, among them Francisco da Costa Gomes and Pinheiro de Azevedo.¹ On 26 April it presented itself to the country on television, from the studios at Lumiar.¹ On the 25th itself it abolished the DGS, the Portuguese Legion and the Portuguese Youth (Mocidade Portuguesa), and in May it abolished the National Assembly and the Corporative Chamber.²³

It was abolished by Constitutional Law No. 5/75 of 14 March 1975, which put the Council of the Revolution in its place.⁴

The trade unions of the Estado Novo (“New State”): only one per profession, under the Government’s tutelage and obliged to renounce “class struggle”. They were an instrument of the regime for disciplining and watching over the world of work.¹

They were born of the National Labour Statute of September 1933, inspired by Mussolini’s “Carta del Lavoro” (Labour Charter); the workers’ answer was the general strike of 18 January 1934.¹² The Government had to ratify the elected leaderships and could dissolve a union that supported strikes; dues were compulsory for all the workers in the profession.¹ In the last years of the dictatorship, several of these unions began to meet to challenge the Government’s tutelage, in the Intersindical.³

The third Angolan liberation movement, created in March 1966 by Jonas Savimbi, who had left the FNLA. It waged a guerrilla war in the interior of Angola, where it also fought the MPLA.¹

In 1972 it made an agreement with the Portuguese forces, Operation Madeira: a ceasefire and a zone the Army did not enter, in exchange for UNITA fighting the MPLA and providing military intelligence.¹ After 25 April it signed the Alvor Agreement; after independence, Savimbi led UNITA through the long civil war, until he was killed in combat with MPLA forces in 2002.¹

The single party of the Estado Novo (“New State”). Parties were banned, and until the end of the regime every deputy in the National Assembly was elected for the National Union, and every President of the Republic elected was the one it backed.¹²

It was created in the early 1930s to support Salazar’s Government.³² Until 1945 there were no lists standing against it; ballot papers were handed out by the police and by the National Union itself, and voters could only cross names out, without being able to replace them.⁴ Under Marcelo Caetano it was renamed National Popular Action, a “purely cosmetic” change, in the words of the Commemorative Commission for the 50th Anniversary of 25 April.¹³

The MFA Programme ordered its immediate abolition.⁵ On 26 April 1974, its headquarters was wrecked by members of the public, like those of the censorship office and of the newspaper A Época (The Epoch).⁶

The name, nearly always given by its acronym, PREC, of the revolutionary process opened by 25 April 1974, up to its first outcome, on 25 November 1975. It was the most polarised and most radicalised period of the transition to democracy.¹²

Several centres of power coexisted — the President of the Republic, the Provisional Government, the Council of the Revolution, the Armed Forces Movement — together with many projects for the country, which measured their strength on 28 September 1974, on 11 March 1975, in the “Hot Summer” (Verão Quente) of that year and, finally, on 25 November.³⁴ The “Hot Summer” was the high point of the tension: some have it lasting from March or April to November 1975, others only from May, June or July to September.²

Both “PREC” and “Hot Summer” often carry, in use, a pejorative charge, somewhere between condemnation and caricature.²

The united front of the opposition created at the end of 1962, at a meeting in Rome, which set up its delegation abroad in Algiers, where it operated until 25 April 1974.¹

It was born of the wish to build on the mobilisation of the 1958 elections and brought together the Patriotic Action Juntas, communists, supporters of Humberto Delgado and PCP dissidents.¹² Disagreements — over armed struggle, the colonial question and the general himself — led Delgado, who had at one point presided over it, to break with it in 1964; in January 1965 he created the Portuguese Front for National Liberation, a month before he was assassinated by the PIDE.¹

From Algiers, the Front spoke to Portugal through Rádio Voz da Liberdade (Voice of Freedom Radio).³

Peniche Fortress was the high-security political prison where men sentenced by the plenary courts served their sentences — and then the security measures that the political police imposed on them.¹

It had been a prison since the beginning of the 20th century. It passed to the political police in 1934, with a GNR guard, and in 1945 to the Ministry of Justice, without the PIDE ceasing to keep watch over it.²¹ Punishments were served in the “segredo” (secret) or “redondo” (round), damp and lightless cubicles at the edge of the cliff, on bread and water, for up to thirty days. In the 1950s it was turned into a high-security prison.¹ Even so, on 3 January 1960, ten communist prisoners, among them Álvaro Cunhal, escaped from it.³

The last political prisoners left in the early hours of 27 April 1974: Spínola had wanted to keep those accused of violent acts in prison, but solidarity among the prisoners, the lawyers and popular pressure forced the release of them all.² Since 27 April 2024, the fortress has been the National Museum of Resistance and Freedom.⁴

One of the movements that fought for the independence of Angola, founded in December 1956 and presided over, from the end of 1962, by Agostinho Neto. It was the MPLA that proclaimed the country’s independence, in Luanda, on 11 November 1975.¹

It claimed the attacks of 4 February 1961 on the Luanda prisons which, together with those of the UPA in March, marked the start of the armed struggle.¹² It waged war from Congo-Brazzaville, in Cabinda, and later, from 1966, in the east of Angola, where from 1969 it also had to fight UNITA.¹ After 25 April it signed the Alvor Agreement with the FNLA and UNITA; the agreement was not honoured, and independence came in the midst of civil war.¹

The court that tried political crimes under the Estado Novo (“New State”), from 1945 onwards. It was made up of three judges appointed by the Government and tried the opponents whom the political police arrested and charged with crimes “against the security of the State”.¹

The Plenary Courts of Lisbon and Porto were created on 20 October 1945 to replace the Special Military Court — a “mere cosmetic manoeuvre”, writes the Commemorative Commission for the 50th Anniversary of 25 April, imposed by the Allied victory in the Second World War.¹² The Lisbon court sat in the Boa-Hora courthouse.³

The judges let PIDE agents fill the courtroom and prevented the defendants from denouncing the torture they had suffered in prison; some prisoners were beaten in open court.¹ Convicted men served their sentences in Peniche Fortress, women in Caxias;⁴ and security measures could extend sentences without limit.¹ The MFA Programme, after 25 April, provided for the abolition of the “special courts”.⁵

The police that watched, arrested and tortured the dictatorship’s opponents. It changed its name twice — PVDE, PIDE and, finally, DGS — and was always the main instrument of political repression.¹

It was born in August 1933, from the merger of two police forces, and was renamed the PIDE in 1945 and the DGS in 1969.² It answered to the Ministry of the Interior and had its own prisons, the Aljube and Caxias Fort.¹ Interrogations took place on the third floor of its headquarters, on Rua António Maria Cardoso, with beatings and torture, and some prisoners died there.³ It also set up in the colonies from 1954, and the war multiplied its activity.¹

On the night of 25 April 1974, agents fired from the headquarters on the crowd and killed four people; the building was only occupied the following morning, by marines and by cavalry from Estremoz.⁴ Decree-Law No. 171/74, of that same day, the 25th, abolished the DGS; in the colonies, it would be reorganised as the Military Intelligence Police.⁵

The party founded in May 1974 by Francisco Sá Carneiro, Joaquim Magalhães Mota and Francisco Pinto Balsemão, who came from the “liberal wing” of the National Assembly under Marcelo Caetano. In 1976 it changed its name to the Social Democratic Party.¹²

It adopted the slogan “Social democracy for Portugal” (Social democracia para Portugal) and, like the PS, took part in five provisional governments.¹ It was the second most voted party in the elections to the Constituent Assembly, with 26.4%, and voted in favour of the 1976 Constitution.³¹ Today it is registered as the Social Democratic Party, with the acronym PPD/PSD.⁴

The party founded in Lisbon on 6 March 1921 which, outlawed after the 1926 coup, held out underground throughout the dictatorship. It was the best-organised opposition, always clandestine and harshly persecuted.¹²

Underground, it published Avante! (Forward!), which had been coming out since 1931, and kept clandestine printing works and houses.⁴ After the reorganisation of 1940–1941 it extended its influence and championed anti-fascist unity.¹ Álvaro Cunhal, imprisoned from 1949 until the escape from Peniche, was elected general secretary in 1961.³¹ It withstood repression like no other party — in October 1974, the 36 members of the Central Committee had between them spent more than 300 years in prison.¹ Between 1970 and 1973 it had an armed wing, Armed Revolutionary Action.⁵

With 25 April it became a legal party, and it took part in all six provisional governments.¹⁷

The armed militia of the Estado Novo (“New State”), created in 1936 in the image of the fascist movements of Germany and Italy. It brought together the most radical right, watched the population through a network of informers and served as shock troops against the opposition.¹²

It was born of Decree-Law No. 27,058 of 30 September 1936,³ in the months when the Spanish Civil War was hardening the regime, and its targets were above all communists and anarchists.² As early as 1937 it replaced the army in the 28 May parade. In the last years of the regime it arrested demonstrators and raided opposition institutions; the commander who oversaw its dissolution spoke of information gathered on nearly a million people.¹

On 25 April, a force from the Cavalry Practical School occupied its general command, in Largo da Penha de França, at around 14:00.⁴ The Legion was abolished that same day by Decree-Law No. 171/74.³

The writers’ association founded in 1956, with Aquilino Ribeiro at the head of its board. It was dissolved by Salazar’s Government in May 1965, after awarding a prize to a writer imprisoned for his anti-colonialist positions.¹

It organised lecture series and literary prizes, such as the grand prizes for poetry, theatre, fiction and the essay; in 1962, many of its members signed a protest in solidarity with the students.¹² In 1965, the Grand Prize for Fiction went to Luuanda, by Luandino Vieira, then in prison; the five members of the jury, among them Fernanda Botelho, were interrogated at the PIDE, and three were detained.¹ On the night of 21 May 1965, its headquarters, on Rua da Escola Politécnica, was raided and wrecked by unknown persons backed by PIDE agents.¹

A women’s association for peace and for women’s rights, formally established in Lisbon on 10 November 1935, on the eve of the Second World War, and dissolved by the regime in 1952.¹²

It had its headquarters on Rua do Loreto and later on Rua Latino Coelho.¹ Maria Lamas agreed to become its president in 1938.³ It brought together anti-fascist women such as Isabel Aboim Inglez, Manuela Porto and Maria Alda Nogueira, who would later found the Democratic Women’s Movement.² During the war, one of its members, Stella Piteira Santos, helped Jewish refugees to reach Lisbon and find somewhere to live.⁴

It was dissolved on 21 March 1952 by order of the Minister of the Interior, five years after the closure of the National Council of Portuguese Women.¹

The organisation through which the Estado Novo (“New State”) regimented children and young people, from 1936 onwards. Boys and girls, even those who did not go to school, did physical exercise there in a militaristic spirit and learned discipline and obedience to hierarchy.¹

It was born of Law No. 1941 of 11 April 1936, and was instituted by a decree-law in May of that year; girls had their own organisation, the Women’s Portuguese Youth (Mocidade Portuguesa Feminina, MPF).²³ It was, in the words of the Commemorative Commission for the 50th Anniversary, the regime’s “ideological arm” among young people: in 1956 the Government wanted to hand it the organisation of university students, but backed down in the face of protest from the student associations.⁴

The Portuguese Youth and the Women’s Portuguese Youth were abolished on 25 April 1974 by Decree-Law No. 171/74.³

The government that ran the country in the months after the revolution of 5 October 1910, presided over by Teófilo Braga. It was this government that, by a decree with the force of law, introduced divorce, on 3 November 1910.¹²

It was to this government that the republican women of the Republican League of Portuguese Women addressed their first petitions — that of October 1910 and that of February 1911 — asking for the reform of the Civil Code, divorce and votes for women.¹ Not to be confused with the provisional governments of 1974 to 1976, after 25 April.

The six governments that ran the country after the revolution, from May 1974 until the first constitutional government, in 1976. The first, under Adelino da Palma Carlos, was sworn in on 16 May 1974; four were headed by Vasco Gonçalves, and the last by Pinheiro de Azevedo.¹²³

Palma Carlos resigned in July 1974, claiming he could not govern under the weight of the MFA. Vasco Gonçalves, “a man of the MFA”, headed the Second to the Fifth Governments, until he was removed on 30 August 1975.¹² Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo, a secretary of state in the First, was Minister of Social Affairs in the Second and the Third.⁴ In July 1975, the PS and the PPD left the Fourth Government; the Sixth, under Admiral Pinheiro de Azevedo, was sworn in on 19 September, with the PS, the PPD and the PCP; during the siege of São Bento, in November, the prime minister was held captive in his official residence.²⁵ Not to be confused with the Provisional Government of the Republic, of 1910–1911.

The police force of the cities, which has had this name since 1927. Under the Estado Novo (“New State”) it was, in the words of its own history project, “a decisive element in the repressive machine” of the regime.¹²

The dictatorship militarised it and gave it modern weapons; as the opposition, social unrest and the student movement grew, the police resorted more and more to repression and violence.² Its stations also served the political police: until 1938, it was in them that prisoners were held incommunicado, and the cells of the 1st Station, in the Lisbon Civil Government building, took in many prisoners on the eve of political trials.³

It was not until 1972 that it opened its first course for women police officers.² After 1974, its command was gradually demilitarised and police officers gained union rights.¹

The radio station linked to the Portuguese Communist Party that broadcast to Portugal from Bucharest, in Romania, for twelve years, from 12 March 1962. It gave news of the struggle against the regime, interviewed opponents and broadcast appeals from workers in the factories and from women in the neighbourhoods.¹

Maria Alda Nogueira worked for it after going back underground, in 1970.² In 1971, the station reported from the regions of Guinea liberated by the PAIGC.³ Together with Rádio Voz da Liberdade (Voice of Freedom Radio), which broadcast from Algiers, it brought to Portugal opposition songs that became revolutionary anthems.⁴

The radio station of the Patriotic Front for National Liberation, which broadcast from Algiers to Portugal during the dictatorship. It opened with the words: “Friends, companions and comrades, this is Rádio Voz da Liberdade speaking, on behalf of the Patriotic Front for National Liberation” (Amigos, companheiros e camaradas, daqui fala a Rádio Voz da Liberdade, em nome da Frente Patriótica de Libertação Nacional).¹

The voice was that of Stella Piteira Santos, in exile in Algeria after being arrested and tortured by the PIDE.¹ After the death of Humberto Delgado, the poet Manuel Alegre, in exile in Algiers since 1964, was the station’s main driving force and announcer.² In 1966 it interviewed Amílcar Cabral, the PAIGC leader.³

The association of republican and feminist women founded in 1909 by Ana de Castro Osório, with its headquarters on the second floor of No. 6 Rua dos Castelinhos, in Lisbon.¹

Its members included, among other women, Carolina Beatriz Ângelo and Adelaide Cabete. It supported votes for women, but put most weight on the revision of the Civil Code — divorce, the protection of children, the management of the couple’s property.² It was the League that decided that women who were heads of household should apply to be entered on the electoral rolls; Carolina Beatriz Ângelo, a widow with a daughter to support, won registration in court and voted on 28 May 1911.³

The division over which women should vote led, in May 1911, to the split from which the Feminist Propaganda Association was born. In July 1912 the League delivered a petition for votes for women to the Senate; Senator João de Freitas replied that it represented “only a few hundred women”.³

The name given to the revolts and conspiracies with which republicans tried to overthrow the Military Dictatorship, above all between 1927 and 1931. They wanted to “revirar” (turn around) the situation and return to the democratic Republic.¹²

The Navy, the GNR, the Fiscal Guard and other republican sectors rose against the dictatorship. The first major revolt was that of February 1927, in Porto and Lisbon; that of 26 August 1931, in Lisbon, was one of the last. They all failed, and the regime responded with purges in the armed forces and the GNR.² The rebels were imprisoned and deported to Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea and Timor.³⁴

After the defeat of 1927, the leading republicans went into exile and formed in Paris the League for the Defence of the Republic, the “Paris League”.⁵

An armed-struggle organisation against the dictatorship and the colonial war, born of a split in the PCP in 1970 over armed struggle, led by Isabel do Carmo and Carlos Antunes.¹

Its first armed action was on 7 November 1971: a bomb at the NATO base at Fonte da Telha.¹ On 11 July 1972 they destroyed fifteen Army lorries bound for the war; days later, in protest at the re-election of Américo Tomás, they let loose pigs dressed as admirals in the Rossio and in Alcântara.² In November 1973 the DGS opened proceedings at Caxias against people linked to the Brigades; Maria da Conceição Moita, arrested in that case, was tortured.³

After 25 April, the Brigades appear linked to the Revolutionary Party of the Proletariat, as the PRP/BR.⁴

The means of keeping an opponent in prison after the sentence they had been given had been served: as long as they were considered “dangerous”, the internment could be renewed again and again.¹

Originally intended for the mentally ill, alcoholics and vagrants, in 1945 they began to be applied to political prisoners, above all communists. In 1947 the PIDE gained the power to impose them, and the Government the power to assign a compulsory place of residence or to expel people from the country, without proceedings or trial. From 1956, internment ran from six months to three years, extendable for successive periods of three years.¹ The Bar Association protested against these “indeterminate and limitless” sentences.²

Men nearly always served them in Peniche Fortress, women in Caxias.³ In November 1972, by then under Marcelo Caetano, the internment of political prisoners under security measures ended in metropolitan Portugal, but not in the colonies.¹

The torture methods most used by the political police in interrogations, besides beatings: preventing prisoners from sleeping, for days and nights on end, and forcing them to stand, for hours at a time — the “estátua” (statue).¹²

Squads of agents took turns every four hours around each prisoner. To keep them from falling asleep they used shouting, blows and noise, sometimes recordings of the voices of comrades and relatives.¹³ On its own, sleep torture was slow to take effect; the “statue” sped it up, with such violence that the doctors working for the PIDE would even warn the interrogators of the danger of death.² From 1971, the DGS moved its interrogations to the South Redoubt at Caxias, in rooms equipped for recording and for piping in sound.⁴

Memória Comum stresses the “class character” of the torture: beatings were above all for workers and peasants, sleep deprivation and the “statue” for prisoners from intellectual backgrounds — a rule the police forgot when they were in a hurry.¹ The student Aurora Rodrigues, arrested in May 1973, suffered the “statue” and sixteen consecutive days of sleep torture, and did not talk.⁵

The party of Christian Democratic inspiration founded by Diogo Freitas do Amaral, Adelino Amaro da Costa, Basílio Horta and Xavier Pintado, among others. It was the only party to vote against the 1976 Constitution.¹²

It signed both pacts with the MFA — the first paved the way for the elections to the Constituent Assembly, in which it won 7.6% of the vote — but did not join the provisional governments.¹³ Registered as a party in January 1975, it is now called CDS – People’s Party (CDS-PP).⁴

The party founded in exile, in what was then West Germany, on 19 April 1973, by Mário Soares and other socialists of the opposition. It grew out of Portuguese Socialist Action, created in Geneva in 1964.¹

Maria Barroso was the only woman present at its founding.² After 25 April, the PS was in five of the six provisional governments: it left the Fourth in July 1975.⁶⁷ In 1975 it was at the centre of the “República case”: the workers of the newspaper removed its management, which they accused of being a mouthpiece for the PS.³ In the Hot Summer, the party gathered a crowd at the Fonte Luminosa against the government of Vasco Gonçalves.⁴ In July 1976, Mário Soares formed the First Constitutional Government.⁵

The court created in 1932 to try political crimes, with two officers appointed by the Government and a judge advocate. In 1945 it gave way to the Plenary Court.¹

It was born of the decree of 5 December 1932, which punished so-called “crimes of rebellion” with banishment to a penal colony. There was one in Lisbon and another in Porto, but the Porto court was abolished the very next year.¹² In Lisbon, trials were often held in the Civil Government building, in whose cells the prisoners waited.³ It was replaced by the Plenary Courts in October 1945, after the Allied victory.²

The women who fought for the right to vote, or suffrage. In Portugal, votes for women were already being demanded before the Republic and were much debated after 1910; but full equality in voting only came after 25 April 1974.¹

The suffragists of the Republican League of Portuguese Women and of the Feminist Propaganda Association agreed on the vote, but not on who should have it: Ana de Castro Osório and Carolina Beatriz Ângelo wanted it for women with education and a profession, while Maria Veleda would only accept it without restrictions.¹ Carolina Beatriz Ângelo, a widow and head of household, won the right in the courts to be registered and voted on 28 May 1911, the first woman to do so in Portugal; the Electoral Code of 1913 closed the door, reserving the vote for men.¹

From 1931, the dictatorship gave a restricted vote to women with secondary or higher education.¹ Only in November 1974 did the electoral law make all citizens “of both sexes” over 18 voters.²

The concentration camp that the dictatorship opened in 1936 on the island of Santiago, in Cape Verde, for the political prisoners it wanted to send far away. It became known as the “Camp of Slow Death” (Campo da morte lenta).¹

It was created by a decree of 23 April 1936, and the first prisoners arrived on 29 October that year — communists, anarchists and republicans, many of them from the general strike of 18 January 1934 and the sailors’ revolt.¹² Ill-treatment, forced labour, scarce food and the lack of medical care killed more than thirty prisoners there.¹² The worst punishment was the “frigideira” (frying pan), a windowless concrete structure exposed to the sun, where the temperature inside reached 50 degrees.² The camp closed in 1954.²

During the colonial war it was reopened, under the name Chão Bom Labour Camp, for prisoners from the liberation movements of Angola, Guinea and Cape Verde.² The last prisoners were released on 1 May 1974.³

Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Teresa Horta and Maria Velho da Costa, the writers who jointly wrote Novas Cartas Portuguesas (New Portuguese Letters, 1972) — a book that denounced the condition of women, the colonial war and the dictatorship’s justice, and that took them to court.¹

The book came out in April 1972 from Estúdios Cor, where Natália Correia, the literary director, refused to cut it. Censorship withdrew it three days later, and the authors and the publisher were charged over a book of “irremediably pornographic content, offensive to public morals”. The three never revealed who had written each text.¹ The trial began on 25 October 1973 in the Boa-Hora criminal court, behind closed doors.²

Abroad, the case became the “first international feminist cause”, with Simone de Beauvoir, Marguerite Duras and Doris Lessing in the solidarity campaign.¹ On 7 May 1974, after 25 April, the court declared that the book was neither immoral nor pornographic: the Three Marias were acquitted.³

Living in hiding from the political police, under false names and at secret addresses, in order to carry on the fight against the dictatorship. It was the life of thousands of women and men, above all PCP activists.¹²

In the PCP, the activists who lived this way were the “funcionários clandestinos” (underground full-time party workers).²³ Maria Lourença Cabecinha became a full-time PCP worker in 1952 and went underground with her husband and her three-month-old son, whom she had to hand over to his grandparents when he was three.⁴ The “clandestine houses” looked like ordinary homes, but they were printing works, workshops for forging documents and meeting places.¹ The home of José Dias Coelho and Margarida Tengarrinha housed the PCP office that forged identity cards, driving licences and passports.⁵

Children grew up in hiding. “Who can imagine that, beside the cases of ‘type’, children and young people have been growing up who have almost never played with other children and young people?” asked Joaquim Gomes in a report to the PCP congress of 1965.⁶ When the PIDE discovered a house, it arrested everyone: that is how, in March 1949, it caught Álvaro Cunhal and Sofia Ferreira, who were posing as a couple in a house in Luso, and Militão Ribeiro, who had been hiding there.²

A feminist movement founded in May 1974, just after the revolution, to “fight for the right to equality without discrimination on grounds of sex”.¹

It was born on the night of 7 May 1974, the day of the acquittal of the Three Marias, at a meeting in the home of Maria Isabel Barreno.² Its founders also included Maria Teresa Horta and Madalena Barbosa.²¹ The historian Manuela Tavares considers it the first feminist association to put abortion, sexualities and violence against women on the political agenda.³

On 13 January 1975, a symbolic action by the MLM in Parque Eduardo VII — burning “symbols of oppression”, from law codes to pornographic magazines — was attacked by a crowd of men who insulted, groped and assaulted the women.²