The figures of April

The stops

1. 1

   Stop 1: 1949 — a wedding in prison

   Rua de Augusto Rosa, 42, 1100-059 Lisboa

   Today: Aljube Museum – Resistance and Freedom

   

   On 31 January 1948, the political police arrested the entire central committee of the Movement of Democratic Unity (MUD) and brought it to the Aljube. Mário Soares, aged 23, was put in the same cell as his father, João Lopes Soares, who had been in prison since the revolt of 10 April 1947.⁴ A year later he was arrested again, and it was here, on 22 February 1949, that he married Maria Barroso — by proxy, because he was in prison. One of the witnesses, Manuel Mendes, was also in custody.²

   Maria Barroso knew what the dictatorship’s prisons were like: her father, an Army officer, had been arrested and deported for conspiring against the Military Dictatorship.¹ Soares would be arrested twelve times, deported to São Tomé in 1968 and forced into exile in France from 1970.³ In 1961 he spent six months between the Aljube and Caxias, and at the beginning of 1962, imprisoned here once more, he wrote her a poem.⁴² He only returned from exile after 25 April — with her, on the train that arrived at Santa Apolónia on 28 April 1974.⁴

   Álvaro Cunhal knew this prison too: he was brought here the first time he was arrested, in 1937, aged 23.⁵⁶ In 1941, by then free, he was a study supervisor at the Colégio Moderno, at the invitation of Soares’s father, and spent time with the family and with the son, who would become his political adversary.⁵

   What you can see today

   The building itself is the museum. The main door of the former prison is closed, but kept as a testimony of the prison.

   • 22 Feb 1949Mário Soares and Maria Barroso marry by proxy in the Aljube prison
   • 28 Apr 1974Mário Soares chega do exílio a Santa Apolónia

   Mulheres e Resistência — documentário (versão com Língua Gestual Portuguesa)Museu do Aljube Resistência e Liberdade · 16 October 2025 · 01:33:09

   RTP Arquivos · Video · broadcast on 31 August 1992 · 31 minEm Nome dos Amanhãs que Cantam – Parte IA programme by Diana Andringa on the political prisoners of the Estado Novo (“New State”), with footage of the Aljube, the PIDE headquarters, Caxias, Peniche and Tarrafal. Former prisoners describe their imprisonment, a former PIDE/DGS inspector justifies the police, and Fernando Rosas and Luandino Vieira speak.Open in the archive
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   To stop 2720 m · 10 min on footDirections

2. 2

   Stop 2: 1950 — Cunhal and Sofia Ferreira in the dock

   Largo da Boa-Hora / Rua Nova do Almada, Chiado, 1249-099 Lisboa (OpenStreetMap: «Convento da Boa Hora», Largo da Boa-Hora, 15)

   Today: Former court, closed since 2009

   

   In May 1950, Álvaro Cunhal and Sofia Ferreira sat here in the dock of the Plenary Court.⁸ They had been arrested together fourteen months earlier, in a clandestine house in Luso where they passed themselves off as a couple; the third prisoner, Militão Ribeiro, had died in prison in January, on hunger strike.⁷ Cunhal had spent all that time incommunicado, in a cell with no natural light where the electric light was never switched off, and he prepared his defence in that isolation.⁵ On 2 May, at the very start of the trial, he called it “a new form of torture”, said that Sofia and Militão had also refused to answer the police, and ended with an accusation: “if anyone is to be tried for such crimes, then let the fascists sit in the dock” (se alguém deve ser julgado por tais crimes, então que se sentem os fascistas no banco dos réus).⁸

   Sofia Ferreira, who had spent six months in isolation, five of them without a single book or newspaper, was sentenced on 9 May to three years in prison.⁹ Cunhal remained in prison for eleven years in a row, eight of them in isolation. In the Lisbon Penitentiary he translated Shakespeare’s King Lear, until he was taken to Peniche, from where he escaped in 1960; the drawings he made in prison were later published as a book, Desenhos da Prisão (Prison Drawings).⁵

   Mário Soares also knew the door of this court: on 15 February 1949 he was arrested on his way here, where the central committee of the MUD Juvenil (Youth Movement of Democratic Unity) was to be tried.⁴

   What you can see today

   No confirmed marker of the political trials. The Memorial to Political Prisoners and the Politically Persecuted approved for the square in 2021 had not been built by August 2025.

   • 2 May 1950Álvaro Cunhal and Sofia Ferreira tried by the Plenary Court
   • 25 Mar 1949The PIDE arrests Álvaro Cunhal, Militão Ribeiro and Sofia Ferreira
   • 2 Jan 1950Death of Militão Ribeiro in the Lisbon Penitentiary
   • 3 Jan 1960The Peniche escape: Álvaro Cunhal and nine other leaders break out

   Vidas Prisionáveis — Diana Andringa (testemunho completo)Museu do Aljube Resistência e Liberdade · 4 February 2021 · 01:14:49

   Hemeroteca Municipal de Lisboa · Document · 25 October 1973«Novas Cartas Portuguesas» – Julgamento secretoA news item from the “Diário de Lisboa”: the judge declared closed the hearing in the trial of the authors and the publisher of “Novas Cartas Portuguesas” (“New Portuguese Letters”), which had begun that day at the Boa-Hora. Journalists and observers from the feminist movement and from PEN Club had to leave the courtroom.Open in the archive
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   To stop 3700 m · 10 min on footDirections

3. 3

   Stop 3: 1948 — the actress removed from the stage

   Praça D. Pedro IV, 1, 1100-201 Lisboa

   Today: D. Maria II National Theatre

   

   Maria Barroso completed the Dramatic Art course at the National Conservatory in 1943, with the highest mark of her year, and the following year made her debut on this stage, with the company of Amélia Rey Colaço and Robles Monteiro, which had run the National Theatre since 1929.²¹⁰ Amélia Rey Colaço cast her as Maria de Noronha in Frei Luís de Sousa, alongside Palmira Bastos; in 1947 she played the lead in José Régio’s Benilde ou a Virgem Mãe (Benilde, or the Virgin Mother), and then Adela in García Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba.¹¹²

   Off stage, she recited the poets of the opposition at recitals all over the country, and the political police called her in for questioning several times.¹² In 1948, around the time of the third arrest of Mário Soares, whom she had met at the Faculty of Letters, an order arrived “coming from the police and the Ministry of Education”: she could no longer work at the D. Maria II. “It was heartbreaking. I felt it was an injustice,” she told her biographer Leonor Xavier. Amélia Rey Colaço saw it as a blow that struck at the heart of the theatre.¹¹

   She acted again in other theatres — she did Sophocles’ Antigone in 1965 — and in 1966 the regime banned Cocteau’s monologue The Human Voice, which she had taken to the São Luiz: it was the last time she acted on stage. In 1959 she had also been refused a licence to teach in private schools; she went on to run the Colégio Moderno, founded by her father-in-law, for decades.¹²

   • 1948Maria Barroso removed from the Teatro Nacional D. Maria II
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   To stop 4380 m · 5 min on footDirections

4. 4

   Stop 4: 1974 — the captain who chose to negotiate

   Largo do Carmo, Lisboa

   Today: GNR General Command and the National Republican Guard Museum

   

   Salgueiro Maia’s column arrived here at around 12:30 on 25 April 1974, after climbing up from the Rossio along Rua do Carmo.¹² It was along that way, between the Rossio and the Chiado, that Celeste Caeiro gave a soldier a carnation that morning.¹³ The day, hour by hour, is told in the route The first day; here, what matters is the man. He was 29, the son of a railwayman whose job took him, as a child, from Coruche to Tomar, Pombal and Leiria. He served two tours of duty in the colonial war, in Mozambique and in Guinea, where in May 1973, with his company already in Bissau waiting to go home, he was sent to relieve the besieged garrison of Guidaje. In 1969 he had enrolled at the Higher Institute of Social Sciences and Overseas Policy: “he wanted to understand the reason for what he was doing”, writes Carlos de Matos Gomes.¹⁴

   In front of the barracks, with the President of the Council (head of government) inside and the crowd all around, he chose to “run the risk of parleying, of negotiating, of exposing himself” rather than attack. He received Marcelo Caetano’s surrender, witnessed the handover of power to General Spínola and made sure that the defeated left safely. He won, sums up the Commemorative Commission for the 50th Anniversary, “without causing a single death, without provoking combat, respecting the defeated”.¹⁴

   He did not accept political office after 25 April.¹⁵ On 11 March and on 25 November 1975, his weight lay more in what he did not do than in what he did; in November 1976 he was taken out of the Cavalry Practical School and put on bureaucratic duties and, in March 1977, sent to the Azores. He died in 1992, aged 47.¹⁴

   What you can see today

   One of the “Lugares de Abril” (Places of April) plaques, by Lisbon City Council and the 25 April Association, marks the square.²⁵

   • 25 Apr 1974A coluna da EPC sobe ao Carmo e cerca o quartel da GNR
   • 25 Apr 1974Celeste Caeiro e os cravos
   • 25 Apr 1974Spínola no Carmo; Caetano sai na chaimite «Bula»
   • 11 Mar 1975Golpe spinolista de 11 de Março falha
   • 25 Nov 197525 de Novembro: fim do período revolucionário

   25 placas que contam a história da RevoluçãoCâmara Municipal de Lisboa · 27 March 2024 · 00:40

   RTP Arquivos · Video · broadcast on 25 April 1974 · 13 minAcontecimentos no Largo do CarmoFialho Gouveia reports from the besieged Largo do Carmo: Lieutenant Alfredo Assunção receives Feytor Pinto and Nuno Távora, the Chaimite armoured car “Bula” arrives, Salgueiro Maia waits for Spínola, and Francisco Sousa Tavares calls for calm through a megaphone. At the end, the Chaimite takes away Marcelo Caetano and two ministers.Open in the archive
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   To stop 5840 m · 15 min on footDirections

5. 5

   Stop 5: 1947–1976 — three women and a newspaper

   Rua de O Século, 63, 1200-433 Lisboa

   Today: Palácio Lançada, Rua de O Século

   

   Maria Lamas worked for more than twenty years at O Século (The Century), in charge of the magazine Modas e Bordados (Fashions and Embroidery). In 1947, forced to choose between the magazine and the National Council of Portuguese Women, which she chaired, she chose the Council — which the police closed down that year — and was left without a livelihood.¹⁷¹⁶ Redress came in 1975: Maria Antónia Fiadeiro, the magazine’s managing editor, invited her to be honorary editor and dedicated a special issue to her; Modas e Bordados was renamed Mulher – Modas e Bordados (Woman – Fashions and Embroidery) and took on a feminist editorial line.¹⁶¹⁷ The beginning of this story is told in the route Forbidden words.

   The following year, on 20 April 1976, the paper launched a daily political supplement, O Século — Hoje (O Século — Today), edited by Natália Correia. The first issue carried the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as its editorial; the issue of 24 April, the eve of elections, came out with “Vetted by the Reflection Commission” (Visado pela Comissão de Reflexão) in red on the front page, as in the days of censorship, when newspapers carried “This issue has been vetted by the Censorship Commission” (Este número foi visado pela Comissão de Censura). On 29 April, on a proposal from President Costa Gomes, the Council of the Revolution shut the supplement down for publishing articles “offensive and slanderous towards the Council of the Revolution and the Armed Forces”. The ninth and last issue came out the following day.¹⁸

   • 28 Jun 1947The police close down the National Council of Portuguese Women
   • 1975Maria Lamas volta à «Modas e Bordados», como diretora honorária
   • 29 Apr 1976O Conselho da Revolução extingue «O Século — Hoje», de Natália Correia
   RTP Arquivos · Video · broadcast on 31 August 1974 · 50 minMaria LamasA portrait of Maria Lamas in the series “Nome Mulher” (Name: Woman), by Maria Antónia Palla and Antónia de Sousa, with interviews in Torres Novas and in the newsroom of “Modas e Bordados” (Fashions and Embroidery) at “O Século”, and footage of Caxias prison. She talks about presiding over the National Council of Portuguese Women and its closure, about prison and about what 25 April meant.Open in the archive
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   To stop 6860 m · 15 min on footDirections

6. 6

   Stop 6: From the regime’s chamber to the elected parliament

   Palácio de São Bento, Largo das Cortes, Lisboa

   Today: Assembly of the Republic

   

   Under the Estado Novo (“New State”), the Corporative Chamber sat in this palace, in the room that had been used by the Chamber of Peers and is today the Sala do Senado (Senate Room).¹⁹ From 1969 to 1974 Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo, a chemical engineer, sat there: she had refused to go on the list of deputies for the National Assembly, but agreed to be a member (procuradora) of the Chamber, and she signed opinions on press freedom, the model of economic development and amendments to the Constitution with a “dissenting vote”.¹⁷²⁰ Ten years after she first came here, she became the first woman to head a government in Portugal — and she is still the only one.¹⁷

   After 1975, the palace became the seat of an elected parliament. Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen chaired here the committee that drafted the preamble to the Constitution.²¹ Maria Barroso was a deputy from 1976 to 1983 and vice-chair of the parliamentary Education Committee.¹² Natália Correia was a deputy from 1979 to 1983 and from 1987 to 1991, and replied with a poem to the deputy who, in the first debate on abortion, in 1982, said that the sexual act was “so that one may see the birth of a child”.²²²³

   Álvaro Cunhal was elected a deputy to the Constituent Assembly in 1975 and to the Assembly of the Republic in the elections that followed, until 1987.²⁴ Mário Soares, a deputy in the Constituent Assembly and later prime minister of three governments, came back here on 9 March 1986 to be sworn in as President of the Republic: the first civilian elected to the office by direct universal suffrage.³⁴

   What you can see today

   Busts of two women deputies: Maria Alda Nogueira, in the cloister (CIG; sculptor António Trindade, according to Wikipedia), and Natália Correia (according to Wikipedia, the only two women deputies with a bust in the Assembly).

   • 1 Aug 1979Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo, primeira mulher primeira-ministra
   • 25 Apr 1975Eleição da Assembleia Constituinte: 20 deputadas
   • 2 Mar 1982Primeiro debate parlamentar sobre o aborto e o poema de Natália Correia

   As mulheres na Constituinte (Cápsula do Tempo)Assembleia da República · 15 December 2020 · 02:39

   RTP Arquivos · Video · broadcast on 2 June 1975 · 28 minAbertura solene da Assembleia ConstituinteThe opening session of the Constituent Assembly, at São Bento, opened by Henrique de Barros. President Costa Gomes reads a message to the deputies, who give him a standing ovation.Open in the archive
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