Women of the resistance
Maria Lourença Cabecinha
Maria Lourença Calção Cabecinha
- Born
- 17 March 1933, São Romão, Montemor-o-Novo
- Died
- 7 January 2022
A farm worker from the Alentejo and an underground full-time PCP worker, she was arrested in 1964. In Caxias she endured gruelling interrogations and psychological torture, and studied with other women prisoners, among them Alda Nogueira.
She was born on 17 March 1933 in São Romão, Montemor-o-Novo, the daughter of farm workers. She started working in the fields at 12 and joined the PCP in 1948, at 15.1 In 1952 she became a full-time party worker and went to live underground with her husband, António Gervásio, and their three-month-old son, who at the age of three was handed over to his grandparents.1
When her husband was arrested again, in 1963, she stayed underground. She was arrested in July 1964.1 In Caxias Fort she was subjected to gruelling interrogations, psychological torture, lack of medical care and discrimination, “but never tortured”.1 In prison she studied Portuguese and French with Fernanda Paiva Tomás, Mathematics and Geography with Alda Nogueira, and hygiene, health and mother-and-child care with Julieta Gandra.1
In January 1965 she was sentenced to two years and ten months of major imprisonment and to security measures, which she began serving in 1967. Released in September 1969, she went back underground in July 1970 and stayed there until 28 May 1974.1 She died in 2022.2
From the archives
A documentary edited by Sofia Gomes for the exhibition “Women and Resistance – New Portuguese Letters and other struggles” (“Mulheres e Resistência – Novas Cartas Portuguesas e outras lutas”), with excerpts from the testimonies the Aljube Museum has been recording since 2015: sixteen women talk about resistance to the dictatorship and the struggle for women’s rights. This version has Portuguese Sign Language (LGP) interpretation; the version without LGP is on the same channel (XmUbNbnHgKg, 2022).
Original page Licença padrão do YouTube — embed permitido pelo canal oficial do Museu do Aljube
Museu do Aljube Resistência e Liberdade, on YouTube. The player only connects to that site when you press “Watch”.
Three rural women — Eulália Miranda, Hermínia Vicente and Maria Lourença Cabecinha — in a joint testimony recorded by the Aljube Museum on 19 October 2016. According to the museum’s keywords, they talk about the struggle for the 8-hour working day, life underground in the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP), the children of those living underground, imprisonment and interrogation in Caxias.
Original page Licença padrão do YouTube — embed permitido pelo canal oficial do Museu do Aljube
Museu do Aljube Resistência e Liberdade, on YouTube. The player only connects to that site when you press “Watch”.
On the walks
Places
In the timeline
They crossed paths with her
Maria Alda Nogueira
1923–1998
An underground communist activist, she was arrested in 1959 and sentenced to eight years of major imprisonment plus security measures, which she served in Caxias. A deputy from the Constituent Assembly onwards, she chaired the Parliamentary Committee on the Status of Women from 1983 to 1985.
Aida Magro
1918–2011
A chemical engineer and underground PCP activist, she was in charge of the Eastern Zone of the Lisbon Local Committee, “the most important working-class zone of the capital”. Arrested by the PIDE in 1957, she was, in Caxias, one of the authors of the letters of the Caxias Manifesto.
Albina Fernandes
1928–1970
A communist activist arrested in 1961 with her two small children, whom she kept with her in Caxias. She spent six years and seven months in prison and took her own life in 1970, her nervous system weakened by the years in jail.
Alda do Espírito Santo
1926–2010
A poet from São Tomé whose Lisbon home, on Rua Actor Vale, housed the Centre for African Studies from 1951. Arrested in 1965 and imprisoned in Caxias, she later wrote the words of the anthem of São Tomé and Príncipe.
António Tereso
A mechanic imprisoned in Caxias, he posed for months as a “rachado” (turncoat), at the PCP’s request, to prepare the escape of 4 December 1961, and it was with him at the wheel of Salazar’s armoured car that eight prisoners got out of the fort.
Aurora Rodrigues
b. 1952
A law student, she witnessed the murder of Ribeiro Santos in 1972. Arrested in 1973, she was one of the women students most savagely tortured by the political police in Caxias, and she never talked.
Notes on the sources1
- The date of death, 7 January 2022, is given only by Wikidata.
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Sources
- 1Maria Lourença Cabecinha (testemunho e biografia). Museu do Aljube Resistência e Liberdade — consulted on 2 October 2026
- 2Consulta SPARQL de identificadores e datas (P569/P570) de pessoas. Wikidata Query Service — consulted on 2 October 2026