Revolutiongeneral secretary of the Socialist PartyPrime Minister of the First Constitutional Government (1976)
Born
7 December 1924, Lisbon
Died
7 January 2017, Lisbon
General secretary of the PS, he returned from exile on 28 April 1974 and was greeted by a crowd at Santa Apolónia. In 1975 he took on the PCP in the República affair and at the Fonte Luminosa rally; in 1976 he headed the First Constitutional Government.
He was born in Lisbon in 1924.7 In 1974 he was living in exile in France and was general secretary of the Socialist Party (PS), founded the year before.1 On 25 April he was in Bonn, at the invitation of Willy Brandt, and he left for Paris when the SPD told him that a military movement had broken out in Portugal.2
In May 1975, in the affair of the newspaper República, the PS called a demonstration for the 22nd, accusing the PCP of being behind the crisis. Soares then said through the megaphone: “25 April was made to put an end to a dictatorship, not to come and impose another one on us”.4 On 19 July, at the Fonte Luminosa rally, he directly attacked the PCP, the Prime Minister, Vasco Gonçalves, and the Intersindical.5
A communist leader, he was arrested in 1949 and escaped from Peniche Fortress in 1960. General secretary of the PCP, he returned from exile on 30 April 1974 and addressed the crowd at the airport from the top of a Chaimite armoured car.
An actress who recited poetry against the regime, she was an opposition candidate in 1969 and the only woman to speak at the opening of the Aveiro Congress, in 1973. She was at the founding of the Socialist Party and, on 28 April 1974, accompanied Mário Soares on the train that brought him back from exile to Santa Apolónia.
A general and author of “Portugal e o Futuro” (Portugal and the Future), he received Marcelo Caetano’s surrender at the Carmo Barracks, presided over the National Salvation Junta and was President of the Republic until he resigned, on 30 September 1974. On 11 March 1975 he fled to Spain.
An engineer and progressive Catholic, from 1970 she prepared what would become the Commission on the Status of Women, was Minister of Social Affairs in 1974–1975 and the only woman to have headed a government in Portugal (1979–1980).
The “Fearless General” (general sem medo): a man of the regime who went over to the opposition, he stood for the Presidency in 1958, answered “Obviously, I’ll sack him!” (Obviamente, demito-o!) when asked what he would do with Salazar, and drew crowds. The PIDE murdered him in 1965.
A journalist and writer, she edited “Modas e Bordados” (Fashions and Embroidery), chaired the National Council of Portuguese Women until the regime closed it down in 1947, and responded with “As Mulheres do Meu País” (The Women of My Country). She was arrested several times and lived in exile in Paris.
Notes on the sources1
The days of birth (7 December 1924) and death (7 January 2017) come only from Wikidata.
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