Headquarters of the Portuguese Women’s Association for Peace

The Portuguese Women’s Association for Peace (AFPP) was formally established on 10 November 1935. The register of the Lisbon Civil Government, now in the archive of the Secretariat-General of the Ministry of Internal Administration, gives its headquarters as the second floor of no. 25 Rua Latino Coelho and, before that, the second floor of no. 4 Rua do Loreto.¹ Among its founders was the primary school teacher Maria dos Santos Machado, a communist activist who signed herself “Rubina” in the clandestine press.⁴

On the eve of the Second World War, the association brought together women who were fighting for peace and for women’s rights.³ Maria Lamas agreed to become its president in 1938.² Stella Piteira Santos was one of its first members, and during the war her German was put to use helping Jewish refugees, mostly from Germany, to reach Lisbon and find somewhere to live. Maria Alda Nogueira joined while still a student.⁴ Isabel Aboim Inglez, Manuela Porto, Francine Benoit, Virgínia Moura and Elina Guimarães were also active in the association.⁵³

On 21 March 1952, an order from the Minister of the Interior dissolved the association.¹ For the historian Virgínia Baptista, there was an “intercommunicability” between the AFPP and the National Council of Portuguese Women, closed down in 1947, and the association kept up its activity even after it had been dissolved.² The Democratic Women’s Movement, born in 1968, counts it as part of its own history.³