Botequim

In the 1950s and 1960s, the home of Natália Correia hosted one of the liveliest salons in Lisbon, with people from the arts, letters and the opposition. In 1971, Natália opened this bar on the ground floor of the Vila Sousa — with Isabel Meyrelles, Júlia Marenha and Helena Roseta, according to the Aljube Museum and the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of NOVA University (NOVA FCSH); in partnership with Isabel Meyrelles, according to the Imprensa Nacional — and the gatherings moved here.¹²⁵ It was a place of literary gatherings and café-concerts — Natália sang here for years³ — and, in the words of a NOVA FCSH guide, of free discussion of “literature, politics and feminism”.⁴

Natália had already been convicted over the Antologia de Poesia Portuguesa Erótica e Satírica (Anthology of Portuguese Erotic and Satirical Poetry). She was running the publishing house Estúdios Cor when it published the Novas Cartas Portuguesas (New Portuguese Letters) in 1972, and she was named a defendant as the editor responsible, until the managing director, Romeu de Melo, took responsibility.⁵

On the night of 24 to 25 April 1974 she was here, and here she celebrated the fall of the dictatorship, with the poet André Coyné and the writer Dominique de Roux.⁵

Natália Correia died in the early hours of 16 March 1993, at home, after coming back from the Botequim. Four months later, the City Council named a street in Graça after her; in that street’s children’s playground there has been a bust of her since 2023.⁶⁷ The bar closed after her death and reopened in 2010, with other owners.²