O Século — the newsroom of “Modas e Bordados”

The newspaper O Século (The Century), a daily founded by Magalhães Lima in 1880, moved in 1881 into the Palácio Lançada, on this street, which the republican city council renamed after the paper in November 1910.¹²

In 1908 Virgínia Quaresma joined the newsroom, where she rose to head of General News and Special Reports.³ Twenty years later, at the invitation of Ferreira de Castro, Maria Lamas took charge of the supplement Modas e Bordados (Fashions and Embroidery), written “from woman to woman”.⁴ In 1930, she organised at the newspaper the exhibition “Mulheres Portuguesas” (Portuguese Women), showing women’s work since the Renaissance, under the slogan “Let us be intelligently women” (Sejamos inteligentemente mulheres).⁵

In 1947, as president of the National Council of Portuguese Women, Maria Lamas was forced to choose between the magazine and the Council — and she left.⁶ After 25 April, the managing editor, Maria Antónia Fiadeiro, invited her to be honorary editor, and the magazine was renamed Mulher – Modas e Bordados (Woman – Fashions and Embroidery), with a feminist line. Before the revolution, Maria Antónia Palla had been the first woman to join the newsroom of the O Século company.⁶ In April 1976, Natália Correia edited O Século — Hoje (O Século — Today), the newspaper’s daily political supplement, which the Council of the Revolution shut down after its ninth issue.¹¹