Editorial offices of the newspaper “A Capital” (Rua do Norte, 3)

A Capital, a republican evening daily, was published from 1910 to 1938.⁵ It was founded by Manuel Guimarães, who brought with him Virgínia Quaresma, one of the first women to graduate from the Curso Superior de Letras and the first woman to work as a journalist in Portugal. The editorial offices were here, at no. 3 Rua do Norte, the corner building on Praça de Luís de Camões, and Virgínia rented a flat just opposite.¹

Virgínia made her name in political reporting.¹ In February 1911, A Capital argued that she should be appointed to the diplomatic service, then closed to women; in August, it reported that she was to go on an official assignment to study schools for girls in France, Italy, Switzerland and Germany.⁴ On 26 August, in an interview with the paper, she said that she loved the profession, that her male colleagues had always made her welcome and that she wanted to see other women earning their living as journalists.¹

The paper followed the suffragist cause closely. On 29 April 1911 it reproduced the ruling ordering that Carolina Beatriz Ângelo be entered on the electoral roll, and called it “a victory for national feminism”.² On 28 May, election day, it told how she had voted at the Clube Estefânia: a voter’s protest, the invoking of Article 64 of the electoral law, the “It’s me!” (Sou eu!) at the second roll call and the applause from some of those present.³