Streets of the republican feminists in the Quinta dos Condes de Carnide

In 1976, Maria de Lourdes Pais Guerreiro da Franca wrote to the City Council, with a petition of a few dozen signatures, asking for a street to be named after Maria Veleda. On 15 June, the Municipal Street Names Committee noted that the names of Ana de Castro Osório and Adelaide Cabete were “closely linked” to the work of Maria Veleda, founder of the Obra Maternal, and proposed all three for the still unnamed streets of the Quinta dos Condes de Carnide housing development, together with the writer Guiomar Torresão.¹ The edict of 19 June 1976 made this the first housing development in Lisbon with streets named exclusively after women.³

The streets became Rua Ana de Castro Osório (Rua B), Rua Adelaide Cabete (Impasse 1), Rua Maria Veleda (Impasses 3 and 4) and Rua Guiomar Torresão (Rua E). An edict of 31 January 1978 added Rua Maria Brown, Rua Públia Hortênsia de Castro, Rua Adelaide Félix and Rua Manuela Porto.² The captions contain errors: the committee’s proposal gave Adelaide Cabete the dates “1877 – 1935”, though she was born in 1867; Maria Veleda’s sign says “1871-1951”, though she died in 1955.¹²³

They were women of the turn from the 19th to the 20th century.¹ Ana de Castro Osório published As Mulheres Portuguesas (Portuguese Women), the first Portuguese feminist manifesto, in 1905, and in 1909 founded the Republican League of Portuguese Women.¹ Adelaide Cabete, a doctor, founded the National Council of Portuguese Women in 1914 and presided over it for more than twenty years.² Maria Veleda, a writer and teacher, chaired in 1907 the feminist group that gave evening classes to illiterate women, and in 1911 she presided over the League.³