Streets of the women pioneers in Bairro de Caselas
In 1988, the numbered streets of Bairro de Caselas were given names, many of them those of women pioneers: Carolina Ângelo, the first woman to vote; Virgínia Quaresma, the first woman journalist; Aurora de Castro, the first woman notary; the writers Alice Pestana and Olga Morais Sarmento; the painter Sara Afonso.
Today: Rua Carolina Ângelo, Rua Virgínia Quaresma, Rua Aurora de Castro, Rua Alice Pestana, Rua Olga Morais Sarmento and othersThere is a marker at the siteApproximate location
Since 1950, the streets of Bairro de Caselas had had only numbers. At the request of the São Francisco Xavier Parish Council, the edict of 20 April 1988 gave them names.1 The Municipal Street Names Committee recalled that Caselas was a very old settlement and that the Diário de Notícias, through the pen of its editor Augusto de Castro, had already called for a tribute to the illustrious figures who were born or lived there, and proposed adding to the local figures “some leading names in the Arts and Letters”.4
Rua 1 went, 77 years after her death, to Carolina Beatriz Ângelo, who in 1911, at the Clube Estefânia, became the first woman to vote in Portugal.1 Rua 2 went to Leonor Pimentel, “the republican woman of Naples”; Rua 3 to Alice Pestana, a teacher and writer who championed women’s education in Portugal and in Spain.4 Rua 4 went to Virgínia Quaresma, the first woman to work as a journalist in Portugal, who wrote for A Capital.2
Rua 6, with the caption “Writer on public affairs/20th century” (Publicista/Séc. XX), went to Aurora de Castro, the first Portuguese woman notary, who at the First Feminist and Education Congress, in 1924, demanded full political equality and the right to vote for women.3 Rua 7 went to the writer Olga Morais Sarmento; and the street until then known as Rua da Cooperativa de Caselas, to the painter Sara Afonso.4 Sara Afonso was the first woman to take part in one of the gatherings at the café A Brasileira, in the Chiado.5
The streets of Bairro de Caselas are given numbers only.
20 April 1988
An edict gives the neighbourhood’s streets the names of women pioneers and of local figures.
Notes on the sources2
The captions on the signs of the other streets (only that of Rua Aurora de Castro is documented).
How many women’s names the 1988 edict gave: Lisbon’s street-naming office (Toponímia de Lisboa) says that, besides Carolina Ângelo, five of the remaining eleven names are women’s, but the list it publishes has six (Leonor Pimentel, Alice Pestana, Virgínia Quaresma, Aurora de Castro, Olga Morais Sarmento and Sara Afonso).
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