Cecília Supico Pinto

The wife of Luís Supico Pinto, a former minister of Salazar’s, she created the National Women’s Movement after the shock caused by the seizure of the liner Santa Maria. The movement was officially born on 28 April 1961, Salazar’s birthday, and had the government’s support.¹

The movement organised women in support of the colonial war in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea. One of its first initiatives was the “war godmothers” (madrinhas de guerra), who gave moral and material support to soldiers and their families. In July 1961 the Deputy Under-Secretary of State for National Defence deemed it the right body to supply and distribute the military aerogrammes: between 1961 and 1974, the movement issued more than 300 million of them. Cecília Supico Pinto also edited Guerrilha, a monthly magazine for soldiers.¹

The movement never called for changes in women’s place in Portuguese society; it wanted to show that the regime already guaranteed them the rights they needed. It lasted until 1974.¹

Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen drew on her for the short story “Retrato de Mónica” (Portrait of Mónica), which she published in 1962 in Contos Exemplares (Exemplary Tales).³⁴ Cecília Supico Pinto died in 2011.²