Eurico Figueiredo

At 16 he joined the MUD Juvenil (Youth Movement of Democratic Unity) and at 18 the PCP, and he took part in Humberto Delgado’s presidential campaign.³ As chairman of the Pro-Association Committee of the Lisbon Medical Students, he was one of the figures of the 1962 academic crisis.¹ It was at his suggestion that a general assembly approved a new form of protest: the hunger strike, which 81 students began on 9 May in the Cidade Universitária canteen.²¹⁴

Nominated as secretary-general of the RIA (Inter-Association Meetings), he never took office, because he had been expelled from the University of Lisbon. On 28 May 1962 he was arrested and taken to the Aljube.¹ After the “luto académico” (academic mourning) was suspended, in June, the protest continued mainly around his imprisonment.² On 20 June, a demonstration of support that was meant to end outside the prison was broken up by a riot police charge near the cathedral, and the students went on to the Baixa shouting “Freedom! Autonomy!” (Liberdade! Autonomia!). He was released after further demonstrations, which the police charged once again.¹

Transferred to the University of Coimbra, in 1963 he took part in founding the Movimento Sindical Estudantil (Student Union Movement). In 1965 he went into exile in Switzerland, and he later broke with the PCP.³ After 25 April he came back and joined the PS, for which he was a deputy in the Assembly of the Republic; a psychiatrist, he was a professor in Porto and director of the Abel Salazar Institute of Biomedical Sciences. He died in Porto in December 2025.³