Helena Pato

She was born on 19 April 1939 in Mamarrosa, in the district of Aveiro; her father had been under surveillance by the political police and her grandfather had been imprisoned. In 1956 she entered the Faculty of Sciences and joined the MUD Juvenil (Youth Movement of Democratic Unity). As a student leader, she took part in the 1962 academic crisis and was detained for 48 hours.¹

After May Day 1962, her husband, Alfredo Noales, left for Paris, and she joined him shortly afterwards. Ill with a fatal lymphoma, Noales asked the PIDE for permission to come back to Portugal to die. On arrival, in November 1965, he was taken straight to the PIDE headquarters, which he left only hours later; he died a month afterwards.¹

Increasingly active in the PCP and in the Commission for Aid to Political Prisoners, she was arrested in June 1967 and taken to Caxias. Suspected of links to the armed struggle, she suffered long isolation, beatings and sleep torture, until she was released in November that year. She later took part in founding the Democratic Women’s Movement, in 1968.¹⁴

After 25 April she was on the founding committee of the teachers’ union and, later, led the Não Apaguem a Memória movement.¹ On 25 April 2010 she spoke, as a former political prisoner, at the unveiling of the plaque marking the former PIDE/DGS headquarters on Rua António Maria Cardoso.²