Pinheiro de Azevedo

He was born in Luanda on 5 June 1917.⁷ A naval officer, on 25 April 1974 he was a captain (capitão-de-mar-e-guerra) and commanded the Mainland Marine Force; at 16:00, with Lieutenant Commanders Vítor Crespo and Almada Contreiras, he formed a force of marines under the command of Lieutenant Commander Luís Costa Correia.² He was a member of the National Salvation Junta, which was presented to the country live in the early hours of the 26th from the RTP studios in Lumiar, together with António de Spínola and Costa Gomes.¹

He was prime minister of the Sixth Provisional Government. On 12 November 1975, striking construction workers gathered outside the Constituent Assembly, at the Palácio de São Bento; Pinheiro de Azevedo went out onto the balcony to speak to them and was booed.³ The demonstrators — about 100,000, according to the press of the time — prevented the deputies from leaving for 36 hours and kept him captive in the prime minister’s official residence, next to the palace.⁵ In the early hours of the 14th he reached an agreement with the union leaders and undertook to bring the collective labour agreement into force from 27 November.⁴

After the siege, accused of being a fascist, he replied with a phrase that ended up on a sticker: “To hell with the fascist” (Bardamerda para o fascista).⁶ He died in Lisbon on 10 August 1983.⁷