Luísa Basto

She was born in Vale de Vargo, in the municipality of Serpa, the daughter of communist activists, and her name was Úrsula Lobato.³¹ At the age of 12 she went underground with her parents, in clandestine houses and printing shops of the PCP in Lisbon, Sintra and Damaia, where her parents were arrested.² She remembered the death of Catarina Eufémia, the village surrounded by the GNR on horseback, and her father being arrested twice.²

She went to study in Moscow, where she changed her name to Luísa Basto and recorded Canções Revolucionárias Portuguesas (Portuguese Revolutionary Songs), with music by Fernando Lopes-Graça and poems by Manuel Alegre; the recordings reached Portugal through Rádio Portugal Livre (Free Portugal Radio), which broadcast from Bucharest, and Rádio Voz da Liberdade (Voice of Freedom Radio), from Algiers.² It was also in Moscow that she first recorded “Avante Camarada” (Forward, Comrade), by Luís Cília: “my parents heard me singing on the clandestine radio stations and didn’t know it was me”, she said.² She finished her studies in 1973 and, in February 1974, went to Paris to sing for the emigrants.²

She returned on 3 May 1974 and at once began singing at rallies all over the country; she sang with Adriano Correia de Oliveira at a local association in the Alentejo where the only equipment was a megaphone, and in 1977 she went to the Festival da Canção (Song Festival) with Os Amigos.² In 1980 she sang at the Coliseu, at the 10th anniversary of the CGTP-IN trade union confederation.⁴ In the 1980s she recorded “É Para Ti Mulher Esta Canção” (This Song Is for You, Woman), which became the anthem of the Democratic Women’s Movement.²