Maria Lourença Cabecinha

She was born on 17 March 1933 in São Romão, Montemor-o-Novo, the daughter of farm workers. She started working in the fields at 12 and joined the PCP in 1948, at 15.¹ In 1952 she became a full-time party worker and went to live underground with her husband, António Gervásio, and their three-month-old son, who at the age of three was handed over to his grandparents.¹

When her husband was arrested again, in 1963, she stayed underground. She was arrested in July 1964.¹ In Caxias Fort she was subjected to gruelling interrogations, psychological torture, lack of medical care and discrimination, “but never tortured”.¹ In prison she studied Portuguese and French with Fernanda Paiva Tomás, Mathematics and Geography with Alda Nogueira, and hygiene, health and mother-and-child care with Julieta Gandra.¹

In January 1965 she was sentenced to two years and ten months of major imprisonment and to security measures, which she began serving in 1967. Released in September 1969, she went back underground in July 1970 and stayed there until 28 May 1974.¹ She died in 2022.²