Simone de Oliveira

She was born in Lisbon in 1938 and began singing in the second half of the 1950s.¹² In 1965 she represented Portugal at the Eurovision Grand Prix, in Naples, with “Sol de Inverno” (Winter Sun), and in 1967 she made her debut as an actress in the play Lisboa à Noite (Lisbon by Night), at the Avenida Theatre.³⁴

On 24 February 1969, at the São Luiz Theatre, she won the Grande Prémio TV da Canção (TV Song Grand Prix) with “Desfolhada Portuguesa” (Portuguese Husking), a poem by José Carlos Ary dos Santos with music by Nuno Nazareth Fernandes.⁶ She had not been the first choice to sing it.⁷ When Ary asked her whether she was not ashamed to sing it, she replied, as she told Visão: “Not me. I have children and I made them for pleasure”.⁸ The censors let through the line “Whoever makes a child, makes it for pleasure” (Quem faz um filho, fá-lo por gosto), which offended the most conservative morality; at the Eurovision Song Contest, in Madrid, the song came 15th.⁷

Fifty years later, she told what followed: she was insulted in restaurants and pestered in the street, “above all by men”, and came close to being arrested; at a concert on a football pitch, a spectator stood up to protest against the line, she answered him from the stage, and the night ended with the GNR on horseback.⁸ Shortly afterwards she lost the voice of those years, but she went on singing and acting.⁸²