Portuguese Army officer, World War I veteran and republican politician whose death by shooting proved mysterious.
He was involved in the fight against João Franco’s dictatorship in 1906, in the preparation of the Regicide in 1908, and in the revolution of 5 October 1910, which established the Republic in Portugal. He would also participate in the revolutionary movements of 1915. During the First Republic, he was elected deputy to the National Constituent Assembly for the Castelo Branco district and, between 1911 and 1925 (with the exception of the Sidonist period), he was elected deputy to the Congress of the Republic, always for the Funchal district. He was also Minister of War in the government of Álvaro de Castro, between March and July 1924, and his short term was marked by the so-called Revolta dos Aviadores da Amadora.
During the First World War, he volunteered as early as 1914, when the first proposals for the country’s entry into the conflict were presented. He left for Flanders on 27 May 1917, commander of a company of the 2nd Infantry Regiment. He was taken prisoner by the Germans in the Battle of La Lys (9 April 1918), returning to Portugal in early 1919; he was therefore decorated with the War Cross and with the 3rd class of the Order of the Tower and Sword (the first Portuguese soldier who participated in the Great War to receive this decoration) for acts of bravery during the campaign. He wrote about this period in his memoir Na Grande Guerra (1919).
He was shot dead by soldiers assigned to the regime on 8 February 1927 during the Revolt, a movement to combat the Military Dictatorship established the previous year, at his home on Rua de Sant’Ana à Lapa. Official records show that it was an accidental shooting that took place during searches of his residence for evidence of links to the revolutionaries, but the murder thesis was never truly ruled out.
Link to Wikipedia biography (Portuguese)