In 1947 he founded the Livraria Victor in Braga (in Rua dos Capelistas), but this is also the year when he was first arrested. He was detained by the PIDE [Political Police] in Porto for about a month along with Salgado Zenha and José Gabriel Bacelar. Further detentions occurred in 1949 and 1950, and he was forbidden to publish anything. However, this did not prevent his bookshop from becoming a centre for political and civic intervention. Curiously, in the “CV and Report of Activities” which he later presented to the Faculty as part of his application for some academic posts, he called this period a “Cultural Animation Phase”.

Antagonised by his fellow countrymen who were followers of the regime, with three children to care for, and a target for and closely watched by the Political Police, he decided to enrol in the Historical-Philosophical Sciences course at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Coimbra in 1952 as a voluntary student. The 1950s is a good example of his life: involved in trying to understand the epistemology of historical knowledge and the multifaceted perspectives of historical becoming; writing as much as possible to make his thoughts known – Vértice, Seara Nova, Correio do Minho; concerning himself with problems of reading and books – he launched an inquiry into the situation of libraries in Braga which later spread to the rest of the country (with his book As bibliotecas o público e a cultura: um inquérito necessário [Libraries, public and culture: a necessary inquiry, 1956] being a result of this); persecuted for his civic and political intervention with periods of imprisonment in 1955 and 1958. He was sent to prison in 1958 when he was finishing his bachelor’s degree (licenciatura), thereby delaying completion to the following year when he defended his thesis entitled Amorim Viana, a Vida e a Obra (Amorim Viana, his Life and Work). This degree allowed him to apply for a place as a secondary school teacher and he was appointed to the Escola Comercial de Braga, but he never took up the post as he was denounced by a local representative of the National Union [União Nacional]. Prevented from teaching (under Decree nº 25317, of 13 May 1935), he turned to his work as a bookseller but continued to write and to intervene, revealing a high degree of non-conformity and a great fighting spirit. This stance earned him two further periods in jail in 1960 and the closing of his bookshop. In 1961 he stood as a candidate to become a deputy for Braga in the legislative elections. In 1962 he was detained for seven months and then tried in the Plenary Tribunal [Tribunal Plenário], but he was acquitted.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | (Pdf)