Ir para conteúdo principal ou rodapé
Informação Informação
Culture

Maria José Nogueira Pinto honored in Lisbon

With the naming of a street after her and the installation of a monument - on the day of her 74th birthday - Lisbon is paying tribute to a woman who was "profoundly humanistic and unwaveringly committed". The municipality had unanimously approved the name "Maria José Nogueira Pinto" for "Rua B ao Braço de Prata".

At the inauguration ceremony, Carlos Moedas recalled Maria José Nogueira Pinto's "spirit of adventure, courage and consistency in her ideas and convictions". With "a life strictly measured by hedonistic standards", said the Mayor of Lisbon (CML), Maria José Nogueira Pinto "defied comfort and the predictable", putting herself to the test and allowing herself "to be exactly what she was, fulfilling exactly her essence".

A former CML councillor, MP and CDS-PP parliamentary leader, Maria José Nogueira Pinto "always showed the courage to fulfill what was a duty for her: not to ignore what she saw, heard and read," said Carlos Moedas. "She took that courage into politics, to support my fragile ones, in the many changes in her life."

In her "experience as a refugee in South Africa, where she had to stand in line to eat", the mayor added, "even in this position of fragility, she maintained her dignity", which he made a point of emphasizing.

At this afternoon's ceremony, on her 74th birthday - attended by her husband, Jaime Nogueira Pinto, her sisters and children - the mayor of Lisbon paid tribute, on behalf of the city, to someone who "was born, lived and died having been put to the test. Today, we pay tribute to her in exactly that way".

Born in Lisbon on March 23, 1952, Maria José Pinto da Cunha de Avillez Nogueira Pinto died on July 6, 2011, at the age of 59.

Among her many public positions, she was Ombudsman of the Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa, president of the Alfredo da Costa Maternity Hospital, and a councillor in Lisbon City Hall, where she headed the Baixa-Chiado Commissariat. In 1997, she was the first woman in Portugal to lead a parliamentary group in the Assembly of the Republic: the CDS-PP. She was also a columnist for the newspapers Expresso, Público, A Capital and Diário Económico.

In 1998, she was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Prince Henry the Navigator; in 1999, the Grand Officer of the Order of Rio Branco of Brazil, and posthumously, on July 6, 2022, the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of Portugal
-Cross of the Order of Merit of Portugal.

A sculpture by Rui Sanches (relocated to the garden in Braço de Prata, close to the street where she was honored) also pays tribute to Lisbon's former Councillor for Social Housing.