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Showing posts from December, 2006

a history lesson: sa carneiro

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The man known as Sá Carneiro (real name: Francisco Manuel Lumbrales de Sá Carneiro) was born July 19, 1934 and died December 4, 1980. He was Prime Minister of Portugal for 11 months in 1980. Short history from Wikipedia : A lawyer by training, he became a member of the puppet National Assembly , where he became one of the leaders of the "Liberal Wing", which attempted to work for the gradual transformation of António de Oliveira Salazar 's dictatorship into a normal Western European democracy. In May 1974 , a month after the Carnation Revolution , Sá Carneiro founded the Popular Democratic Party (PPD), together with Francisco Pinto Balsemão and José Magalhães Mota , and became its secretary-general. The PPD was soon renamed the Social Democratic Party (PSD); despite Sá Carneiro's original claims to be leading a left-of-centre party, he and the party soon drifted to the right. He was minister without portfolio in a number of provisional governments, and was elected...

holidays, a vote, and a confession

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Christmas is always nice anywhere in the World. In Portugal, Santa is put to work driving the streetcar. Get going Santa! In other important events, December 1st is an important date around the world, but not as important as in Portugal, where in 1640 we regained back Portugal from the Spanish. To mark this holiday, 2 of the biggest soccer teams faced off - Sporting vs. Benfica with Benfica coming out the winner. Then today, Porto won... ..and that's about all the soccer news I can take. In other important events around the country... They've finally decided to hold another vote to decide whether abortion should be legal. Here are some women in parliament pushing their cause... Source Portugal's president has said the country's predominantly Roman Catholic population will vote on whether to legalise abortion on 11 February. Anibal Cavaco Silva said he agreed to the vote because the issue still dominated public debate in Portugal. The country will be asked if they wish t...