Manuel Fiúza Júnior

(São João da Ribeira, Viana do Castelo, 26-04-1988 – Porto, 02-03-1957)

Manuel Fiúza da Silva Júnior, an anarchist and libertarian militant, son of Manuel Fiúza and Margarida Augusta, was born in 1888, in Viana do Castelo, where he worked as a plasterer, and editor, for some years, of A Voz dos Famintos, an anarchist biweekly publication with great doctrinal influence in the Minho region. He later joined the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP). With the beginning of the Military Dictatorship on 28 May 1926, Manuel Fiúza Júnior went underground. He was arrested on 18 March 1949, in Viana do Castelo, kept in the sub-directorate of Porto and returned to freedom in July. In April 1950, he was tried in the Criminal Court of Porto which acquitted him, a decision confirmed in appeal by the Supreme Court of Justice.

In 1957, due to his participation in the distribution of manifestos denouncing the death, weeks before, of Joaquim Lemos de Oliveira at the headquarters of the International and State Defence Police (PIDE) of Porto, he  was arrested by the PSP, again, in Viana do Castelo, and sent to the delegation of Porto for inquiries into “crimes against state security”.

On 2 March 1957, Fiúza Júnior, almost 70 years old, died in the PIDE delegation of Porto, in Rua do Heroísmo, after violent torture and several days of “statue”. The autopsy was performed in secret, and the results were withheld.

The death of Manuel Fiúza Júnior and Joaquim Lemos de Oliveira led to several protests and campaigns for an inquiry into the conditions of the interrogations and the causes of death of these men.