Albina Fernandes

Albina Fernandes also known as Albina Pato, Albina Fernandes Pato or Rosália (Soissons, France, 5 January 1928 - Lisbon, 2 October 1970) was a militant of the Portuguese Communist Party, opposer to the Estado Novo regime and a fighter of the French Resistance.

Biography

Youth Fernandes' parents were Portuguese communists that emigrated to France, where Fernandes was born in 1928, she lived her childhood within the French resistance during the German occupation of France in the context of the Second World War, during which she grows up under the weight of the imminent risk of her parents arrest by the Nazis. She starts her militancy early on in life in the French Communist Youth.

Membership of the Portuguese Communist Party After the war, Fernandes moved to Portugal, where she joined the Portuguese Communist Party. She gets married at twenty years old, in 1948, with Alcino de Sousa Ferreira. In October 1949, when her husband became a worker for the PCP, they go through clandestinity together, where they live in Party houses until Alcino de Sousa is arrested under political reasons by PIDE on 12 February 1951.

Living clandestinely

Albina Fernandes would live with the pseudonym Rosália for the following 11 years in several clandestine houses across the country, context in which she meets the militant Octávio Pato with whom she starts a relationship. She will be captured by PIDE on 15 December 1961, in the same day in which, in a different place, Octávio Pato will be arrested, and taken with her children to Caxias prison.