Conceição Matos

Conceição Matos is a Portuguese communist who campaigned against the authoritarian rule of the Estado Novo regime in the 1960s. She was arrested and subjected to considerable torture.

Early life Maria da Conceição Rodrigues de Matos was born in 1936 in São Pedro do Sul in the Viseu District of Portugal. Three years later, her family moved to the industrial area of Barreiro on the left bank of the Tagus river, to the immediate south of the Portuguese capital of Lisbon, living in what she has described as a "wooden shack". Her mother had 16 children, of whom only 5 survived. She ceased school at a young age and went to work, having a variety of jobs, including dressmaker, working in a soft-drinks factory and working in a cork factory and for the conglomerate Companhia União Fabril (CUF).

Arrests On 21 April 1965, the couple were arrested in their house in Montijo by the PIDE and guards from the National Republican Guard (GNR). Held in Caxias prison, she was accused of carrying out activities against national security. Matos spent a year and a half in preventive detention. During this time she was interrogated and tortured at the PIDE headquarters in Lisbon. She was subjected to sleep deprivation and forbidden to use the toilet. When nature took its course, she had to clean up with her own clothes and was left naked to be seen by the police. In 1968, she was arrested again, held at Caxias prison for two months and again tortured. Meanwhile, Abrantes was still being held in Peniche Fortress, another of the prisons designated by the Estado Novo for political prisoners. They were married in the prison in 1969 so that she could have visitor's rights and they could exchange letters. Matos worked at the National Commission for Relief to Political Prisoners (CNSPP) until Abrantes was released in 1973, when they left Portugal and went to Paris, where they briefly worked for the PCP.

Later life On 25 April 1974 the Carnation Revolution overthrew the Estado Novo. The couple returned to Lisbon, on the same plane as the PCP leader Álvaro Cunhal, the composer, Luís Cília, who wrote the PCP's anthem Avante camarada (Forward comrade), and the singer-songwriter, José Mário Branco, an opponent of Portugal's colonial wars, on what became known as the "freedom plane". She recalled: "There were also many political exiles [on the plane], including José Mário Branco. We sang so much ..." Matos worked as an employee of the PCP until she retired.