Cândida Ventura
Cândida Ventura (1918 - 2015) was a political activist against the Portuguese Estado Novo regime and a political prisoner. She was the first woman to hold a leadership position in the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP). Early life Cândida Margarida Ventura was born in the city of Lourenço Marques (now Maputo), in Portuguese Mozambique, on 30 June 1918. She was the daughter of a railway official, António Ventura, and a primary-school teacher, Clementina de Deus Franco Pires Ventura. Shortly after her birth the family returned to Portugal, settling in Caldas de Monchique in the Algarve, where her father worked in the spa town. At the age of 11, Ventura went to study in Lisbon, being supported by a schoolteachers' organization. After completing high school, she entered the Faculty of Arts of the University of Lisbon, where she studied Historical-Philosophical Sciences. One of her friends there was the writer and painter , who wrote a poem called The ballad of separated friends, in which he referred to her as "Joana with clear eyes". At university she also met Fernando Piteira Santos. The two married but the marriage lasted less than a year. Early activism Influenced by the Spanish Civil War, she joined