Career
As a student at the University of Coimbra, he was elected president of the Academic Association of Coimbra, being dismissed some months after because he refused to participate in a demonstration of support to the Estado Novo regime. His "subversive" actions lead him to prison for several times. Later, he supported the presidential candidacy of Norton de Matos, and it was at this time that he met Mário Soares.
Some years after he supported another democratic candidate to the manipulated elections, Humberto Delgado.
After the Carnation Revolution, he was Minister of Justice in the first, second, third and fourth provisional governments and Minister of Finance in the fifth. In 1986 he was a presidential candidate supported by the Portuguese Communist Party and the Democratic Renovator Party, but even supported by these two parties he failed to reach the second round and thereafter virtually left the Portuguese political scene.
He died on November 1, 1993.