Francisco Sá Carneiro

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For the airport of the same name, see
Francisco Sá Carneiro Airport
.

Member of the National Assembly
In office
25 November 1969 – 25 January 1973
ConstituencyPorto
Personal details
Born(1934-07-19)19 July 1934
Vitória, Porto, Portugal
Died4 December 1980(1980-12-04) (aged 46)
Camarate, Loures, Portugal
Political partySocial Democratic (1974–1980)
Other political
affiliations		Democratic Alliance (1979–1980)
Liberal Wing (1968–1973)
Spouse
Isabel Nunes de Matos
​
​
(m. 1957)​
Domestic partnerSnu Abecassis (1976–1980)
Children5
Alma materUniversity of Lisbon
Signature

Francisco Manuel Lumbrales de Sá Carneiro

plane crash
in Camarate on 4 December 1980.

Background

Sá Carneiro was born in Vitória, Porto, the fifth of the eight children[1] of lawyer José Gualberto Chaves Marques de Sá Carneiro (1897–1978) and Maria Francisca Judite Pinto da Costa Leite (1908–1989) of the Counts of Lumbrales in Spain.[citation needed]

Career

A lawyer by training, Sá Carneiro became a member of the

National Assembly in 1969[2] and, in turn, one of the leaders of the "Liberal Wing" (Ala Liberal) which attempted to work for the gradual transformation of Marcelo Caetano's dictatorship into a Western European liberal democracy
.

In May 1974, a month after the Carnation Revolution, Sá Carneiro founded the Popular Democratic Party (PPD), together with Francisco Pinto Balsemão, Joaquim Magalhães Mota, Carlos Mota Pinto, João Bosco Mota Amaral, Alberto João Jardim, António Barbosa de Melo and António Marques Mendes, and became its secretary-general. The PPD was soon renamed the Social Democratic Party (PSD); despite Sá Carneiro's original claims to be leading a left-of-centre party, he and the party soon drifted to the right, becoming the country's main centre-right force. He was minister without portfolio in a number of provisional governments, and was elected as a deputy to the Constitutional Assembly the next year.

In 1976, he was elected to the Assembly of the Republic. In November 1977, he resigned his office as president of the party, only to be reelected to that office the next year.

In the general election of late 1979, he led the

President António Ramalho Eanes subsequently called on him to form a government on 3 January 1980, and formed Portugal's first majority government since the Carnation Revolution of 1974. In a second general election held in October that year, the Democratic Alliance increased its majority. The Alliance received 47.2 percent of the popular vote and 134 seats, 82 of them from the PSD. Sá Carneiro's triumph appeared to augur well for the presidential election two months later, in which Sá Carneiro was supporting António Soares Carneiro
(no relation).

Death

Main article:
1980 Camarate air crash
Francisco de Sá Carneiro, by Patrick Swift, 1980; Following his election Sá Carneiro commissioned Swift to paint his portrait

His victory was short-lived, however. On 4 December 1980, while on his way to a presidential election rally in

October surprise conspiracy theory and was planning on taking them to the United Nations General Assembly. A parliamentary inquiry said in 2004 that there was evidence of a bomb in the aircraft,[3][4] after a 1995 inquiry had concluded there was evidence of sabotage.[5]

Dependent to a considerable extent on Sá Carneiro's personal popularity, the Democratic Alliance was unable to maintain its momentum in the wake of his death. Faced with a national crisis, the public rallied behind the incumbent president, António Ramalho Eanes, who easily defeated the Alliance candidate in the presidential election a few days later.

The Pedra Rubras airport where Sá Carneiro was heading has been named after him as

Francisco de Sá Carneiro Airport, in 1990, despite objections[by whom?
] that it would be in bad taste to name an airport after someone who died in a plane crash.

Family

He was married on 13 May 1957, in Miragaia, Porto, to Isabel Maria Ferreira Nunes de Matos (1 October 1936, Miragaia, Porto), and had five children:

  • Francisco Nunes de Matos de Sá Carneiro (12 March 1958, Cedofeita, Porto), unmarried and without issue
  • Isabel Maria Nunes de Matos de Sá Carneiro (7 July 1959, Cedofeita, Porto), unmarried and without issue
  • Maria Teresa Nunes de Matos de Sá Carneiro (11 August 1961, Cedofeita, Porto), had two sons:
  • José Nunes de Matos de Sá Carneiro (1 April 1963, Cedofeita, Porto), married on 8 September 1991, in Luso, Mealhada, Isabel Maria Guedes de Macedo Girão (25 January 1965, Ramalde, Porto), and had an only daughter:
  • Pedro Nunes de Matos de Sá Carneiro (12 September 1964, Cedofeita, Porto), married to Maria Benedita de Matos Chaves Pinheiro Torres (28 May 1967), of the Barons of Torre de Pero Palha, and had an only daughter:
    • Maria Teresa Pinheiro Torres de Sá Carneiro (17 August 2000, Porto)

Later in life he lived together with Snu Abecassis, who died in the same accident as Sá Carneiro.

Ideological assessment and legacy

Sá Carneiro started his political life in the youth of the

Catholic syndicalist organizations and Christian socialism in general. He was very influenced by Catholic personalism[7] and humanism (especially its Christian version
).

Sá Carneiro tried to adapt the

Marxist socialism
.

Despite having an anti-

blue-collar worker and middle-low class workers and that his party defended "the construction of a socialist society in liberty".[12]
Due to all these specificities, he called his party's ideology "Portuguese Social Democracy".

He was recognized as populist by supporters[13] and opponents,[14] as well as neutral analysts.[15]

Works

Sá Carneiro was the author of various works, among them:

  • Uma Tentativa de Participação Política (An Attempt of Political Participation) (1973)
  • Por uma Social-Democracia Portuguesa (For a Portuguese Social Democracy) (1975)
  • Poder Civil; Autoridade Democrática e Social-Democracia (Civilian Power; Democratic Authority and Social Democracy (1975)
  • Uma Constituição para os Anos 80: Contributo para um Projecto de Revisão (A Constitution for the 1980s: Contribution for a Project of Revision) (1979).

Honours

See also

References

  1. ^ Francisco Sá Carneiro, um Documento – Parte I [Francisco Sá Carneiro, a Document – Part I] (Documentary) (in Portuguese). Event occurs at 2:29 – 2:35. Francisco was the fifth of eight siblings.
  2. ^ "Index Sa". Rulers. Retrieved 16 June 2013.
  3. ^ Associated Press, 6 December 2004, New tests indicate sabotage in 1980 air crash that killed Portuguese PM
  4. ^ "Investigative Commission: 1980 Portugal Crash Was Sabotage".
  5. ^ David Elsner, Chicago Tribune, 8 October 1995, Premier's Body Exhumed In Inquiry
  6. YouTube
    , 1:44 – 1:58
  7. ^ "X CONGRESSO da TSD – Trabalhadores Social Democratas (Social Democratic Workers)" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 21 October 2004. Retrieved 7 January 2008. (Portuguese), p. 7: «O sindicalismo que defendemos e procuramos praticar tem esta matriz social democrata e personalista. A sociedade que queremos ajudar a construir tem neste pensamento os seus alicerces. (...) Como pensou e defendeu Francisco Sá Carneiro.» [«The syndicalism we defend and try to practice has this social democratic and personalist matrix. The society that we want to help to build has in this thought its foundations. (...) As thought and defended Francisco Sá Carneiro.»]
  8. Anglo-Saxon Europe
    , conceived a social democracy project adapted to the idiosyncrasy of the Portuguese people and to its historical tradition, so marked by the personalist experience.»)
  9. YouTube
    , 1:35 – 1:35
  10. YouTube
    , 1:56 – 2:02
  11. YouTube
    , 1:36 – 1:44
  12. YouTube
  13. ^ "Reformist Centre Popular Pan-National photos". Facebook.[permanent dead link] (English)
  14. Santana Lopes or even worse...!! (João Jardim
    ...!)»)
  15. ^ "O Populismo Laranja (The Orange Populism)". 30 September 2007. (Portuguese), o António Maria blog, third paragraph: «Em primeiro lugar, porque a matriz ideológica e social do PPD-PSD é geneticamente populista, na modulação muito própria que lhe foi dada desde o início por Francisco Sá Carneiro» ("In the first place, because the ideological and social matrix of the PDP-SDP is genetically populist, in the very specific modulation that was given to it since the beginning by Francisco Sá Carneiro")
  16. ^ a b c "Cidadãos Nacionais Agraciados com Ordens". Página Oficial das Ordens Honoríficas Portuguesas. Retrieved 28 January 2017.

External links

  • Part I on
    YouTube
    of a version with English subtitles of the official Social Democratic Party documentary made on 25th anniversary of Sá Carneiro's death (4 December 2005)
Political offices
New office
Minister without Portfolio
1974
Served alongside:
Álvaro Cunhal, Francisco Pereira de Moura
 Succeeded by
Preceded by
Mário Morais de Oliveira
 Deputy Minister of the Prime Minister
1974 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Prime Minister of Portugal
1980 		Succeeded by
Party political offices
New political party Secretary-General of the
Social Democratic Party
1974–1975 		Succeeded by
Emídio Guerreiro
New office President of the
Social Democratic Party
1975–1978
1979–1980 		Succeeded by
Preceded by
José Menéres Pimentel
 Succeeded by
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