Aida de Freitas Loureiro Magro was born in Huíla Province in what at the time was the Portuguese colony of Angola on 4 April 1918.

She married a distant cousin, José Magro (1920 – 1980), who was a Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) activist.

In 1945, she went underground as a Party official, taking over, among other tasks, the control of the PCP committee for the eastern zone of Lisbon, at the time the most important working area in the city, and contributing to A Voz das Camaradas (The Voices of the Comrades), the magazine for PCP members.

At the end of World War II food was scarce and communists living clandestinely did not have access to rations provided by the state.

Her family was dependent on financial support from the PCP and had to buy supplies of basic foodstuffs on the black market.