Catarina Eufémia

Poets Sophia de Mello Breyner, Carlos Aboim Inglez, Eduardo Valente da Fonseca, Francisco Miguel Duarte, José Carlos Ary dos Santos, Maria Luísa Vilão Palma and António Vicente Campinas have all dedicated poems to her.

António Vicente Campinas' "Cantar Alentejano" was put to music by Zeca Afonso on the album "Cantigas de Maio", made on Christmas 1971.

Alentejo was a region of large estates and seasonal jobs and the living conditions of the peasants and salaried workers were extremely difficult.

On May 19, 1954, during the wheat harvest, Catarina and thirteen other harvest-women complained with the supervisor of the property where they were, trying to obtain a two escudo increase in their daily pay.

While she has been made into an icon of the anti-fascist resistance, the Portuguese Communist Party supposedly adulterated details of the life and death of Catarina Eufémia.

In fact, Mariana Janeiro, a militant communist imprisoned several times by the Polícia Internacional e de Defesa do Estado, always rejected the hypothesis that Catarina was a member of the party.

During the autopsy, the people of Baleizão were joined in the square of the Cathedral of Beja, a few meters from the Hospital da Misericórdia, crying out in despair: "It was not one, there were two deaths!"