Maria Judite Pinto Mendes de Abreu (1916–2007) was one of the first five Portuguese women to be elected as a mayor of a municipality.

An opponent of the Estado Novo dictatorship, she was a supporter of General Norton de Matos in the 1949 national election and a member of women's and other organizations that campaigned against the government.

[1][2][3] Abreu was born on 16 February 1916, in the parish of São Julião, in Figueira da Foz in the Coimbra District.

After the defeat of fascism in World War II the Estado Novo allowed some limited opposition groups in order to appear to give it respectability in other countries.

In 1946 she also joined the feminist Conselho Nacional das Mulheres Portuguesas (National Council of Portuguese Women) and was one of the founders of its Coimbra branch.

From 1961 she was also managing partner of Teatro Avenida, in Coimbra, sometimes incurring the ire of the government by holding meetings there of the organizations she supported.

She also supported the Organizing Committee of the Humberto Delgado Civic Court, between 1977 and 1978, a body created to denounce and judge crimes experienced during the dictatorship and to arrest PIDE (the secret police of the Estado Novo) informants.