Socially, she mixed with many of the Angolan intellectuals who went on to found the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), such as with Agostinho Neto, Lúcio Lara and Paulo Teixeira Jorge.

During the 1958 Portuguese presidential campaign, at a rally in support of the opposition leader Humberto Delgado, she addressed, at the beginning of her speech, the "black mothers".

She was tried, together with other defendants, in what was the first political trial of Angolan nationalists and became known as the "Process of the '50s", for having the intention of "separating, by violent or illegal means, the territory of Angola from the Motherland".

[7] According to Amnesty International, "it would not be possible to find a better example of a human being who, dedicating herself to peaceful work and never having practised or defended the use of violence, had been subject to the arbitrary brutality of the State for her opinions and convictions".

[2][3] With legal support from the future President of Portugal, Mário Soares, she was released in July 1965 and lived in Lisbon, working as a doctor in Rua Manuel da Maia and, for a time, employing Aida Paula, with whom she had shared a cell in Caxias prison.

It was constantly monitored by the secret police and there is a story that one day Gandra returned home with lots of shopping and persuaded the agent outside her door to carry it up to her fourth floor apartment.

[1][3][6][8] After the Carnation Revolution of 25 April 1974 that overthrew the Estado Novo regime, Gandra's home was the location of the first meeting to plan the first anti-colonial demonstration in Lisbon.