Manuel Buíça had few friends, outside his professional acquaintances, although he was a close colleague of Alfredo Luís da Costa and Aquilino Ribeiro (the latter of whom he referred to in his last testament by name), with whom he mingled at the Café Gelo in the Rossio.

His professional career started with his conscription into the army, where he would achieve the status of second Sergeant, and hold the title of field instructor in shooting, while at the Cavalry Regiment in Bragança.

[3] But, the plans were shelved immediately when, tipped-off by police, João Franco's government began rounding-up the usual suspects in militant republican circles.

The back room of the Café Gelo, then a popular meeting place for republican and Carbonária sympathizers, was empty in the following days, except for Manuel Buíça and Alfredo Costa who had escaped the sweep and were not afraid to be seen.

On the morning of 1 February 1908, Manuel Buíça met with Alfredo Luís da Costa and other Carbonária in Quinta do Xexé, in Olivais, where they finalized the regicide of King Carlos I of Portugal.

[6] By four in the afternoon, Buíça, Domingos Ribeiro, and José Maria Nunes positioned themselves in the Terreiro do Paço, near the statute of King Joseph I and near a tree in front of the Ministry of the Kingdom, alongside a kiosk.

Costa, de Lemos, and Ximenes assumed positions below the arcade of the Ministry, and mingled with the population gathered for the king's arrival by boat.

Earlier that day, the autopsy found: a contusion at the top of the cranium, a laceration in his lower back (likely caused by Lieutenant Figueiro's sabre) and a wound to the left breast.

[9] After the 5 October Revolution ushered in a republican government, the Associação do Registo Civil acquired a plot in the cemetery and erected a monument to "the heroic liberators of the Fatherland".

Around six months before the regicide of King Carlos I and Prince Luís Filipe, Manuel Buíça had become a widower, and his children, ages seven and four years, would be left with their maternal grandmother.

There is a belief, primarily in republican circles, that Buíça was an idealist, whose assassination of the King and Prince Royal was accomplished as a form of justice and honourable duty for the Fatherland.

I am a native of Bouçoais, concelho of Valpaços, district of Vila Real (Trás-os-Montes), married D. Hermínia Augusta da Silva Buíça, daughter of a retired major in the cavalry and D. Maria de Jesus Costa.