She played an important role in the legalization of abortion in the country, by promoting the practice in interviews and television programmes.

At university she briefly became a member of the Movement of Democratic Unity (MUD), which was a quasi-legal body opposed to the Estado Novo dictatorship.

Palla supported the 1958 presidential campaign of the pro-American independent candidate Humberto Delgado, in spite of his condemnation by the Portuguese Communist Party, because she was strongly anti-Salazar.

She then divorced his father Orlando da Costa in 1962 to marry her extra-marital lover, the Portuguese architect Victor Palla, as his third wife.

This enabled her to obtain a permanent assignment with Diário Popular in 1968, when she was among the first group of women journalists to be admitted to the editorial staff of that daily newspaper.

[5] She was, however, dismissed from the Diário Popular for writing, without formal authorisation, a review of the events in Paris of May 1968, which involved widespread strikes and student protests.

The following year she published a book entitled Revolução, meu amor – Maio 68, um ano depois (Revolution, My Love - May 68, a year on), including interviews with diverse observers, such as the singer/songwriter, actor and director Jacques Brel, the film director Jean Luc Godard, the cartoonist Siné, the sociologist Alain Touraine, the journalist and politician Françoise Giroud, and the student leader Jacques Sauvageot.

This book, in turn, was banned by the Salazar-led Estado Novo regime, fearing a repetition of events in Paris in Portugal.

[6] She stayed with O Século Ilustrado for 11 years, travelling all over Portugal and working with the well-known photographers Eduardo Gageiro, Fernando Baião and Alfredo Cunha.

Between 1974 and 1976, together with Antónia de Sousa, she made a fortnightly television series for the state broadcaster, RTP, called Nome Mulher (Woman's Name), which featured 46 reports, each of 50 minutes.

The first was shown in August 1974, and was dedicated to the early feminist and journalist Maria Lamas, who had a strong influence on Palla when she was a student.

Palla also gave an interview to the New York Times (published 13 March 1976, page 39) where she freely admitted to having had "several abortions" during her lifetime.