Maria Veleda

[3] In the early 1900s, she was active as a journalist in the south of Portugal, publishing poetry, children's stories and a booklet titled Emancipação Feminina (Women's Emancipation).

In 1908, while working as a teacher at the Afonso Costa School Centre in Lisbon, she created evening courses and gave educational lectures encouraging women to enter professional life or engage in politics.

In 1912, she was appointed to serve as a delegate for Lisbon's Childhood Surveillance Centre, a position she maintained until 1941.

[2] Upset by the violence of the newly founded republican regime, she abandoned politics in 1921.

Instead, she turned to spiritualism, founded the Spiritualist Group Light and Love (Grupo Espiritualista Luz e Amor), organized the Portuguese Spiritual Congress (1925), and contributed articles to the spiritualist press.