Francisco Pinto da Cunha Leal

Francisco Pinto da Cunha Leal (born August 22, 1888 in Pedrógão de São Pedro , † April 26, 1970 in Lisbon ) was a Portuguese politician and Prime Minister (Presidente do Conselho de Ministros) during the First Republic .

Life

Military and professional career

After finishing school, he completed a military career. As a lieutenant in the engineering corps , he was deployed in what was then the colony of Angola , where he was later director of the railway company ( Companhia dos Caminhos de Ferro Portugueses ). After returning to Portugal, he served as an officer in the expeditionary force in France during the First World War . However, despite his officer license, he was not used at the front, but was instead appointed general director of transport with the rank of captain .

Promotion to Prime Minister of the First Republic

After the First World War he began a political career as a member of the Partido Centrista Republicano founded in October 1917 by António Caetano de Abreu Freire Egas Moniz . As a supporter of Sidónio Pais , he was elected as a deputy of parliament ( Assembleia da República ) in 1919 , where he first represented the province of Angola until 1922, then the constituency of Chaves and later in 1925 the constituency of Vila Real . A few months later, in January 1919, he took part in the revolt of Santarém against the government of João Tamagnini de Sousa Barbosa , who was accused of supporting the monarchy that was abolished by the establishment of the First Republic on October 6, 1910 .

On November 20, 1920 he was then appointed by Álvaro de Castro to be Minister of Finance in his cabinet and held this office in the government formed ten days later by Liberato Ribeiro Pinto until January 1921. He then became director of the journal O Popular .

On December 16, 1921, he succeeded Carlos Maia Pinto as Prime Minister (Presidente do Conselho de Ministros) . After almost three months in office, however, he handed this office over to António Maria da Silva on February 7, 1922 . At the same time he took over the office of Minister of the Interior during his reign . His government, which was made up of representatives of several parties, tried to end the revolutionary mood of the Lisbon Blood Night ( A Noite Sagrenta ) of October 19, 1921, in which the government of António Joaquim Granjo was overthrown in a bloody uprising and later together with other republicans Politicians became. When he did not succeed, he asked for the support of the Republican National Guard ( Guarda Nacional Republicana ) and the Army (Exército Português) to restore security and order in Caxias and Lisbon . After the Partido Democrático emerged stronger from the parliamentary elections on January 29, 1922, he was unable to re-form a government.

He then became director of the daily O Século in March 1923 . On November 15, 1923, Prime Minister António Ginestal Machado appointed him Minister of Finance in his cabinet, which was in office until December 14, 1923.

Pinto da Cunha Leal was then rector of the University of Coimbra from 1924 to 1925 . On April 19, 1925, however, he was arrested after the coup of General João José Sinel de Cordes . After he was released a short time later, he was one of the defenders of the revolutionaries in September 1925, alongside João Tamagnini de Sousa Barbosa. After leaving the Partido Nacionalista , he was the founder of the União Liberal Republicana in 1926 .

Critics and opponents of António de Oliveira Salazar

After the coup d'état of May 28, 1926, he was appointed lieutenant governor of the National Overseas Bank ( Banco Nacional Ultramarino ). In the same year he became governor of the Central Bank of Angola ( Banco Central de Angola ). In this position, which he held again between 1927 and 1930, he unsuccessfully asked President António Óscar de Fragoso Carmona to reconsider the appointment of António de Oliveira Salazar as finance minister in 1928 . In particular, in 1930 he publicly criticized Salazar's financial and budgetary policies and their effects on the colony of Angola. Because of this criticism, he was released and arrested fifteen days later and charged with treason against the government in May 1930. In November 1930 he was deported to the Azores , from which he did not return to Lisbon until the end of 1932 as part of an amnesty .

Between 1934 and 1935 he was director of the insurance company Vida Contemporânea before he was deported again in 1935. In the following years he became a clear opponent of the New State founded by Salazar ( Estado Novo ) .

After the Second World War he was an unsuccessful candidate of the United Democracy Movement ( Movimento de Unidade Democrática ) for the parliamentary election on November 18, 1945, in which he campaigned for the independence of Angola. Two days before the election test , he again criticized the dictatorial Salazar. In 1949 and 1953 he was again unsuccessful opposition candidate for the Assembleia da República election. In 1950 he was one of the founders of the Directório Democrato-Social opposition alliance, alongside António Sérgio , Jaime Cortesão and Mário Azevedo Gomes .

In 1951 he made another public appearance when he supported the unsuccessful presidential candidacy of Quintão de Meireles against Francisco Craveiro Lopes alongside Henrique Galvão .

Web links

• Biography (portuguese)
• Biography (PDF; Portuguese)
• Biography (portuguese)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The Cunha Leal Government
2. ^ List of Portuguese interior ministers
3. ↑ The Rectors of the University of Coimbra ( Memento of the original from February 23, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
4. ^ Banco Nacional Ultramarino in the Portuguese language Wikipedia

predecessor	Office	successor
Carlos Maia Pinto	Prime Minister of Portugal December 16, 1921 - February 7, 1922	Antonio Maria da Silva