Humberto Delgado

Humberto Delgado ( born May 15, 1906 in Brogueira, † February 13, 1965 at Olivença ) was a Portuguese general and politician.

Life

He participated in the military coup of 1926. In 1944 he was Director General of the State Secretariat of Civil Aviation and founded in that capacity in 1945, the Portuguese airline TAP Portugal. Later he joined the diplomatic service and in 1952 military attaché in Washington. In 1952 he was appointed the youngest general in the Air Force. End of the fifties, but he turned away from the authoritarian Salazarregime and 1958 was the opposition candidate in the election for president. António de Oliveira Salazar was during his tenure only been Prime Minister, who was formally appointed by the President. Even before the election of 1958, he had refused to accept the office of President. Delgado had his part declared in the election campaign that he would dismiss his election Salazar. This later earned him the honorary title o General sem Medo ( the general without fear) under which you want a monument dedicated today at his former residence in Cela Velha. The government candidate Américo Tomás won with 76.4 % of the votes cast, Delgado received only 23% of the vote. From the opposition as well as by Delgado himself of accusations of electoral fraud was raised, whereupon Delgado was discharged from the army in 1959. A review of the elections took place under Salazar's dictatorship instead of nature and could not be made up later. Delgado took refuge first in the Brazilian embassy, and later to Brazil. From exile, he supported actions of the opposition, including he claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of the passenger ship Santa Maria and founded in 1964 the Patriotic Front for National Liberation ( Frente de Patriótica Libertação Nacional - FPLN ).

The murder of Humberto Delgado

The political repression of the Salazar dictatorship reached in 1965 with the murder of Humberto Delgado, who had become a symbol of the anti- salazaristischen opposition, and his secretary Arajaryr Campos by the Portuguese secret police peaked. António Rosa Casaco, an inspector from the PIDE / DGS, was the head of the brigade, which was planning to " Operação Outono " and carried out while the Humberto Delgado was lured with his secretary ambushed and murdered on 13 February 1965. Both bodies were found two months later in Villa Nuevo del Fresno in Badajoz, near the Portuguese border.

1974 after the Carnation Revolution, the body of Humberto Delgado in the National Pantheon in Lisbon was transferred.