Maximino Serra, former activist and political employee of the PS, who took part in two unsuccessful attempts to overthrow the Estado Novo regime of Oliveira Salazar, has died. He was 87 years old. The funeral is taking place in São Martinho do Porto, in the municipality of Alcobaça, but the date has not yet been announced.

Maximino Serra participated in the Revolta da Sé and the Golpe de Beja against the regime of Oliveira Salazar, he was exiled under the aegis of the United Nations and joined the PS before April 25, 1974, the party in which he was a politician.

In the municipal elections of 2021, this historic socialist entered as the last substitute on the list running for the Câmara de Alcobaça by the Nós Cidadãos movement, an option that led to his expulsion from the PS.

Speaking to the newspaper Público, in May this year, Maximino Serra said he was “allergic to impositions” and considered that what they had done to him represented “treason”, because of the way in which “it’ was done”.

He then said he was “very admired that the current Secretary General, António Costa, had admitted” his expulsion and added: “I even think that he did not realize what they do.”.

Maximino Serra was a political employee of the PS since the installation of the parties in Portugal, he had responsibilities in Setúbal, Santarém and later in Leiria.

Also in statements to the Público newspaper, in May he said he was “the only living antifascist to be a member of the PS”, noting that he “was a friend of Edmundo Pedro and Palma Inácio”.

Before joining the PS, Maximino Serra, Manuel Serra’s brother, was a member of the Popular Socialist Movement (MSP).

After the foundation of the PS, on April 19, 1973, Manuel Serra made an agreement with Mário Soares and the MSP joined the PS in January 1974.

After losing the leadership of the party to Mário Soares at the first congress of the PS in December 1974, his brother, Manuel Serra, left the PS.

“It was unwise for Manuel to run for the post of general secretary at the time,” Maximino Serra told the Público newspaper, almost fifty years later. Maximino Serra, on the contrary, decided to stay in the party and continue to be a political leader.

Antifascist resistant, he began his political activity linked to Professor Ruy Luís Gomes and in 1958 he was involved in the presidential candidacy of Humberto Delgado.

After the failure of the Beja coup, Maximino Serra took refuge in the Brazilian embassy in April 1962, where in 1959 Humberto Delgado had taken refuge.

Subsequently, he hijacked a plane from a flying club and flew to Morocco in August 1963 to try to join the Patriotic Front for National Liberation (FPLN) in Algiers.

He could not enter Algeria and, at the end of 1964, left Morocco, then for Canada and, later, for the United States, within the framework of a program for the protection of political exiles of the United Nations.