Maximino Serra, a former militant and political operative of the PS, who took part in two failed attempts to overthrow Oliveira Salazar’s Estado Novo regime, has died today at the age of 87, a socialist source told the Lusa agency.
According to a PS source, the funeral of Maximino Serra, a PS activist since 1973, will take place in São Martinho do Porto, in the municipality of Alcobaça, although the date has not yet been set.
Maximino Serra took part in the Revolta da Sé and in the Golpe de Beja against the regime of Oliveira Salazar. Banned under the United Nations umbrella, he joined the PS before April 25, 1974, a party in which he was a political official. .
In the 2021 municipal elections, this historic socialist entered as the last deputy on the list competing 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 claimed to be “allergic to impositions” and believed that what they were doing to him represented “betrayal”, because of the way “it was done”.
He then showed “great admiration that the current Secretary-General, António Costa, had admitted his expulsion” and added: “I don’t even think he realized what they did to me.”
Maximino Serra was a political collaborator 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 newspaper Público in May, he said he was “the only living anti-fascist who was 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 party leadership to Mário Soares at the First Congress of the PS in December 1974, his brother, Manuel Serra, left the PS.
“It was reckless of Manuel to run for secretary-general at the time,” Maximino Serra told Público newspaper nearly 50 years later. Maximino Serra, on the other hand, decided to stay in the party and remain a political official.
An anti-fascist resistance fighter, he began his political activities in association with Professor Ruy Luís Gomes and in 1958 was involved in the presidential candidacy of Humberto Delgado.
After the failure of the Coup de Beja, Maximino Serra took refuge in April 1962 in the Brazilian embassy, where Humberto Delgado had taken refuge in 1959.
He then had a plane diverted from an aero club and flew to Morocco in August 1963 to try to join the Patriotic National Liberation Front (FPLN) in Algiers.
Unable to enter Algeria, he left Morocco in late 1964, then to Canada and later to the United States, under a United Nations protection program for political exiles.
Source: DN
