Jorge Sampaio was an opponent to the dictatorship of Estado Novo, who participated in the student crisis in the 1960s and was a lawyer for political prisoners.
33 Facts About Jorge Sampaio
2.
The Jorge Sampaio family lived abroad in the United States and the United Kingdom for some years, due to the professional activity of his father Arnaldo de Jorge Sampaio, a physician.
3.
Jorge Sampaio's mother was Fernanda Bensaude Branco, daughter of Shara Bensliman Bensaude, who died in 1976 and was a Sephardi Jew from Morocco, and Sampaio's maternal grandfather Fernando Branco was an officer of the Portuguese Navy and later the Foreign Minister of Portugal and his maternal great-granduncle was the businessman Jose Bensaude.
4.
Jorge Sampaio did not consider himself a Jew and was agnostic.
5.
Jorge Sampaio grew up in Sintra in a manor house and attended the Queen Elizabeth School as a child.
6.
Jorge Sampaio enrolled at the YMCA where he practiced boxing and swimming and attended piano lessons at the Peabody Institute and participated in its orchestra.
7.
In 1949, Jorge Sampaio wanted to enter the Colegio Militar, but failed, so he ended up entering the Pedro Nunes High School.
8.
Jorge Sampaio started his political career as a college student of the Faculty of Law of the University of Lisbon.
9.
Jorge Sampaio had a key role in the student resistance and the 1960s academic crisis against the fascist Estado Novo regime and led the Lisbon students union between 1960 and 1961.
10.
Jorge Sampaio was in charge of the defense of defendants in famous cases such as the assault on the Beja Barracks and those arrested during the Vigilia da Capela do Rato protest.
11.
Jorge Sampaio worked for the Portuguese Bar Association as a directive.
12.
On 25 April 1974, during the Carnation Revolution, Jorge Sampaio was awakened by a friend's phone call and went to his office to gather information, but soon returned home when the Armed Forces Movement radioed that no one should leave their homes.
13.
Jorge Sampaio was first elected to the Assembly of the Republic as a deputy for Lisbon in the 1979 legislative elections, an office he held successively until 1991.
14.
On 18 November 1988, Jorge Sampaio ran for Secretary General of the PS and on 16 January 1989, after defeating Jaime Gama, succeeded Vitor Constancio, who resigned.
15.
Jorge Sampaio led the PS until 1992, when Antonio Guterres defeated him by winning the primaries, after being presented as an alternative following the poor results of the party in the 1991 legislative elections.
16.
On 13 July 1995, Jorge Sampaio announced his candidacy to run for the presidency of the Republic in the 1996 presidential election, candidacy that was already supported by the Socialist Party a few days earlier and resigned as mayor of Lisbon.
17.
Jorge Sampaio won the election with 3,035,056 votes and was sworn in on 9 March 1996 in a ceremony at the Assembly of the Republic, succeeding Mario Soares.
18.
Jorge Sampaio was replaced by the president of the Assembly Almeida Santos.
19.
Jorge Sampaio visited Timor for the first time in February 2000, being the first Portuguese head of state to do so, but had to cut short the visit after learning of the death of his mother at the age of 91.
20.
On 19 October 2000 Jorge Sampaio announced his candidacy for re-election.
21.
Jorge Sampaio was re-elected in the 2001 presidential election after defeating Joaquim Ferreira do Amaral, winning 2,401,015 votes.
22.
From that moment on, Jorge Sampaio acknowledged in an interview in 2016, that he did not agree with Durao Barroso's position that the country should participate and was strongly opposed to sending troops to Iraq.
23.
The legislative elections were won by Jose Manuel Barroso and Jorge Sampaio nominated him as the new prime minister.
24.
Jorge Sampaio appointed Pedro Santana Lopes as Prime Minister on 9 July 2004.
25.
Only four months afterwards, on 30 November, Jorge Sampaio concluded that the new cabinet was not achieving the desired stability, but quite the opposite, and he therefore dissolved the Parliament, calling new elections for February 2005.
26.
Jorge Sampaio's successor was chosen in the presidential election held on 22 January 2006.
27.
Jorge Sampaio was member of the Club de Madrid, an organization of more than 80 former democratic statesmen.
28.
In May 2006, Jorge Sampaio was appointed by the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan as his first Special Envoy for the Global Plan to Stop Tuberculosis.
29.
On 26 August 2021, in an article of the newspaper Publico, Jorge Sampaio announced that by the Global Platform for Syrian Students was now creating academic training for female Afghan students amidst the Taliban's seizure of power.
30.
Jorge Sampaio married Maria Jose Rodrigues Ritta in 1975, with whom he had two children, Vera Ritta de Sampaio, born in April 1974, and Andre Ritta de Sampaio, born in 1981.
31.
Jorge Sampaio played the piano from childhood and was club member number 3,109 of Sporting CP.
32.
Jorge Sampaio was shy, cried easily, was discreet and had a bad temper, but above all he was known for an altruistic character.
33.
Jorge Sampaio is remembered for his British accent and his characteristic red hair inherited from a paternal great-grandfather from the north of the country.