11 Facts About Rui Tavares

Rui Miguel Marcelino Tavares Pereira was born on 29 July 1972 and is a Portuguese historian and politician.

Rui Tavares has been elected a Member of the Assembly of the Republic in the 2022 legislative election, and has been a member of the Lisbon City Council since 2021.

Rui Tavares had previously served as an independent Member of the European Parliament, elected in 2009 for the Left Bloc.

Rui Tavares was born in Lisbon on 29 July 1972, to a bank clerk father and a homemaker mother.

The family was originally from the small rural village of Arrifana, in Azambuja, in the Ribatejo Province, where Rui Tavares spent part of his childhood.

The Protestant denomination was indirectly introduced in the town by an atheist great-uncle of Rui Tavares, who invited a Baptist pastor to the village to spite the Catholic hierarchy.

Rui Tavares became interested in politics at around age 11 or 12, when he started reading anything he could on the different political ideologies at the Municipal Library in Penha de Franca, and became fascinated with anarchism and left-libertarianism.

Rui Tavares earned a licentiate in History of Art from the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of NOVA University Lisbon in 1994, a master's degree in Social Sciences from the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon in 1998, and a doctorate in History from the Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales, in Paris, in 2014.

Rui Tavares was elected Member of the European Parliament in 2009 for the Left Bloc.

Rui Tavares was elected Member of the Assembly of the Republic in the 2022 legislative election for the Lisbon constituency.

Rui Tavares pledged to get Antonio Costa, who was re-elected Prime Minister with an absolute majority, to work with other left-wing parties.