Bernardino Luíz Machado Guimarães (28 March 185129 April 1944) was the president of Portugal, serving from 1915 to 1917 and again from 1925 to 1926.
In 1917, Sidónio Pais, who was at the head of a military junta, dissolved Congress and removed Machado, forcing him to leave the country. Later, in 1925, he returned to the presidency of the Republic and, a year later, he was again overthrown by the military revolution of 28 May 1926, which instituted the military dictatorship and paved the way for the establishment of the Estado Novo.
Early life
Bernardino Machado was born in Rio de Janeiro, Empire of Brazil, the son of António Luís Machado Guimarães (1820–1882), 1st Baron of Joane and a nobleman of the royal household, a rich merchant raised to the nobility, and his second wife Praxedes de Sousa Guimarães. Bernardino came to Portugal in 1860, enrolled at Coimbra University in 1866, studied mathematics for three years, and graduated in philosophy in 1873. In 1872, he chose to obtain Portuguese nationality. Machado continued his studies, obtaining a doctorate in philosophy in 1876 and graduated in general agriculture and rural economy in 1883. He lectured at that institution beginning in 1877.
In Porto in January 1882 he married Elzira Dantas Gonçalves Pereira (Rio de Janeiro, 15 December 1865 – Porto, 21 April 1942), by whom he had nineteen children. One of his sons-in-law was the writer Aquilino Ribeiro, whose own son was Aquilino Ribeiro Machado, the first mayor of Lisbon after the Carnation Revolution.
Political scene
Bernardino Machado began in politics from a young age, by the leader of the Regenerator Party, Fontes Pereira de Melo. It was the members of the Regenerator Party who elected him as a deputy for the first time to the Portuguese parliament for Lamego, in the supplementary elections of 1882. In the following legislature (1884-1887) he was reelected, this time by the Coimbra circle.
In 1890 and 1894 was also elected Peer of the Realm by Coimbra University. During this period he was briefly Minister for Public Works on the Hintze Ribeiro cabinet in 1893, and created the first labour court in Portugal. Taking a special interest in public education, he was made part of the Superior Council of Public Education in 1892, and published several books on the subject.
In 1903, due to his growing disbelief in monarchical values, he joined the Portuguese Republican Party. On 31 October 1903 he professed his republican faith in a conference given at the Ateneu Comercial in Lisbon, thus marking his formal adherence to the Party. Since then, he contributed much to the remodeling and organization of the Party as a political force; participated in vigorous propaganda campaigns of republican ideals and participated actively in numerous rallies. In 1904, 1905 and 1906 he was a candidate for deputy on the republican lists, always for the Lisbon constituency, however, he was not elected. Once again, in 1925, he achieved the presidential office after President Teixeira Gomes resigned, only to be overthrown a year later (1926) by Gomes da Costa (See: 28 May 1926 coup d'état and Ditadura Nacional). The country remained under a military, then a civilian, dictatorship until 1974.
For a second time he went into exile in France, where he continued to be very critical of the Portuguese regime. The German occupation of France in 1940 forced him to seek protection in Portugal, which the government granted him with the condition that he was to be confined to his personal retreat in the northern part of Portugal. It was there in Porto that he died, aged 93, in 1944, making him the longest lived Portuguese president ever.
Personal life
He was the father-in-law of the noted writer Aquilino Ribeiro, grandfather of the politician Aquilino Ribeiro Machado and the great-grandfather of the psychologist and sexologist Júlio Machado Vaz. In 1906, Machado was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society.
Books
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