Aquilino Ribeiro

Who was Aquilino Ribeiro?

Aquilino Gomes Ribeiro, ComL was a Portuguese writer and diplomat. He is considered as one of the great Portuguese novelists of the 20th century. He was nominated for the Nobel Literature Prize in 1960.

Natural son of Joaquim Francisco Ribeiro, a priest, and Mariana do Rosário Gomes, he had three older siblings: Maria do Rosário, Melchior and Joaquim. Destinated to priesthood, Aquilino Ribeiro got involved in republican politics, opposing the Portuguese monarchy, and had to exile himself in Paris; he returned to Portugal in 1914, after the Republican Revolution of 1910.

He was involved in the opposition to António de Oliveira Salazar and the Estado Novo, whose government tried to censor or ban several of his books.

He married twice, firstly in 1913 to German Grete Tiedemann, by whom he had a son Aníbal Aquilino Fritz Tiedeman Ribeiro in 1914, and secondly in Paris in 1929 to Jerónima Dantas Machado, daughter of the deposed President of Portugal Bernardino Machado, by whom he had a son Aquilino Ribeiro Machado, born in Paris in 1930, who became the 60th Mayor of Lisbon.