Zita Seabra

Zita Maria de Seabra Roseiro (born Coimbra, Santa Cruz, May 25, 1949) is a Portuguese politician.

She was the only child and daughter of Mário Ramos Carvalho Roseiro (b. Tondela, Molelos, April 11, 1921), an engineer, and wife Zita Moreira Marques de Seabra (b. c. 1925).

She joined the Portuguese Communist Party in 1966, before she was even eighteen years old and was controller of the UEC (in Portuguese: "União dos Estudantes Comunistas" - Communist Student Union) before and after the carnation revolution. As a member of the Communist Party, she was elected to and served in the Portuguese parliament, representing Lisbon and Aveiro between 1980 and 1987. She was elected to the Political Commission of the party at its 10th Congress in 1983. In 1982 she was responsible for introducing in parliament for the first time a bill to legalize abortion, and was assigned by the PCP to create the PEV (in Portuguese: "Partido Ecologista "Os Verdes" - Ecologist Party "The Greens").

She abandoned the Communist Party before the fall of the Soviet Union and is currently the best known party dissident. Due to her criticisms of the party, she was harassed and expelled from the Political Committee in 1988, and then purged from the party's Central Committee. In 1988 she published the book "The Name of Things: Reflections During Times of Change" which went through seven printings by the following year. In 1989 she covered the first free elections in Russia for the "Expresso" newspaper.

After publicly renouncing communist ideology, she joined the PSD Social Democratic Party (Portugal). With an avid interest in the arts, she directed the National Audio-Visual Bureau, and in 1993 she became president of the Portuguese Cinema Institute. From 1994 to 1995, she was the President of the Portuguese Institute of Cinematographic and Audiovisual Arts. In the private sector, she has been very active in publishing. She was editor of the Quetzal publishing house, administrator and editorial director of Bertrand Publishers, and is currently the President of the Executive Council and Director of Alêtheia publishing house, Lisbon which she founded. In 2005, she was elected to the Portuguese Parliament, representing her home city Coimbra. Currently, she is Vice-President of the Parliamentary Group of the Social Democratic Party.

She married the notable PCP militant Carlos Brito and had two daughters: Ana and Rita de Seabra Roseiro de Brito. Out of wedlock she had a son Francisco de Seabra Roseiro Guimarães by medical doctor João Guimarães.

Books

*"O Nome das Coisas" (1989) ("The Name of Things"--not yet translated into English)
*"Foi Assim" (2007) ("It Was Like It"--not yet translated into English)