Afonso Augusto Bourbon e Menezes

Afonso Augusto Falcão Cotta de Bourbon e Menezes (20 February 1890 – 8 September 1948) was a Portuguese writer, journalist, polemicist and republican partisan who stood out in the fight against the initial phase of the Estado Novo.

Biography

Afonso Augusto was born in Lisbon, Kingdom of Portugal, the son of Gaspar Augusto Falcão Cotta de Bourbon e Menezes and Elvira Maria do Carmo Garcia Lopes Van-Zeller. His father was a Catholic monarchist, an amanuensis at the Ministry of Public Works, where he worked for around thirty years.

He took part in some clandestine meetings, as he would later describe them, where his Jacobinism and radicalism allowed him to meet some of the underground personalities of his time, such as João Borges, a Carbonari terrorist. According to him, he also met Bernardino Machado at the time. In 1911 he took over, albeit briefly, the management of the anarcho-syndicalist weekly Germinal in Setúbal.

Initially linked to the currents of anarcho-syndicalism, he evolved towards democratic republicanism. Above all, he was linked to republican journalism, having made his debut in the pages of A Manhã, a periodical directed by Mayer Garção, later moving on to the editorial offices of O Mundo, Primeiro de Janeiro, Voz do Operário and Diário de Notícias, where he made a name for himself with his column "Pedras soltas" (Loose stones). A prose writer and polemicist, he published several essays, several books of short stories and the prose poem Menino (1925).

He was administrator of the municipality of Viana do Castelo after the 1910 revolution, where he adopted a repressive stance towards the strike movements that broke out in the city. He was responsible for the arrest of Aurélio Quintanilha in Viana do Castelo in 1914, as well as other prominent personalities in the city.

Bourbon e Menezes acted as Bernardino Machado's private secretary during the two periods when he was President of Portugal. During the beginning of the Military Dictatorship, he was closely involved in the transfer of power from the President of the Republic to Mendes Cabeçadas.

He entered the civil service as a clerk in the Civil Identification Archive in Lisbon, rising to 2nd officer in that public office and receiving a diploma for public service in 1927 from Cancela de Abreu, as Director General of the Ministry of Justice.

In 1931 he joined the Portuguese Socialist Party, from which he was expelled in 1933 after an incident with party leader Amílcar Ramada Curto.

In the course of his journalistic life, he became involved in various polemics, writing with irony, sarcasm and a great deal of force. The result of this was the duel he fought with Homem Cristo Filho.

Afonso Augusto Bourbon e Menezes died in Lisbon at the age of 58.

Private life

He was the brother of the painter Helena de Bourbon e Meneses, Luísa Gonzaga Van-Zeller Fernandes and Georgina Gonzaga Garcia Van-Zeller. He married Lívia de Bourbon e Menezes and had a son named Gilberto de Bourbon e Menezes who was an employee of the Angola Diamond Company, where he was at the time of his father's death.

Works

• Os paradoxos de Adéme (1917; a defense of Portugal involvment in World War I)
• A paisagem na obra de Camilo e de Eça: simples apontamentos (1920)
• Solilóquios espirituais (1922)
• Menino (1925)
• Os crimes de 19 de Outubro: revelações & interrogações sensacionais (1929)
• O diário de João Chagas: a obra e o homem (1930)
• A ronda da noite: contos (1930)
• Proença furioso & lastimoso ou A magalomania de um messias sem juízo (1931; polemic against Raul Proença)
• Os intelectuais e a causa propria (1932)
• Grandesa e fatalidade do socialismo: conferência doutrinária e elogio histórico de Jean Jaurè (1932)
• Páginas de combate: critica e doutrina (1933)
• Almas deste mundo: contos e novelas (1934)
• O génio e o coração de Antero (1934)
• A significação do anti-judaismo contemporâneo (1940)
• Os portugueses perante a aliança inglesa (1941)
• Sua graça é Lisboa, desenhos de Aran Stephan (1944)
• Gaspar Gista & outras histórias (1946)
• O Ultimatum de 1890: antecedentes do conflito anglo-português (1946)

References

• Pires, Daniel (1988). Raul Proença. Polémicas. Lisboa: Publicações D. Quixote.