Portuguese Suffragette. A physician and feminist and republican activist, she was the first woman surgeon and the first woman to vote in Portugal, on the occasion of the Constituent Assembly elections in 1911. During her childhood, Beatriz, as she was called by family and friends, grew up in a liberal family environment. Her father and maternal grandfather supported the Progressive Party and were linked to the region's journalistic activity, allowing her to study and enter the Guarda Lyceum, in 1891, where she completed her primary and secondary studies. Settling with her family in Lisbon in the last decade of the 1800s, she continued her academic career and entered the Polytechnic School and the Medical-Surgical School of Lisbon, where she completed her Medicine course in 1902. Despite being the only woman in her class, she was well received by her colleagues. On December 3, 1902 she married physician, sports director and republican activist Dr. Januário Gonçalves Barreto Duarte, with whom she had a daughter, Maria Emília, born June 27, 1903. In her medical career, the fact that in 1903 she presented her inaugural dissertation "Prolapsos Genitaes (Apontamentos)" ("Genital Prolapses (Notes)", in English) stands out, starting her practice as the first Portuguese female surgeon, a remarkable feat that contradicted the strongly sexist tendency of the operating rooms of the time. She would then become the first Portuguese woman to operate at São José Hospital. Shortly after, she started working at the Rilhafoles Psychiatric Hospital, under the guidance of Miguel Bombarda, and dedicated herself to the specialty of Gynecology, with a private practice in downtown Lisbon, namely in Rua Nova do Almada. The anti-monarchy atmosphere of the last years of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century in Portugal fused republican, masonic and feminist ideologies among the liberal bourgeoisie in Lisbon, and without exception, Carolina Beatriz Ângelo. Her militancy in organizations defending women's rights began in 1906 in the Portuguese committee of the French association La Paix et le Désarmement par les Femmes (Peace and Disarmament by Women), an association whose objective was to resolve war conflicts through dialogue, followed by 1907, in the Portuguese Group of Feminist Studies, led by Ana de Castro Osório, and in Freemasonry, in the Humanity Lodge, under the symbolic name of "Lígia". In 1909, she was part of the group of women that founded the Liga Republicana das Mulheres Portuguesas (Republican League of Portuguese Women), a defender of republican ideals, women's suffrage, the right to divorce, the education of children and equal rights and duties for men and women. Only a year later, her husband would die of tuberculosis, without first seeing the end of the Monarchy, as he so much wanted, leaving her with a 7-year-old daughter to raise. On October 5, 1910, the Implantation of the Republic took place, with Beatriz Ângelo and Adelaide Cabete being responsible for the secret making of the red and green flags, symbolizing the successful revolution. Soon after, she was involved in the founding of the Feminist Propaganda Association. This association, which she came to direct, had its origins in the split of the Liga Republicana das Mulheres Portuguesas over issues related to women's suffrage. Within the framework of the association, she designed the creation of a school for nurses, which is referred to as yet another manifestation of her concern for the emancipation of women. Across Europe and beyond, suffragettes had been loudly demanding the right to vote for women for years, and New Zealand had become the first country to grant it in 1893. In Europe, Finland was the only country that recognized women's suffrage in 1911. The first electoral law of the Portuguese Republic recognized the right to vote for "Portuguese citizens over 21 years of age, who could read and write and were heads of family." She saw in this wording of the law the opportunity to "subvert" it in her favor, given that, grammatically, the masculine plural of words includes both masculine and feminine in Portuguese. Widowed and with a minor daughter in charge, over 21 years old and educated, she addressed a request to the president of the census commission of the 2nd Neighborhood of Lisbon to have her name "included in the new voter registration that has to be carried out." The claim was rejected by the census commission, which led to an appeal in court, arguing that the law did not expressly exclude women. On April 28, 1911, judge João Baptista de Castro, father of Ana de Castro Osório, pronounced the sentence that would go down in history: "Excluding women (…) just because they are women (…) it is simply absurd and iniquitous and in opposition to the very ideas of democracy and justice proclaimed by the Republican Party. (…) Where the law does not distinguish, the judge cannot distinguish (…) and I order that the claimant be included in the voter registration." Thus, on May 28 of the same year, in the elections for the Constituent Assembly, she became the first Portuguese woman to exercise the right to vote, but not without a small incident, which she reported to the newspaper "A Capital": "At the end of the first call, the president of the polling station, Mr. Constâncio de Oliveira, consulted the chair about whether or not he should accept my vote, an extravagant consultation, since, being registered by virtue of a judicial decision, he had no competence to interfere in the matter." The case was widely reported in Portugal and congratulated in several countries around the world by suffragist associations. In July and August of 1911, she complained of extreme fatigue. She made a public declaration that she wished to have a civil burial rather than a religious one, which would be made public in the following year at her funeral. She also made arrangements for the future of her eight-year-old daughter, asking her family members that would survive her to "dispense conventional mourning" and to "not force the girl to mourn her mother." On October 3, 1911, at 2 am, just 4 months after voting, Carolina Beatriz Ângelo died of cardiac arrest due to myocarditis, at her home, at the age of 33. Reports from the time say that she felt unwell during the tram ride, as she returned home after attending a political meeting with other suffragists from the Feminist Propaganda Association. She allegedly died extremely disappointed with the Portuguese Republic. She was interred in Prazeres Cemetery, beside her husband in his family's mausoleum. Her act would have the immediate consequence of a setback in the law: the Electoral Code of 1913 expressly prohibited women from voting. Portuguese women would have to wait for the year of 1931 to be granted the right to vote, and even so, with restrictions: only women with secondary or higher education could vote. It was only after the April 25, 1974 Revolution that all restrictions on the electoral capacity of citizens based on gender would be abolished, and for this reason Portugal was one of the last European countries to grant the vote to women. Despite not having witnessed the implementation of universal suffrage in the country, having defied the conservative norms of Portuguese society and accomplished the feat of becoming the first woman to vote in Portugal, Carolina Beatriz Ângelo is one of the most recognised suffragettes of the 20th century. She would be honoured in the naming of several streets, a school, Escola EB 2,3 Carolina Beatriz Ângelo, inaugurated in her hometown and a hospital, Hospital Beatriz Ângelo, inaugurated in the city of Loures on January 19, 2012.