Archives

The Mário Soares and Maria Barroso Foundation’s Archives keep and grant access to a widely diversified set of more than 200 hundred funds and collections associated with different themes, such as Republicanism, Military Dictatorship and Estado Novo, Colonialism and Anti-Colonialism, opposition to dictatorship, the 25 April 1974, European Construction, women and feminisms, literature, plastic arts, the environment and the oceans.

The archives of Mário Soares formed its initial basis. In the meantime, the Foundation Archives have received, preserved and shared documents from different provenances, incorporating personal archives, photograph collections and press collections, critically important to understand the History of Portugal, Europe and the World in the twentieth century.

It includes archives of politicians, physicians, historians, journalists, artists, sociologists, translators, agronomists, experts in African politics and literature, defenders of human rights and of the environment. It also contains archives of republicans, members of the opposition to dictatorship, politicians and military staff who held offices in the former colonies and mainland Portugal, African nationalists (e.g., Amílcar Cabral and Mário Pinto de Andrade), revolutionary activists, builders of democracy and Europeanists. 

It includes archives of politicians, physicians, historians, journalists, artists, sociologists, translators, agronomists, experts in African politics and literature, defenders of human rights and of the environment. It also contains archives of republicans, members of the opposition to dictatorship, politicians and military staff who held offices in the former colonies and mainland Portugal, African nationalists (e.g., Amílcar Cabral and Mário Pinto de Andrade), revolutionary activists, builders of democracy and Europeanists.

It includes archives of politicians, physicians, historians, journalists, artists, sociologists, translators, agronomists, experts in African politics and literature, defenders of human rights and of the environment. It also contains archives of republicans, members of the opposition to dictatorship, politicians and military staff who held offices in the former colonies and mainland Portugal, African nationalists (e.g., Amílcar Cabral and Mário Pinto de Andrade), revolutionary activists, builders of democracy and Europeanists. 

The archives can be accessed, free of charge, by way of the Casa Comum digital platform, which gathers more than 150,000 documents and approximately 1.7 million digital objects.

Opening hours
Monday to Friday
09h30-13h00 / 14h300-18h00

Mário Soares was a writer and reader by nature. Throughout his long life, he carefully kept everything that he wrote and received. The archives he gathered reflect his long and full political and civic pathway, namely his fight against dictatorship, the construction of democracy, Portugal’s accession to Europe, the defence of human rights and the protection of the environment. His archives are the mirror of someone who never ceased to write, reflect and debate the major issues of society and the world.

Mário Soares was keenly aware that his archives closely overlapped Portugal’s history and memory. In 1996 he therefore took the pioneering decision of making them available to the public through the Foundation he had created. He was the first Portuguese politician to clearly express the will to share the documents he had preserved.

The Mário Soares “galaxy-archives” are characterised by the wide scope, diversity and richness of its contents. Its document universe consists of approximately 2 million documents, belonging to the personal archives and the institutional archives. It includes a remarkable collection of photographs and letters, virtually covering the entire twentieth century and the early twenty-first century.