Frequently Asked Questions

A Fundação tem como missão a promoção de uma cultura cívica e democrática inspirada na vida e nos legados de Mário Soares e de Maria Barroso e a preservação e divulgação da memória histórica e da herança cultural de Portugal Contemporâneo.

The mission of the Foundation is to promote a civic democratic culture inspired by the lives and legacies of Mário Soares and Maria Barroso, while preserving and disseminating the historical memory and the cultural heritage of Contemporary Portugal.

The Foundation develops its activities in the cultural, humanitarian, social, scientific and educational fields, organizing its cultural heritage (Archives, Library, Casa Comum and João Soares Museum-House) and making it available in open access. Special reference should also be made to its scientific and cultural events, the promotion of training and debate Programmes, the co-operation with Portuguese-speaking countries and the support to the creation and dissemination of science-based knowledge, notably on the action of Mário Soares and Maria Barroso.

To know more about the Foundation, please read here.

The Foundation has a Board of Directors, chaired by Isabel Soares, the daughter of Mário Soares.

The Foundation also has a Chief Executive Officer, Filipe Guimarães da Silva, responsible for its executive management.

Know the Foundation’s structure here.

The João Soares Museum-House is a branch of the Mário Soares and Maria Barroso Foundation in Leiria, at Cortes.

The Cortes house, where the João Soares Museum-House is currently installed, belonged to João Lopes Soares, the father of Mário Soares, who lived there during certain periods.

João Soares bought this nineteenth-century village house from the heirs of his sister Maria das Neves, its original owner.

In the 1950’s, after some renovation work, João Soares called the house “Vivenda Saudade 1958”.

Following the death of João Lopes Soares, in 1970, the House was left to his grandchildren, Isabel and João Soares, who donated it to the Foundation in 1994 with a view to installing a Museum-House under the patron figure of João Lopes Soares.

The entry at The João Soares Museum-House is free of charge.

The Foundation provides services in all domains of its activity, such as: space rental; support services for the users of archives, libraries and the museum; digitization of archives and collections; educational and cultural mediation services.

Know the services in detail here.

Yes. You can visit The Mário Soares and Maria Barroso Foundation, in Lisbon and Leiria, during the opening hours [link to contacts and information], to consult and explore the archives, publications and collections, to visit exhibitions, to participate in colloquiums, congresses or book presentations, among other events included in the Foundation’s Programmes.

You can access and consult the document funds and collections of The Mário Soares and Maria Barroso Foundation through its digital platform Casa Comum (http://casacomum.org), or by requesting a personal on-the-spot consultation through the email address geral@fmsoaresbarroso.pt.

Know more here. 

The Casa Comum digital platform enables us to navigate the archive structure, as an alternative to research tools. Both approaches can be used.

Information has been organized by level, according to a tree-shaped structure. As we enter the website, we find a table of contents with the names of the entities that generated the funds and collections. Through this table, we can access the respective classification table and continue to navigate, until we reach the document/item level. Documents have been stored according to their provenance and link to a specific document collection, or as a function of thematic criteria.

Information can be retrieved by means of a simple search, using a phrase or keyword, or resorting to advanced search guided to subject-matters and dates, enabling the use of filters to reduce the searchable universe. Search can be limited to a specific fund or look across for documents from different provenances.

Advanced search enables the retrieval of information at the field level (folder, title, subject-matter, date, observations, fund) and resort to Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) that can combine different terms of the same search, allowing for maximum efficacy and efficiency.

If you want to retrieve documents by number of folders you must introduce the folder number followed by an asterisk in the search box (e.g., 02001*). If you want your search limited by date, you must use the advanced search and fill in the time fields (initial date and final date) as follows: year-month-day (e.g., 1924-09-24).

Yes. The Mário Soares and Maria Barroso Foundation has adopted Law no. 31/2019 that regulates the use of personal digital devices, allowing for digital photographing in public libraries and archives. Users can reproduce the contents of books and documents for their private use, avoiding the use of camera flashlights, whenever such books and documents can be communicated and have a good state of conservation.

Please consult the price list.

Certain archives and collections under the custody of The Mário Soares and Maria Barroso Foundation are protected by copyright. To reproduce documents whose copyright and related rights belong to a third party, you must be authorized in advance by the respective holder.