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Francisco Xavier Damiano de Bragança van Uden

b. 1949

Born
8 Sep 1949, Lisbon
Country of birth
Portugal

Living person. The family sees only the name, dates and photo; everything else stays private unless they choose to share it.

facts
6
sources
1
images and files
0

Facts and their sources

Tap a fact to see where it comes from.

A life in time

  1. Born · Lisbon

    Birth, Lisbon

  2. Child born: Afonso Miguel Maria Gil de Braganca van Uden

    Birth

  3. Child born: Maria Francisca Gil de Braganca van Uden

    Birth

  4. Child born: Henrique Maria Gil de Braganca van Uden

    Birth

  5. Child born: João Maria Gil de Braganca van Uden

    Birth

What was it like?

The world around Lisbon, 1949: who ruled, who else was alive, how people lived. This is general history, not a record about the family, and every item shows where it comes from.

Francisco was born the same year as António Guterres, Nené, and Meryl Streep.

Who ruled

  • Óscar Carmona

    President of Portugal, 1926–1951 · Portuguese Republic

  • Francisco Craveiro Lopes

    President of Portugal, 1951–1958 · Portuguese Republic

  • Américo Tomás

    President of Portugal, 1958–1974 · Portuguese Republic

Born the same year

  • António Guterres

    Secretary-General of the United Nations since 2017

  • Nené

    Portuguese footballer

  • Meryl Streep

    American actress

  • Valery Leontiev

    Russian singer

  • Sigourney Weaver

    American actress (born 1949)

  • Arsène Wenger

    French football manager (born 1949)

Fashion

Barretes used as storage

Fishermen used their wool hats, known as 'barretes', as practical storage for tobacco, cigarette rolling papers, and matches.

Embroidering by oil lamp light

Women frequently worked until 11:00 PM by the light of oil lamps to embroider their festival clothing after a full day of labor.

Music
Around 1950–1960

Youth and Rock and Roll

In the 1950s, urban youth began listening to explosive rock and roll, leading the secret police to post notices in cinemas warning that young people could be happy without being irreverent.

Fado Moves to Theatre Stages

During the 1930s and 1940s, fado singers like Hermínia Silva gained fame performing on theatre stages, moving fado from its origins in taverns and streets to broader audiences.

Getting around
Around 1950–1959

Traveling from remote villages to the train

People in isolated regions like Vilarinho da Castanheira often traveled on foot or by donkey to reach train stations, a trip that could take three hours if everything went well.

Around 1950–1974

Driving speeds on old national roads

While early car travelers could reach speeds of over 120 km/h, average speeds on Portugal's narrow, winding national roads were often below 30 km/h, with Porto to Lisbon trips typically taking up to five hours.

Daily life

Lack of Basic Infrastructure in Homes

In rural areas, many homes lacked running water, electricity, and toilets, with families often using basic holes in the ground for sewage. Cooking typically occurred on floor-level fires without chimneys, leaving walls blackened by smoke.

Limited and Patriotic Schooling Conditions

Rural schooling was often limited to a single room for four grades and around 40 students, lacking electricity and toilets. Children were taught in a patriotic, conservative environment that focused on memorization and obedience to the regime.

Food
Around 1939–1945

Wartime Rationing and Factory Meals

During the 1940s, food scarcity led to the rationing of essential goods like cod, olive oil, and sugar using quarterly coupon booklets. Workers often brought their own meals in aluminum lunchboxes to the factory, heating them with alcohol kept in shoe polish tins.

Shared Sardines and Bread-Based Diets

Ordinary families relied on bread, potatoes, and vegetable soups, with meat and fish reserved for special occasions or consumed in tiny, shared portions. It was common for a single sardine to be divided among three people, and poor families in rural areas often relied on seasonal produce from small garden plots.

Prices and wages
Around 1950–1959

Cost of a pair of shoes

A pair of custom-made shoes from a shoemaker in Portimão cost 8 dollars and 50 cents, while factory-made shoes were about 10 dollars.

Around 1950–1959

Wages for manual workers and maids

In the 1950s, a construction worker or a sardine cannery worker earned about 20 escudos a day, and a maid's monthly salary was between 200 and 400 escudos.

Work

Cannery work dictated by factory sirens

Women in the sardine canning industry lived by the sound of factory sirens, rushing to work at any hour of the day or night whenever fish boats landed. They often worked 14 to 16 hours a day without fixed schedules, standing to clean, fillet, and hand-pack fish with meticulous speed.

Grueling shifts from dawn to dusk

Agricultural laborers in the Alentejo often worked from dawn until dusk, sometimes surviving on less than four hours of sleep. Children and adults alike would walk many miles to the fields, rising at five in the morning to begin their grueling shifts.

During their lifetime

  1. 1961

    Outbreak of the Colonial Wars

    Portugal began fighting colonial wars in Africa, leading to massive emigration and military expenditures that consumed half of the GNP by the end of the decade.

  2. 1973

    1973 Oil Crisis impact in Portugal

    The OPEC oil embargo caused fuel shortages and queues at petrol stations, as oil supplied three-quarters of Portugal's primary energy.

  3. 1974

    The 25 April Revolution ends dictatorship

    The 25 April Revolution ended the dictatorship and colonial rule, triggering major social, political, and economic changes, including the introduction of a minimum wage.

Family

Parents

Spouses

Children

Ancestors and children

Open the full tree

Four generations back to the right, the children to the left. The number beside a child counts the generations of descendants known after them.