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U.Porto Memory

University of Porto Famous Alumni

Paulo Vallada

Paulo Vallada 1924-2006 Politician and businessman

António Guilherme Paulo Vallada was born in Porto in 1924, to a bourgeois family. In the academic year 1946-1947, he enrolled in the Civil Engineering course at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto. He finished the degree in 1949, with the final mark of thirteen out of twenty. In 1950, he left to Italy, where he attended a post–graduate course at the Polytechnic Institute of Milan.
He began his professional activity in the 1950s, in Africa. Between 1950 and 1958, he worked as an engineer and builder in Mozambique. He set up and directed civil construction and public works companies (Limpopo railway line, António Enes High School, etc.) and metal industries.
In the 1960s, he expanded his activity to Angola and Brazil, mainly in the area of civil construction.
From the 1970s to the end of his life, he ran his company in Areosa, near Estrada da Circunvalação, in Porto. This company had been bought from the family of Manuel Pinto de Azevedo, a man he much admired, and it came to be the first "company incubator" in Portugal meant to stimulate modern business activities. During 2nd Interim Government, he also assumed the management of Complexo do Cachão (1974).

Besides his professional activity, he was also known for his social and cultural involvement in Porto. He was the Chairman of the Board of the Cultural Centre for Performing Arts, secretary-general of SEDES (Association for Economic and Social Development), between 1972 and 1974, founder of CNAE (National Council of Business Associations) and of APGE (Portuguese Association of Business Management) and Chairman of the Porto Trade Association (1979-1983).
He was elected Mayor of Porto in 1982, for the Democratic Alliance, and generated consensus as to his performance and for carrying out important work for the city. During his three years as Mayor, his most important initiatives were as follows: the renovation of Ferreira Borges Market, with the help of the newspaper O Comércio do Porto, and of the Monument to the Colonizing Effort, designed by Sousa Caldas and Second-Lieutenant Alberto Ponce de Castro, in 1934, and placed in Império Square; the transfer of water collection from Zebreiros to Lever; the first municipal bond loan; he solved the problem of the revision of the Porto Master Plan, transformed into Municipal Master Plan, under the supervision of the architect Duarte Castel-Branco; the creation of the Regional Centre of Traditional Arts; placing the known Cubo da Ribeira, by master José Rodrigues, in the historical centre of Porto; the organization of the International Conference Os Portugueses e o Mundo [The Portuguese and the World], in June 1985. After his term of office, he accepted a seat in the PSD party list running for the Municipal Assembly of Porto for the 1989-93 mandate.

His public involvement in Porto was not limited to political actions. He helped regenerate old institutions like the Confraria das Almas do Corpo Santo [a brotherhood of souls of the holy body], of Massarelos, bringing the Regata do Infante, [boat race] to Douro, in 1993, for the commemorations of the 5th Centenary of the Discovery of America. He boosted the conversion process that transformed Quinta de Serralves into the Museum of Contemporary Art. He was part of the Cooperativa Árvore delegation attending the last commemorations of the 10th of June in Macau. He founded and chaired the Youth Foundation, in which he set up a Community of Inclusion named after him, and participated in the Commemorations of the 6th Centenary of the anniversary of Infante D. Henrique.
This charismatic man of Porto, known for his incisive civic intervention and vast culture died in 2006 and was buried on the 5th June of that year in the Agramonte Cemetery, in Paranhos. The funeral service mass in Corpo Santo Church gathered many anonymous and distinguished people from Porto, who wanted to pay him a last tribute. His coffin was covered with the flag of the Porto Trade Association.
(Universidade Digital / Gestão de Informação, 2008)