Jorge Sampaio

Jorge Fernando Branco de Sampaio (; 18 September 1939 – 10 September 2021) was a Portuguese lawyer and politician who was the 18th President of Portugal from 1996 to 2006. Sampaio was a member of the Socialist Party, a party which he led between 1989 and 1992. He served as the Mayor of Lisbon from 1990 to 1995 and High-Representative for the Alliance of Civilizations between 2007 and 2013. Sampaio was an opponent to the dictatorship of Estado Novo. He participated in the student crisis in the 1960s and worked as a lawyer for political prisoners. During his presidency, Portugal relinquished its last colony Macau, which was handed over to China, and Sampaio played an important role in the 1999 East Timorese crisis. Early life Sampaio was born in Lisbon on 18 September 1939 into a middle-class family. The Sampaio family lived in the United States and the United Kingdom for some years due to the professional activity of his father Arnaldo de Sampaio (1908–1984), a physician who was recognized for promoting the National Vaccination Program. Jorge Sampaio’s mother was Fernanda Bensaúde Branco (1908–2000), daughter of Shara Bensliman Bensaúde, who was a Sephardi Jew from Morocco and died in 1976. Sampaio's maternal grandfather Fernando Branco (1880–1940) was an officer of the Portuguese Navy and later served as Foreign Minister of Portugal, and his maternal great-granduncle was the businessman (1835–1922). Sampaio did not consider himself a Jew and was agnostic. In an interview for the daily newspaper Público, Sampaio said he recalled his parents "putting tapes on the windows, because it was feared that Hitler would come down that way [to Portugal]". His brother is psychiatrist and academic (born 1946).