It wasn't until 26 April 1974 that the military arrived at the building on the corner of Rua do Heroísmo and Largo Soares dos Reis, where the PIDE (the dictatorship's political police) office in Porto operated, to release the last political prisoners. The "last of the last" was Jorge Carvalho, known as "Pisco", who was only released in the afternoon. We go back to that day through the memories of Maria José Ribeiro, co-founder of the Women's Democratic Movement and a connoisseur of that building — she was imprisoned three times. At 88, she is a memory keeper and an active member of the Union of Portuguese Anti-Fascist Resistants (URAP).

We climb the stairs of the building that now houses the Porto Military Museum and take the same route that political prisoners used to take to the interrogation and torture rooms. This is where the project "Do Heroísmo à Firmeza — percursos na memória da casa da PIDE no Porto (1934/1974)" (From Heroísmo to Firmeza — journeys through the memory of the PIDE house in Porto (1934/1974)) is based and where Maria José shows us some photographs of the moment the prisoners were released when a crowd was already surrounding the building: "It was a great joy. At lunchtime I came here with colleagues to see if the prisoners had left. Some had been taken to Caxias the night before, by stealth. The last was Jorge Carvalho, who had a common offence case against him because when the PIDEs went to beat him, he reacted. They say he bit the hand of a PIDE, blessed!" she laughs.

"Do Heroísmo à Firmeza" (From Heroism to Firmness), designed by architect and researcher Mário Mesquita and coordinated by URAP, recreates the journey that thousands of people made in the former political prison during the dictatorship. "The aim is to understand the path taken by political prisoners, which involves characterising these spaces, from the moment the prisoner enters, through the cells and the interrogation and torture rooms," says the architect. The future of the project now involves feeding this space with museological and documentary content about this "dark period" in history.