José de Almeida Santos

Poet, playwright, and essayist. Holder of a degree in Mathematics and geographical engineering from the University of Lisbon; completed the first year of the Conservatório Nacional de Teatro. He began his professional activity working in the mines of the Companhia dos Diamantes de Angola in Lunda (1945), moving the following year to become a broadcaster and programmer at the Angolan company's Rádio Diamang. Having returned to Lisbon, he worked at the Instituto Geográfico e Cadastral (1952–1955). In 1955, he returned to Angola as an engineer for the Serviços de Geologia e Minas, moving in 1957 to the Câmara Municipal de Luanda, where he headed the Repartição Municipal de Cadastro and, from 1958, concurrently the Repartição Municipal de Estatística, Cultura e Turismo. The following technical positions followed, still in Angola: President of the Administrative Commission of the Fundo dos Bairros Populares (1965); Director of the Junta Provincial da Habitação (1970). In 1973, he served as a deputy for Angola in the National Assembly, retiring in 1975. He is a corresponding academician of the Academia Portuguesa da História. He has contributions scattered across numerous newspapers and magazines in Angola, Portugal, Brazil, and the United States, and was director of the Lisbon weekly Rossio (1976). Literarily, he debuted with the poetry book Longe, lá Longe... (1962) and began approaching history in book form with Luanda d'Outros Tempos (1964). He has published numerous essays on housing, settlement, and municipal planning, most of them dealing with Angolan issues. In collaboration with his wife, Maria Lígia Amaral, he wrote over a dozen plays, all of which were performed on stage, in radio adaptations, and one produced by RTP. He also used the name Almeida Santos and the pseudonym A. S. Lopes Pacheco.