Wilson Filipe, one of the leaders of the occupation of Torre Bela in 1975, died

WIlson Filipe, 72, felt ill and was still transferred to the hospital, but without success.

Funeral ceremonies, said the same source, should be held on Monday or Tuesday.

Busy 23 April As of 1975 by various workers from Azambuja, Herdade da Torre Bela became known for not having partisan intervention, having created a popular and non-communist cooperative, as was customary.

Until April 25, Portuguese agriculture was not valued at a political or economic level, being integrated into the Ministry of Economy as Secretary of State, a situation that on April 25 has changed, with the creation not only of the Ministry of Agriculture but also of the Agrarian Reform Institute.

Under the slogan “land for those who work it,” the agrarian reform in the democratization period took off with various land occupations throughout the country, starring by popular movements and strongly supported by the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP), due to worsening unemployment.

Conceived by General Vasco Gonçalves, the agrarian reform (made official by the law of 15 April 1975) takes place in a politically conflictive context.

Member of the political committee of the MFAVasco Gonçalves was Prime Minister from the second to the fifth provisional government. As prime minister, he was a mentor of land reform and nationalized the main private means of production such as banking, insurance and public transport, for example.

The agrarian reform was one of the most important and also most controversial measures of Vasco Gonçalves, and he himself considered the constitution of cooperatives and the distribution of land as a “difficult measure”.

The argument of the then prime minister, who died in 2005, was that it was necessary to lift the people out of hunger and misery, at a time when the gap between rich and poor was very wide.

Wilson Filipe, tells a 2007 article in Diário de Notícias, was born in Manique do Intendente and was linked to a film about the occupation of Torre Bela, the work of the filmmaker José Filipe Costa.

The director’s work is mainly focused on another film, “Torre Bela”, by the German Thomas Harlan, a document made in 1977, two years after the occupation of the estate.