Mine was a normal childhood, in a conservative and religious family of northern Portugal – my family is from Braga. My uncles, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers were educated, they all studied Greek and Latin in Coimbra, or medicine and psychiatry in Paris. The men studied, and the women, the meninas, stayed home. My father was an ophthalmologist, he studied at the Clínica Barraquer in Barcelona, and was a both monarchic and liberal conservative. I went to a school that was a hundred meters from my parents’ house, la Scuola Italiana, which was a huge influence. It was highly disciplined, and I think many of the teachers had come from Italy to Portugal because Salazar protected them. The Scuola’s program was more advanced than that of classical Portuguese schools. Drawing was very important, and every essay had to include a drawing on the subject. This gave us a certain ability that later helped me become an architect...
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