Lara from Gallaecia, Alda of Poetry

Abstract

Lara is an ancient Iberian lineage, mentioned since the eleventh century, lords of Lara, a place in the province of Burgos, kingdom of
Castile. Due to services rendered to the kingdom, their possessions spread throughout Galicia, León, and notably northern Portugal. Lara is a parish in
the municipality of Monção where D. Álvaro Nunes de Lara established a “new manor house” after 1212. The different branches of the Lara family spread across five continents, including famous figures in arms, literature, politics, the arts, poetry, music...

Alda Lara was born in 1930 in Benguela and died in 1962 in Cambambe. Her family comes from Minho, her father and uncles settled in Angola, working in agriculture and in the sisal industry. In 1947 she came to the metropolis to study Medicine. At the University of Coimbra she met Orlando de Albuquerque, a Mozambican doctor, writer and poet, whom she married in 1953.

One single desire motivated me, a unique wish – to take a university course that could make me useful in Angola.

Her topic for thesis degree was: Psychological deficiencies caused by lack of family care.

Alda Lara, during her short life, was a socially and politically engaged
author, mother of four children, and died from complications during her
fifth childbirth. She left behind a vast body of work, collected and published posthumously by her husband. Her poetry appears in several anthologies, and her name is cited as a reference point for intercultural engagement.