Humberto Delgado

In February 2015, on the 50th anniversary of his assassination, the Câmara Municipal de Lisboa proposed the Portela Lisboa airport should be renamed in his honor. The government accepted the proposal and on 15 May 2016, the airport was renamed for Delgado.

In 1990, Humberto Delgado was posthumously promoted to Marshal of the Portuguese Air Force, the only person to hold this rank posthumously. The square where the main entrance of Lisbon Zoo is located is named after him. Delgado's mortal remains were translated to the National Pantheon at 5 October 1990, following a decision of the Assembly of the Republic.

PIDE subsequently claimed that the original plan was an extraordinary rendition in which Delgado was to be kidnapped and brought back to Portugal for trial. In 1981, a Portuguese court convicted Monteiro in absentia, effectively accepting the argument that Monteiro had acted contrary to orders by killing Delgado.

In 1966, German film writer and director André Libik created a 45' documentary about Delgado's assassination in the series "Political Murders" produced by West Berlin's TV station SFB. The film was completed and aired shortly after the Portuguese revolution of 25 April 1974.

After being lured into an ambush by the regime's secret police (PIDE) near the Spanish border town of Olivenza, Delgado and his Brazilian secretary, Arajaryr Moreira de Campos, were murdered on 13 February 1965 while trying to clandestinely enter Portugal. The official version claimed that Delgado was shot and killed in self-defence despite Delgado being unarmed and his secretary strangled. Their bodies were found some two months later, near the Spanish village of Villanueva del Fresno.

In 1964, he founded the Portuguese National Liberation Front in Rome, stating in public that the only solution to end the Estado Novo would be by a military coup, while many others advocated a national uprising approach.

Incumbent president Craveiro Lopes had been coerced by Salazar into standing down after only one term, Delgado faced arch-conservative naval minister Américo Tomás, the regime's candidate, in the 1958 presidential election.

Interviewed on 10 May 1958, in the Chave d'Ouro café and asked what would be his attitude towards Salazar, Delgado replied with the immediately sensational: "Obviamente, demito-o!" ("Obviously, I'll sack him!"). He was well aware that the president's power to remove the prime minister from office was essentially the only check on Salazar's power.

In 1952 he was appointed military attaché at the Portuguese Embassy in Washington and a member of the NATO Military Representatives Committee. At the age of 47 he was promoted to general and in 1956 the US Government granted him the rank of officer of the Legion of Merit.

Becoming a Military Attaché and Aeronautic Attaché to the Portuguese Embassy in Washington, D.C. in 1952 pushed his ideology in a liberal democratic direction, and inspired him to run as a democratic opposition candidate for the Portuguese presidency in 1958.

Under his supervision the first domestic line, between Lisbon and Porto, opened in 1947, the year Douglas C-54 Skymaster was purchased. In 1948, TAP became a full member of IATA and flights open to Paris in France and Seville in Spain. The flight to London in the United Kingdom began in 1949.

The Transporte Aéreos Portugueses was founded on 14 March 1945 by Delgado, then Director of the Civil Aeronautics Secretariat, with the purchase of the first aircraft that year, two DC-3 Dakota. On 19 September 1946, the first commercial line was opened, between Lisbon and Madrid, and on 31 December of that year, the Imperial Air Line was inaugurated, between Lisbon, Luanda (in the then colony of Angola) and Lourenço Marques, former designation of Maputo (in the then colony of Mozambique), with twelve stopovers and lasting 15 days (round trip), being the longest line in the world operated by twin-engine aircraft.

Delgado decided to launch his candidacy as an independent, taking the traditional opposition by surprise. Among the supporters were figures such as the intellectual António Sérgio, the monarchists Vieira de Almeida and Almeida Braga and the Fascist Francisco Rolão Preto. The Portuguese Communist Party reacted fiercely and did not spare Delgado labeling him as "Fascist" and "General Coca-Cola", in an allusion to the General's pro-Americanism. Delgado campaigned vigorously, even though he seemingly faced impossible odds. Although opposition candidates had nominally been allowed to run since the 1940s, the electoral system was so heavily rigged in favor of Salazar's National Union that its candidates could not possibly be defeated.

He published an anti-democratic book, Da Pulhice do 'Homo Sapiens' in 1933, which attacked both the "crooks monarchy" and the "bandits republic" in his subtitle. Delgado wrote in praise of Adolf Hitler, who he considered as a genius and an example of human possibilities in the fields of politics, diplomacy, social organization and military, in 1941. However, with time his sympathies leaned towards the Allies. He came to the Azores islands during World War II, by the occasion of the Portuguese-British Agreement.

He began his military career by joining the Colégio Militar, in Lisbon, which he attended from 1916 to 1922. He participated in the 28 May 1926 revolution that overthrew the First Republic and created the Ditadura Nacional, which would pave the way to the Estado Novo. He would be a loyal supporter of the regime, becoming the Director of the Secretariado Nacional de Aeronáutica Civil (National Secretariat of Civil Aeronautics), General-Commander of the Legião Portuguesa, Deputy National Commissar of the Mocidade Portuguesa and Procurator to the Corporative Chamber. He would be the youngest general in Portuguese history. Marcelo Caetano, who was his friend during this time, later would describe Delgado as an "exalted person" and a man who "wore his heart on his sleeve".

Delgado was married to Maria Iva Theriaga Leitão Tavares de Andrade (1908-2014), they had three children:

Humberto da Silva Delgado, ComC, GCA, GOA, ComA, OA, ComSE, GCL, OIP, CBE (Portuguese pronunciation: [ũˈbɛɾtu dɛɫˈɡadu]; 15 May 1906 – 13 February 1965) was a General of the Portuguese Air Force, diplomat and politician.