Ana Gomes was born in 1954 in
Alfredo da Costa Maternity Hospital, in the
Lisbon parish of
São Sebastião da Pedreira, and she grew up during the authoritarian
Estado Novo regime. Her father, Jorge Pedro Martins Gomes, was an officer of the
merchant marine and her mother, Maria Alice Rosa Gomes, In her teenage years, she accompanied her father to the rallies of the opposition movements
Democratic Unity Electoral Commission (CEUD,
Comissão Eleitoral de Unidade Democrática) and the
Portuguese Democratic Movement/Democratic Electoral Commissions (MDP/CDE,
Movimento Democrático Português/Comissões Democráticas Eleitorais) that unsuccessfully ran in the fraudulent
1969 legislative election, amid extensive harassment of opposition candidates and voter manipulation. Her parents allowed her and her sister a liberal education, initially at Colégio da Baforeira, a
boarding school in
Parede, and then the
lyceum in
São João do Estoril, As an
initiation, she was recruited to paint large murals against the
Colonial War. By the time of the
Carnation Revolution that overthrew the dictatorial regime in 1974, Ana Gomes had been suspended from the Faculty of Law for "subversive activities"; she had been briefly arrested as an agitator, along with a group of fellow students, in December 1973 and was suspended the following month. At around this time, she was first employed part-time as a waitress at the restaurant Caldeiro owned by a popular actress of the time,
Maria José Curado Ribeiro (she worked there alongside
Rita Ribeiro and
Guida Maria), and then as a translator for the exports department of the
Companhia Portuguesa de Congelação (Portuguese Frozen Foods Company). She was present at the
Largo do Carmo in the afternoon of the day of the revolution, 25 April 1974, when the forces of the
Armed Forces Movement led by
Salgueiro Maia and a crowd of civilian supporters besieged the headquarters of the
National Republican Guard, where Prime Minister
Marcelo Caetano had sought refuge, demanding he cede power. She later went to the
Fort of Caxias to witness the release of the
political prisoners. She was preparing to marry a fellow law student and political activist,
António Monteiro Cardoso, just as the revolution took place, but the marriage had to be postponed to the following month. She was elected to the Faculty's
student council in the
electoral list supported by MRPP in November 1974 (alongside
Durão Barroso and
Garcia Pereira) as well as to the Faculty governing board. After the birth of her daughter in August 1975, she dropped out of law school and quit her job, and focused on working as a translator and interpreter for the press division of the Central Committee of MRPP. During the political tensions of the "
Hot Summer" in 1975, during which the country was on the brink of civil war, culminating with the
attempted Communist coup of 25 November, Ana Gomes was on the side of the democratic forces, supporting General
Ramalho Eanes and the
Socialist Party against the
Portuguese Communist Party. Shortly after, however, in January 1976, disillusioned with the party's disbelief in the
Portuguese transition to democracy, she abandoned MRPP and active politics. She returned to work as a secretary for an
import/export company and resumed her law degree
after working hours, finally completing it in 1979. She was working as a
teaching assistant at the Faculty of Law and training to become a
lawyer under Manuel Figueira, a specialist in
public international law and
maritime law, when she was challenged by friends João Ramos Pinto and José de Freitas Ferraz to apply for the
diplomatic service. She came out on top of all applicants in the
concours to gain access to the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs. • 1981 - Community Law Course, National Institute of Administration, Lisbon • 1988 - Summer course at the International Institute for Human Rights,
University of Strasbourg ==Career in the diplomatic service==