Marques (Dr Vasco Gonçalves)

He was born in Funchal on 29 August 1877, the son of Dr Joaquim Gonçalves Marques and Dona Maria Gonçalves Marques. He qualified as a physician and surgeon at this city’s now defunct Medical-Surgical School (Escola Médico-cirúrgica), completing the course in 1897. For some time he was a physician in Seixal (‘pebble shore’), and later moved to Porto Moniz (‘Moniz’s harbour’) as the Council’s district medical officer. He remained there until 1904, when he was appointed secretary of the emigration police in Funchal, a post he held until after the establishment of the Republic in our country.

Having joined the Regenerator Party while still quite young, he always rendered it the most notable services, both in the electoral contests fought in the days of the monarchy in the municipality (concelho) of Porto do Moniz, where he wielded great political influence, and in the party’s press. This was especially true of Direito, in which for some years he wrote countless articles that revealed his much-appreciated gifts as a journalist.

When the Republic was proclaimed and the old monarchist parties dissolved, Dr Vasco Marques joined the Democratic Party, led by Dr Afonso Costa, and under the new regime he continued to display his great intellectual gifts and his tough fighting temper. He edited the Liberal and the Democrata, and was municipal administrator (administrador do concelho, the government's representative) of Funchal in 1912 and 1913. After the death of the Viscount of Ribeira Brava (‘wild river’) he was elected president of the District Committee (Comissão Distrital) of that party. In 1920 he joined the Republican Party of National Reconstitution, in which he now holds a post identical to the one he last held on the district committee of the Portuguese Republican Party (1921).

Dr Vasco Marques has been elected senator for Madeira four times: on 13 June 1915, 11 May 1919, 10 July 1921 and 29 January 1922. In the national parliament he has made many speeches championing the interests of this archipelago.

As president both of the District General Council (Junta Geral) and of its executive committee, he has rendered many services to his homeland. To him is owed the great expansion of the district's roads in recent years, the acquisition of the Incarnação building, where the episcopal seminary (Seminário) was housed, and of the house that serves as the old people's home, the construction of a new pavilion at the Camara Pestana asylum, etc., etc. The plan of improvements that he and the executive committee of the General Council drew up and intended to carry out includes the construction of several new roads and the repairs that many existing ones need, the harnessing of water for irrigation, the reforestation of Madeira's mountains, the construction of a modern housing district, etc., etc.

Dr Vasco Marques rendered excellent services on Porto Santo (‘holy harbour’) during an epidemic that broke out on that island, and in Porto Moniz, where, as we have said, he spent many years, he left a great deal of goodwill through the way he carried out the duties of his post. For some time he was also a teacher of German at the Funchal lyceum (state secondary school), and on 4 October 1897 he enlisted in the reserve corps of medical officers; at present he holds the rank of militia captain in the army (1921).