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He comes from an educated middle-class background. Due to his mother's Anglo-Saxon heritage, Sampãio attended schools in Great Britain and the USA. He then began studying law at the University of Lisbon. Here, during his studies, he came into contact with the intellectual opposition movement against the fascist dictatorship. Sampãio temporarily served as general secretary of a student association and was briefly politically imprisoned in 1962. After completing his studies, Sampãio continued to work as a lawyer in Lisbon for the anti-fascist resistance by taking on the defense of political prisoners and working for the opposition press. As a result of the "Revolution of the Carnations", which led to the overthrow of the Portuguese dictatorship in April 1974 with the participation of José Manuel Durão Barroso, Sampãio founded the "Movement of the Socialist Left" (MES), and a little later the "Group of Socialist Intervention" (GIS ).
In 1978, Sampãio joined the Socialist Party (PS) under Mário Soares. A year later he was elected to parliament for the party. After leading the PS's international contacts, Sampãio rose to become leader of his party's parliamentary group in 1987. In January 1989, Sampãio finally took over the leadership of the PS as Secretary General. By joining forces with the Communists, the new party leader led the Socialists to a victory in the local elections in Lisbon that same year, which gave Sampãio the office of mayor. The new mayor of Lisbon declared war on real estate speculation, housing shortages and traffic chaos and, through an active cultural policy, earned the Portuguese capital the nomination for "European Capital of Culture" in 1994. However, Sampãio was less successful in leading the PS, where he was replaced in 1992 by the reformer António Guterres.
As a result of the socialist election victory in 1995, Sampãio won the presidential election the following January. On March 9, 1996, he took over the office of President of the Portuguese Republic, succeeding Mário Soares. Sampãio, who resigned his membership and positions in the PS for the duration of his term in office, has since assumed the high position of impartial and responsible president. The head of state vehemently represented the economically weak country's interests towards the European Union and played a key role in Portugal's entry into the euro zone. After his re-election in January 2001, Sampãio served as president for the second term. On January 22, 2006, the conservative politician and economist Aníbal Cavaco Silva was elected President of Portugal.
