during 1959 and 1960 that he started singing in his trademark musical style, coloured with political and social connotations, touring with many popular groups around the country and gradually becoming a favourite among the working class and the rural population. He toured for a month in Angola with the Orfeon Académico de Coimbra. In 1960 he released another EP, Balada do Outono. From 1961 to 1962 he followed the pro-democracy student strikes and demonstrations demanding the end of the authoritarian Estado Novo regime, which were brutally repressed by the police. He continued releasing many of his songs and introduced important new guitar arrangements. He played in Switzerland, Germany and Sweden, with a fado guitar group that included Adriano Correia de Oliveira, José Niza, Jorge Godinho, Durval Moreirinhas and the singer Esmeralda Amoedo. He released a new EP, named Baladas de Coimbra, in 1962. He completed his university studies in 1963 with a thesis about Jean-Paul Sartre, which got a grade of 11 out of 20. That year he also finalized his divorce from his wife Maria Amália. In 1964 he released his first studio album, Baladas e Canções ("Ballads and Songs"). In May 1964, Afonso performed at the Sociedade Musical Fraternidade Operária Grandolense (Workers' Fraternity Musical Society of Grândola) in Grândola, where he found the inspiration to compose his most famous song, "Grândola, Vila Morena". The song would be recorded years later for his album Cantigas do Maio, and would become one of signals for the start of the Carnation Revolution in April 1974. From 1964 to 1967, Afonso was in Lourenço Marques (now Maputo) and Beira, in Mozambique, with his second wife Zélia, where he reunited with his children. In his last two years in the overseas province, he taught in Beira and composed music for the Bertolt Brecht play The Exception and The Rule. In 1965 his daughter Joana was born and by 1967, marked by the colonial reality and the Portuguese Colonial War, he returned to Lisbon. He left his older son, José Manuel, with his grandparents in Mozambique. Back in Portugal, Afonso took up a secondary school teacher position in Setúbal, where he developed a severe health crisis which left him hospitalized for 20 days. After receiving hospital discharge, he found out that he had been expelled from public school teaching because the regime censors disapproved of his leftist political ideals and considered his songs highly