Catarina's funeral secretly. When the commoners found out about the funeral, they ran towards the coffin with screams of protest. The police beat them back brutally. The coffin was hastily removed and taken not to the cemetery of Baleizão, but to the land of Catarina's husband António Joaquim, Quintos, about 10 km outside of Baleizão. In 1974, her remains were transferred to Baleizão. In the sequence of disturbances during the funeral, nine peasants were accused of disrespecting authority; the majority of them were sentenced to two years in prison. Lieutenant Carrajola was transferred to Aljustrel but he never came to be judged in court. He died in 1964. Legend Communist Party affiliations While she has been made into an icon of the anti-fascist resistance, the Portuguese Communist Party supposedly adulterated details of the life and death of Catarina Eufémia. Firstly, they claim that Catarina was a militant of the Communist Party in the local committee of Baleizão in 1953, which some people claim to be false. The choice of Catarina as a spokeswoman for the harvest-women may actually have been influenced by there not being any suspicion of her being a communist. In fact, Mariana Janeiro, a militant communist imprisoned several times by the Polícia Internacional e de Defesa do Estado, always rejected the hypothesis that Catarina was a member of the party. On the other hand, António Gervásio, former leader of the PCP in Alentejo, affirms that Catarina was in fact a member of the local committee of the PCP of Baleizão in 1953. Pregnancy It has also been said that Catarina Eufémia was a few months pregnant when she was killed. Apparently, this information came from other harvest-women, whom Catarina had confided in a few days before her death. During the autopsy, the people of Baleizão were joined in the square of the Cathedral of Beja, a few meters from the Hospital da Misericórdia, crying out in despair: "It was not one, there were two deaths!" However, the forensic scientist who did the autopsy, Henriques Pinheiro, affirmed repeatedly, even after the revolution of 1974, that the references to a pregnancy were false. Bibliography Natália Santos, "Catarina Eufémia: (Des) Montagem de um Mito", Coimbra, 2005. Manuel de Melo Garrido, "A Morte de Catarina Eufémia. A Grande Dúvida de Um Grande Drama", Beja, ed. da Associação de Municípios do Distrito, 1974. External links (In Portuguese) The death of Catarina Catarina,