Gonçalo Pereira Ribeiro Telles (24 May 1922 – 11 November 2020) was a Portuguese politician and landscape architect. He was born and died in Lisbon.
He was a founder of the People's Monarchist Party in 1974, and led it until 1992, when he left the party. In 1993 co-founded and presided the ecologist movement party Movimento Partido da Terra, today called MPT – Partido da Terra.
He was also Minister for Quality of Life in the Democratic Alliance government, and one of the first Portuguese politicians to call attention to ecological problems, having an influence far beyond the tiny size of the parties he led.
Academic and professional career
Gonçalo Ribeiro Telles graduated in Agronomy Engineering and finished the Free Course in Landscape Architecture at the Higher Institute of Agronomy of the Technical University of Lisbon (ISA) in 1951.
He began his professional life in the services of the Lisbon City Council immediately after finishing his studies. Ribeiro Telles started teaching at the Higher Institute of Agronomy (ISA) in 1963, as a disciple of Francisco Caldeira Cabral, the pioneer of landscape architecture in Portugal. Together with Caldeira Cabral, they published in 1960, the first edition of "A Árvore in Portugal", a reference work on tree species existing in our country.
In the Lisbon City Council Ribeiro Telles worked at the Division of Arborisation and Gardening (1951-55) until he assumed the role of Landscape Architect in the Office of Urbanisation Studies (directed by the engineer Guimarães Lobato) in 1955,and remained until 1960.
From 1971 to 1974 he also directed, as a landscape architect, the Biophysical planning and Green Spaces Sector of the Housing Development Fund.
The most recognized project of his career is the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation's garden, which he signed with António Viana Barreto and[5] which earned him, ex aequo, the Valmor Prize of 1975.
Also in the capital, it is worth mentioning the set of projects that conceived, between 1998 and 2002, at the request of the City Council, the main and secondary green structures of the Metropolitan Area of Lisbon, and which are now in different stages of implementation: the Alcântara Valley and Radial de Benfica, the Chelas Valley, the Peripheral Park, the Monsanto Green Corridor and the Integration into the Main Green Structure of Lisbon of the Eastern and Western Riverside Zone.
Among his other projects, it is also worth noting the public space of the Estacas District, in Alvalade; the gardens of the Chapel of St. Jerome in Restelo; the vegetation cover of the hill of The Castle of St. George the Amália Rodrigues Garden, next to Eduardo VII Park, designed in 1996.
As a guest full professor, he taught at the University of Évora, where he created in the 1990s his degrees in Landscape Architecture and Biophysical Engineering.
In April 2013 he was awarded the Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe Prize, the most important international distinction in landscape architecture.
Political and public activity
Gonçalo Ribeiro Telles began his public intervention as a member of the Catholic Agrarian and Rural Youth, a youth structure linked to Portuguese Catholic Action.
In 1945, he participated in the foundation of the National Culture Center, of which he is now the number one associate, and also President of the General Assembly, in whose sessions he accentuated his opposition to salazar's regime.
With Francisco Sousa Tavares, in 1957 he founded the Movement of Independent Monarchists, which would follow the Popular Monarchical Movement.
In 1958, he expressed his support for the presidential candidacy of Humberto Delgado.
In 1959, he was among the signatories of the Letter to Salazar on repression services.
In 1967, during the Lisbon floods, it publicly imposed itself against the existing urbanization policies.
In 1969, he was part of the Monarchical Electoral Commission, which joins the lists of Mário Soares's Portuguese Socialist Action in the Electoral Commission of Democratic Unity (CEUD) coalition, led by Soares, to run for the National Assembly. He would not be elected, like the other members of the democratic opposition lists. In 1971, he helped found the Monarchical Convergence movement, a meeting of three monarchical resistance movements: the Popular Monarchical Movement, the Monarchical Popular League and the Portuguese Renewal.