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SINERGIA 37

PEOPLE

OVER A CENTURY OF DEDICATION AND

COMMITMENT

MÁRIO CANDAL

An excellent talker, an impressive and cheerful man with a life flled with adventures, Mr. Candal is a leading fgure of Mota-Engil history.

At 74 and working in the company for 55 years, he is one of the company’s oldest employees. He was born in Amarante, in 1937 and at the age of 18 he left to Angola “with no destination, to work for a relative”. However in 1956 he started working at Mota e Companhia.

Following a series of small projects, in 1961 he integrated a large project for 270 km of road, in Luso Henrique Carvalho and “where for the frst time the soil-cement technique was used”, he says. He started as a machine operator and ended up as a Foreman.

When he speaks of Angola his voice is full of emotion and nostalgia. It was there

that he met his wife and spent most of his youth. And it was also there that he started working for Mota e Companhia.

In Angola he experienced hardships, mainly due to the colonial war and witnessed the deaths of some friends.

He says that everyone felt fear, “indeed I was afraid but we got to a point that the confusion was such that we completely lost fear of everything”.

“I was working in the north of Angola during the war and when I refused military service, Lieutenant-Colonel Fernandes, an army engineer told me that I would either go as a volunteer or otherwise bemobilised. I chose to be a volunteer”.

Hedid some reconnaissancewith the famous Second-Lieutenant Robles, “considered by the Russians as a young assassin”.

If we mention the name Mário Augusto Pinheiro da Silva, most probably very few people will knowwho we are talking about, but if insteadwe mentionMário Candal, or Mr. Candal then that’s

another story.

“It all started at a work site in Angola, in Luanda, Henrique Carvalho, as there were quite a fewMários, the tractor driver, the Azorean, the mechanic and so to distinguish me there was a foreman who said that I was the Mário who lived in Candal, Vila Nova de Gaia. And this is how I became

known as Mário Candal”.

Until today.

› Workers of Mota & Companhia (including Mr. Candal in his bicicle) and their familys in Bucuzau (Cabinda)

› Mr. Candal