Convinced that she wanted to be a journalist she used her savings to go to Brazil for a month. Her report of that trip was published by "Diário Popular" and was a great success. This enabled her to obtain a permanent assignment with "Diário Popular" in 1968, when she was among the first group of women journalists to be admitted to the editorial staff of that daily newspaper. In the "Diário Popular" and later, she showed a particular interest in stories that revealed the violence suffered by women, children and the elderly. Three months after joining she was awarded a prize for an article about alcoholic wives, buying a television with the prize money. Her forensic approach to journalism made her claim that had she not been a journalist she would have been a member of Portugal's Judicial police. She was, however, dismissed from the "Diário Popular" for writing, without formal authorisation, a review of the events in Paris of May 1968, which involved widespread strikes and student protests. The following year she published a book entitled "Revolução, meu amor – Maio 68, um ano depois" (Revolution, My Love - May 68, a year on), including interviews with diverse observers, such as the actor and director Jacques Brel, the film director Jean Luc Godard, the cartoonist Siné, the sociologist Alain Touraine, the journalist and politician Françoise Giroud, and the student leader Jacques Sauvageot. This book, in turn, was banned by the Salazar-led "Estado Novo" regime, fearing a repetition of events in Paris in Portugal.