From 1960 until April 25, 1974, Cesariny was mercilessly harassed by the Portuguese Polícia Judiciária for being a suspect of vagrancy, a euphemistic term used by the police in those days for homosexuality, which the poet lived courageously in spite of persecution. This fact shows up several times in his writings in a veiled way ("Lisboa-os-Sustos") and was one of the causes of his intermittent stayings in Great Britain and France during the 1960s and 1970s. Later he talked publicly about this.