She began attending the Faculty of Law of the University of Lisbon in 1972, a period marked by the regime's increasing academic repression climate in the aftermath of the student opposition resistance movement of the Academic Crisis in 1962, later revived by the international revolutionary movements of 1968; notably, 1972 was the year of the assassination of fellow law student by agents of the political police, and early in the year that followed, the Minister of Education had "surveillers" ("vigilantes"; commonly referred to as the "gorillas") placed at the Faculty to enforce police control over students. Ana Gomes soon became active in student political activism against the regime as part of the underground Anti-Colonial Struggle Committees (CLAC; "Comités de Luta Anti-Colonial"), groups with links to the Re-Organized Movement of the Party of the Proletariat (MRPP; "Movimento Reorganizativo do Partido do Proletariado"), a clandestine communist party. As an initiation, she was recruited to paint large murals against the Colonial War.