Mónica Quintela

Quintela worked as a lawyer from 1994. She married Rui Manuel Portugal da Silva Leal, who is also a lawyer. Between 2014 and 2017 she was a member of the general council of the Portuguese Bar Association.^[4]

In 2019 Quintela was chosen to be head of the list of PSD candidates for the Coimbra constituency in the national election and was elected to be a deputy in the Assembly of the Republic. In the January 2022 national election, called by the Socialist Party prime minister, António Costa, following the failure of left-wing parties to support his budget, Quintela was again first on the PSD list for Coimbra and was duly re-elected. The PSD won three of the available nine seats for Coimbra.^[4][5]

During her first term in the Assembly, Quintela was vice-president of the parliamentary committee on the verification of elected deputies. In her re-election campaign she called for measures to improve birth rates in Portugal, such as improved maternity hospitals and more day-care centres. Criticising the country’s bureaucracy, she argued for more rapid digitalization of administrative functions. She also argued for a decentralization of government services.^[6][7]