Soares was central to Portugal’s return to democracy and was prime minister three times and president for ten years

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Portugal’s former president and prime minister, Mário Soares, a central figure in the country’s return to democracy in the 1970s after decades of rightwing dictatorship, has died aged 92.

He was hospitalised on 13 December and had been in a coma before doctors confirmed his death on Saturday.

Once popularly known as King Soares for his regal manner, the founder of the Portuguese Socialist party was prime minister three times and later spent a decade as the country’s president.

“Today Portugal lost its father of liberty and democracy, the person and face the Portuguese identify most with the regime that was born on 25 April, 1974,” the Socialist party said in a statement.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Soares in 1975 as leader of the Portuguese Socialist party, addressing supporters ahead of an election. Photograph: -/AFP/Getty Images

The government decreed three days of mourning.

Portugal’s “Carnation Revolution” took place on 25 April 1974 and was the day when the dictatorship that had been headed by strongman António de Oliveira Salazar was overthrown

Soares, who was born on 7 December 1924, headed the country’s first democratically elected government in 1976.

“My sincere condolences to all Portuguese on the death of Mário Soares,” the European Commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, tweeted.

Soares left office in 1996 after the maximum tenure as president permitted under the constitution with his popularity at a peak. For years he remained one of the country’s most influential politicians. He sat on the presidential advisory council and still took part in its meetings in early 2015.

One of his last important public appearances was in late 2014, when he visited jailed former Socialist prime minister José Sócrates, calling him a victim of a slander campaign. Sócrates, who denies any wrongdoing, is still being investigated on suspicion of corruption and tax evasion.

After flirting briefly with communism at university and then embracing Portugal’s democratic movement as a socialist, Soares was jailed 12 times and then exiled for his political activities during the dictatorship of Salazar.

During his career as a lawyer he often defended the government’s political foes. With the collapse of the dictatorship, he returned to Portugal to a triumphant reception.

One of his two children, João, has followed his father into politics and served as mayor of Lisbon. He briefly served as culture minister in the current Socialist administration, but had to resign in April after threatening to slap critics who had called him incompetent and rude.