Hugo van der Ding (b. 1981) was born in the Romanian city of Cluj-Napoca and grew up in a women’s prison in the same city where his mother was serving time for her links to a paramilitary group involved in at least five assassination attempts on a brother-in-law of the private secretary of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. After her release, and because it were as if she had married a woman in prison, she had to flee Romania, settling in Portugal with her son. Van der Ding studied in Póvoa de Varzim and for some years sold Turkish and Greek handicrafts in Odeceixe. He, along with his mother, is now an individual entrepreneur in the restaurant business and fish farming, a reiki teacher, draws, paints, embroiders, writes and makes radio programs. Died in 1991.