Almeno Gonçalves' death? “She left me a void greater than my mother’s”

Ain addition to recalling his mother's death, Joaquim Nicolau confessed how difficult it was to see Almeno Gonçalves leaving in November 2025 at the age of 66. 

Talk to Daniel Oliveira at SIC’s “High Definition” last Saturday, November 7, the actor confessed: “This is horrible what I will say. He left me a void bigger than my mother's. It's amazing. My mother was sick, so was Almeno, but my mother lived, saw her grandchildren, her children, made her life. He just left a little earlier than life allows us. Almeno left too. It was me, not just him. It’s weird that.”

“ It was a deep, deep, complex friendship. Not if I was leaving a friend, that's how I feel. I was also leaving and it was a part with him”, he added, confirming to the presenter Daniel Oliveira who accompanied Almeno Gonçalves “to the end”. “It was all very fast, ephemeral, but I accompanied.”

“ You still met my grandson. I showed him a picture of my grandson, told him it was Diogo's son. We were always very together all”, he added. 

Joaquim Nicolau also said that Almeno “was aware that he was saying goodbye” to people in the last moments of life, just as the people around him also had that notion. “Almeno was very lucid and I can assure you that the best moments of my life were spent with him.”

In recalling the last conversations with his great friend, the actor shared that he made a point of highlighting how happy “they were” and that “they would meet again”. “I didn’t talk to my mother about death, but I talked to him.”

And, he says, “at some point he accepted death with great serenity.” “Fortunately, because I do not like to see anyone suffer, he was quick. The thing happened with some speed so he wouldn’t suffer.”

“My mother died because there was no ventilator”

Remember that also in the “High Definition”, Joaquim Nicolau told that his mother, “as incredible as it seems, died because there was no fan”, this about 20 years ago, when the actor was “40 and so”.

“There was a young boy – and it is right that he was entitled, it is not right that there were no more fans – who had a motorcycle accident and was needed a ventilator. Of course, it always protects the younger life and that is the right that is correct, but the truth is that there were no more fans available at the hospital of Castelo Branco where my mother went ", detailed. 

“ When it was the Covid-19 pandemic it was realized the great problem that Portugal had, was amputated of necessary hospital equipment ", commented and lamented later.