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This year, we commemorate the National day of Portugal in the city of Elvas. It would not be easy to find a better place to celebrate what we are and what sets us out as a sovereign people, a people that own their destiny.

Located on the border with the neighbouring country, rising from a plain with the legitimate pride forged over the years, Elvas is a city that, as only just a few, defines our collective profile: indomitable in the defence of our Nation and of the values which we hold dear, but open to establish bridges, from like to like, with all the world’s peoples.

The fortifications that feature this city’s landscape are a symbol and a metaphor. They are a signal of the will that encourages us to fight and to resist, even in the most adverse circumstances. When these fortresses were built, all seemed lost. But we never let go of the belief in a better future.

Throughout our History, the Portuguese went through extremely difficult situations, as much or more than those we are crossing nowadays. During decades we lived under foreign domination, but we never gave up hope to restore our sovereignty and to defend it heroically and with a spirit of sacrifice, with the tenacity that keeps united here, in this parcel of Europe looking out over the immense Atlantic.

Portuguese,

The qualification of the Elvas bulwarks and historic centre must be an example to the central ruling powers, to the decision takers in the local authorities and to all the Portuguese.

The beauty and the historical importance of these buildings is centuries old. However, the international recognition of their value, occurred in 2012, gives them a still greater relevance, whether from the intangible point of view, as a generator of pride and attachment of the people to their roots, or from the tangible point of view, as a component of tourist attraction and of projection for the whole of this region.

I have often underlined the importance of safeguarding our heritage, whether that which is built such as this city’s bulwarks, or that which is intangible, such as the Fado song, equally recognized by UNESCO.

There is, in our days, a much clearer conscience concerning the importance of heritage, including if considered from the economic point of view.

A recent study concluded that historical heritage is one of the areas that causes a greater growth of the cultural sector’s contribution to national wealth. It is thus obvious that an agenda for development and creation of employment confers special regard to the safeguard and valuation of our heritage.

In addition to our mild climate and conditions of security, as well as the recognized hospitality of our People, historic heritage and culture are the greatest attractions that Portugal can offer in the international tourist market, where competition is more than ever intense.

In several places in the country, the local authorities, whom I greet in the National Day of Portugal, became conscious that the preservation of the cultural heritage is an investment for the future, at a time when, above all, the basic infrastructures and the main equipments have already been commissioned and consolidated.

Many Portuguese cities and towns became distinguished in the national context due to their local authorities having taken this strategic option. With it, they not only valued the pride and self-esteem of the people but caused heritage to be their “trade mark”, which makes them unique and outstanding and that projects them in an absolutely unrivalled way in the whole of the Nation.

However, there is still a long path to be tread. But let it not be thought that because we live in difficult times we should walk away from this option, or that cultural heritage is a minor issue, an ornamental improvement or a luxury we should only take up in times of prosperity.

On the contrary, it is effectively in times of difficulty that we should place our stakes on the future. The recovery of degraded buildings and the valuation of historic centres are factors that immediately generate employment and muster economic activity.

Portugal urgently requires the preparation of the “post-troika” period through a growth strategy generating employment. We have to locate and take advantage of our many existing potentialities. The sea, to start with, but also the historical heritage are assets that the Country has available and that we cannot do without at the present moment.

The bulwarks that guaranteed our independence, which allowed us today to celebrate with pride the National Day of Portugal, are part of a valuable legacy, a legacy that inspires and encourages us in the assertion of our sovereignty whilst a free and democratic Country, proactive participant in the European project, a socially cohesive Country and confident in its future.

Portuguese,

In this region bordered by the Guadiana River, a poet sang the history of the plains and an amateur ethnographer became a pioneer when recording, through the fields, the day-to-day agricultural activities.

The National Day of Portugal, celebrated this year in the Alentejo province, is a unique opportunity to demolish ambiguities over the recent development of our agriculture and to recognize its strategic importance.

Agriculture is a crucial area for the sustainability of economic sovereignty, for the harmonious development of the territory and for the peoples’ quality of living.

We have not yet achieved all the objectives, we have several challenges to overcome, but what has been carried out in the rural world, and that many citizens are not aware of, is a notable example and a great lesson, above all at a time when we must place an unequivocal stake on the growth of the economy, in order to combat unemployment and attain greater social equality.

Some people sustain that Portugal’s adhesion to the Communities implied the destruction of the rural world and the irreversible loss of our production capacity in the primary sector. This picture is totally out of phase with reality.

When we adhered to the Communities, in 1986, the number of farmers was much larger than it is currently. We had, at the time, approximately 600,000 framers, whilst today we have less than half that number. Equally, the number of farms recorded a significant fall, of approximately 53 percent.

Whoever views only these figures may conclude that, in the last thirty years, agriculture in Portugal suffered a grievous regression.

This is not the case. It is important that the full reality is made available, and not just a part of it, when we carry out a global and objective assessment of the changes occurred in the primary sector.

Indeed, more than a process of decadence in our agriculture, we witnessed and in effect are still witnessing, a deep reconversion in the rural world. A reconversion that, it should be emphasized was not just inevitable but also desirable and that after all was demonstrated as extremely positive.

Agriculture was a sector that occupied a significant parcel of our labour, rather due to the effect of the persistent socio-economic model inherited from the past than to a deliberate professional option. People weren’t farmers, agriculture was just there. And agriculture was there in order to ensure day-to-day sustenance, often within the limits of poverty and of mere subsistence.

To those who regard with longing a past that in reality never existed, it is enough to ask: if life had been easy in the rural world, why then did so many Portuguese run away from the fields, in search of a better life?

Approximately 30 years ago, we had an agricultural sector which was deeply stagnant and lacking capital, suffering from heavy structural limitations.

We were able to successfully operate a structural transformation in our agriculture. On average, farms have doubled their size and the technical and productive reconversion that occurred there allowed obtaining notable results, which we should be aware of before airing swift judgements, which ignore facts and figures.

Within their strict objectivity, statistics do not err. Land productivity grew by 22 percent and productivity in agricultural work increased by 180 percent.

Twenty years ago, 80 thousand milk producers obtained 1 million tonnes per year; currently, 7,800 producers – less than one tenth of those that existed 20 years ago – are able to produce 2 million tonnes. Total production in the milk sector doubled and productivity per farmer increased more than 20 times.

In the tomato for industry sector, global production increased two and a half times and production per farmer grew 26 times.

In the olive oil sector, what was produced 20 years ago in 300 thousand hectares is now obtained in only 10percent of the area, that is, 30 thousand hectares.

The great changes occurred were not limited to these sectors. Generally, agro-industrial and forestry activity were the target of an intense modernization process.

We have asserted ourselves as an exporting country in several areas: fruit, horticultural goods, wines, milk products, tomato concentrate, and forestry products. In the past we only exported paper pulp, cork, Port wine and little else.

The forestry sector, in its turn, has systematically grown in the last few years, with exports in 2012 reaching a record value of 3,600 million euros.

None of this would have been possible without a strong renewal of the primary sector, on which is based the development of very large areas of our Country.

The improvement in the conditions of agricultural production, whether in quantity or in quality, had a direct reflection in the nourishment of the Portuguese. At times we do not really perceive its reach. But the new generation, above all, must be told of the notable development recorded in the last few decades.

The way in which we take nourishment these days is a lot different from what happened in the past and has been substantially improved: the average consumption per head of population improved by 63 percent in horticultural products, 41 percent in meat and 24 percent in milk, and the increase in the consumption of such goods did not imply an identically proportional increase in the external food deficit. On the contrary, we have even recently witnessed a reduction in this deficit, thanks to a significant increase in export, which amounted to 416 million euros in 2012.

Summarizing, we not only were able to increase productivity in our agriculture, we were not only capable of asserting our exporting capacity in several areas, but we also substantially improved the quality and the diversity of the nourishment of the Portuguese. More than this, however: we did so under conditions that guarantee a high level of self sufficiency in food, now amounting to 81 percent.

Thus the benefits were not focused only on the agricultural producers but were spread over the whole population.

And the role of agriculture cannot be forgotten in the mustering of activities such as tourism, handicrafts, industrial production or trade, contributing towards the quality of life in average sized urban centres located in rural areas.

For this transformation, the Common Agricultural Policy provided a fundamental contribution, but the truth is that the great merit resides in our farmers.

In this National Day of Portugal, I pay my tribute to all our farmers that, due to their effort, to their merit, to their spirit of initiative, knew how to adapt themselves to the demands of a highly competitive market, competing with much larger countries, equipped with more machinery and technology, with more fertile soils and climatic conditions more favourable to land exploit.

Our farmers fought without fear with their European counterparts, invested in the modernization of their agricultural operations and were able to place the correct stake in quality products.

The figures are, once more, expressive: of the 872 European products recognized as being of special quality, 120 are Portuguese, that is, 14 percent of quality products in Europe originate from Portugal.

In addition to this, organic agriculture has achieved a very significant growth, occupying already 2,800 producers in 210 thousand hectares, a fact which is not alien to the growing concern of consumers with food safety and quality.

Portuguese,

The development of our agriculture is a good example of the need to abandon ready made and preconceived ideas, of overcoming the trend towards defeatism and pessimism.

Indeed, still rooted in many spirits is the idea – objectively mistaken – that Portuguese agriculture is in decadence and that our adhesion to the Communities implied the destruction of the rural world.

The fact is that the rural world of the past has disappeared. Simply, however, we must not regret this extinction. On the contrary, nobody with any sense can nourish feelings of nostalgia for a time when agriculture recorded the lowest possible levels of productivity, occupied a significant part of the population but did not give it in exchange any quality of life, and led many Portuguese, more than half a million, to practise an obsolete agriculture that, at times, placed them in the limits of subsistence.

The backwardness of the rural world was associated to the backwardness of its population, living in precarious conditions, with high levels of illiteracy.

We do not have to go back many years to relive situations of absolute misery that persisted in the fullness of the 20th century and that, from the pen of authors such as Alves Redol or Manuel da Fonseca, the neorealist literature captured in pages that illustrated the way of life – or rather, survival - in the Portuguese fields.

In thirty years we were able to change ancestral practises that obliged successive generations of Portuguese to live unfair inequalities, owner absenteeism, dramas of hunger and misery, precarious conditions of hygiene and health, illiteracy transmitted from parents to offspring, seasonal internal migrations or, at the limit, rural exodus to the cities or abroad. The social landscape of our fields has changed – greatly.

We are in the Alentejo and I want to point out the enormous effort that the farmers of this region have placed to alter the structure and the guiding lines of their production, through a not always easy adaptation to market conditions and to the European framework.

The results of such efforts are already visible, with new vineyards, modern olive groves, new orchards and also many young forestry crops. The Alqueva irrigation scheme has provided unique conditions for the renewal of the productive tissue of a vast region and there is still an enormous potential that must be used to advantage.

It must be recognized that in the Portuguese agriculture of our days, there still persist structural limitations. Property continues much dispersed, the quality of arable land is not always the best and climatic features are often adverse.

Equally, it is important to recognize that, in some sectors and regions, it has not been possible to follow the demands of competitiveness and of innovation and that, above all amongst small producers, many were affected by the reconversion of our agriculture.

The long term sustainability of agriculture calls for a rejuvenation of its entrepreneurial tissue. We must acknowledge that approximately 48 percent – that is, almost half – of our agricultural operations are managed by farmers over 65 years old.

Amongst the issues the deserve consideration from our political decision takers, I point out the future of young farmers. Generally endowed with higher education, ambitious and willing to apply their knowledge in working the land, the young people that want to dedicate themselves to agriculture are facing significant difficulties. On the one hand, they have special difficulties in accessing land in fair conditions and, on the other, they have to bear excessive costs at the start of their activities.

It is true that many young people are looking towards agricultural activities. In the last tear, more than 2,000 installation projects of young farmers will have been approved. This is a very encouraging sign, which opens new perspectives to Portuguese agriculture.

We have to provide value to the rural areas and support the youngsters that want to place their dynamism and their qualifications at the service of agriculture. We have done much, but we can – and must – do more and better.

Portuguese,

Throughout my mandates as President of the Republic, I have tried to point out paths towards the future and provide guiding lines that muster citizens and bring these together within a wide consensus between political, economic and social figures.

I have always disagreed with those that believe that presidential magistracy must be negative and conflicting, those that view a President of the Republic as a political player that participates and becomes involved in the game between majorities and oppositions, often looking for the elevation of his own personal performance.

I consider, on the contrary, that the contribution of a President of the Republic must be positively provided. For this reason I have adopted as key principles of my actions, strategic cooperation and active magistracy. For this reason, as well, in the Routes I carry out throughout the Country, I endeavour to emphasize the examples of success, in order that these may be valued and adopted in other locations.

Should there be anyone who intends to nourish pessimism and contribute towards the discouragement of the Portuguese, feelings that lead to nothing, do not count upon my support. I will do everything in my power to act constructively, instilling purpose and hope in my fellow citizens.

In the difficult moments the Country is going through, we must comply with the commitments we assumed, since Portugal is an ethical Republic, which honours its word.

At the same time, we must prepare ourselves for the stage when we can no further count upon the guarantee of financing from international institutions. Portugal will become fully dependent upon the confidence that markets and investors place upon us to ensure the financing of the State and of the economy.

Those who believe that the “post troika” era is remote should be disillusioned. On the contrary, the future is more than ever nearer and, independently from whichever party is in Government, the challenges will be so great that we have to start, as from now, to anticipate them and to prepare ourselves. And to prepare ourselves well, so that we are successful.

The perspectives of economic growth and creation of employment in the “post troika” period will depend critically from the social consensus that we will be able to preserve and from the compromise to be reached as to the Country’s guiding lines in a medium term timing horizon, that the political forces are duty bound to establish. This is a decisive issue for our collective future.

It is not the first time that Portugal faces heavy challenges. With courage and determination we were able to overcome enormous adversities. These bulwarks witness it, these fortifications prove it. They served in the past to assert our sovereignty. In the present, they were recognized as World Heritage. I am certain that, in the future, the Elvas fortresses shall bear witness to a more developed and fairer Country.

On behalf of a better Portugal, I salute all the Portuguese.

Thank you