Welcome to the Official page of the Presidency of the Portuguese Republic

My first words are to compliment the authors to whom the Portuguese PEN club awarded prizes this year, and to congratulate them for the recognition they received from this prestigious institution.

I am very pleased to congratulate António Ramos Rosa, poet, essayist and translator, whose work has already received various prizes this year, besides the prize now awarded by the PEN Club.

The originality of his poetry and the creativity of his writings have placed him, for some time, among the most consecrated names of Portuguese contemporary literature.

I am thus delighted with the admiration and interest which successive generations, both in Portugal and abroad, have been showing for the work of Ramalho Rosa.

I equally want to applaud Fiama Hasse Pais Brandão and Helder Macedo, winners of the Prize for Fiction, both of them relevant figures in our literature.

I greatly regret that author Fiama Pais Brandão, due to known health reasons, cannot be with us today, and I wish her an early recovery.

I also want to compliment professor Pedro Eiras, winner of the Prize for Essays; Ana Cristina Oliveira, winner of the Prize for First Literary Work; and José Bento and Miguel Serras Pereira, both awarded prizes for their excellent translations into Portuguese of the work by Cervantes, “Don Quixote de la Mancha”.

For them all, I reiterate my admiration and sincere wishes for their continued success in the future and that they render their readers with the fruits of their creativity and of their work.

The work, the imagination and the sensitivity of writers are the main guarantee for the survival of a language and for its international assertion.

As Ramalho Ortigão had already recalled, «it was due to the institution of the national idiom, by its differentiation from the peninsular dialects, and by the progressive aggrandisement with which our literati and our poets were able to transform the Portuguese language into one of the most plastic, resonant and beautiful in the world, that we became separated from our honourable and glorious mother, Spain».

The work of each writer, with its singular style and individual freedom, enriches the common heritage.

This is why the work carried out by institutions such as the PEN Club, promoting the interchange between literature of different countries and in the uncompromising defence of the freedom of expression, is so important.

The Portuguese PEN Club has existed for decades and has given an appreciable contribution, both for the dissemination of Portuguese literature, as for its integration, as its absolute right, in that dialogue amongst nations that takes place through the diversity of cultures.

I thus want to take advantage of this ceremony, to render homage to the Portuguese PEN Club, and to its current president, the writer Casimiro de Brito.

The Country is surely grateful to the poets, fiction writers and essayists which are members of this institution, for all they have done for the recognition of the prestige of Portuguese literature.

To all of you, once again, my congratulations and my very best wishes for a Happy Christmas.