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Mayor of the City of Praia,
Members of the Cape Verde and Portuguese Governments,
Speaker of the Municipal Assembly,
Aldermen,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

I wish to begin by thanking, with great gratification, the Key to the City of Praia, which I have just received. I am convinced that, with this gesture, the capital of Cape Verde wished, before anything else, to honour Portugal. As such, it is on behalf of Portugal and the Portuguese that I accept it and express my thanks.

Portugal and Cape Verde share a secular conviviality. Not far from here we find the Old City, one of the oldest urban areas founded by the Europeans in Sub-Saharan Africa. In the Old City, preached Father António Vieira, a major name in the Portuguese language and the genial author “lusofonia” or the art of speaking in Portuguese, evoked at a Conference which is taking place in the University of Cape Verde, whose works I shall have the pleasure to close this afternoon. .

Built amongst plateaus and streams, intersected by sand beaches bordered by the Atlantic, the City of Praia, in addition to being the Country’s political capital, is also the symbolic centre of the belonging to Cape Verde. In the streets and in the plateaus, in the markets filled with lights and colours, on the Plateau that overhangs the sea, Praia summarizes well the spirit of the people of Cape Verde, of their cosmopolitanism, their opening to the world, that singular capacity that reveals the mingling of the old and the new, the local lore and the knowledge arrived from abroad.

The cultural wealth of Praia is also in its youth, in the dynamism of those that stay and of those that leave, providing, whatever the case, an inestimable contribution for the future of this country. A young country, that knew how to assert itself as an example to many and which is respected by all the world’s other nations..

The City of Praia is a metropolis that Africa placed in the middle of the Atlantic, a meeting spot between continents, the platform of an archipelago that marvels us with its diversity. The City of Praia is the synthesis of the filigree of the islands which comprise Cape Verde.

Praia is also a capital of the future, which improves with each day that passes. But it is also a .location of memories and of affections, of unforgettable colours and scents, of a nostalgic sundown which we view in the infinity of the horizon, on the immense sea that surrounds the Island of Santiago. The City of Praia is the address of the so singular Creole manner, simultaneously joyful and sad, of feeling the “sodade” of the hour “di bai” (the nostalgia of the hour of leaving).

It is thus with great honour, Mister Mayor of the City of Praia, that I receive the Key to this City. I shall keep this gesture in the memory of my heart. On behalf of Portugal, once again, thank you very much.