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Mayor of Lagos,
Speaker of the Municipal Assembly,
Chief of the Naval General Staff,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

On the day when 550 years have gone past over the death of Prince Henry the Navigator, we congregate here in his memory. We, the Portuguese, are well aware of how much we are in his debt.

His presence is still felt in Portugal nowadays and, most of all, in the Lands of the Navigator Prince. I recall the tribute I paid him when I decided, as Prime Minister, to give the name of the Prince of Sagres to the motorway that links the Algarve to the rest of Europe. I wished, with this gesture, to continue the route of Prince Dom Henrique, who from here opened Portugal to the world..

Lagos was the cradle of a dream that extracted worlds from the sea. These beaches witnessed the departure of the caravels of the son of King John I. The same caravels that later returned with news of unknown lands and different people.

Navigators, scientists and merchants from “differing nations of people unknown to us”, all of them, highlighted Gomes Eanes de Zurara, anxious “to see the wonders of the world” walked about these streets where exotic languages were heard and the deeds of Dom Henrique’s men were discussed.

Reports of the last voyages were heard all over, Charts and routes, the heavens and the seas were studied. The learning of mediaeval history was placed in doubt.

Astronomy, mathematics and geometry came together to produce the practical knowledge that made the next journey possible, the one that would allow going a bit further. Thus was followed the ambition of the Prince, to go a bit further every time.
Initially it was necessary to overcome the moorings of legends and fear, and surpass the narrow limits of knowledge based on authority.

The will was stronger than legends and fear and showed that navigating meant going and coming back, contrary to the tradition of the Funereal Sea.

Can one sole individual change the course of history? Will a sole human being have the possibility to bring something new into the life of other human beings? And as such affect the destiny of a whole people?

An individual can be the vital force causing events that change history. The one whose dream comes true at the right time.

Sailor and missionary, moved by ideas of chivalry and the will to know, he was a human being with all its contradictions, placed in an extraordinary situation. Or, going further forward, a human being who, due to the weight of his personality, caused the situation that he lived to be extraordinary. Because he did not limit himself to dreaming but went into action.

The Prince never accepted the limits that the earth wanted to impose on us. And, for this reason, he found a destiny in the sea. To us he was, above all, the discoverer of Portugal’s Atlantic vocation.

When he started all the problems needed resolving. His was the first undertaking, thought, organized and above all, durable: forty years of navigating in the name of Dom Henrique.

It was a lengthy undertaking, which he knew how to inspire with temerity and stubbornness.

He is recognized by all as the first great sponsor of maritime exploration. He widened the limits of the world and was equally the moral author of one of the greatest changes that was witnessed by humanity.

Nothing was really known in Europe for certain about the seas, or of the land, or of the peoples. Before him, dispersion, isolation. After him, the mutual discovery and the admiration caused by the diversity of ways of life and by the understanding of the essential unity of man.

The first steps were taken, decisive because of greater difficulty, to promote the union of the separate and distant branches of the great human family. For the first time, history became universal history.

The words that Fernando Pessoa dedicated to the Prince of the Sea are filled with justice and are well due.

The only emperor that really has,

The global world in his hands.

Nothing better represents this new world that was then awakening than the story of the first children born in the Atlantic islands, the twins of Gonçalo Aires Ferreira, kinsman of the House of the Prince and one of the first island settlers.

The boy’s given name was Adam and the girl named Eve, as if those children were the symbols of a new beginning, of a new age of man on earth.

A new age in which all peoples started to be in contact, sharing ideas and values, promoting the exchange of knowledge and of goods.

We know today that the meeting of peoples and cultures offers endless opportunities. But we also know that such a meeting may also become a confrontation.

A live culture, faithful to its origins, a culture that develops creativity in science, in economy, in art, in spirituality, turns this meeting into a creative impulse that brings upon the strength to conquer.

From Dom Duarte, the brother of the Prince who later became King, sensible words were heard in the Loyal Counsellor:

“In the ship that is firm and secure and strong and well fitted out, the state of the virtues is, where very few die and may securely navigate without danger through the stormy waves of this world to a safe port.”

Against winds and tides, I know that we will be able to reach a safe port. As long as we know how to navigate and, as I have been insisting, take advantage of the sea.

But we have to shove off the quay. To go further we must again have the vision and the capability to decide on how to take the first steps of a centuries’ old undertaking.

We have, once again, to place the sea in our future, such as Dom Henrique dreamed from the bottom of the past for all of us, who have lived these 550 years.

Let us celebrate our Henry Navigator, with a well fitted out heart for Portugal to become whole again.

Thank you.