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Words do not alter reality. But they help us to think, to converse, and to take conscience. And conscience, of course, can alter reality.

My first words are entirely addressed to the Portuguese who are living situations of difficulty and poverty, of unemployment, that live today in worse conditions than they did yesterday.

It is of them I think on this June 10.

The golden rule of any social contract is the defence of the least protected. I think of others, thus I exist (José Gomes Ferreira). It is the commitment to others, to the welfare of all, which makes us human.

Portugal was able to rise from a long cycle of poverty, marked by backwardness and by survival. When we thought that this past would never return, poverty is back again, without the networks of traditional societies.

Too many “portugals” are beginning to appear within Portugal. Too many inequalities are beginning to arise. And a fragmented society is easily conquered by fear and radicalism.
Let us arrange an armistice with ourselves, and with the country. But let us not, once again, commit the error to believe that this is a passing storm and that fair weather will soon arrive. It won’t. Everything around us is changing. And so are we.

After all, History has not yet ended. We need new ideas that provide us with a view of the future. We need alternatives. Alternatives always exist.

The arrogance of inevitable thought is the opposite of freedom. And in these peculiar days, hard and difficult, we may do without everything, but we cannot dispense either Freedom or the Future.

The future, Ladies and Gentlemen, is in the strengthening of society and in valuing wisdom, it is in a society that bases its organization on wisdom.

There is freedom to speak and there is freedom to live, but this only exists when people are provided with an irreversible social dignity (Miguel Torga).

I would like to recall the famous speech of Franklin D. Roosevelt, delivered at an even more difficult time than ours, in 1941. Democracy is based on basic and simple issues: equal opportunities; employment for those who are able to work; security for those who require it; end of privileges for the very few; preservation of freedoms for all.

In a situation of war, Roosevelt knew that sacrifices had to be based upon a strong social conscience, on collective interest, a conscience that we kept losing in the vertigo of the economy; worse yet, that we kept losing in favour of interests and groups, without control, that concentrate the wealth of the world and take decisions disregarding any ethical or democratic principle. This is an “unacceptable reality”.

In a stormy sea it is necessary to maintain the course, to have the wisdom to separate the accessory from the fundamental. Europe is not an option, it is our condition. A Europe with a new motto: freedom, diversity, solidarity.

Let us not be led away from the truth, Europe is our future. We either save ourselves or nobody will save us (Manuel Laranjeira).
Let us thus speak of Portugal and the Portuguese.

From the Tagus we went towards the world... but how often were we absent from ourselves? We preferred remote, uncertain India, over the seas, to the plot of land where we were born (Teixeira de Pascoaes).

Land or Sea? Portugal or the World? The question was asked by all those who thought Portugal.

At the end of the 19th century, a man from the Seventies Generation, Alberto Sampaio, explains that our faculties were wasted for anything that was neither travelling nor trading. We were never concerned with agriculture, or with industry, or with science, or even with the beaux-arts. The wealth that we gained “when appearing, quickly evanesced, because there was no industry for i to settle”, and the community’s heritage, “instead of enriching, became poorer”.

In times of prosperity we did not deal with two fundamental issues: work and learning. In times of crisis it is too late: large economies in the administration would increase unemployment, and capital is lacking to reorganize work; time is lacking, since hunger knocks at the door of the poor. Thus emigrating is the only solution; silently and resigned each one departs, maybe without even a bitter word.

This text was written 120 years ago. My speech could end here. In silence.

Mr. President of the Republic,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is endemic weakness that we must overcome. The heroism to which we are called is, today, the heroism of the basic and simple issues – opportunities, employment, security, freedom. The heroism of a normal country, based on work and learning.

It does not seem much, but it is a lot, a lot that we have lacked throughout history.

Because Portugal has within itself an organizational problem:
- In a more than ever blocked political system;
- In a society with weakened institutions, without independence, occupied by bureaucracy and promiscuity that are the source of corruption and waste;
- In a weak economy without a true entrepreneurial culture.

Signs are arising, it is fair to say, of a capability of adaptation and answer, but from the bottom up. We need to transform these movements into an action on the country, an action of reinvention and strengthening of society.

It is now time to set a new course to our history.

Portugal has to become organized in itself, not to become closed up, but to become open, to attain a strong presence outside itself.

We will never be anybody in Europe or in the world if we aren’t anybody in ourselves.

It is not because we are a small country that our ambitions have to be small. Size is no matter; what does matter, and much, is wisdom and science.

Mr. President of the Republic,

Your Excellency’s invitation, for which I am very grateful, is a gesture of recognition of the universities and of their role in the future of Portugal.

In Lisbon, in the famous Casino Conference (1871), Antero stated the essential: Enlightened Europe became greater, became nobler, arose due above all to science: it was above all due to lack of science that we were brought down, that we degraded ourselves, that we cancelled ourselves.

Antero was right and the 20th century has only reinforced his reasoning. Portugal’s drama, of our backwardness and of our dependence, has always been the drawing away from the societies that evolved thanks to wisdom and science.

In the last few decades we have made a notable effort in the field of education (public schooling), of universities and of science.

For the first time in our history, we have started to achieve the required base for a new model of development, for a new model for the organization of society.

It is a necessary base, but it is not yet a sufficient base.

Wisdom exists. Science exists. Technology exists. But we are not being able to take advantage of this potential to reorganize our social and productive structure, to transform our institutions and corporations, to integrate a qualified generation that thus feels itself pushed towards deprivation and unemployment.

This is our problem: the link between university and society. This is the country’s focal issue: the organization of society based upon valuing wisdom.

I insist. In spite of all hindrances, Portugal today has installed capacity, in universities and in science, which allows us to raise ourselves from a diminished position, peripheral, and overcome the technological trench that has been dug between us and Europe.

We do not have time to hesitate. Universities live from freedom; they require freedom to cope with what society demands from them.

Our future lies here, in how we are able to link universities with society, in how we manage to place wisdom at the service of the transformation of our institutions and of our corporations.

This is where our future lies, another future for Portugal.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Lisbon is also changing due to creativity, due to energy and science, due to the students that arrive here from all corners of the world.

Lisbon belongs to the poets. In April, poetry was out in the streets and made us emerge from the night and from silence. Poetry always returns to the street, through this language that is our mater, this language that allows us to be with ourselves and with the others, in the communities that multiplied us throughout the world and in the countries that are a part of us.

25 years later I cannot forget José Afonso: Whilst there is strength, sing boys, dance girls, we will be many, we will be somebody, sing as well.

Let us all sing. For a country with solidarity. For a country that ensures the right to the basic and simple issues. For a country that transforms itself with wisdom.

We cannot be naive. But denouncing naiveties does not mean placing aside illusions, does not mean renouncing to the search for a freed country, for a clean life and for a fair time (Sophia).

It was this search that brought me to the National Day of Portugal, Camões and the Portuguese Communities.