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

I am very pleased to take part in this ceremony to pay tribute to the winners of the Fernando Namora and Agustina Bessa-Luís Literary Prizes.

In a country such as ours, in which cultural events are traditionally the exclusive responsibility of the central Administration, of the Autonomous Regions or of the local authorities, it is a motive of rejoice to find out that there are individuals or private bodies that row against the tide and that promote, at their own risk, initiatives of interest and for the benefit the community.

This is the reason why I feel the need to congratulate the Estoril-Sol Company for this drive in the promotion of culture, through the literary prizes it decided to create over twenty years ago, and with which it has rewarded some of the more significant works of our contemporary literature.

Portuguese authors are most certainly grateful to this institution, as well as the public that attends the artistic events it regularly promotes.

In circumstances such as are now current, examples of this kind are enormously relevant for the vitality of our culture.

We have, in effect, an immense and notable cultural heritage, and this ceremony is the proof that it continues alive and vigorous and that it renews itself, from generation to generation, even when faced with difficult and adverse conditions.

We are paying tribute here, before anything else, to two authors that gave their name to these literary prizes and that are symbols of the most significant works that have been written, in Portuguese, in the second half of the 20th century. The first, Fernando Namora, was one of the great, if not the greatest, exponent of the so-called neo-realist literature, heavily connected with the social issues that affected Europe and the United States in the 40s.

Agustina Bessa-Luís, in her turn, is generally considered as one of the authors that most inspired the current generation and that greatly contributed towards the renewal of Portuguese literature in the latter decades.

To recall these authors, choosing them as sponsors of two prizes for fiction is also, most probably, the most adequate and noble means to celebrate continuity amongst generations, surely the nourishment of true culture.

But this continuity does not mean inertia or stagnation. On the contrary, its meaning is diversity and creativity, if not a total break with what was earlier considered as impossible to outrank. This was the work of Namora and Agustina. And this is the work of Gonçalo M. Tavares and Tiago Patrício, to whom we are presenting today the Prizes sponsored by the Estoril-Sol Company.

Their books easily demonstrate the Portuguese literature continues alive and for this same reason, maintains the capacity for surprise, both due to innovatory writing and to the building of new imaginative pictures.

I want to sincerely congratulate both prize winners.

Truthfully, the excellence of our authors and artists is a sign and a guarantee of the vitality of a nation such as Portugal, which has in its language one of the most important values of its heritage.

It is equally one of the most gratifying means of assertion of Portuguese culture in the World, thus contributing towards the strengthening of our projection and of our identity as a People.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Allow me to address a special word of greeting to the winner of the Fernando Namora Prize, Gonçalo M. Tavares, who I had the pleasure of decorating, in June ultimo, with the grade of Grand Officer of the Order of Prince Henry the Navigator.

Naturally, after all we have heard in this session and after all that has been written about him, it would be redundant that I should try to extol his work anew.

Gonçalo M. Tavares is certainly the holder of a rare talent, not just to create the stories and the gallery of figures that inhabit his books, but also to find the words that exactly express the complexity of the real world.

He combines a vast culture and a sharp intuition of the concerns and the feelings of our time. He writes in lawful Portuguese, but transmits ideas and emotions that reach the sensitivity of people from all over the world. Thus the authentic wave of recognition, both national and foreign, which has been acclaiming his work is no surprise.

Just this last book – A Journey to India – has already obtained, in addition to the Fernando Namora Prize, which is being presented today, another four prizes in Portugal and one in Brazil. In France, where it has just been translated, the critics immediately rendered it encomiums, and there are those who have recently qualified it, amongst other praise, as «the greatest epic of our time».

I am certain that the many books that Gonçalo M. Tavares will still publish will continue, as until now, to be crowned with success.

I equally hope that the winner of the Revelation Prize, Tiago Patrício, after this successful initiation into literature, proceeds in his literary career and produces other works deserving recognition.

To them both I display my appreciation and address my very best wishes.

Thank you very much.