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

Mister Speaker,
Prime Minister,
Members of Parliament,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

At dawn on 25 April 1974, a young 29 year old captain gathered his men at the Santarém Cavalry Regiment. He spoke to them about the state Portugal had reached and ended by saying: «whoever wants to, come with me to Lisbon to put a stop to this. Whoever wants to volunteer, takes up his position. Whoever wishes to stay, do so».

They all went, without exception, even knowing they were running the risk of not coming back alive. After a few hours, the regime, exhausted by war, collapsed. This is why we are here today.

They were the sons of dawn. They did not come to Lisbon looking for office or positions. They were not looking for a place in History – and it is exactly because of this that they are deserving of it.

As Sophia de Mello Breyner pictured him, Salgueiro Maia was «the one who gave all and asked for nothing». A notable example for many of the Portuguese living in these days, who so often give way to empty and ephemeral seductions of the consumer society and just as often measure the value of men for their wealth or for the chattels they flaunt.

Those that departed from Santarém, Mafra, Tancos, Santa Margarida, Estremoz or Vendas Novas travelled to Lisbon because they could not conform to the Country in which they lived. They all came, because they all wanted change. They wanted a free country.

On this day we must have in mind a very simple fact: 2010 is the 36th birthday year of those who were born in 1974. There are more than 3 million Portuguese who cannot recall what was 25 April 1974, for the pure and simple reason that they had not yet been born. They look at democracy as an acquired fact.

A 24 year old youth, who finishes his higher education this year, has always lived in a Portugal member of the European Communities. He sees Europe as his area.

An 8 year old child never knew any other currency than the euro, does not know what the escudo was like.

Those that always lived in freedom are unaware of its cost. Largely, we will only perceive the value of things when these become lacking. The best lesson of freedom is the experience of lack of freedom.

We thus have a duty of recall towards those who were born after 1974. We must teach them what it cost to conquer freedom and that its defence must be a primary principle for politicians and citizens alike.

April 25 was carried out on behalf of freedom, but also on behalf of a fairer and more fraternal society. It is here, perhaps, that the balance of these three decades of democracy shows itself less than achieved.

Portuguese society is nowadays fairer than that of 36 years ago. However, social inequalities still persist and above all, situations of poverty and exclusion which incense the memory of those who carried out the April revolution.

The sensation of injustice is increasingly greater when, side by side with situations of privation and enormous difficulties, we are faced almost daily with shocking cases of undeserved wealth.

In my message, on the first day of 2008, I stated: “without placing in doubt the principle of valuing merit and the need to attract the best talents, I ask myself if the remuneration paid to highly placed company officers is not often unjustified and out of proportion, compared to the average salaries of their employees”.

Although my then call to attention was not well received by some, it does not surprise me that there are many now who show themselves outraged when faced by the salaries, compensations and bonus which, in accordance with the media, are paid to managers of companies which benefit from situations of advantage in the internal market.

As I stated on another occasion, the genesis of the current international financial and economic crisis lies in the infringement of the ethical principles of the business world and in the greed for easy profit, which came together with deficiencies in the regulation and supervision of markets and financial institutions. The resulting social costs are visible today as the loss of savings obtained with great effort, job destruction, and emergence of new poor.

Social injustice and lack of ethics are two factors which, when combined, have extremely corrosive effects on the confidence in the institutions and in the future of the Country.

Social injustice creates feelings of rebellion, especially when it is linked with the idea that justice is not the same for everybody.

Mister Speaker,
Members of Parliament,

We left the empire, we embraced democracy, we chose Europe, and we achieved the single currency, the Euro. But we still doubt ourselves. The Portuguese ask themselves each day: where are they leading the Country? On behalf of what are all these sacrifices being made?

The proof that doubts are accumulating as to the future of the Country is in the number of young people who leave. Unfortunately, those who go abroad are frequently the better qualified, the more promising.

But the large majority wants to return. I have found them in the United States, in Spain, in Germany, in Luxembourg. They are young people who want to be amongst the best, to compete with the best. They tell me they would like to return to their Country if they had the conditions to do so, above all working conditions in their specialized areas.

This is a potential the Country cannot allow to go to waste. It is the leaving for abroad of young people with greater value and talent that can turn Portugal into a peripheral country. In the current world, periphery is the address of the inefficiency of the State, the lack of excellence in teaching, the absence of knowledge, of innovation, of creativity; in short, periphery is the address of competitive backwardness.

For many years the fact that we were in Europe’s periphery was considered one of the main causes of our backwardness. Portugal was Finisterra, as the Romans already called it. We were lost in an extremity of the Iberian Peninsula, away from the great lines of communication and trade through which Europe, since the Middle Ages, construed progress and built cathedrals.

All this changed in our times. Geography is no longer an irremediable fatality. To be near or away from the centre is not measured in miles, since we are at the centre of the world if we have the knowledge and the skill for the purpose. Thanks to new technologies, distances no longer exist. The notions of centre and periphery have suffered radical change.

In a global area there are certainly new threats, great challenges that are placed by the emerging economies. We cannot waste time, since competition will be unrelenting. Whoever keeps back will need an enormous effort for recovery.

In the current world we cannot expect others to help us if we do not believe in ourselves, if we are incapable of carrying out our duty.

Globalization and the deepening of European integration oblige us to search for the difference, to find distinctive factors for our Country, to enjoy our comparative advantages. We must have a long term vision that shows the place we want to occupy in Europe and in the World.

Mister Speaker,
Members of Parliament,

Portugal lives a grievous crisis which is known to everybody. It is in such times that we must be able to open paths that lead the Country to new opportunities. I shall refer to two of them: the sea and creative industries.

Portugal is at the periphery of Europe, but is in the centre of the World. We are «a spit of land bordered by the sea» as Torga called us, words which I recalled in this Hall, when I took office as President of the Republic. We have a vast length of coast, we benefit from the largest exclusive economic area in the European Union. We can be a gate through which Europe is open to the Atlantic, if we can take advantage of the possibilities offered by this same sea that stretches before our eyes, but which we persist in not seeing.

How can a country, projected upon the Atlantic Ocean, in the crossroads of three continents, see itself as peripheral?

In addition to the specificities of our geography, we have History. In just one century we showed Europe two thirds of the planet, travelling the boundaries of all the continents. We placed many of the peoples of the world in contact with each other and created a universal language. For this reason, Portugal continues to project itself abroad with the label of a maritime country.

What justification can exist for a country which has available a formidable natural resource, such as the sea, not to exploit it in all its angles as do all other coastal countries in Europe?

Why do those countries obtain such value and create so much employment with the economic exploitation of the sea, and we don’t?

We must rethink our relationship with the sea. We must rethink the way in which we exploit the opportunities it offers us. It is necessary that we assert the idea that the sea is a main economic asset of our future.

Seventy percent of the wealth generated in the World travels by sea. We must thus invest more in the sector of maritime transport and sea ports.

But also in the development of maritime sources of energy, equipment for the sub aquatic exploitation of high technology, of live maritime products for biotechnology or in the industries of naval equipment, repair and construction.

We have to encourage the prospecting and exploitation of our continental platform, of which the survey project is under appreciation by the United Nations.

Considering the combination of the sea with our temperate climate it is necessary to develop the maritime-tourism operations, recreational sailing, tourist cruises. Along with this, we have to develop aquaculture and the maintenance of a sustainable fishing fleet.

The absence of a developed centre of maritime industries is in fact surprising when Portugal presents a number of comparative advantages which are extremely relevant on a European scale.

To the advantages deriving from our geography, from History and from the Country’s external image we can add the strategies and policies for the sea designated in the last six years in Portugal and in the European Union itself. No further studies or reports are required. It is enough to act in line with such strategies.

It is essential that we create conditions and encourage the economic agents to invest in the number of sectors that link Portugal economically to the sea.

I have immediately in mind the creation of conditions of competitiveness and fiscal stability for maritime transport and for Portuguese sea ports which will allow them, at least, equal conditions with the remaining coastal States in the European Union, as well as to energize the motorways of the sea together with our partners in the Union.

Without wishing to communicate the idea that the sea is the panacea for all our problems, I believe that the sea must become a real priority for our national policy.

By embracing a maritime design we will become stronger, because we will depend less upon international road transport, increasingly conditioned by European environmental policies.

We will become stronger because, with the exploitation of sea energy we will better face the challenges of energy security and sustainability, reducing our external dependency and promoting new technologies.

Portugal and the Portuguese need designs that will provide them with more cohesion, more self esteem and a greater reason for existing. The sea is certainly one of them.

Mister Speaker,
Members of Parliament,

Thanks to our historical and cultural wealth, to the talent of so many of our young people, to the capacity for adaptation of our labour force and to our privileged climate, we have yet the possibility to develop centres of excellence which may be set up as distinctive labels on an European scale.

Similarly to what occurred in other cities in Europe, from Barcelona to Berlin, via Amsterdam or Stockholm, we can convert some of our urban centres as great international centres of creativity and knowledge.

Apart from the Country’s capital, Porto is a city which enjoys all the conditions to be a centre for the agglomeration of new creative industries, linked to the plastic arts, to fashion, to publicity, to design, to cinema, the theatre, music and dance, but also to information technology, communication and digital.

Porto’s cultural vitality is not new, such as the entrepreneurial capability of the Northern people is also not new. Porto has always been proud of its intellectual life and this pride is totally legitimate: from letters to plastic arts, including architecture, Porto possesses a lot of the best that Portugal has achieved in the latter decades.

A large investment from the public powers, together with the already shown capability of the civil society relative to special cultural projects, may enable Porto and the North to become a great creative region, a synonym of talent, excellence and innovation.

There is human tissue made of active and dynamic people, a spirit of innovation and risk, and a cult of what is new and different. There is human capital of excellence, there are learning establishments and quality equipment. What is only lacking is the mustering of efforts to transform Porto and the North in a large European region with a vocation for creative economy and to introduce this objective as a priority in the political agenda.

Recent research has shown that cultural and creative activities may perform a role of increasing relevance in Portuguese economy, similarly to what is occurring in other developed and post industrial societies. Initiatives have anyway already been launched in the Northern region aiming to take advantage of its potentialities in this area.

Porto is clearly prepared to exercise the role of an energising nucleus of the creative skills. Its urban area, allying the ancient with the modern, the splendour of the baroque of its churches and its sober contemporary architecture, can be converted into a trade mark of international projection through a collective and innovatory movement which attracts new development dynamics, with talented creators, Portuguese and foreign artists, young entrepreneurs with a sense of opportunity.

We have there an enormous potential to develop a different and quality tourism and to set up a new central focus based upon aesthetic vanguardism and upon technoilogical and entrepreneurial innovation.

Portuguese,

36 years ago we made a date with a destiny of freedom. We did not allow ourselves to become beaten by a regime of many decades that collapsed in a few hours.

The Country belongs to us. We have forests and we have the sea. We have young talented people who want to live here. We have cities and regions waiting to assert themselves. This is the raw material of dreams.

We celebrate today the hope of those who believed, above all in themselves.

Withoiut illusions or false utopias, we must believe because we have reasons to do so.

There is one reason, above all the others. The motive of being who we are, this is our greatest reason for hope. We have had it with us, for many centuries, with it we have lived since we were born. This reason for hope has a name: it is called Portugal.

Thank you.