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Mister Mayor of Guarda,
Professor Doctor Eduardo Lourenço,
Madam Secretary of State for Culture,
Honourable Chancellor of Salamanca University,
Madam Councillor for Culture and Tourism of the Government of Extremadura,

We celebrate today the anniversary of the charter of this city, granted by King D. Sancho I, in 1199.

This is a very significant day for Guarda, and I wish to greet, by way of its Mayor, all its people as well as all those who, in some way or another, are associated with it, especially Professor Eduardo Lourenço, whose name was given to the Library we have just opened and to the prize that was awarded during this ceremony.

I also wish to greet the regional and academic authorities of our Spanish neighbours, who are visiting the city on this festive day and who are also linked to the Eduardo Lourenço Prize.

Unfortunately, the winner of this prize, to whom we would be awarding it and personally paying public tribute on this day, has passed away, and all that remains are our feelings of admiration for the notable work he carried out on behalf of the narrowing of relations between out two peoples.

I thus want, on behalf of all Portuguese and in my own personal name, to address our very deepest regrets to the family of Angel Campos Pámpano. Above all, I want them to rest assured that we will not forget him, and that we will honour the debt we contracted with the excellent translator of our poets and the lifelong and untiring builder of bridges linking our cultures.

Historians say that the objectives of King D. Sancho, when founding this city, were mainly to create here, on the mountain heights, an outstanding fortress to defend the then still recent national independence, from the neighbouring reigns of Castile and Leon.

And that, the same historians say, is the origin of its name, Guarda.

Throughout the centuries, the role that history determined for this city, from which not only Spain can be seen, but also the important chain of castles built on the Portuguese side of the border, all over the region, was to guarantee the integrity of the national soil.

Guarda was, above all, the symbol of the indomitable and haughty will of the Portuguese to remain independent.

Times, meanwhile, have changed. The lack of trust and even the battles which in the past opposed the peoples from either side of the border, have now given rise to a friendly and growing relationship, in which the geographic and cultural secular affinities have reappeared and are consolidated.

We all know that our paths now cross within a larger horizon, that of the European area. Enemies are no longer viewed from the heights of the Estrela mountains, but allies, peoples which were separated throughout the centuries by political and military circumstances, but who were always deeply linked by geography and with whom we are now investing in dialogue, cooperation and in the strengthening of relations at all levels.

Guarda was undoubtedly one of the first cities to become aware and to recognize the scope of this change, in many ways historical.

A proof of this is the way Guarda celebrates today its municipal holiday, by inaugurating a library with the name of Eduardo Lourenço, and by awarding a prize, named after the same author, intended to honour individualities or institutions with a relevant and innovating intervention within the scope of cooperation and the range of Iberian cultures and communities.

Only those who are aware of the difficulties that the interior of the Country still faces can appreciate the reach of such an expressive investment in the cultural valuation of the people.

Only those that can still remember how the border between Portugal and Spain was a wall between people who hardly knew anything of each other, however small the distance separating them, are able to give due value to the commitment to dialogue and cross border cooperation that this prize represents.

The city of Guarda clearly understood the deep changes demanded by modern times. It knew how to invest in knowledge.

It knew how to breed friendships on the other side of the border.

Above all, it knew how to recognize in the figure of Eduardo Lourenço, a symbol equal to its just ambition to modernize and conquer isolation, without however giving up its identity.

Eduardo Lourenço, who was born and bred in this region, is the exact example of the man whose horizons were not confined to his place of birth and is projected across the borders, but for all of that is no less chained to his roots.

He actually stated, in an interview, speaking of himself: «A Portuguese, when he leaves home, goes definitely to another world. But he thinks of what he left behind, more than if he were at home».

Professor, essayist, an intellectual figure recognized in Europe and Brazil, Eduardo Lourenço was in effect someone who departed early to another world, a cosmopolitan world of culture and humanism.

Happily for us, he was also someone who never stopped thinking about what he had left behind. It can even be said that, living abroad since then, Eduardo Lourenço always had in Portugal, in our culture and in our history, the preferred theme for his writings.

To him we owe, for instance, some of the best writings about Fernando Pessoa, Antero de Quental, Luís de Camões and so many other Portuguese authors.

Equally, to him is owed the deepest and most insistent thought of the last decades concerning our identity, the Portuguese way of life, such as it is found in the works of our main authors and artists.

Even when Eduardo Lourenço reflects upon Europe – and he has written much about European culture and reality – it is still and always a reflection with Portugal in the background, endeavouring to understand the reasons why for centuries, both us and neighbouring Spain, were so remote from the world on the other side of the Pyrenees.

It is not thus surprising that Eduardo Lourenço is the individuality in whom Guarda sees itself, at the time when it is endeavouring to assert its individuality, not any longer as a watcher of borders and advanced fortress of independence, but as a bridge stretched towards the regions with which it confines and which face similar difficulties and challenges.

I am thus pleased to congratulate Guarda for this reunion with one of its most famous sons.

I am certain that this city will consolidate its timely initiated cultural renewal, and that its people may, finally, enjoy the development and well being that its previous situation denied for so long.

Thank you very much.