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It is with great pleasure that I am here, today, on the occasion that the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation celebrates its fiftieth anniversary.

On July 18, 1956, the wishes of the founder were observed, to leave a part of his fortune and his extraordinary art collection to the country that welcomed him in 1942 and where he found the hospitality which, in his own words, “he had never felt anywhere else”.

The statue sculpted by Leopoldo de Almeida, placed in the garden, is the real replica of the extraordinary man who was Calouste Gulbenkian. An enormous falcon, representing the god Horus, which symbolized royalty and harmonized the solar and lunar facets, the worlds of the living and those of the dead and, under that image of power and determination, the figure of the man, only apparently smaller.

In fact, the statue which perpetuates Calouste Gulbenkian exhales the vitality, the strength and the confidence stressed by his gaze. It is the picture of a man who faces the storms and the uncertainties of the world, ready to leave a clear mark on it, that of a successful entrepreneur who did not ignore the importance of the social meaning of riches.

The origin of the Gulbenkian family is in Caesarea, in Cappadocia, a city where St. Basil stood out as the great apostle of the ideal of sharing. It would have been this culture of giving that influenced this family of patrons of the arts and charity works, a tradition followed by generations, and which is in the genesis of the Gulbenkian Foundation and part of its statutory objectives.

But the Foundation could only be raised after one of the greatest juridical battles of the times had been held and won, and would not have been so but for its first chairman, that prime figure of determination and talent which was Dr. José de Azeredo Perdigão.

For the role he carried out when it was set up, for the project he developed and for the prestige it obtained, the name of Azeredo Perdigão will always be coupled with the history of the Foundation. It was his decisive impulse that erected an independent institution, solely submitted to its bye laws and the applicable legislation that does not give in to the contingencies of time, because it is able to think and act in the long term. It is an honour to its nature of a private entity that it continues with a mission in the public interest.

The bye laws, which determine the mission of the Foundation in four areas – charity, art, education and science – left to the successive boards of directors the liberty and the responsibility to decide upon the best means to bring it to fruition. Our country needs such institutions, autonomous, strong, real examples of excellence which need be followed.

This is the legacy of Dr. Azeredo Perdigão. It is thus fit to remember him very specially on this day.

I equally wish to render homage to his illustrious successors as chairmen, Prof. António Ferrer Correia and Dr. Victor de Sá Machado whose activity at the head of the Foundation, especially in regard to cooperation with the African Countries with Official Portuguese Language, we all recall with respect and admiration.

A very special word to the current chairman, Dr. Emílio Rui Vilar, who I am very pleased to salute on this day.

The multiple undertakings carried out by the Foundation in all these years are a true testimony to the clairvoyance and dedication of those who conducted it until now.

Congratulations are due to those responsible and to all those who work here. The legacy of the founder has long been a highly respected institution.

In the perturbed world of this half century, during which the world suffered various crises and Portugal lived through a revolution, the financial solidity of the Gulbenkian Foundation, its stability and consistent bearings it followed constitute, until now, the greatest praise to the men responsible for its set up and consolidation.

Portugal has good reasons to applaud these 50 years of existence of the Gulbenkian Foundation. I hope that it continues, for a great many more years, the meritorious work it has been developing on behalf of society, culture, science, education and art.

My links with this Foundation are very special. I started my professional activity here, as a researcher in the Centre for Economy and Finance, to which I was associated during 10 years. It was in the Gulbenkian Foundation that I carried out my first academic work and it was the Foundation that supported my doctorate in England. I am thus in a privileged position to personally testify how it developed the activity in the training of human resources and how this has been important for the Portuguese.

The choice of Portugal to house the Foundation was a gesture which distinguished us, as a people who know how to welcome and that during whose history encountered different peoples and differing cultures.

But, at the same time, it was a demonstration of our capacity to manage and place at the service of humanity such valuable material and spiritual heritage. Others could have doubted that capacity. Calouste Gulbenkian believed, and we know today that he was right.

The Foundation was, and still is, held in such prestige that, until a short while ago, it was known as our “Ministry of Culture”.

It is doubtless that culture has been the more visible aspect of its activity.

In the arts, apart from museums and libraries, the promotion of shows, exhibitions, conferences, book editions and the granting of scholarships and subsidies are outstanding.

In its museums and auditoriums, the public became able to regularly enjoy the best artistic productions, whether national or foreign, classic or contemporary.

More recently, it was that same strategy that permitted the restoration of various monuments of the historic heritage that the Portuguese built in the four corners of the world.

In the areas of education and culture, I must signal the very deep groove that the itinerant libraries left in the memory of the Portuguese people.

When the system of public itinerant libraries, especially those intended for schools, was still incipient, the grey panel trucks were anxiously awaited by grown ups and children, who were amazed with the shelves filled with books to which they had access, gaining contact with a world which otherwise would not be available to them, opening up horizons and sowing the taste for learning.

Few actions, such as this one, will have so deeply touched the interior provinces of Portugal in the second half of the XX century.

Dr. Azeredo Perdigão said then that “it is not enough to learn to read and write. It is necessary to read, always and regularly”. This simple and profound saying asserted the fight against exclusion and opened a route which we are progressing today with tenacity and the doubled knowledge of its importance.

But the activity of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Portugal is far from being spent in its cultural profile.

Whether in the promotion of scientific research or in dissemination of science, the Foundation pioneered an essential sector of our collective life and made the Country aware of a new world.

Along with the scholarships granted to thousands of researchers, in Portugal and abroad, it set up research centres and developed specific programmes of advanced biomedical research, in which specialists from all the world took part.

In this sphere, the Gulbenkian Science Institute is an international reference mark.

An important part of the Portuguese scientific community benefited, at some time in its career, from the support of this Foundation.

In education, in science, in health, but also in the areas of social and human development, there are numerous programmes and pioneering actions which represent the spirit of innovation, the vision of the future and the capacity of prospecting the more appropriate areas of intervention.

In the social sphere, the integration of immigrants is today a common worry to all the host countries. The Gulbenkian Foundation launched several years ago a socio-professional reinsertion programme of physicians from Eastern Europe working in Portugal, combining an action of fellowship with the problem of the lack of clinical doctors in some of our hospitals.

But there is yet another virtue that is noticeable. That of recognizing value and rewarding excellence. The prizes set up or sponsored by the Gulbenkian Foundation are innumerable, achieving that difficult social task of training and recognizing the national elites

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Portugal is today a very different country from that which welcomed Mr. Gulbenkian 50 years ago.

Politically, we are a stable democracy, where the liberty of intellectual and artistic expression is fully accepted.

Socially, in spite of the existing asymmetries and difficulties, development has brought to all regions basic infrastructures, health centres, schools and the indispensable means to live with a minimum of dignity.

Integration in the European area brought us other horizons and now calls us to a future of ever closer cooperation with the majority of the Continent’s states.

In all this procedure, which completely changed the face of the Country, the Gulbenkian Foundation was always present, anticipating the necessary changes, promoting the debate of ideas and policies, establishing external bridges and becoming, many times, an oasis and a centre for modernity.

In a culture where State dependence has for centuries been predominant, the Gulbenkian Foundation asserted itself as an independent institution, opening up to innovation, and inspiring the potential for free initiative of the people.

The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation has, for all these reasons, an unmistakable place in the history of Portugal of this last half century.

But it is, as well, an integrating factor of our confidence in the future.

Portugal feels honoured to host the Gulbenkian Foundation and grateful for the enormous task carried out in the spheres of culture and science, and in the social and human development of the Country, and continues to maintain great expectations as to the continuity of its action.

In commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Gulbenkian Foundation, we also have to celebrate its vitality, its capacity of strengthening itself and to imprint its mark of distinction in the multiple activities it undertakes.

The Country needs solid and autonomous institutions, which impel and motivate other sectors of the civil society with its dynamism.

It needs experienced institutions with prestige abroad, which can project the Portuguese in the international business circuits, and in those of the arts, science and culture.

The past and the present of the Gulbenkian Foundation are the best guarantee that it will continue to be, as until now, such an institution.

I thus renew my applause to all those responsible, staff, contributors and very specially, to its Chairman, Dr. Rui Vilar, and to the members of the Board of Directors.

I am certain that the spirit and the roots which stimulate this notable institution and maintain alive the memory of that man who knew how to dispose of his assets for the benefit of others, will continue to spread its beneficiary and advantageous actions to the coming Portuguese generations.

I am certain that this Foundation will continue to distinguish itself, projecting into the future the destiny of a man, his will to share and, above all, his great example.