Sunday, December 19, 2004
This Portuguese fate

The word «fado» means fate, but it has many specific meanings, very hard to translate and relative to Portuguese people’s way of being. It is also known as «the Portuguese national song, made famous by the late Amália Rodrigues. Anyway, «fado» refers to a rather nostalgic (there is one unique Portuguese word, «saudade», that doesn’t exist in any other language, that says it better), dreamy, always-looking-for-the-answer-in-the-past way of being. Although we are latins, hot-blooded and emotional, «fado» makes us a lot different from our fellow rivals, Spain. It is said that Portuguese people are still waiting for their former king, Sebastião, to return from the fog, in order to save this country from all its problems. Sebastião was a very strong king who disappeared, during a battle in Africa, on a foggy morning, almost 500 years ago. The myth has inspired some of our most famous poets, like Luís de Camões, a hundred years later, and Fernando Pessoa, our greatest poet ever, in the XXth century.
It indeed is a strange fact that very few foreigners know Portugal was once the greatest country in the world and owned an empire of many millions of people. King Sebastião was only one of many monarchs who ordered our sailors to go discover new lands and sent our knights to conquer mysterious African countries. Portugal and Spain even signed a treaty to divide the world in two, half for each of them. Of course there was much injustice and lots of violence during these conquests but it has to be seen within the context of that time. And believe me, we weren’t half as violent as the British or the Spanish... Anyway, just after a «few» years of power, we had lost everything either for the Spanish or for the British and the French. Brazil became peacefully independent. We lost our provinces in India and Africa after a war that ended in 1974. The last of the colonies, Macao, was delivered back to China two years after Hong Kong. Still, the presence of our ancestors in such faraway places brought an influence of many of those cultures to our own customs and way of living.
We do tend to look back, remember our glory days and feel ashamed of present times, very often frightened of the future. This once great country is now one of the poorest in E.U., due to many political mistakes, the worst of them having been the fascist dictatorship that lasted from the twenties to the seventies, ending with one of the most beautiful revolutions in the world, the 25th April. That’s one particular episode I’m very fond of, though I hadn’t been born yet when it occured. Probably the fact that it happened a day after my (future) birthday has influenced me but, mostly, it was the lack of violence, the poetry within its spirit that made me so passionate about it. The Freedom Revolution, as it was named, has a flower as a symbol – the carnation. It was planned by a group of soldiers who, instead of bullets, had those flowers stuck in their guns. Salgueiro Maia, who unlike other freedom fighters never accepted political acclaim after the revolution, led those men, at dawn, to free Lisbon, our capital, from the dirty hands of the fascists. Nobody died, only a few people were injured when some members of PIDE (political police) fired their guns against the crowd. Democracy was real, at last, and though it was also used by the far-left to try and install a pro-U.S.S.R. government, the real spirit of freedom was always defended until there were no doubts left about the people’s will.
Nowadays, I’m afraid people have become a bit indifferent to politics, as one government follows another without many changes apart from the colours in their parties’ flags. Some people begin to think only another dictatorship like the awful one led by Salazar could strengthen the country again. Well, very often, History’s made in circles so I suppose there will come a day when it will all go back to one man’s power, till someone gets angry, convinces other people to join a clandestine party and all together they can make another revolution.

Damon at 6:56 pm