I would like to thank everyone for attending this concert, which is part of the PCP's programme of celebrations of the 500th. Anniversary of the birth of Luís de Camões.
Allow me to extend a special greeting to the artists, cultural workers and everyone who worked hard to make this initiative a reality.
It is fair to ask how, with so much to do and in such difficult times that demand so much and increasingly more from all of us, times of hardship in the lives of most young people, women and workers, times of injustice, promotion of hatred, division, uncertainty, danger and despair for the people, why is the PCP so deeply and committedly involved in the celebrations of the 500th. Anniversary of Camões' birth with such a diverse programme as the one we are carrying out?
Well, we are carrying out these initiatives because Camões is, as the motto of the celebrations states, “the poet of the people in a changing world”.
We are carrying out because of his topicality and because it is essential that the people know the work of the poet who gave them a voice.
We are carrying out these celebrations because it is imperative to intervene for the historical truth that confronts lies and manipulation.
The work of Luís de Camões was manipulated by fascism, which sought to use it to provide ideological cover for an oppressive regime and to colonialism with all that it entails.
Camões is not the poet of these people, he is not the poet of fear, individualism, resignation, manipulation of consciences, censorship, repression, terror.
Camões belongs to the Renaissance, to that new way of thinking that challenges the old dogmatic thinking of the ruling classes who sought to repress and contain it, particularly through the Inquisition.
Camões was never protected by the powerful or the privileged of his time. He is the poet of Os Lusíadas who, as Álvaro Cunhal said, and I quote:
"Camões is not the voice of reaction and colonialism. Camões is the voice of our people, of Os Lusíadas, the voice of insubordination in the face of privilege, the voice of social and scientific progress, the voice of the Portuguese nation, in a highly humanistic sense."
Camões is the poet of the Portuguese adventure on the oceans, of mutual discovery and relations between peoples, of commercial and cultural exchanges, of new routes, new stars and new skies.
Camões is the poet of sharpening the senses, of the capacities for description, reasoning, experimentation and knowledge.
As Garcia de Orta said: “The Portuguese now know more in a day than the Romans knew in a hundred years.”
To honour Camões for what he was, what he represents and who he represents in his work is to contribute to the fight against the backward, reactionary and stale ideas and concepts that some seek to restore and spread.
But it is more than that, it is giving a voice to those people he always praised, those people who fought to defend national independence, those people who, sooner or later, always use their hands to oppose the conformism that some want to impose.
This is our history, and this is how it was at that greatest moment in the life of the people, which was the April Revolution.
That greatest and unique date that some seek to erase from collective memory, to make us forget and put an end to its achievements and values.
That greatest and unique date that some want to rewrite and replace with some other, in order to consolidate a course and a policy that squeezes the lives of the majority and concentrates wealth, benefits and privileges in the hands of a few.
A course of action that has been followed for decades, now being carried out by the current PSD and CDS government, with a policy supported by Chega and the Liberal Initiative, and with the complicity of the PS.
A course that places Portugal in the hands of large economic groups and multinationals, a course and a policy contrary to the needs of the majority of those who live and work here, of disinvestment and attack on the National Health Service, public schools, culture, and public services in general; of low wages and pensions, brutal difficulties in housing, maintenance and worsening of precariousness and working conditions; of insistence on the path of abdication of sovereignty and national production.
As Camões pointed out: “A weak king makes a strong people weak”.
This course of action and this policy of submission to the powerful weakens the people and their lives.
Celebrating Camões also means contributing to making our strong people even stronger.
It means affirming progressive thinking, discovering and respecting different cultures, combating injustice and inequality, affirming cooperation, solidarity, respect and the sovereignty of peoples, standing up to war and fighting for Peace.
Celebrating Camões and his work means always remembering that today's struggles – for wages, pensions and rights, against the labour package and in the build-up of the General Strike, for the right to housing, public education and culture – are part of the same historical process of denouncing and fighting injustices and inequalities in which Camões, despite the difference in context and time, was involved.
It is also for all these reasons that the PCP is so committed, in these times, to commemorating the 500th. anniversary of Camões' birth and that we are holding this concert today.
Let us now associate the creativity and art of Luís de Camões with the creativity and art of the artists who will be performing here today.
