The Diplomat
The President of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, and the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, and of Culture and Sport, Miquel Iceta, and the Secretary of State for Ibero-America and the Caribbean and Spanish in the World, Juan Fernández Trigo, attended yesterday at the headquarters of the Instituto Cervantes in Madrid the delivery of the legacy in memoriam of the Portuguese Nobel Laureate in Literature José Saramago in the Caja de las Letras.
“In three words, this ceremony means gratitude, fraternity and future, symbols of this unique moment”, said the Portuguese president during the presidency of the event, which took place in the context of the Cervantes Week of the Cervantes Institute and coincided with the centenary of the birth of Saramago (1922-2010) and the celebration of the Day of the Carnation Revolution in Portugal. The event was also attended by the Portuguese ambassador in Madrid, João Mira-Gomes, and the Spanish ambassador in Lisbon, Marta Betanzos.
For his part, the director of the Instituto Cervantes, Luis García Montero, said that “figures such as José Saramago leave us as a legacy that reflection of the individual conscience at the service of collective commitment and the defense of human rights. Likewise, the president of the José Saramago Foundation, the Spaniard Pilar del Río, who is also Saramago’s widow and translator of his works into Spanish, declared that this is the second Portuguese-speaking writer to be included in the Fund of Letters, after Nélida Piñon.
