A new reprint of the first volume of the Portugal Guidethanks to the generosity of the Gulbenkian Foundation. More than 100 years after its publication, it is a fair, well-deserved tribute to Raúl Proença. It is not a current script, but a present memory that readers have cherished and continues to be a symbol in the best Portuguese libraries.
The original quality deserves special attention, at a time when the creation of a new digital instrument is underway to allow better knowledge of Portuguese Cultural Heritage, similar to what exists for Heritage of Portuguese Influence in the world (HPIP), with the unforgettable coordination of José Mattoso.
Ramalho Ortigão said: “There is nothing in the world more delightfully pleasant for a Portuguese heart than traveling, simply, modestly, obscurely in Portugal”. As José Sá Fernandes has done recently, with the Portugal Guide In your hands, discovering Portugal is a requirement and a duty. And in these days, under the effects of the climate catastrophe, love for the earth, planning, protection and memory are more urgent than ever. If there is a public cultural policy that is truly a priority and urgent, it is that of cultural heritage as a living reality, as knowledge, defense, preservation and safeguarding of what we receive and connection to contemporary creation.
The beautiful cover by Raul Lino combines tradition and modernity and appeals to the cult of beauty and landscape, as a duty of quality and balance. As Gonçalo Ribeiro Telles taught, by intervening in the landscape, the human person participates in the sublime act of Creation. Raul Proença says in the porch of this late book, that it was dreamed “in the green valleys, in the placid rivers and in the decorative mountains of my land, on its coasts of blue coves and mysterious caverns (sounding in the waves like huge resonant shells), in the dazzle of its epithalamic light and under its great dormant stars – and made by love and the spirit of truthfulness of some Portuguese, to reconcile and adjure the infinite Portuguese piety, perhaps deserving, for the much that others have done and will do, and for the little that I still do, to be called with justice – the Book of Love and Devotion of Portugal”.
Yes, that’s what it’s all about. To love our culture, our land, our people, in this meeting point of a thousand differences, Finisterre, “where the land ends and the sea begins”, we must recognize our History as a convergence of differences and a starting point for the search for the unknown and for others who complete us. It is Portugal that travels throughout the world and that we need to get to know inch by inch, eye to eye. Today, in solidarity with those who suffer, we look to the future with great demand, planning, preventing, anticipating, and joining hands so that we do what needs to be done.
We elected the new President of the Republic, under the old slogan of “uniting the Portuguese and serving Portugal”. It is a new time that is opening. It is the regeneration of the Fatherland that is the order of the day and obliges us to work, pay attention and care. And if I spoke about the love of culture and the priority of defending and preserving heritage, heritage and memory – I speak, above all, of people and their anxieties and their hopes and the will to overcome terrible adversities.
President of the Arts Council of the National Culture Center
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