Salgueiro Maia has become the “most humanized myth” in the history of Portugal
Carlos Matos Gomes’ captain considers that Carlos Abril Maia has become “the most human myth in values” in the History of Portugal, a “figure” that challenges the Portuguese to preserve freedom or solidarity.
“Salgueiro Maia is today the most humanized myth in our history. He is a figure, but he is already there, implying our Portuguese values in the preservation of his dimension: (…) the universal values of freedom, justice, solidarity, of his memory”, he judged.
Colonel Carlos Matos Gomes spoke at the session commemorating the 30th anniversary of the death of the captain of Abril Sal Ma, which took place in Largo do Carmo, in Lisbon, and attended by personalities such as the former President of the Republic António Ramalho Eanes, the captain of Abril Vasco Lourenço or the Minister of Culture, Pedro Adão e Silva.
Matos Gomes is already a reinforcement that Salgueiro Maia has become “a figure beyond the life of Portugal, a figure beyond the life of us”, he reinforced.
Addressing the journey of the captain of Abril, Matos Gomes underlined the “decisive role” that Salgueiro Maia played on April 25, 1974, being aware that, “despite the greatness of his act”, he would be seen, “by his institution and by political power in general, as a foreign body, as a disturber”. “It must be said that he liked to play this role of implicated and disturbing”, he stressed.
Matos Gomes also underlined that Salgueiro Maia was involved in “several other determining facets” of Portuguese “collective life”, such as in the colonial war, in which he participated in commissions in Guinea and Mozambique, but also in the Armed Forces Movement (MFA), having been one of the first signatories of the document sent “to the highest authorities of the regime, configuring an act of collective and punishable indiscipline”. “It is now in the category of myths, the myth of the young person involved in a transcendent act,” he said.
de Matos Gomes, António Sousa Duarte, author of the biography “Salgueiro Maia – Um Homem da Liberdade”, the editor António Baptista Lopes and the historian Além Maria Inácia Rezola also intervened in the session to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the death of Salgueiro Maia.