Santos Silva highlights Portugal’s openness to the world stemming from multi-secular emigration
This idea of Portugal as a “builder and crosser of bridges” – in which Portuguese communities returned to the world after decolonization and immigrants from the country stand out – was developed by Augusto Santos Silva in the speech he gave at the solemn session commemorating the 48th anniversary of the April 25.
The speech of the parliament of the Assembly of the Republic was interrupted by the president of the fainting, who was right after the minister Pedro Nuno Santos, who was seated by the Secretary of State for Health, António Lacerda Sales, and by the social democratic deputy Ricardo Baptista Leite, these last two medical doctors.
In its intervention, Ukraine Silva began by identifying the date of August 25 April “in a European and internationally dramatic context”, triggered by Russia against Ukraine.
“We wish the best success in diligence so that this week, the Secretary-General of the United Nations”, António Guterres, then declared a contrast between what is happening in Eastern Europe and “democracy” from Portugal.
“In such difficult times, as essential characteristics of our homeland, such as a mature democracy, a safe and peaceful country to the other, emerge as a valuable heritage and an international example. and the way we were first to recognize a pluralist democracy that everyone seeks to integrate , without admitting fractures of religious, territorial or identity basis, never ceasing to grow or internationally in the Portuguese capacity to communicate with everyone, to bridge different realities and to be a European nation open to the world”, he said.
The President of the Assembly of the Republic, “in times of closure, closure and hatred, to other citizens of a country like Portugal, there are currently almost all nationalities without this constituting any problem, where the religious confession is almost all nationalities without that this constitutes any coming problem and that he feels as comfortable dealing with his European partners as he does with Africa, the Americas and the Asian regions, this openness is a precious asset that must be cherished”.
But it goes deeper, as it has its roots in the multi-secular experience of the Portuguese and, in particular, in the experience of emigration. Like my master Vitorino Magalhães Godinho, emigration has been, since the 15th century, a structural constant of our history”, observed the former Minister of State and Foreign Affairs.
Augusto Santos Silva, PS deputy for the constituency for the transformation of Europe, the development of vacancies in the contemporary history of Brazil, the United States, the development of other destinations was decisive for Germany and the social economy of the regions of origin”.
“It continues to be so, today: through consumption and remittances, and capturing and realizing a niche of its own and valuable for certain companies, serving as a privileged vehicle for encounters of costumes, traditions, knowledge and national” ways of being. The social capillarity of this experience of mobility and migrations will form what, as a sociologist, I have designated as the cosmopolitanism of everyday life, which opens Portugal to the world and tends to treat the foreigner as part of it, equal in rights and responsibilities”, stressed.
Augusto Santos Silva also defended that the international recognition of Portugal “as a peaceful, safe, humanist and cosmopolitan country” is due to the emigrant communities.
“Communities that form a concrete identity of how false is the myth of the observation between originary and integration are global. In fact, Portuguese communities are a harmonious double bond: on the one hand, a deep connection to Portugal and the respective regions and localities; on the other, full insertion in the host societies, with scrupulous respect for their laws, customs and costumes”, he said.
Now, according to the President of the Assembly of the Republic, “these characteristics of emigration policy” and “the establishment of the history of politics and the deep-rooted development of democracy give them a new dimension”.
In defense of his thesis, Augusto Santos Silva went even further, and argued that “several of the doors that the 25th of April opened “were opened by migrants”.
“Just look at the way, between 1974, as the Portuguese and 1976, a million returnees from Africa (in natural and traumatic conditions) integrate perfectly into Portuguese society and there the local economy recovered, without any coast. of the foundations of the regime that emerged from the 25th of April; and let us say it, loud and clear, on the day of commemoration”, he added, in a speech applauded by deputies from several benches.
PMF // JPS
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