Book
Twenty years of meditation, reflection, quasi-philosophical questioning, and taking a step back from society... It was under the pseudonym Bernardo Soares that Fernando Pessoa's masterpiece, ‘The Book of Disquiet’, was published. Comprehensive, communicative, universal... As the pages turn, the reader experiences the loneliness that strikes each of us deep inside, those conflicting feelings so familiar to all, but which ordinary people cannot put into words.
Music
Listed as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO in 2011, Portuguese fado tells of disappointed love, sorrow and the melancholy of days gone by, accompanied by plucked string instruments. Very popular in the working-class neighbourhoods of Lisbon, it gradually reached the bourgeoisie and spread throughout Portuguese society.
Film
What if Christopher Columbus was not Genoese but Portuguese? This is the premise of the film ‘Christopher Columbus, the Enigma’, directed by Manoel de Oliveira and released in 2008. It follows the adventures of Manuel Luciano, who, since the 1940s, has been trying to solve this mystery from one side of the Atlantic Ocean to the other, always accompanied by his wife. A quest as zany as it is poetic.