Paulo F. Oliveira Fontes: "What does it mean to celebrate June 10?"
As it happens every year, June 10th is the "Day of Portugal, Camões and the Portuguese Communities", the date attributed to the death of the author of "Os Lusíadas", the great national epic poem. During the First Republic, the date was initially celebrated as a municipal holiday in Lisbon, but was later elevated to a bank holiday by the Estado Novo, which renamed it "Day of Camões, of Portugal and of the Race", from a nationalist and imperial perspective. It was temporarily celebrated as "Community Day" in the years following the April 25th revolution, only to acquire its current designation in 1978, in the context of the stabilisation of the new democratic regime. In its continuity, the holiday of June 10 thus aims to pay tribute to Portugal, the Portuguese, the Lusophone culture and the Portuguese presence throughout the world, being celebrated in Portugal and, since 2016, with the Portuguese communities abroad (cf. art. 2, Decree-Law no. 20-A/2016, of April 27).
June 10 is one of the four national holidays with which the country officially celebrates its civic, cultural and political identity: June 10, October 5, December 1 and April 25. With the celebration of each of these holidays, the country highlights some of the features considered to be important in the way Portugal defines itself and understands itself as a nation, based on the evocation of some milestones of the past. Thus, and respectively: June 10 celebrates its history and culture, defined and understood in a universalistic reading; October 5 commemorates the political regime proclaimed in 1910, while underlining the ideas of citizenship and civility to which the idea of the Republic points; December 1 marks the value of national sovereignty and independence, resulting not only from a philosophical ideology, but from a political will historically reaffirmed with the restoration of 1640, after the dynastic union experienced with neighbouring Spain; April 25 celebrates the value of modern freedom and democracy, as a form of affirmation and respect for human rights, following the 1974 revolution, and having as its explicit foundation "the dignity of the human person" that the 1976 Constitution of the Portuguese Republic expressly recognises in its Article 1.
The existence of these four national political holidays, together with religious holidays, speaks volumes about the complexity of understanding the national identity of a country, in its unity and diversity. It is true that Portugal is the oldest nation-state in Europe with its continental borders practically unchanged, which greatly contributes to the fact that there is no national identity problem, as is the case with other modern European states, namely Spain. However, stating that "Portugal is a nation" raises multiple questions regarding the definition and experience of a polyhedral identity, the expression of homeland feelings, the recognition and experience of the various cultural communities that today assume and manifest this common identity (cf. José Manuel Sobral – Portugal, Portugueses: uma identidade nacional. Lisboa: Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos, 2012). And points to the need to know and study proposals for a global reading, with different perspectives and produced from the most diverse areas of knowledge, such as geography (Orlando Ribeiro - Portugal, o Mediterrâneo e o Atlântico, 1943), geopolitics (Jorge Borges de Macedo - História diplomática portuguesa: constantes e linhas de força, 1978), culture (Eduardo Lourenço – O Labirinto da Saudade: psicanálise mítica do destino português, 1978), history (José Mattoso – Identificação de um país, 1986-1988), philosophy (José Gil – Portugal, Hoje: o medo de existir, 2004), biology (Mário Ruivo – Do mar oceano ao mar português, 2015) or poetry (José Tolentino Mendonça - Speech on June 10, 2020), among others.
Reflection on the identity and destiny of a country remains an always current question, but one to which attention must be paid in times of globalisation and simplifying ideological polarisations. Only the critical study of the past combined with a careful observation and reading of the present reality can help to counteract simplistic and reductionist visions of social complexity. This is one of the challenges facing Universities today, in general, and the study of the Humanities in particular.
This year, the commemorations of the Day of Portugal, Camões and Portuguese Communities began in South Africa. In Portugal, the festivities on June 10 will take place in Peso da Régua, in the context of the designation of the Douro, a World Heritage Site, as European Capital of Wine in 2023. Let's celebrate!
Paulo F. Oliveira Fontes
Historian, professor at the Faculty of Theology and director of the Centre of Religious History Studies