English Version | Editor's Letter: From Portugal With Love, June 2024

06 Jun 2024
By Sofia Lucas

“O salty sea, how much of your salt are tears from Portugal!” - Excerpt from the poem Mar Português, by Fernando Pessoa.

Daniela Melchior, in Sintra.
An Le

This issue is a message of love, from Portugal to the world, which illustrates just a small part of the Portuguese essence. It is impossible to know Portugal just with your eyes because you feel it, above all, with your heart. And anyone who knows, knows that it is impossible to leave without feeling the longing… the taste of the sea, the smell of the sun and the warmth of our embrace.

Jourdan Dunn, in Madeira.
Ricardo Abrahao

Carla Pereira, in Monsaraz, Alentejo.
Cole Sprouse

You cannot build the future without knowledge and proper understanding of the past, especially when it still makes so much sense today. After all, we continue to be trailblazers, we are thrilled with the achievements that expand the limits of geography and knowledge, we feel overwhelmed by emotion with love stories, even if painted with tragic colors. We carry Fado in the Portuguese soul and invented the word Saudade. We are a people and a country of contrasts between the nostalgia of the past and the colorful exuberance of the landscapes and flavors that define us.

Mariza, in Porto.
Branislav Simoncik.

Alessandra Ambrosio, in São Miguel, Azores.
Élio Nogueira

A small country, huge in curiosity and the desire to go further, in ingenuity and modernity and, above all, in the ability to overcome limits and always believe in a better outcome. Nothing defines the Portuguese soul so well as the words of Fernando Pessoa, in Mar Português: “Everything is worthwhile, if the soul is not small.”