Lisbon
Jose Saramago is acknowledged as Portugal’s greatest living novelist. In 1998, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. In his “Journey to Portugal”, a loving pursuit in prose of his country’s history and culture, he distinguishes between the traveler and the tourist: “The traveler is not a tourist, he’s a traveler. There’s a big difference. To travel is to discover; the rest is simply finding.”
This morning Lindblad travelers found themselves in Portugal’s capital city of Lisbon at the foot of the massive Monument to the Discoverers (photo), built in 1960 in a style that was popular under the Salazar regime. Other reminders of Salazar’s grandiosity are to be found nearby. The nearby suspension bridge, the longest in Europe at the time of its construction in 1962, was opened as the Salazar Bridge but was renamed the Bridge of 25 April following the 1974 Revolution. The replica of Rio de Janeiro’s Christ the King on the opposite bank of the Tagus was also Salazar’s idea: erected to thank God for sparing Lisbon from allied attack during the Second World War.
The Monument to the Discoverers sends us a mixed message: it is at once both a celebration of Portuguese discovery and of conquest. It was constructed close to the city’s commercial port, at that time busy with colonial trade. Today, following decolonisation and Portugal’s accession to the Treaty of Rome, those docks have become an Europort handling container traffic and cruise ships. Laid out on the square beside the monument is a magnificent mosaic world map depicting the routes of the Portuguese discoverers, including those of Bartholomew Diaz (to Natal in 1487), Vasco da Gama (to India in 1497) and Cabral (to Brazil in 1500). Vasco da Gama is buried, it is claimed, in the adjacent Jeronomite Monastery, a building in the extraordinarily beautiful Manuelline style that we visited this morning.
Pacing out the routes on the map we made our own discoveries. That there is an alternative world to ours which, unless we learn to speak Portuguese, we cannot share. In Lisbon homes, people watch Brazilian soap operas and listen to Portuguese news from Goa and Macau; in the city’s streets there are proud faces from Mozambique and Angola. Like the Portuguese heroes celebrated in this monument, Lindblad travelers seek to discover rather than merely find. There are other worlds than our own deserving of respect. That discovery does not have to lead to possession. And today, as the Portuguese flag beside the monument fluttered at half mast as a mark of respect to the victims of the terrorist outrages in the United States, that we share one world whose diversity we should love and cherish not fear and hate.
Jose Saramago is acknowledged as Portugal’s greatest living novelist. In 1998, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. In his “Journey to Portugal”, a loving pursuit in prose of his country’s history and culture, he distinguishes between the traveler and the tourist: “The traveler is not a tourist, he’s a traveler. There’s a big difference. To travel is to discover; the rest is simply finding.”
This morning Lindblad travelers found themselves in Portugal’s capital city of Lisbon at the foot of the massive Monument to the Discoverers (photo), built in 1960 in a style that was popular under the Salazar regime. Other reminders of Salazar’s grandiosity are to be found nearby. The nearby suspension bridge, the longest in Europe at the time of its construction in 1962, was opened as the Salazar Bridge but was renamed the Bridge of 25 April following the 1974 Revolution. The replica of Rio de Janeiro’s Christ the King on the opposite bank of the Tagus was also Salazar’s idea: erected to thank God for sparing Lisbon from allied attack during the Second World War.
The Monument to the Discoverers sends us a mixed message: it is at once both a celebration of Portuguese discovery and of conquest. It was constructed close to the city’s commercial port, at that time busy with colonial trade. Today, following decolonisation and Portugal’s accession to the Treaty of Rome, those docks have become an Europort handling container traffic and cruise ships. Laid out on the square beside the monument is a magnificent mosaic world map depicting the routes of the Portuguese discoverers, including those of Bartholomew Diaz (to Natal in 1487), Vasco da Gama (to India in 1497) and Cabral (to Brazil in 1500). Vasco da Gama is buried, it is claimed, in the adjacent Jeronomite Monastery, a building in the extraordinarily beautiful Manuelline style that we visited this morning.
Pacing out the routes on the map we made our own discoveries. That there is an alternative world to ours which, unless we learn to speak Portuguese, we cannot share. In Lisbon homes, people watch Brazilian soap operas and listen to Portuguese news from Goa and Macau; in the city’s streets there are proud faces from Mozambique and Angola. Like the Portuguese heroes celebrated in this monument, Lindblad travelers seek to discover rather than merely find. There are other worlds than our own deserving of respect. That discovery does not have to lead to possession. And today, as the Portuguese flag beside the monument fluttered at half mast as a mark of respect to the victims of the terrorist outrages in the United States, that we share one world whose diversity we should love and cherish not fear and hate.
