Portugal accepted the request made by the Brazilian government and will lend the heart of Dom Pedro 1º for the celebrations of the 200th anniversary of the Independence of Brazil. The announcement was made this Wednesday (22) by Rui Moreira, mayor of Porto, the city where the heart of the former emperor is.
According to him, the date of the trip has not yet been defined — the heart must be transported on an FAB (Brazilian Air Force) plane, with expenses paid by the Brazilian government. “The expert report is not yet concluded, but it has already been assured that the heart can be temporarily transferred to Brazil, subject to the need for transport in a pressurized environment,” Moreira said at a press conference.
Before the trip, a formal agreement between the diplomacy of the two countries will still be necessary.
The loan request was revealed by Brazilian ambassador George Prata, one of the coordinators of the bicentennial celebrations. The justification is the importance attributed to the figure of Dom Pedro. First Emperor of Brazil, he is known to Brazilians as Pedro 1º, and, in Portugal, as Dom Pedro 4º.
The heart is preserved in formaldehyde, protected by five keys, in the church of Lapa. Due to the fragility of the material, its handling and display are quite restricted. Although the body of Dom Pedro 1º is kept in the Parque da Independência, in the Ipiranga Museum complex, in São Paulo, the heart remained in Porto at the request of the monarch himself, who expressed his desire in his will.
The decision was taken as an acknowledgment of the role the city played in Dom Pedro’s struggle with the armies of his younger brother, Dom Miguel, for the throne of Portugal. Dom Pedro I abdicated the Brazilian throne less than a decade after independence, in April 1831.
In the midst of political instability in Brazil and Europe, he decided to return to Europe to regain the crown for his daughter, Maria da Glória, recognized as a legitimate heir by the continent’s monarchies.
Thus, Portugal plunged into a bloody civil war, between the absolutist troops, under Dom Miguel, and the liberal troops, under Dom Pedro. Porto, even under siege for more than a year, resisted and was crucial for the victory of Pedro 1º, who would die of tuberculosis months after the end of the conflict, in September 1834, at the age of 35.
