September 2022. We have our hearts in our hands. There is no more heart to take it. Beat, heart. Hold on, heart! What the eyes don’t see, you don’t feel. And even if we are heartbroken, we can always make our heart out. Are we going to open it, have it by our mouth or just hold it in our hands?
If love is a matter of the heart, there is no doubt that Brazil loves Portugal and Portugal loves it back. Making a 224-year-old heart travel, flying over an ocean, inside a glass flask, to be received with state honors, is only justified by love.
Of course, there will be outcry, bad moods and political exploits, but the unique and undeniable truth is that the two countries are not only united by history, they like and love each other – and they have proven to have the same heart.
Did any other country in America (perhaps in the world) borrow your heart? Never. Many heads were lost, on silver platters, at saber points, in the fury of wars. But not a heart. This is Love.
Hold on, heart. Between Brazil and Portugal there is a heart that can handle it. It’s that beats, heart between here and there. And how it beats! Two hundred years later!
Hit TAP flights that connect Brazil to Europe and the world through Lisbon and Porto. He knocks at the consulates where more and more Brazilians are looking to find out how they can get a visa to find free education, modern hospitals and the safe and quiet streets of Portugal.
Hit the beach volleyball courts, which in Portugal only talk about Jorge Amado — on the beaches and streets of Cascais only Carlos Drummond de Andrade and Vinícius de Moraes declaim.
It hits hard, sees and feels, joy and identity at the height of Porto de d. Pedro, in the downtown Lisbon of Pessoa, in the Cathedral of Braga of all the archbishops, from the Ria de Aveiro to the Lusitanian Venice, in the Leiria castle of medieval history, in the bookstores of Óbidos do José Pinho and in the schoolyard of the University of Coimbra where even José Bonifácio’s heart beat — in Portugal, for Brazil.
No estrangement, which some still talk about, resists the beautiful reality of this love story shared between Brazil and Portugal. No “portuga” jokes —which still have many, no accusations of racism—sometimes deserved; no bureaucratic transliteration or spelling compromise or ignorance.
Today, Portugal, a small and very old country like many others in Europe, has a unique advantage over them. He can offer the sister country, young and vibrant, in a sweet bicentennial metaphor for its need for rejuvenation, a heart.
And the giant country, bigger, richer and in many factors more developed than the small country of its ancestor, finds in it an opportunity for a consistent, daily and desired future.
Hearts up! Our hearts are with Peter. First and fourth. Fourth and first. Emperor and King. Past and future. Union and peace.
The heart that never leaves the man who founded Brazil returns to the country he gave birth to 69,900 days later (from April 7, 1831 to August 22, 2022). Come out of sight. They miss love. Eternal love.
