In Portugal, avowed and vocal supporters of Jair Bolsonaro and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva sit at the same table and drink the same wine. Among them, politics is not taboo. The Portuguese country seems to have a surprising calming effect. The airs of the “land” should be imported.
With an ocean in between, the tension diminishes and, among friends, Brazilians prefer not to talk about politics, but if some more incautious Portuguese brings the subject to the table, even if the atmosphere cools, no one loses their composure.
The extremes that in Brazil hate each other, in Portugal they share places, conversations, friends —especially Portuguese—, but not only that. As if the Portuguese country and the Portuguese were an antidote to national hatreds. A kind of protective capsule, comfortable cocoon where a permanent non-aggression pact is in force.
This story took place in Lisbon, in a restaurant-gallery that an elegant and tasteful Brazilian opened in the chic and French neighborhood of Campo de Ourique, but it could happen anywhere else. It is worth telling because the protagonists are good types and Cícero, the name given to the eponymous bar of the famous Brazilian modernist painter Cícero Dias, composes the picture with quality.
It was a dinner with all the spices. Good wine. Azorean by the way, Terras de Lava, made on Pico Island, place of the highest mountain in Portugal, but which is right in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, practically halfway with Canada.
I remember this wine well because I had only drunk it once a long time ago, back in the Atlantic archipelago, and I was far from tasting it again — much less at a French table in the heart of Lisbon under the modern, colorful and sparkling gaze of the master. Cicero.
It’s a footnote, but it goes right here. It must be said that the menu of “elegance at the table” in the Portuguese capital can no longer be dissociated from the permanent presence of intellectuals, artists, investors, famous journalists and many other pleasant and sophisticated human beings, apostles of a certain Brazilian elite abroad. .
Another condiment for dinner was books. Cicero’s boss has a late but unstoppable vocation as a patron of the literary arts, and it was to talk about this wonderful list of the 200 books that Sheet presented on the last World Portuguese Language Day (May 5th) that friends gathered.
Wine, books. Art. Painting. Light and color. Modernism and history. Smiles and ideas accompany each other in perfect harmony, on the agenda of Luso-Brazilian friendship.
That’s when, one of the guests, a Portuguese less trained in the tragicomedies of Luso-Brazilianism in exile, throws Bolsonaro into the sweaty crayfish and Lula into the braised tuna. Then I thought—a little aphorism: “Afonso, dear Afonso, don’t spill the beans, don’t waste time, don’t waste your time, keep your mouth shut.”
But that was my exaggeration. One of the guests sighed, sipping a very dry Madeira Bual and the other didn’t even comment, immediately praising an almond paçoca.
Absently, everyone followed the conversation, praising the list, Carolina de Jesus, Guimarães Rosa and Davi Kopenawa, as if they were watching the world… And he started in Lisbon.
