NOVIDADES, the islands, and the diaspora, by Bruma Publications from PBBI-Fresno State, will be doing a daily segment on the Sanjoanians Festival in the City of Angra, Terceira, Island. Our platform, Filamentos (arts and letters in the Azorean Diaspora), will also do a daily segment dedicated to literary figures and books published about Angra. These segments will be from today. June 20th until June 30th.
“True Angra crowned with work and suffering,” – wrote the poet – “lady of the never-known forgotten chronicle of your people/ of inscrutable anthills that run in the secrecy of your blood/ my little cosmopolitan city/ endless metropolis of adventures and tidal dreams.”
This Angra that Marcolino Candeias sang about – and that Santos Barros, Emanuel Félix, Álamo Oliveira, and so many others have sung about – joins large and small cities, towns, and villages across the country in celebrating democracy in 2024. Nothing less than the first 50 years of April 25, the most prolonged period of peace and prosperity in Portugal’s history and, at the same time, the undeniable origin of the autonomy of the Azores.
And it celebrates them with no bit of propriety. One of the homes of national Enlightenment liberalism, a city that has promoted a republic form of government, exultantly inter-classist and irreducibly popular, Angra do Heroísmo has always been not only a place of arrivals and departures, warm and worldly but a city of progress and change.
From its layout came the architecture and urbanism that the great navigations spread worldwide, and the forests around it spread the flora they brought back. Iberian, Flemish, and African blood runs through the veins of its people. In their dubious prisons, Portuguese, Mozambican, and German prisoners lived as if in paradise. Its gastronomy includes the flavors of India, Jamaica, and Brazil.
She always chose to include Angra and cherished the difference like few others – even when it was the most difficult. As in Ode to Angra My City in the Tone of an Elegy, once again: “All your unionized and/or non-unionized employees, your maids/ many of them domestic servants/ extreme and gifted girls/ that this is your true memory/ it is your great and present memory of the needy/ and oppressed/ present memory of all the others who live off/ a smaller salary from smaller people/ and forgotten on the doorstep.”
Ah, Angra of poetry and literature. Angra of Europe and civilization. Angra of the world. Subversive Angra. Angra of the Holy Spirit. Angra of Brianda Pereira. Angra of Carnaval. Abril Angra- “My city of good surroundings/ São Carlos of farms and orange groves/ my city of bad surroundings/ São Mateus da Calheta full of sales and fishermen./ Oh Angra, unique city and mine/ city of enchanted fog/ silent/ memory stretching through the fading mist/ no longer of D. Pedro IV but you city/ in yourself reborn another memory/ truly yours/ that of D. Pedro IV. Pedro IV, but you city/ in yourself reborn another memory/ truly yours/ that of/ your outcasts/ that of/ your unfortunate workers/ your fishermen from Corpo Santo/ your smoky pensioners in their mute footsteps/ your grumpy shoeshine boys vanishing into insignificance.”
Ah, Angra – a noble, loyal, always constant, and above all, free city of Angra do Heroísmo. “My mixture of pirolito and vinho de cheiro / five-beaked barnacle in the lapa of the bay born / my perfumed chalice / of brandy from the land / battered and sweaty dough / in the bowl of your face.” Angra of freedom. Let’s celebrate them both, one and the other. What else could we do “in this land, my city, my people/ to our bodies, to our hands, to our arms/ in front of this space of restless waves?”
Author: Joel Neto
Pirolito –is a sugared carbonated fruity drink that was trendy in the 1960s and 1970s.
Vindo de Cheiro-is a local low-alcohol wine produced by many families in the Azores for centuries
Translated to English as a community outreach program from the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute (PBBI) and the Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures Department (MCLL) as part of Bruma Publication and ADMA (Azores-Diaspora Media Alliance) at California State University, Fresno.
direct link to the festas
Photo by Fernando Pavão
Novidades - The Islands and the Diaspora 