“Ilha dos Amores” is the theme of this year’s Sanjoaninas, which mark the 500th anniversary of the birth of the poet Luís de Camões.

The poster and theme of the festivities, which take place from June 20 to 29, were presented yesterday at a press conference held in the Salão Nobre of Angra do Heroísmo Town Hall.

“For several years now, we have dedicated the Sanjoaninas to a theme with historical importance and also with some connection to the history of the city itself, of the municipality of Angra do Heroísmo and of Terceira,” said the vice-president of the municipality, Guido Teles.

“We chose the theme Ilha dos Amores to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the birth of Luis de Camões and to make a connection between the ninth and tenth cantos of ‘Os Lusíadas’ and what may have been the author’s inspiration when he passed through this island,” he said.

Guido Teles admitted that this association may appear “somewhat fictionalized”, but that it is a good starting point for the festivities.

Rúben Quadros Ramos is once again responsible for the poster.

Luiz Fagundes Duarte, a teacher, essayist, and former Regional Secretary for Education was invited to write the text introducing the theme of the festivities.

We can read that “Camões tells us, in Os Lusíadas, that Venus – the Goddess of Love, who is a great friend of ours – asked her son Cupid to reward the Portuguese sailors for their enormous work and victories in discovering the sea route to India and, thus, a new world. And she gave him this idea: to place them on their way home on a very beautiful island, full of tasty delicacies and beautiful loving nymphs, where they would find the reward of rest and the delight of pleasure, and would give birth to strong and beautiful children who would be the new Portuguese born from the sea on an island blessed by the gods”.

“There are those who claim that this island was a fantasy of the poet’s and that it was nothing more than a symbolic construction typical of an epic poem made in the style of Homer’s Odyssey or Vergilio’s Aeneid, in which valiant heroes like Ulysses or Aeneas, after long and dangerous sea voyages, ended up landing on a blessed island where they were rewarded for their deeds and the knowledge thus acquired. That may be so,” writes Luiz Fagundes Duarte.

“But it could also be that Camões was inspired by one of the many islands that populate the Atlantic and Indian Oceans and which, being on the routes back and forth between Portugal and India, depending on the winds and currents, he must have visited in his wanderings around the world. Let’s think, for example, of the islands of Bombay, Angediva, Zanzibar or Mozambique, in the Indian Ocean, and, in the Atlantic, those of Saint Helena, Santiago and, finally and most importantly, our Terceira – which, on the return voyages, was the last stopover for the ships before Lisbon, their final destination,” he adds.

Guido Teles told reporters yesterday that the Sanjoaninas are part of the national celebrations of the 500th anniversary of the birth of Camões.

“As happened last year, with the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of April 25th, this also creates the opportunity for us to have some more explanatory moments on the way to the festivities, with the presence of elements linked to the national commission responsible for the commemorations, about what the connection between our island and this Ilha dos Amores (Love Island) might be. It could be conferences, etc,” he said.

The budget for this edition of the Sanjoaninas is expected to be around one million euros.

In Diário Insular–José Lourenço, director

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, PBBI thanks Luso Financial for sponsoring NOVIDADES.