The Minister of Culture came to visit the Azores this week. I followed her visit through the eyes of the regional media. I was thrilled by the announcement of millions (in this case, just one) for the 2026 Portuguese Capital of Culture, where an agreement was signed with the Ponta Delgada City Council. The tern enthusiasm was chosen out of sympathy for an area whose gaps are as immense as the sea separating Corvo from Santa Maria.

This is the distance that has not yet managed to promote the circulation of projects and artists. It’s the same distance that makes us islands within islands due to the impossibility of creating partnerships the size of our – and only our – archipelago. The annual budgets of some of the region’s cultural and artistic facilities either don’t exist or are limited to amounts that, in this day and age, correspond to the Olympic minimum of programming a single show, with the adjacent vicissitudes that an outermost region must necessarily contemplate. Projects and cultural activities depend on the goodwill of other local cultural institutions and non-profit organizations to make them happen. Programming is a tremendous effort in the Azores. Perhaps the Azorean artist José Nuno da Câmara Pereira knew what he was doing with his work “A Happy Sisyphus.”

The Minister of Culture came to visit the Azores this week. She emphasized that this is a Portuguese Capital of Culture with a “transatlantic expression.” I wonder how this status will translate from one end of the archipelago to the other. I agree with her when she presents the idea that there is no longer a center and a periphery in the cultural and artistic sector. Still, unfortunately, Madam Minister, this is not the reality in the Azores. It simply seems impossible for an artist from one island – imagine collectives! – to travel to another. There is no networking in the cultural structures; this absence makes circulation and production impossible.

I invite you to come back to this place where “Our Nature is Human” – to do justice and remember that this all started with Ponta Delgada’s application, involving all the islands to some extent, to be the European Capital of Culture 2027 – and take part in one of the first events of the Portuguese Capital of Culture 2026 with the “utopias” festival. Now that I think about it, no utopia is more achievable than this: to dignify and professionalize the cultural and artistic sector.

Helena Barros (Santa Maria, Azores)

December 6th, 2024

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 the Luso-American Education Foundation for sponsoring FILAMENTOS.