Freedom, My Beloved

Another April crosses through my body, ever since that one in 1974—a jubilant year once thought unreachable by the common people.

Fifty-two Aprils have pierced the fabric of time, yet none has ever returned to me the exotic fragrance, the exuberant hope, the breathtaking beauty of that morning—lived at a distance, yet drawn near by emotions so abyssal, so profound, that no spiritual or temporal logic can fully explain them.

Even now, in this year of 2026—when my thoughts remain firm, but my memories firmer still—I have not known another day so lucid in spirit, so elevated in aspiration. It was singular, as each star that trembles in the vast eternity above us is singular. And all this because Freedom itself is singular—genuine, untouched, radiant, and clear—unstained, the summit of all human feeling.

Freedom—the Goddess who at last descended upon a land long denied to its people, guiding them as they forged a new and open road toward their destiny. She flooded the souls of those who never feared, who dared always to confront the systemic monster that had haunted their nights for decades. Unyielding, they cast again their lives and their most precious belongings into the struggle—for the Goddess who protected them, but above all, inspired them.

Freedom or death! They cried in one voice.

For had they failed once more to unshackle her, their end would have been sorrowful indeed. To free Freedom—by opening the prison of a nation—so that all might live, intimately and without restraint, the release of thought, of speech, of action. It was a beauty beyond measure. So beautiful that time itself cannot distance it from memory.

It feels like yesterday. And yet, fifty-two years have passed. Since then, we have circled our solar star nineteen thousand times. Tens of thousands have been born into this magnanimous dawn—into the very womb of Mother Freedom.

For those now in their fifties, and for the newborns of this very moment, life bears a meaning profoundly different from that of your parents and grandparents. You are not privileged for living in Freedom. To live otherwise would be the true aberration. Such was the fate of those who came before you. They lived and suffered within that unnatural condition. And yet, it was they who dared, at the very edge of anguish.

Fewer and fewer remain who can still speak of it in the first person. Death—the great finality of existence—claims us all. But even those who did not live the jubilation of 1974 will carry this inheritance forever: the inheritance that irreversibly altered the destiny of a people—one that will continue to cherish the virtue that its children and grandchildren may live in freedom of thought, of action, of initiative, of individual decision—without chains hanging in the corners of conscience.

Each person is free to awaken to their choices, their decisions, and above all, their limits.

To be free is to become what the Universe intended us to be: human.

José Soares is a contributing writer for several Azorean newspapers. Translation by Diniz Borges.