In the solemn setting of the Noble Hall of the Town Hall of Angra do Heroísmo, where collective memory is inscribed in stone and in institutional gestures, a work was presented on April 27, 2026, that seeks to read the present moment with the restlessness of those who refuse to accept history as a continuous and predictable line. The Great Rupture, by Miguel Monjardino, is not merely a book: it is an exercise in intellectual vigilance in the face of a fragmenting world.

The presence of the Mayor, Fátima Amorim, gave the session a significance that went beyond protocol: it signaled a recognition that international politics, so often perceived as distant, inevitably seeps into the daily life of island communities. The session, led by the Vice-President of the Historical Institute of Terceira Island and presented by Álamo Meneses, reinforced this dialogue between academic thought, historical memory, and civic responsibility.

In the book, Monjardino offers a demanding reading of the early 2020s as a point of rupture—not merely conjunctural, but structural. What is at stake, he suggests, is the exhaustion of an international order that, for all its imperfections, ensured a certain balance in the Euro-Atlantic space for decades. The idea of a “Great Rupture” thus emerges as an attempt to name what is not yet fully visible, but whose presence is already felt in accumulated tensions.

Figures such as Donald Trump, Xi Jinping, and Vladimir Putin are invoked not merely as individual leaders, but as expressions of a broader will to reconfigure the international system. Alongside these political forces stand new centers of power—the owners of social media networks and major technological platforms—whose silent and diffuse influence reshapes the contours of sovereignty, information, and even the very idea of truth.

The international political essayist, as Monjardino conceives him, moves within a paradoxical terrain. On the one hand, he seeks to interpret the present through the lens of the past; on the other, he recognizes the absence of the temporal distance that would allow for full understanding. Writing about the present is always an act of risk—a way of trying to fix what is still in motion. Yet it is precisely within that risk that its relevance lies.

There is, in the reflection he proposes, an almost memorialist dimension. The analyst does not merely describe scenarios: he records anxieties, anticipates possibilities, and warns of dangers. In this sense, the book belongs to a tradition of thought that understands writing as a form of responsibility—a gesture aimed at preventing the return of the disorder and anarchy that have so often marked European history.

For Portugal and for Europe, the question remains open. The “Great Rupture” offers no definitive answers, but compels us to formulate essential questions: what place should be occupied in a world being reshaped? How can democratic values be preserved in a context of growing fragmentation? And, perhaps more deeply, how can we maintain the capacity to imagine futures that are not merely extensions of present crises?

In the city of Angra do Heroísmo—itself a witness to centuries of encounters, conflicts, and reconstructions—the presentation of this work acquires particular symbolism. Between the sea that separates and connects continents and the memory that insists on enduring, Miguel Monjardino’s book reminds us that history does not end: it transforms. And in that process, it demands from each generation not only interpretation, but also awareness and choice.

Translated and Adapted from Press Release.