Camões was one of the great minds of European civilization. He belongs in the same gallery as Dante, Cervantes, Shakespeare, and Goethe. His work transcended his own age because he understood that no nation exists solely through the force of arms, the wealth of its merchants, or the extent of its territories. A nation lives only as long as it remains capable of producing thought, beauty, freedom, and critical consciousness.

The poet of The Lusiads was, in truth, a profoundly unsettling man. He knew poverty, war, exile, injustice, and abandonment. He witnessed both the greatness and the misery of humankind. It was precisely for this reason that he understood that true heroism lies not merely in the conquest of seas, but in the capacity to resist the corruption of power, moral decay, and the blindness of elites.

Celebrating Portugal Day cannot mean merely exalting ancient glories. No people become greater through forgetfulness.

Alongside the literary genius of Camões, alongside the extraordinary maritime adventure that connected continents and expanded humanity’s knowledge of the world, there is also a history of violence, domination, and suffering that cannot be silenced. The ships that carried navigators, missionaries, and merchants also carried men, women, and children torn from their homelands to be sold as human merchandise. For centuries, Portugal participated actively in the Atlantic slave trade, one of the largest and most inhumane systems of exploitation ever created.

The overseas conquests also brought military occupations, the subjugation of peoples, the imposition of foreign rule, and deep cultural wounds whose consequences remain visible in many contemporary societies. The empire that traditional historiography has so often described in epic tones was also a space of inequality, coercion, violence, war, and death.

Recognizing this reality neither diminishes Camões nor impoverishes Portugal. Only a community secure in its identity is capable of looking at its past without resorting to mythology or concealing a fratricidal history.

The greatness of a nation lies not in its ability to hide its mistakes, but in the courage to acknowledge them. There can be no authentic patriotism without historical truth.

Today is a day to celebrate the language, literature, and culture that Camões elevated to universality. But it is also a moment to remember those who suffered under the mechanisms of imperial expansion: the enslaved who lost their freedom, the peoples subjected to colonial logic, and the millions of humble Portuguese who, throughout the centuries, were forced to leave their homeland in search of survival.

Only a complete memory can make us freer. And only critical consciousness allows us to transform History into learning rather than turning it into a succession of comforting legends.

There is within Camões’s poetry a critical dimension that is often forgotten. While he celebrates Portuguese achievements, Camões denounces greed, vanity, the mediocrity of rulers, and the degradation of public values. His patriotism was never servile. He never confused love of country with obedience to power.

That is the lesson that remains revolutionary.

In an age when politics is so often reduced to immediate calculation, propaganda, and spectacle, Camões reminds us of the importance of the moral quality of collective life. A society that abandons its poor, despises culture, transforms education into a commodity, and reduces memory to folklore is quietly destroying the foundations of its own existence.

Portugal must return to the intellectual and ethical rigor that runs through Camões’s work—and honor it.

To celebrate Camões is to defend public education, science, literature, freedom of thought, and human dignity. To celebrate Camões is to reject ignorance elevated into virtue. It is to understand that culture is not a luxury reserved for times of abundance, but a fundamental necessity for any people who aspire to freedom.

For this reason, June 10 also belongs to the Portuguese communities scattered across the world. Millions of men and women, driven from their homeland by necessity, carried with them a language born on a small Atlantic strip of Europe and transformed it into a spiritual inheritance that continues to live through Portuguese communities everywhere.

Camões understood that empires pass. Borders change. Thrones disappear. Wealth evaporates. Only human creation, empathy, and compassion survive the passage of time.

Therefore, on this day, we celebrate Poetry, freedom of thought, the courage of the spoken word, and the capacity of a people to produce, through its language, a universal vision of the human condition.

As long as someone continues to read Camões, Portugal will continue to exist beyond geography.

— Henrique Levy, poet and novelist (translation by Diniz Borges)