Where are our politicians going – “and what will they be reading?”
SIC Notícias/ Lusa have kicked off the traditional ‘silly season’, with a long text about where the country’s politicians are going this summer, and what they will be reading.
It’s a curious mixture: locations being ‘fairly standard’ and literary choices adding insight (particularly when there are none…)
Starting from the top – and with a Head of State known for dipping into the sea whenever his agenda lets him – Marcelo will be (once again) choosing the Algarvian village of Monte Gordo, in the municipality of Vila Real de Santo António – a destination already favoured by euro MP and former health minister Marta Temido who has been photographed cutting a dash in a white full-piece bathing costume, and eating cream-filled doughnuts (not quite at the same time).
Neither Marta Temido nor President Marcelo have elaborated on their reading material. But parliamentary speaker José Pedro Aguiar-Branco (also choosing the Algarve, but not saying exactly where) has started the ball rolling with three books by international authors: ‘Submission’ by Michel Houellebecq; ‘The Next 100 Years’ by George Friedman, and ‘Trilogy – Vigil. The Dreams of Olav. Fadiga’, by the 2023 Nobel Prize for Literature winner Jon Fosse”.
Faced with such a line-up, the PS secretary-general Pedro Nuno Santos has simply let it be known that he “will pass through the Algarve”. His advisor (who passed this information to SIC, did not say whether Mr Santos would be taking any reading material with him).
Algarve beachgoers thus have the prospect of three political heavyweights ‘somewhere in the region’ (one deeply focused on three books), and possibly even another: CHEGA leader André Ventura will be taking nine days in August (from August 9-18) to ‘be in the Algarve’. Again, no word on reading material.
President of the Liberal Initiative, Rui Rocha, makes up for his colleagues’ lack of ideas (for books, that is) informing that he will be reading “The End of Soviet Man”, by the 2015 Nobel laureate for Literature, Belarusian Svetlana Aleksiévitch. He also told Lusa that he wants to update his reading of the Belgian comic book series Blake & Mortimer, by Edgar P. Jacobs.
But Rui Rocha isn’t one for the Algarve. He is choosing to spend his summer break in the city of his family’s home, Braga.
Also far from the main tourist drag will be Livre figurehead Rui Tavares, who is heading to his ‘ancestral village’ of Arrifana in the Ribatejo. Here he plans to immerse himself in Greek and Latin textbooks and basic grammars, a choice he justifies because he “didn’t learn Greek and Latin at the right time”.
He told Lusa that he finds trying to improve in these two languages a “good way to enjoy free time” and, in his opinion, “that’s what the summer holidays are for”.
The Left Bloc’s Mariana Mortágua is choosing the Alentejo, to spend time with her family, and says she will be reading the book “Stone and Shadow”, by Turkish novelist Burhan Sönmez.
Also in the Alentejo will be Paulo Raimundo, secretary general of the PCP which has stood out this week as being one of the few western parties to applaud the re-election of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela while the country ignites in thundering popular protest. Mr Raimundo will be reading poetry.
Defence minister Nuno Melo has said that “the pace of governance and the problems inherited in the Ministry of National Defence will hardly allow a holiday in the classic sense of the term”- but he has picked out a book in case he gets a moment: “1821, the Return of the King” by Armando Seixas Ferreira, who is currently press officer at the defence ministry.
Mr Melo adds that if he does go away for “a few days”, he will “go north to Moledo, in the Minho” – a location where he has holidayed since childhood.
PAN’s Inês Sousa Real is opting for the increasingly popular Costa Vicentina, and says she will be taking Harper Lee’s classic “To Kill a Mockingbird”, and Margaret Atwood’s “The story of a servant girl” (recently adapted for television).
One personality missing from this list is prime minister Luís Montenegro. A man whose popularity is running higher than anyone else in politics right now, and very possibly because he is seen as ‘focused on the national interest’ (and the national interest alone).
According to SIC, Mr Montenegro “refused to answer Lusa’s request to the main faces of national politics”, both about the location of his holidays and choice of reading material. ND
Source material: SIC Notícias
