Mário Soares Centenary

Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of Mário Soares’s Birth is an occasion to remember a key figure in our contemporary history, whose life is inseparable from the historical struggle for democracy in Portugal, its installation, defence, consolidation and development.

This celebration is also a time for restating and showing, today, the paramount importance of the values and causes that Mário Soares stood for, boldly fighting for them and never giving up: coexistence, tolerance, solidarity, modernization, the environment and peace.

Soares had a very rich personality and his political and civic work, which also includes his written work, had a greatness and a national and international scope that are unique in our time. His accomplishments were immense and critical to make Portugal a free, democratic and European country, with links to all Portuguese-speaking nations and respected world-wide.

A political man, he was also a writer and a man of culture, attentive, active and intervening, a collector of works of art and books, a member of the most prestigious national and international cultural institutions. No human thing was indifferent to him.

Preserving the memory of Mário Soares enables us to project it into the future, to the new generations. Among the objectives promoted by these commemorations, there is a purpose to set up new spaces for training and adding value to citizen participation. We want to encourage and support the production of knowledge and the involvement of young people in civic projects, based on three premises, i.e., preserve memory, build the future, promote participation.

Commemorations take place on the 7 December 2024 and last until the end of 2025. They are associated with the 50th Anniversary of the 25 April 1974 and to the Birth of Maria Barroso.

Commemorations are directed by an organizing committee, based at the Mário Soares and Maria Barroso Foundation, co-ordinated by José Manuel dos Santos, which also includes Isabel e João Soares, the children. Other members of this committee are Maria de Lurdes Rodrigues, Isabel Alçada, José Amaral, Teresa Calçada, Paulo Caramujo, Filipe Guimarães da Silva e Pedro Marques Gomes.