“My dear friend, please forgive me for this delay,” says Marcelo Chico Buarque.

Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa this Monday expressed regret over the four-year wait for the Camões Chico Buarque award, citing some “didn’t like” it.

“My dear friend, please forgive me for this delay,” Marcelo Rebelo de Souza told the Brazilian composer, singer and writer, quoting a verse from one of his songs.

The Portuguese head of state spoke at the Camões Chico Buarque award ceremony at the Queluz Palace in Sintra in the presence of Brazilian President Lula da Silva and Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa.

“While welcoming the decision of the Camões Prize jury and the reasons for its decision, I suspect that this time no one will need the reasons for this decision in such a way that it appears to be evidence, primarily poetic, but also romantic.” , says Marcelo Rebelo de Souza.

The presentation of the 2019 Camões Prize to Chico Buarque took place symbolically on the eve of the Carnation Revolution in Portugal and four years after its announcement, on May 21, 2019.

The then President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, did not want to sign the award diploma, causing Chico Buarque to say: “The absence of Bolsonaro’s signature on the diploma is the second Camões Prize for me.”

“They will say that four years is a long time to materialize, there is nothing to cry over spilled milk, the award respects 2019, it is awarded personally in 2023, but no one cares what year it concerns. This applies to all years,” said Marcelo Rebelo de Souza.

According to the President of Portugal, the anticipation for Chico Buarque to receive this award was “like how fans wait for those they admire, like friends wait for each other.”

At the beginning of his speech, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa recalled that in the Palace of Queluz was born and died, in the same room, “a son who broke with his father to accept a new homeland”, D. Pedro I of Brazil and IV of Portugal.

“What a time and place to relive and remake history,” the head of state said, congratulating on this day “a meeting between Brazil and Portugal in a democracy.”

Mentioning that Portuguese is considered the “language of Camões”, he asked: “Which of the Portuguese or Portuguese speakers would be impressed by the use of the term ‘Chico Buarque language’ as the equivalent of the language of Camões, taking into account growth, emotions, malleability, imagination to which he led the Portuguese, sung by himself and by so many?

Marcelo Rebelo de Souza compared Chico Buarque’s Camões Prize to Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize in Literature, but stressed that the American musician’s work “consists almost exclusively of songs” and that Chico Buarque is the author of several novels.

Regarding those who “did not like the Camões attributed to Chico on various occasions”, whom he did not name, the head of state noted that “they abandoned the absurdity of the claim of aesthetic flaws, instead challenging the ideas and opinions of the citizen Francisco Buarque de Hollande, who has full right to them, gave his face both in freedom and in the dictatorship.

At the end of his speech, the President of Portugal tried to use “Brazilian Portuguese” to recite a few verses from Chico Buarque’s 1976 song “Meu caro amigo”, a “singing letter” to Augusto Boal, then in exile in Lisbon: “My dear friend, please forgive me / If I don’t pay you a visit / But since the carrier has now appeared / I am sending the news on this tape.

“We have received regular news from Chico Buarque since the mid-1960s. First, the news in the record, and then in the form of books. And now that you have paid us a visit, I want to say to you in Portuguese from Portugal: My dear friend, please forgive me this delay,” concluded Marcelo Rebelo de Souza.

The Camões Prize for Literature in Portuguese was established by Portugal and Brazil in 1988 to recognize an author “whose work contributes to the projection and recognition of the literary and cultural heritage of a common language”.

Francisco Buarque de Hollanda, born June 19, 1944 in Rio de Janeiro, wrote hundreds of songs, about 500, and recorded about 40 albums during his 58-year career. His first recorded composition was “Marcha para um dia de sol” in 1964 and his last was “Que tal um samba” in 2022.

He also directed music and wrote theatrical plays, alone or with co-authors, such as Rhoda Viva and Gota d’Agua.

His first novel “Estorvo” was published in 1991, followed by “Benjamim”, “Budapest”, “Leite Spilled”, “German Brother” and “Gente’s Essay”. His latest book is Years of Lead and Other Tales, published in 2021.