On July 3, the Minister of Culture will hear the question of heritage in parliament

Culture Minister Dalila Rodrigues will be heard in parliament on July 3 about the possible return of assets to former Portuguese colonies, as well as the dismissals and appointments of those responsible for cultural heritage.

The hearing is scheduled for July 3 and will be Delilah Rodriguez’s first as culture minister since taking office in April, according to parliament’s Culture, Communications, Youth and Sports Committee.

These parliamentary hearings are the result of two requests submitted in May by Chega and the PS, this time on an urgent basis.

The Chega parliamentary group has asked to “clarify whether the government is making any efforts to carry out historic monetary or other reparations” to the former Portuguese colonies.

In a November interview with Observador, Dalila Rodrigues, then director of the Jerónimos Monastery and Belém Tower, said that “it is fundamentally important to accept the imperative of restitution of misappropriated goods, regardless of the conditions of their receipt.”

On May 18, International Museum Day, Dalila Rodrigues, now culture minister, told reporters that “if there is any cultural property that has been ethically misappropriated,” the Portuguese should “start returning it,” and ensured that the government operated on a cooperative basis.

In April, the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, said the country must lead the process of accepting and addressing the consequences of colonialism, and offered debt forgiveness, cooperation and financing as examples.

The PS’s request for an “urgent hearing” by the Minister of Culture concerns the “hasty dismissals” of the directors of the state-owned company Museus e Monumentos and the Institute of Cultural Heritage, as well as the appointments to Mosteiro dos Jerónimos and Torre de Belém.

In May, Dalila Rodríguez described as “catastrophic” the reform carried out by the previous government in the field of cultural heritage, by abolishing the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage and creating two new organizations: Museus e Monumentos EPE and Patrimóniocultural IP.

According to Socialist deputies, on the one hand, the position of guardianship is contrary to “good practice, examples and good results that similar models have in other countries”, on the other hand, the statements made are “untimely, since this model has only five months” of application.