A Portuguesa

The story

On 11 January 1890 the United Kingdom issued an ultimatum demanding that Portugal give up colonising the land between its colonies of Angola, on the west coast of Africa, and Mozambique, on the east, which would have joined them into one territory, as proposed on the Rose-coloured Map. Despite a popular uproar, the Portuguese government accepted the demands. The surrender added to the unpopularity of King Carlos I and the monarchy and won support for the growing republican movement.

The night after the ultimatum was accepted, the composer Alfredo Keil, at the suggestion of a group of friends that included Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro and Teófilo Braga, wrote the melody of "A Portuguesa" as a patriotic protest march, and the writer Henrique Lopes de Mendonça agreed to Keil's request for words to fit it. Mendonça said it was a song "in which the fatherland's wounded soul would merge with its ambitions of freedom and revival", and he hoped the people would take it up as an anthem of their longing for national vindication. The march spread quickly: several thousand copies of the sheet music were handed out free, with fliers and posters, and verses were translated into other languages. On 29 March 1890 it was performed at the Great Patriotic Concert at the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos in Lisbon, and at every other theatre in the capital; canned sardines and cookies were even named after it.

The song was soon seen as a political weapon and turned into a republican hymn, and both authors felt obliged to disown that reading and stress that it belonged to no party. On 31 January 1891 republicans rebelled in the northern city of Porto and adopted "A Portuguesa" as their marching song; the revolt was crushed and the song was banned. It was not forgotten: on 5 October 1910 a new and stronger rebellion broke out with "A Portuguesa" playing in the background, and a year later the first session of the Constituent Assembly proclaimed it the national anthem of the Republic, replacing "Hino da Carta", the anthem of the deposed constitutional monarchy.

As different versions of the melody came into use, the government set up a committee in 1956 to fix an official one; the present version was proposed on 16 July 1957 and approved by the Council of Ministers. The official anthem consists of the first verse and the chorus of Mendonça's poem. It is played at civilian and military ceremonies honouring the country, the flag or the President of the Republic, at receptions for foreign heads of state after the visitor's anthem, and during the President's official visits abroad.

What it says

A call to the Portuguese to rise again and restore the nation's past greatness: it invokes the heroes of the sea and the voices of the ancestors, and its chorus summons the people to arms in defence of the homeland. The mood is martial and defiant.

The words