A note of condolence for the death of Francisco Pinto Balsemão published by the President of the Republic This Tuesday has a significant difference compared to all the others. This is signed “Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa”. It is not the Head of State who signs the disappearance of “one of the most remarkable personalities of the last sixty years”but rather the young man whom the founder of Expresso mentored. Marcelo wouldn’t be Marcelo without Balsemão. And Expresso would not have been Expresso without Marcelo.
The relationship between the two may not have ended well, but in his message the President evokes a path that, in part, he followed. “In politics, deputy of the Liberal Wing, and, in it, co-author of the constitutional revision projects, press law, assembly and association law and religious freedom law, to change Portugal at the end of the sixties and beginning of the seventies”described the head of state. In these years of spring and twilight of Marcello Caetano, the young Marcelo Nuno closely followed this group of deputies who had been elected on the National Union lists, but who quickly split with the regime. Among them, José Pedro Pinto Leite, João Pedro Miller Guerra, Xavier Pintado, Francisco Sá Carneiro and Francisco Pinto Balsemão.
At that time, Marcelo went to National Assembly attend parliamentary sessions like someone who goes to the cinema or the theater take the pulse of the tensions between the deputies of the liberal wing and the more conservative regime. Has the expectation that the The press law and the constitution may change, as well as the law on the relationship between the Church and the State, but this ends up not happening. It was these themes that he was referring to. Later, after the 25th of April, he will work with Balsemão – where he participates as a businessman and member of the non-governmental press association. daily – in a commission at Palácio Foz that created the first Freedom Press Law.
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In his statement, he highlights the role of Francisco Pinto Balsemão “in affirming freedom of expression and the press, fighting against censorship and prior examination, founding Expresso before the 25th of April, creating a new large media group, drafting the first democratic press law, joining the Press Council, launching SIC, revolutionizing what information was at the end of the dictatorship and at the beginning of Democracy.”
In 1972, it was the lawyer and friend André Gonçalves Pereira, one of Balsemão’s best friends, who tell him about Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. I already knew him, he was that young man with a reputation as a brilliant student who appeared frequently in the National Assembly during the time of the liberal wing. He himself had already told him about the project of creating a newspaper that would become Expresso, during a dinner at the home of Francisco Sousa Tavares and Sophia de Mello Breyner. Following the recommendation, the mythological episode takes place, which Paula Calisto, former secretary of Pinto Balsemão, described as follows: “Rolled up-himself on the blind’s tape and said: ‘If I’m not admitted I’ll hang myself.’ Then Balsemão comes in and sees him…” He found it funny.
When at the end of the presidential message, he describes Balsemão as “visionary, pioneer and creative” he is referring above all to his ability to found Expresso, the first Portuguese newspaper, at the right time, with the aim of having the quality of its European peers. But also the creation of the first private television in Portugal, SIC.
He was a unique figure “in politics, in society, in affirming freedom of expression and the press“, wrote the President. In the part that concerns freedom of the press, Marcelo has at least two proofs of this marked with letters on his own skin. First of all, the famous case of “lelé da cuca”a few words added out of context in the middle of “Gente”, which despite seriously irritating Pinto Balsemão (he never forgave him for the joke), resulted in neither Marcelo’s removal nor the end of the column on political burlesque, which still continues to be published in the newspaper.
The other test, this one more prolonged in time, was the permanent rain of criticism with which Expresso and the analyst Marcelo himself toasted the Government headed by Pinto Balsemão as well as the Prime Minister himself. The result was an invitation to the Government, taking him very close to him, so that he would not be running around harming him in his own newspaper.
When you describe that “after the 25th of April” he was “founder of the PPD, today PSD”Marcelo does not reveal that he was also alongside Balsemão and Sá Carneiro, at the newspaper’s premises, choosing the name for the party (suggested by writer Ruben A., as the name Social-Democrata was already taken). He then added that it was “vice-president of the Constituent Assembly, Parliamentary, Ruler, party president and prime minister, during the constitutional review that put an end to the Council of the Revolution“, on the implementation of which Marcelo also worked, as well as on the National Defense Law. However, at this stage the situation would spill over again between the two when Balsemão held Marcelo’s intrigues responsible for the end of his Government and they became even more sour when he founded “Semanário” in 1984 to compete with Expresso.
In his text, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa also states that, “from the 70s of the last century until the new century”, Balsemão was “one of the Portuguese politicians with effective external projection, particularly in Europe and the USA”adding that he integrated or led “European, Euro-African, Latin American and transatlantic causes, opinion movements and institutions”.
“Determined, hard-working, democrat, social democrat, Europeanist and Atlanticist, he has been in almost all combats from the mid-sixties to today”, he acknowledged. In a speech given a few years ago on the occasion of an event at Grupo Impresa, at the group’s facilities in Paço de Arcos, Marcelo almost explicitly acknowledged that Balsemão had been his mentor, and that he would not have become what he became if it hadn’t been for him.
On the occasion of Expresso’s 50th anniversary, he would award the newspaper with the Order of Freedom, after another very complimentary speech for the weekly’s founder. “Expresso wanted to be a more comprehensive, more modern, more challenging reality than the regime’s past. And it could only be Francisco Pinto Balsemão who personified this. It’s a unique case of someone who leads a social communication project, knowing about social communication and just wanting it to be a social communication project”said Marcelo in 2023 on the occasion of the first Expresso Podcasts Festival.
Remembering how Pinto Balsemão “knit together a very broad coalition” that made Expresso one of the “positive catalysts” that dictated the end of the dictatorship, he also made a mea culpa: “He paid huge invoices because of this, part of the invoices on me”he stated, recalling how, succeeding Balsemão as director of Expresso, he wanted to show that the newspaper was immune to the fact that its owner and first director was head of the Government. “This would result in invoices for me in the future”he joked.
When the note ends by saying that “Portugal does not forget him” and that “Portugal will never forget him”you will also be recognizing that, despite a difficult relationship that did not end in the best way (Balsemão classified him as a “scorpion”), he can never forget it either.