Colección Saudade

The Portuguese did not invent longing. But our history has given us a great deal of practice in expressing it.

For centuries, Portugal has been shaped by departures and returns. Sailors left its shores for voyages that could last years. Families watched loved ones cross oceans. Later generations emigrated in enormous numbers, building lives in France, Brazil, Venezuela, Bermuda, the United States, Canada and elsewhere while maintaining powerful connections to the villages, islands and cities they had left behind.

For an Atlantic country, and particularly for island communities such as the Açores and Madeira, distance became a familiar part of family life. Home could be loved intensely even while living thousands of kilometres away from it.

That experience found its way into Portuguese music, poetry, and literature. Fado gave saudade one of its most recognisable voices, expressing love and loss, absence and fate, the passing of time and the longing for what may or may not return.

Perhaps that is what makes saudade so Portuguese. Not that the feeling belongs only to Portugal, or that it cannot be understood elsewhere, but that generations of Portuguese experience have made us particularly adept at recognising it, naming it and turning it into something beautiful. 

Let us share a moment of that mournful beauty with you.