In this collection by Imprensa Nacional, the publication of Mário Soares’ work with Maria João Avillez follows Portugal Amordaçado/Le Portugal Baillonné (volume 1). This sequencing is deliberate, as it serves, through different means and with another narrative form, as a kind of continuation and an unintended completion of the previous work. In this sense, it is a pivotal piece, into which Soares poured time, determination, energy, memory, attention, reflection, and enthusiasm—along with a deep sense of history, with all its scope and intensity.

In this edition, we also include the biographical dictionary that appeared in the earlier version, now carefully updated by historians Pedro Marques Gomes and Teresa Clímaco Leitão. Soares discusses his family origins, political and cultural development, the fight against dictatorship, and the construction of democracy. He reflects on his illusions, disappointments, indignations, convictions, successes, mistakes, changes, confirmations, defeats, and triumphs. His language is vivid, energetic, direct, and colloquial, at times suggestive or allusive, shifting between oblique and direct, silence and emphasis, past and present, today and tomorrow.

At the time these conversations took place, Soares was at the height of his institutional and personal prestige. He was nearing the end of his final term as President of the Republic, a role in which his political and intellectual qualities gained recognition and appreciation, much like a book that finally finds the discerning and knowledgeable readers who understand and admire it.

Mário Soares was an avid and tireless reader, an assiduous and prolific writer, a curious and fascinated art lover. His love for all forms of creation that seek to express our loftiest dreams and probe the deepest mysteries of our human condition made him a persistent collector of books, rare editions, manuscripts, autographs, dedications and letters. And also works of art: painting, drawing, sculpture, tapestry, photography and engraving. 

In his various homes, he lived surrounded by art and culture. In his own personal and familiar world, what he wanted and enjoyed most was to immerse himself in the inspiring and all-encompassing company of art in all its forms. A cosmopolitan citizen of the world, whenever he travelled, no matter how short his stay, he unfailingly visited the local museums, art galleries, exhibitions, artists’ studios and bookshops. 

The exhibition The Salt of Democracy — Mário Soares and Culture marks the centenary of Mário Soares’ birth and offers us a glimpse of his friendship with writers and artists, many of whom were his companions in the struggle for freedom, and highlights his constant interest and concern for what they were doing. It illustrates his own activity as a writer and shows the most fundamental references of his political and cultural thought. It also reveals the solidity of Soares’ vast cultural knowledge, his careful concern for the preservation of memory, his forward-looking impulse and his open and curious mind, his enthusiastic interest in new things, his attention to diversity and difference, his active desire to know and discover more and to keep up to date, and his fervent need to be surprised by contemporary creation and new ideas.