Farewell, Portugal

last updated 8 January 2015

Lisbon, Portugal

Portuguese novelist José Saramago has outraged his compatriots by proposing that Portugal unite with Spain to form the country of Iberia. “Portugal will be another province of Spain,” he told the Lisbon Diario de Noticias. “We would continue to speak Portuguese, and write, think, and feel in our own language. We wouldn’t become Spaniards.” The comments stirred a flurry of denunciations from politicians, artists, and writers. Several pointed out that Portugal had been a major world empire more than a century before Spain even became a united country. Saramago, Portugal’s only Nobel laureate, moved to Spain after Portugal banned his 1991 novel, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ.