The Ponta Delgada Public Library and Regional Archive promotes the launch of the book “The opposition to salazarism on São Miguel and on other Azorean islands (1950-1974): with an evocation of Ernesto Melo Antunes in the “Campaigns”of the Azores” this Friday.

It is a collection of studies and documents, mostly unpublished, organised by Mario Mesquita, who is a member of the Commission in charge of paying tribute to Melo Antunes, which was published by “Tinta da China” with the sponsorship of the Presidency of the Government of the Azores .

The book launching will take place at the auditorium of the Ponta Delgada in Public Library and Regional Archive at 9:30 PM, being presented by José Medeiros Ferreira.

According to the organiser of the collection, this publication is intended to pay a tribute to Ernesto Melo Antunes and to the years that he spent in the Azores, although this is not a book about Melo Antunes. The collection focuses on the democratic opposition on the island of São Miguel from the 50s to the 70s, in which the military, who would join the Group of the Nine played an important role since the years of Humberto Delgado until the time of Marcelo Caetano.

The book is divided into three parts:

- Evocations (with texts by Carlos César, João Bosco Mota Amaral and Jorge José de Magalhães Rodrigues);

- Testimonies (with texts by Ernesto Melo Antunes, António Borges Coutinho, Bruno da Ponte, Carlos Enes, Dimas de Almeida, Eduíno de Jesus, José Medeiros Ferreira, José Pacheco de Almeida, Manuel António Pimentel, Mário Barradas, Sacuntala de Miranda and Weber Machado Pereira);

- Documents (with special emphasis to the correspondence from the Ponta Delgada Office to the Directorate of PIDE-DGS, (1959-1968); letters written by Ernesto Melo Antunes about the political situation on São Miguel in the first half of 1969; the famous “Declaration of Ponta Delgada,” drafted by him, which was the election platform of the independent candidacy of a group of citizens to the elections for the National Assembly in 1969, and the correspondence regarding the release of Jaime Gama, who was arrested by the PIDE-DGS in 1970).

The most extensive and substantial part of the book, “Testimonies,” is mostly composed by the speeches made at the Colloquium on “The Opposition to Salazarism in the Azores: 1950/70,” promoted by the Azorean Forum in Lisbon in 1994 by occasion of the 20th anniversary of April 25, which was organised by Mário Mesquita, José Magalhães Jorge Rodrigues and Regina Martins.

In addition to contributing to a less well-known period regarding the biography of Ernesto Melo Antunes, this book is also a depiction of the political atmosphere on the island of São Miguel during 1950-70 among those who opposed to the political regime of Salazar and Caetano, in which several trends, generations and the main figures are interconnected, all of them are evoked in a plural approach by the different testimonies whose is of particular interest to the Azorean public.