According to the recently developed programme, this year’s Portugal Day celebrations will take place in Pedrógão Grande, Figueiró dos Vinhos and Castanheira de Pera, the municipalities affected by the 2017 fires, as well as Leiria and Coimbra, and will extend to Switzerland.
At the end of a preparatory assembly that brought together the mayors of the Intercommunal Community of the Region of Leiria (CIMRL) and the members of the Civil and Military Houses of the President of the Republic in Marinha Grande, the president of the Civil House, Frutuoso de Melo, told the Lusa news agency that the celebrations of the Day of Portugal, of Camões and the Portuguese Communities will take place in Leiria on 8 June.
On the 9th, the celebrations continued in Figueiró dos Vinhos, where an army exhibition would be held, and in Castanheira de Pera, where the diplomatic corps would be received.
Also on the 9th, according to the program in preparation, the rite of raising the national flag will take place at the monument to the victims of the 2017 fires, erected next to National Highway 236-1, in the Pobrais domain of Pedrógão Grande. , with the official ceremonies of Portugal Day, on June 10, which take place in this municipality.
On that day, a solemn consultation is planned at the University of Coimbra in commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the birth of Luís de Camões, said Frutuoso de Melo.
The celebrations get bigger for the Portuguese communities in Geneva and Zurich, Switzerland, on the 12th and June.
When he was head of state in 2016, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, in collaboration with Prime Minister António Costa and with the participation of both, introduced an unprecedented style of double celebration of June 10, first in Portugal and then with Portuguese communities abroad.
On June 27, 2023, the President of Portugal announced that the 2024 Portugal Day birthday party will take place in the domain affected by the wonderful fires of Pedrógão Grande.
“This sign of life [for those affected by the fires] may simply be a formation. . . the meeting of the municipalities here in the Center, to prepare for the birthday party of Portugal Day, with those 3 municipalities [Pedrógão Grande, Castanheira de Pera and Figueiró dos Vinhos] as the main point, but encompassing the intercommunal community,” said Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, during the rite of the triyete to the victims of the 2017 fires, next to the memorial, which contains the names of the 115 fatalities of that year’s fires.
The fires that broke out in June 2017 in Pedrógão Grande and spread to neighboring municipalities killed another 66 people and injured 253 others, seven of them seriously.
The fires destroyed between 500 and 50 businesses.
More than two-thirds of the fatalities (47 people) were traveling in vehicles. They were surrounded by flames on the national highway 236-1, between Castanheira de Pera and Figueiró dos Vinhos, in the northern interior of the municipality of Leiria, or on the roads to this road.
The October 2017 fires in the Centre region killed another 49 people and injured about 70 and destroyed all or part of some 1,500 homes and more than 500 businesses.
The CIMRL covers the municipalities of Alvaiázere, Ansião, Batalha, Castanheira de Pera, Figueiró dos Vinhos, Leiria, Marinha Grande, Pedrógão Grande, Porto and Mós.
In 2023 the celebrations were held in Peso da Régua and with the Portuguese communities of South Africa, in 2022 in Braga and the United Kingdom, in 2021 in Funchal because of the pandemic, in 2020 in Lisbon also because of Covid-19, in 2019 in Portalegre and Cape Verde, in 2019 in Ponta Delgada and the United States, in 2017 in Porto and Brazil and in 2016 in Lisbon and France.