The President of the Republic arrived around 21.45 pm from the Azores (22.45 pm in mainland Portugal) for the New Year’s Eve dinner with the community of Corvo Island, wishing 2020 to be better in “many aspects of everyone’s life”.
“Here I am. Here I am,” he told reporters as he greeted one by one the 150 or so people attending dinner tonight on Corvo Island.
The visit of the head of state was doubtful because of bad weather, but Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa landed early in the afternoon on the smallest island of the Azores, where he will send, on Wednesday, the message of new year.
For 2020, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa aims for a “better year, both in the world, in Europe and in Portugal”.
He went on: “I wish next year would be better in many aspects of everyone’s life.”
Regarding the Azores, the head of state was “very grateful” for the way he was received after an idea – spending the year in Corvo – presented “very late, by surprise, and that late challenge had to be answered, and it was a welcome extraordinary”.
“I wish the Azoreans remain as they are, they are spectacular,” he said.
Asked about the regional elections in the Azores in 2020, the only elections Portugal will have in the new year, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa recalled the autonomic picture and expressed the desire for “economic and social progress” for the archipelago’s future, without going into the detail of suffrage. .
This year, and for the first time, the new year’s message from the President of the Republic is transmitted from Corvo, in the Azores, where Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa makes his New Year’s Eve, with the inhabitants of the Azorean island, 1,890 kilometers away. Lisbon.
Elected on January 24, 2016, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa took office on March 9 and made his first message to the Portuguese via television on January 1, 2017.
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