The head of state, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, arrived this Sunday in San Diego, where a Portuguese president has not arrived for 33 years, to begin a five-day visit to the Portuguese communities of California.

“It’s been 30 years since a President has come here, 33 years, it’s a sure thing, it’s capicua,” said Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, getting out of his car on Avenida de Portugal for the first point of his program. , a meeting at a century-old Portuguese association that is one of dozens of Espírito Santo societies that exist in California.

“It’s a very emotional moment,” he added.

Still on Avenida de Portugal, the President of the Republic talked with some people who were waiting for his arrival and took a baby of Portuguese descent named Daria in his arms, exclaiming in English: “It’s the future”.

Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa recalled that his promise to visit Portuguese and Portuguese-descendant communities in California dates back to 2018: “I promised to come here. Then came the pandemic. I did not know that there would be two years of pandemic. But now, with the pandemic dead in Portugal and here too, here I am.”

Mário Soares was the last President of the Republic to visit San Diego, in southern California, in 1989, in a visit that also visited Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area, which includes the city of San José. Aníbal Cavaco Silva, when he visited California in 2011, was only in São José and San Francisco.

Between today and Wednesday, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa will pass through these three great centers of Portuguese emigration towards the West Coast of the United States of America and will also go to the Vale de São Joaquim, part of the central valley of California, an agricultural region in the interior of the state that none of his predecessors had visited.

He is accompanied on this five-day visit to California by the Secretary of State for the Portuguese Communities, Paulo Cafôfo, and deputies Eurico Brilhante Dias, the parliamentary leader of the PS, João Moura Rodrigues, of the PSD, Rui Paulo Sousa, of Chega, and Pedro Filipe Soares, parliamentary leader of BE.

California is the US state with the largest number of citizens of Portuguese origin, more than 300,000, according to data from the official census of the United States of America.

Portuguese emigration to the west coast of North America dates back to the 19th century and comes mainly from the Azores.

Asked about the absence of the president of the Regional Government of the Azores, José Manuel Bolieiro, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa replied: “You can’t bring everyone, because people have positions, that’s all. We’ll be here, and he’ll be here soon.”

Portugal’s honorary consul in San Diego, Idalmiro Manuel Ferreira da Rosa, estimates that “between 15,000 and 20,000” Portuguese and descendants of Portuguese live in California, far more than official figures.

Idalmiro da Rosa, who moved from the Azorean island of Pico to California in 1967, at the age of 13, considered that “Southern California needed another consulate” or other means to serve the population that resides here.

“The government has to look at the size of the territory covered by the consulate in San Francisco, from Texas to the Samoa Islands,” he said.

Regarding this visit by the President of the Republic, which was attended by some two hundred people, he regretted not having had more time to contact the Portuguese-Americans scattered throughout the county of San Diego: “Many people did not know if we had had a little longer the numbers would be higher.”

The US presence in Portugal “has costs”

In San Diego, the President of the Republic considered that Portugal is in some sectors “the California of Europe” and highlighted the growing presence of North Americans in tourism and housing, pointing out that it also has costs.

Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa was speaking to journalists during a meeting with Portuguese emigrants and descendants of Portuguese in San Diego, in the US state of California, the first point of a five-day visit to the west coast of the United States of America.

Asked if Portugal can be considered the “California of Europe”, the head of state replied that when his predecessor, Aníbal Cavaco Silva, used that expression “at the time it seemed like a somewhat revolutionary idea, but it wasn’t”.

According to Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, Portugal is “the California of Europe” in the digital and renewable energy sectors and also “in the sense of having home tourism”, but he pointed out the differences in terms of demographics and economic development.

The head of state said that currently he often finds Americans from the north and south of the United States, New York, California, Florida, visiting and temporarily residing in Portugal on the streets of Cascais and Lisbon.

“Why? Because it’s safe, because it’s very quiet, because it has great weather, because it allows you to enter Europe from here,” he said, concluding: “So this is really changing.”

From the United States of America, “reformed people, others still active and young, many young people to study” have arrived in Portugal, he mentioned.

Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa stressed that this US presence in Portugal also “has costs.”

“It has costs, it does. Above all, on the one hand, in housing, and there are costs in rehabilitation, which allows you to make prices according to the new clients you have”, he pointed out.

In this meeting with some two hundred Portuguese and descendants of Portuguese in San Diego, where a Portuguese president had not visited for 33 years, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa thanked this community, which began as “great fishermen” and now “is in every corner of the world”.sectors”, with people from the Azores, Madeira and Algarve.

“I feel at home, we are here in Portugal. We are at the same time in the United States of America, but in Portugal. This house is a Portuguese house,” she exclaimed.

Introducing himself as a member of a family of emigrants, from his grandfather to his grandchildren, the President of the Republic spoke in Portuguese and English and revealed that he had never been to California: “I had to wait until I was 73 years old.”

“Maybe start teaching here in California after my term? I don’t know, I’ll think about it, come here for at least a few months, ”she admitted, receiving applause.