Lula arrives in Portugal on the first trip to Europe of the third term

Havana, April 21 (RHC) - Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will arrive today in Lisbon, Portugal, the starting point of his first trip to Europe after taking office on January 1 for his third term.

The G1 portal indicates that, after visiting Brazil’s main trading partners (China, the United States and Argentina), Lula turns his attention to the old continent, as he will also visit Spain.

According to official sources, Lula will concentrate most of the agenda in Portugal, where he will have meetings with authorities, including his counterpart Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, and will present the Camões Award to the renowned Brazilian musician, poet and writer Chico Buarque, the author of O que se ser won the Camões Award in 2019 for his body of work -a kind of Cervantes Prize in Spanish.

Such a diploma of distinction would be signed by the presidents of Brazil and Portugal, but the then president Jair Bolsonaro declined to sign the document won by his compatriot.

Created in 1988, Camões chooses an author from any Portuguese-speaking country every year. The choice is a recognition of the complete work of the intellectual and not just a specific one. The last Brazilian elected had been Raduan Nassar, author of Lavoura Arcaica, in 2016.

According to G1, Lula's Iberian roadmap, which will have commitments until April 26, marks a new stage in the government's foreign policy, after the ex-unionist prioritized the main business partners and neighbors in the first trips of the new term, such as Argentina, Uruguay, the United States, China and the United Arab Emirates.

Among the issues to be discussed are the war in Ukraine and the agreement between the Common Market of the South and the European Union. Lula insists on the creation of a group of countries to mediate peace in the war between Moscow and Kyiv. (Source: Prensa Latina)