To remember is to continually construct our memory. We build and recompose it incessantly because we need to project it in time to dignify, ennoble and transcend it. The celebration of a centenary is one of the ways we humans have to fix in time the memory of our loved ones.

In short, the ceremony of remembrance allows us to apprehend the essence of our heritage to turn our homes, streets, cities, parents, friends, relatives… into universal values.

The María Pagés Choreographic Center and the City Council of Fuenlabrada join in the celebration of José Saramago’s centenary, convinced that the Portuguese writer is part of our collective heritage. Saramago constitutes, without a doubt, the open and beautiful extension of our trans-Iberian memory, to which he has dedicated reflection and literature in The Stone Raft. Spain and Portugal form a unique sentimental and physical geography that has the virtue of having participated in the construction of new worlds and utopias.

Finally, the María Pagés Choreographic Center claims Saramago as part of its creative memory. His voice and words are still alive in the choreographic repertoire of the Company. His spirit, memory and humanist values are our traveling companions on the arduous path of claiming to all humanity that life is only possible if we make it, build it and live it together. We are all travelers on the same raft of desire.

The memory of the carnation is a tribute to Portugal, a brother country, and to José Saramago, a man we love, respect and admire as part of our daily life and of the universality to which he elevates us every day. It emanates from his poem Ergo uma rosa to develop as a serene search for generous encounters in the good utopias of good places.

El Arbi El Harti
Director CCMP Fuenlabrada