Gilberto Fernandes

The 55th annual conference of the Association for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies (ASPHS) took place between April 22nd and 25th, at York University’s Keele Campus and in downtown spaces associated with Toronto’s Portuguese community. I had the privilege of co-organizing it with my colleague Dr. Aitana Guia, the MacKenzie-Papineau Memorial Fund Chair in Modern Spanish History. This year’s conference, themed “The Politics of Home: Mobility, Memory, and Belonging in the Portuguese and Spanish Worlds,” was attended by 110 scholars from Canada, the United States, Portugal, Spain, Brazil, Italy, and Japan. They presented their research across 34 panels, covering a wide range of topics and historical periods – see the conference program here.

The conference started at the Schulich Executive Dining Room, with Giles Tremlett keynote lecture, titled “Romance or Revulsion: The International Brigades in the Memory of the Spanish Civil War and Franco’s Dictatorship.”

Our 34 panel sessions, at the Victor Phillips Dahdaleh building, took place between April 23 and 25.

At the end of day two, I led a walking tour of Kensington Market’s Portuguese history. Roughly 50 participants and volunteers attended this tour round one of Toronto’s most storied and culturally rich neighbourhoods.

After the walk, we had our Book Bash open mic book reading event at the Supermarket Bar on Augusta Avenue, coinciding with the International Book Day. This was a fun night of celebrating each other’s books in a non-academic setting. Twenty conference participants and local community authors walked up to the stage and read from their books, then exchanged them with other speakers.

On day three, I presented two papers drawing from my ongoing research into 1) the political uses of the past by labour leaders, community advocates and organizers, Portuguese diplomats and others in New England’s Portuguese-American communities in the 1920s; and 2) the impact of the Carnations Revolution and its interim revolutionary period in the battlegrounds of Toronto and Montreal in 1974-76. After another morning and afternoon of fascinating sessions, I lead a small group of participants to the Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections, at Scott Library, and introduced them to the Portuguese Canadian History Project’s records.

That evening, conference participants returned to the Supermarket Bar for a retirement celebration for Professor Pamela Radcliff, a distinguished historian of Modern Spain and Portugal at the University of California, San Diego, and former ASPHS president.

The last day of the conference coincided with the 52nd anniversary of the Carnations Revolution. We concluded the conference with a banquet at Casa do Alentejo Cultural Centre, which we co-organized with Luis Morgadinho and Toronto’s Associação Cultural 25 de Abril (AC25A). Our 200 guests, including conference participants and community members, were treated to performances by the Luso-Can Tuna; Grammy-award winning jazz drummer Marito Marques, and his accompanying flamenco guitarist Nicholas Hernandez and singer Tamar; and local musicians John Ferreira and Herman Vargas.

The evening’s highlight was the speech by the “April Captain” Col. José Santos Coelho, a leading member of the MFA who planned and executed the takeover of Rádio Club Português in the early hours of April 25th, and broadcast Paulo Carvalho’s “E Depois do Adeus” and Zeca Afonso’s “Grândola Vila Morena” – the anthem of the revolution. The event was MC’ed by me, Aitana, and Luis, and featured speeches by the ASPHS’ President Kirsten Schultz and the President of the AS25A’s general assembly Artur de Jesus.

We are are especially grateful to Luis Morgadinho of the AC25A, the Casa do Alentejo’s entire staff, Marito Marques and his musicians, and sound technician John Santos for helping us make this evening possible.

By all accounts, the conference was a great success. That is due to the great team of volunteers we had, among them undergraduate and graduate students from York University, University of Toronto, and McMaster University: Alisa Soto, Andres Lalama, Annabelle Silva, Cesar Mendoza, Kiran Poonia, Luah Tomas, and Matthew Viteri. We are also grateful to our sponsors, the ASPHS, York University’s Global and Community Engagement, Mackenzie-Papineau Memorial Fund, Camões I.P., the Embassy of Spain in Canada, Avie Bennett Historica Chair in Canadian History. We also give thanks to our hosts, caterers, suppliers, academic press exhibitors, and the many people who helped with York’s logistics.