Comedy duo Homens da Luta have won Portugal's Eurovision nomination and captured the spirit of peaceful protest
Do you feel like leaving Europe when another Eurovision song contest is about to start? Are you feeling less than inspired by this year's British entry, Blue's heartstring-wrenching I Can (featuring such timeless couplets as "We're not the first ones to be divided /Won't be the last to be reunited")? Well, from 10 to 14 May this year you can make a difference. Vote for Portugal at next Eurovision.
Portugal's entry, Homens da Luta, are a comic duo posing as 1970s political activists. They look like Latin American revolutionaries ? complete with hats and moustaches, though less tanned ? and refer to themselves as "professionals of the struggle".
When Homens da Luta won the Eurovision nomination in Portugal in March, they surprised the show's organisers, the serious juries and the other contestants. They even surprised the audience at home who had voted for them. Their song, A Luta � Alegria, about taking to the streets and shouting with joy, is silly and ironic, and yet does seem to work: in Portugal, at least, it has become the soundtrack of people taking to the streets.
The 12 March protests against the austerity measures announced under the recently resigned Portuguese prime minister Jos� S�crates saw the biggest crowd gathering in Lisbon since 1974, the year of Portugal's revolution. Homens da Luta have become the face of the "generation in trouble", a name coined by the Portuguese media and the name of the group that initially called the 12 March protests on Facebook.
With their large trousers, tight shirts and their use of "camarada" (comrade), Homens da Luta hark back to revolutionary Lisbon when all young people were engaged in some kind of social reform ? in education, agriculture or workers movements. In 1974, reporters, writers and filmmakers from France, Germany and Brazil travelled to Portugal to witness the peaceful revolution and the construction of a new society. That society ended up being not so new or not so different from the rest of Europe, but Homens da Luta go straight to the heart of the matter: we have been missing those times ? not because we want a revolution, but because we want to believe that it's possible to go out on the streets and have our voice heard; that it's still possible to be slightly idealistic and believe in the people rather than banks, companies, commissions, troikas.
When I spoke to them last Monday, Nuno and Vasco Duarte, the brothers behind the Homens da Luta phenomenon, told me that to them, 25 April is their Christmas, because 25 April was the date they used to go as children to Lisbon's Avenida da Liberdade to take part in the annual march to remember the value of their freedom. Nuno was born in 1974, a few months after the revolution, and Vasco in 1978. Like many children of the revolution, they grew up with the political songwriting of the 1970s, with true stories of censorship and torture, ideals and dreams.
Looking around from the pick-up truck where Homens da Luta played on 25 April, at the annual commemoration of the revolution, you could see raised fists, a lot of posters and thousands of carnations, the symbol of our revolution without bloodshed.
The Portuguese have for many years been European champions of complaining, but they are finally starting to do more than complain. The young generation that had been proclaimed not only doomed but apathetic, is organising ? online and offline ? in movements and groups and they seem determined not to be denied a future.
A group of 74 people born after 1974 released a manifesto just before 25 April, stating that they would not let the conquests of the April revolution slip away, in a reference to the labour laws at risk (lack of job security for young people is one of Portugal's most pressing issues).
Yesterday, several protests took place in Lisbon, though Homens da Luta weren't around to cheer up the protesters. They are on their way to Germany, to take to the streets before playing at the Eurovision semi-final, in D�sseldorf, on 10 May. Will they win it? Perhaps not, but perhaps winning isn't quite the point. In 1974, Abba won the Eurovision song contest in Brighton with Waterloo. But it was the Portuguese song, E depois do adeus, which came last, that went on to be played on the radio in Portugal as the secret sign to start a revolution.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/02/eurovision-portugal-peaceful-protest-comedy
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