José Saramago: from iberism to trans-Iberism

Abstract

This paper confronts different positions on iberism, starting with Miguel Torga and his Iberian Poems (1965). The point of arrival of this journey is the novel A Jangada de Pedra (The Stone Raft) (1986), by José Saramago. We thus move from the notion of Iberism to the concept of trans-Iberism, within the framework of an approach that is assumed to be piecemeal; such an approach takes into account historical and political transformations that, at the end of the twentieth century, go beyond the scenario experienced by Torga. José Saramago’s progressive concern with Iberism emerges, then, in a number of essayistic texts that follow the novel The Stone Raft, as if explaining and deepening the great mean- ings represented in it. Thus, as it was elaborated by Saramago, the trans-Iberist project refers to a geostrategic reality to come, motivated by what the novelist called the “southern vocation” of the Iberian nations.