JANE SCOTT discovers a man whose remit is to put his country, its language and culture on the map
LUIS Gomes has spent the last year on a mission from the Portuguese government. He is alone in Scotland, ploughing a lonely furrow in the name of Portuguese language and culture, and in Falkirk at that.
``There's French and German institutes all over the world. Do you know where the only Portuguese institute in the world is? In Lisbon. It's not much use there, is it?'' he says.
Undaunted, he has plastered the walls of the language centre at Falkirk College of Further & Higher Education, where he is the European Union Portuguese Assistant, with posters of mountain villages, the blue and white tilework of the palaces, and explorers carved in marble, yearning out to sea. For perhaps the first time since the rise and fall of the 50-year Salazar dictatorship in 1974, Portugal is beginning to extend its influence abroad.
Falkirk claims to be the only institute in Scotland to offer a qualification in Portuguese, and has signed up to Lingua, a European programme which last year sent two exchange groups of media students, one Portuguese, one Scots, to each other's respective countries to record and broadcast a radio programme.
``The students were terrified of staying with the families, but they had already met the Portuguese students, who stayed in Stirling Youth Hostel,'' says Luis. Exchanges are not big, it would seem, in central Scotland. ``They were all saying: `Why are they putting us in their homes, they don't know us, it's very strange!'
``The Portuguese are always very, very welcoming. There is a traditional saying: Do as you were in your home.''
Lingua projects get students from different countries co-operating on a joint task. This year Luis has tutored a group of marketing students, whose job is to mount an exhibition of the work of Portuguese photography students here in Scotland.
It is European money which has allowed Portugal to sound its name overseas again, which has sent Luis here as an ambassador for the language. In his year he has run and promoted evening classes, helped set up a Portuguese information centre for Scotland, created a teaching pack for future assistants, tested coursebooks and mounted an exhibition promoting his country in Falkirk.
He is shy, proud of his work, deeply-committed to making ``a Portuguese mark'' on a largely ignorant world. ``There are a lot of emigrants abroad - too much to come all home, they wouldn't fit all in Portugal now, but because there are so many people speaking it abroad they don't worry too much about teaching it. So, little by little, we are losing our rank in the most widely-spoken language table.''
Like Britain, Portugal relinquished the final remains of its empire this century. ``It's the fifth most spoken language in the world. Portuguese is spoken in Africa, Europe and America. We were everywhere. And because we are a people of migrants, during the dictatorship people just fled, from Azores and from the mainland, and you have Portuguese all over the place.''
It was partly economics; a minimum salary anywhere in Europe was an average salary in Portugal. Hence the huge influx of people ready to sweep streets and clean offices, undercutting the local workers and causing some resentment in countries like France.
Now, however, things have changed; with European money, which the Portuguese have proved extremely astute at attracting and investing, the standard of living is rising, and cash is going into education and roads. Now the Portuguese are travelling abroad with a new sense of nationhood.
Portugal wants to play a big part in Europe, but on its own terms. The first time I met Luis, I made the mistake of writing down his surname with a Z. There was a sharp intake of breath; this is the Spanish spelling. ``Please, please, don't call me Gomez in the article. I'm Gomes. Otherwise a million Portuguese will hate you forever.''
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