Portuguese President António José Seguro and Spain’s King Felipe VI opened an exhibition dedicated to poet Luís Vaz de Camões at the National Library of Spain in Madrid on Tuesday. The exhibition, titled “Camões: Life, Work and Legacy in Hispanic Culture,” is on display until February 14, 2027.

The two leaders toured the exhibition shortly before it opened to the public, accompanied by Portugal’s Culture Minister, Margarida Balseiro Lopes, and Spain’s Culture Minister, Ernest Urtasun. Their visit was guided by curator Aurelio Vargas Díaz-Toledo, a professor of Romance Philology at the Complutense University of Madrid. Seguro and Felipe VI did not make statements to journalists.

The exhibition brings together items from the Spanish library and loans from Portuguese institutions. Among the works on display are early Portuguese and Spanish editions of Camões’s “Os Lusíadas,” as well as a 1639 edition with commentary by Manuel de Faria y Sousa. Other exhibits include a manuscript of Bernardim Ribeiro’s “Menina e Moça” and the only surviving complete edition of Gaspar Frutuoso’s “Saudades da Terra,” loaned by the Public Library and Regional Archive of Ponta Delgada in the Azores.

The display also includes works from Lisbon’s Military Museum and Lisbon Museum, among them Francisco Augusto Metrass’s painting “The Death of Camões.” Its final section explores the poet’s influence on Hispanic literary authors, including Rosalía de Castro, Francisco Villaespesa and Jorge Luis Borges. The only living writer featured is Antonio Muñoz Molina, whose book “Un andar solitario entre la gente” takes its title from a line in Camões’s sonnet “Love Is a Fire That Burns Without Being Seen.”

Curator Vargas Díaz-Toledo said the exhibition aims to introduce Spanish audiences to one of Portugal’s major poets, whose poetry is not widely known among the country’s general readership. The National Library of Spain said the show also highlights its holdings related to Portugal and presents Camões both within an Iberian historical and cultural setting and as an influence on writers across the Atlantic.

The exhibition is a collaboration between the Portuguese government and the National Library of Spain, which is overseen by Spain’s Ministry of Culture. It forms part of the programme marking the 500th anniversary of Camões’s birth, scheduled for 2024–2026, and is intended to serve as a centrepiece of its international events.

Seguro is in Spain for the Ibero-American Summit in Madrid on Wednesday and Thursday, and is also due to attend the awarding of an honorary doctorate to António Guterres by the University of Salamanca on Friday.

Sources: Observador.