One hundred years after the founding of the Portuguese Society of Authors (SPA), on 22 May 1925, it continues to represent Portuguese authors’ resistance and ability to fight for their rights and freedoms, not forgetting the technologies that allow them to communicate with the public and fulfil their desire to consume and share works of great diversity and quality.
A century ago, a group of authors, particularly those linked to theatre and literature, decided to create a cooperative to support the production of a Code for Author’s Rights. Its scope soon expanded, first into cinema and later into the visual arts.
As well as being a great strategic investment, in the years following the First World War, it also represented a form of solidarity to which it remained committed, elevating the authors’ cooperative above the other companies of the time. The SPA thus acquired an institutional dimension, distinguishing itself from other businesses with different aims and priorities in the market.
Over the years, the number of SPA members grew constantly, as did the disciplines covered by its judicial and institutional activity.
During the decades of the dictatorship, the SPA was always a courageous space in fighting for freedom and against censorship. Various members of the cooperative, including Alves Redol, Luís de Sttau Monteiro, Manuel da Fonseca and José Afonso, spent time in the regime’s prisons. In that sense, the SPA has always been a symbol of resistance to oppression and terror.
For that reason, the SPA was awarded the Order of Liberty by Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, shortly after he became President of the Republic.
Internationally, the Portuguese authors’ cooperative assumed more responsibilities, taking on the presidency of the European Committee of Author Societies, based in Paris, and directing the European Grouping of Societies of Authors and Composers, with headquarters in Brussels.
The SPA has always been on the front line of combat in defending the rights of intellectual creators against the abusive and invasive interests of media multinationals, as well as highlighting the lack of legislation surrounding central power in relation to creators of music, literature, cinema, television, visual arts and other disciplines.
The global situation today has become much more complex with the advance of artificial intelligence, a topic that the cooperative addressed at an international seminar – one of the first author societies to do so – in the knowledge that AI can offer benefits in the areas of medicine or sciences, whilst simultaneously eliminating several thousand jobs and seeing large media multinationals usurping image and identity rights, confusing regular culture consumers with amalgamations that violate authors’ ownership of and rights over their works. Without authors, as we have always stated, there is no culture and with no control over new technologies there can be no culture or dignity in the act of creating.
In Portugal and in Brussels, in conjunction with the European Commission and the European Parliament, the SPA gives voice to Portuguese authors of all generations, remembering and paying tribute to authors such as José Saramago, Amália Rodrigues, Carlos Paredes, José Afonso, José de Almada Negreiros and many others who are, for the institution, a strong and rousing source of pride and collective responsibility. Today, we must produce a new Code of Author’s Rights that takes into account the new technological, legal and social realities and which protects culture from the opportunism of those who only think of unregulated profit and not of the undeniable sovereignty and dignity of authors, who know that no other institution protects culture and its creators like this organisation, created by authors one hundred years ago.
Lisbon, 22 May 2025 Portuguese Society of Authors
