A Time for Hope

In 2020, the new coronavirus pandemic shocked the entire world.

Empty streets, boarded-up shops, closed schools, cancelled flights. The advent of working from home. The absolute necessity of wearing a mask and using hand gel, the paradigm of physical distancing. Hugs and other displays of affection forbidden.

The economic crisis has already resulted in millions of people losing their jobs and being plunged into poverty, a situation that has advanced more rapidly than political decision-making.

The measures put in place to combat the pandemic have paralysed entire sectors of the global economy and led the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to make unprecedented forecasts: the global economy could shrink by 4.9% in 2020, battered by a contraction of 8% in the United States, 10.2% in the eurozone and 5.8% in Japan.

Even for those who have not yet been directly affected, the pandemic is already becoming the most important variable in disruption of life on a scale that, until recently, we thought to exist only in the realm of speculative fiction.

Nevertheless, the obligatory confinement many societies found themselves in also brought to the surface signs of hope in humanity and the capacity for regeneration and reinvention of many people.

A new perspective on the effects of pollution, as a result of the severe reduction of all activities; a feeling of planetary union, since the disease is global and does not discriminate along geographical, religious or political lines; a general appeal to creativity to reduce the effects of isolation; the more widespread adoption of acts of kindness and respect for others; the practice of solidarity as a pillar of social behaviour.

Thus, we have decided to use this national philatelic issue to show that hope in the future is indispensable. We believe that it is hope that will help us overcome this crisis. All of us, together.

This issue’s souvenir sheet has an insert made out of graphene – a material now being used for the very first time in philately – with an engraving of the poem “Contagion” by doctor/writer Miguel Torga, written in Coimbra and dated 15 September 1951.

“A hope remains:

The optimistic constancy of dawn. The crowing cock and my neighbour The blackbird at my window

Dispel all worry and despair. Like the fallen rising anew,

The verses straighten, they are reborn,

And though uncertain, limping, carry on...”