Knowing Better for Doing More

Renovação is the natural development of the A Batalha project, whose brilliant Suplemento Semanal Ilustrado stood out for the quality of its writers and dynamic graphics.

It should be noted that this is a biweekly periodical published by a trade union confederation, aimed at workers. Their social reality required a pedagogical posture, leading to texts on the dignity of work, contestable social conventions, women’s condition, colonialism, different methods of alienation. At the same time, the magazine sought to educate and intellectually stimulate its readers, by presenting biographies of leading revolutionary figures, by discussing ideas and the arts, in addition to literary collaborations, with the double purpose of contributing toward both the aesthetic fruition and the emancipation of workers.

All of Renovação’s authors, with the notable exception of Ferreira de Castro, fell into a limbo. His body of work, from Emigrantes (1928) onward, responsible for the first half of the 20th century’s definitive renovation of the Portuguese novel, was greatly influenced by the effervescence of ideas that place in the magazine.

As a generation’s collective work, together with A Batalha, from where it originated, Renovação stands as an important testimony for the history of libertarian culture.

Ricardo António Alves