Manuel de Oliveira Guerra

Poet and short story writer. Militant for Luso-Galician cultural relations. The son of a glass factory worker from Marinha Grande who became an industrialist in his field in Oliveira de Azeméis, Oliveira Guerra was destined to follow his father in the latter's activities when, at the age of 11, he had to be admitted to the Northern Maritime Sanatorium in Francelos due to a severe bone disease. He stayed there for eleven years, during which time he completed some high school studies thanks to a teacher who went there on purpose, published his first poems in the newspaper O Correio d'Azeméis (1922) and created a small sanatorium newspaper, O Girassol, which he directed between 1924 and 1928 and, much later in a sort of pilgrimage of nostalgia, between 1955 and 1956. It was also during this period of confinement that, as newspapers from Galicia regularly arrived at the sanatorium, he fell in love with the problems of Luso-Galician culture, particularly the relations between Portugal and Galicia. Having left the sanatorium in 1928, he returned to his father's factory, though he continued to write, especially poetry. In 1932, at the suggestion of a friend, he wrote the poetry collection Padre... Nosso in just over a month, which Silva Pinto published with a preface by Ramada Curto and which sold out in two weeks. Religious, political and, above all, family problems that arose at the time prevented the second edition demanded by Silva Pinto, as well as the publication of his second poetry book already prepared, Ave Maria, and the book of short stories in preparation, Os Trinta Dinheiros. Years later, and after starting a family, Oliveira Guerra travelled alone to Brazil, returning in 1939 in time to find that everything he had left behind had crumbled. Thus, in 1941, he was forced to establish himself as a merchant in Porto, an activity he maintained without vocation and for mere subsistence reasons until his death. Meanwhile, in 1960, he returned to his two passions: literature and Galicia. He reissued his first book and began publishing his unpublished works, while creating the Luso-Galician rapprochement magazine Céltica, of which four volumes were published, with contributors being intellectuals from Northern Portugal and Galicia, where the initiative was enthusiastically received. In 1961, he attempted to create the Galician-Portuguese Studies Circle, initially supported by intellectuals and artists from Galicia and the Association of Journalists and Men of Letters of Porto. Although the initiative failed for obvious political reasons, it was pioneering and created multiple opportunities for discussion on the problem of cultural relations between the two countries. Countries where interest in the work of Oliveira Guerra is currently returning, whose prose 'surprises with the simplicity of the dialogues, the naturalness with which the narrative flows', 'the same simplicity [which], moreover, populates [his] poetry' (Salvato Trigo), just as one revisits his 'paths of a Luso-Galician dialogue, an integral part of the Iberian dialogue that Torga, also present in the writing of the author of Padre... Nosso, advises us to travel' (Idem). Oliveira Guerra left a valuable estate of unpublished works that he did not have time to edit as he intended, a part of which, however, is believed to have been lost.