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Not subdued, flashy and overwhelming. It is said that journalism is done without adjectives, but it would not be possible to stop using some when printing what was the life and career of Vicente Jorge Silva. The journalist, who was also director and founder of the newspaper Público in 1990, died early Tuesday morning, the victim of a prolonged illness. He was 74 years old.
“It marked the lives of everyone I met,” said Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who lived with him in the corridors of the Expresso. “The President of the Republic, who had the honor of being his student in so many moments of their shared life and his friend and admirer always, remembers him with an unappealable longing, mitigated by the feeling that his testimony is still present as never before” he continued. note published on the website of the Presidency. In a less institutional tone, Marcelo wrote an open letter to “friend and partner in the task of editing newspapers”, in which he evoked “a thousand common memories”, “his brilliant laugh”, “his implacable intelligence” and even his “His excesses – that there are no touches of genius without excesses “.
Vicente Jorge Silva was born on November 8, 1945 in Funchal. He belonged to a family of illustrious photographers, with his eldest son, Miguel Silva, ie do SOL photographer, following in the footsteps of his ancestors.
Vicente, who was a rebellious child, still thought about studying film, but ended up being seduced by words. Here we go. In the first place, let’s go back to the days of high school, where the father ended up taking him out at the suggestion of a teacher, who warned him that the strong and defiant personality that accompanied him since he was a child was about to cause problems. He continued his studies on the continent, but barely turned 18 he went to Paris where he worked in a glue factory. And it shaped his worldview, having made contact with the Portuguese intellectuals exiled there. “He was an insubstantial and free being,” wrote journalist Teresa de Sousa in Public after his death, recalling the characteristics that led him, from his youth, to trace a path that was out of the norm.
From Paris he went to London to study cinema, which would not happen. But many years later he would finally become a filmmaker, having made several films, including Porto Santo (1997), his first feature film, with Ana Zanatti, Leonor Silveira and Beatriz Batarda.
After the failed attempt in London, he returned to Funchal in the late 1960s, where he first embraced the profession for which he would become famous: that of journalist. With a group of friends, he founded Commerce of Funchal, giving it a new dynamic, captivating collaborators and catapulting it to the national level, as a benchmark for left-wing journalism. Five years later, in 1974, he was in Lisbon to continue his career. As Isabel Lucas would say (Vicente Jorge Silva – Conversations with Isabel Lucas, ed. Issues and Debates): «I came to the adventure a little, first I thought of A Capital, where Cáceres Monteiro was, but I ended up in Quick, where he met Francisco Pinto Balsemão from the times when he was in charge of Popular newspaper». Balsemão did not give him “guarantees of immediate entry into the newsroom,” so he was left alone as a collaborator. It did not take long for him to demonstrate his talent and creativity as editor, section director, editor-in-chief (appointed by Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, then director) and, finally, deputy director and mentor of the magazine. “I had the pleasure of working with Vicente at Revista do Expresso, they were exciting times”, summarized Alexandre Pomar in a Send without Facebook.
“Animated times” by the bustle of ideas, but also by heated discussions. Vicente spoke aloud, often yelling, which some attributed to his deafness, others to the ease with which he became excited. I couldn’t bear the mistake. He could not be hypocritical, on the contrary: he had a sometimes brutal frontality. Relentless ”, recalls José António Saraiva, his friend since he was 18 years old and director of Expresso at the time Vicente was deputy director and director of the magazine, in a text published in B, i ,. “When he got nervous, his eyes would glow, he would turn red as if he were going to have a stroke, he would scream. We had some shocks ».
Vítor Rainho, executive director of ie do SOL, also recalled this week, in a text published in i, the peculiar personality of Vicente Jorge Silva, his sense of humor and the agitation that the closure of the magazine caused. «On those nights a lot of people passed by the newsroom and Vicente loved to prod some journalists or cultural critics. I remember one night I heard him call Alexandre Pomar and, when he appeared in the corridor, Vicente took a piece of polystyrene and put it in his head, saying that he had just made a sculpture of Pedro Cabrita Reis. There was no lack of humor in those nights, crossed by a certain excitement ».
Creative and captivating, a born leader and creator of journalists, he did not resist the invitation to found Público in 1990. He was followed by many journalists who had accompanied him at Expresso. One of those who accompanied him was Jerónimo Pimentel, who left his tribute to Vicente on Facebook: «A great friend, a brilliant, creative, brilliant, affectionate and generous man. We worked together for years and he was one of the people who marked me the most. He always surprised me as a friend and as the editor of the newspapers where I worked with him. I will be very surprised not to see him again, it was always very stimulating.
In Public, he signed some of the most memorable articles of the decade. It was Vicente Jorge Silva who, in 1994, coined the expression “scratch generation,” with which he baptized the students who rudely spoke out against the austere Minister of Education of the time, Manuela Ferreira Leite. Opinion was divided on the label, but the expression has remained today.
The newspaper was a decade ahead of the newspaper, which marked the DNA of Público and the national journalistic scene itself, winning first the Cupertino de Miranda Award, at that time the most important in the medium, and, in 1995, the Gazeta de Mérito awarded by the Clube of Journalists.
He came out a little exhausted and was a deputy for the PS between 2002 and 2004. Later, he would come to classify his time in politics as “a mistake.” «For someone who is a journalist at heart and soul, it is very difficult to adapt to the limitations of the political world. It is not possible that we change our skin and our soul », he would say in an interview with RTP Madeira.
In recent years, although he was not in the newspaper office, he did not deviate from journalistic life. He was a collaborator of SOL, later returning to Public, where he published his last text in the August 9 edition. The following week, deeply moved by a deal, he called Nuno Pacheco to tell him that he could no longer send the text that occupied the last page on Sundays.
On the pages of the newspapers and on social networks, many were the professionals who worked with Vicente Jorge Silva who, throughout this week, were leaving their goodbyes. “My life, pure and simple, will never be disconnected professionally (or humanly) from yours and that is why you took a little bit of me, so much, so much, that’s what we live together”, wrote Maria João Avillez, her great friend . in the observer.
Vicente Jorge Silva, fond of the good things in life, of a meal as it should be, maintained until the end the custom of going to the cinema once a week in the company of family members – and sometimes even saw more than one session in the same day. Besides Miguel, he leaves behind two other children, Vicente and Laura, the last daughter of this woman, Rosana, whom Vicente often said was “one of the best things that has happened to him in his life.” And also a grandson, also named Vicente, as well as two younger sisters: Cristina, who lives in Germany, and Carolina, deputy director and administration of ie do SOL, who this week said goodbye to her “best and greatest friend.”
* with Mariana Madrinha
