Written by Sara Baptista de Sousa
In the beginning of this new year, resolutions are made – that most of the time we can’t 
José Saramago was born November 16, 1922. Born in the little village of Azinhaga, Portugal, he was a Nobel (1998) winning writer. Saramago decided to dedicate is life to novels when he was sixty years old, with more than sixteen novels written in the next years. Pilar del Río, his wife, a journalist born in 1950, in Granada, Spain. They’ve met n 1986, after Pilar had read all of Saramagos books in Spanish, and she ask to meet him in person. Two year later, they’ve married and decided to live in Lisbon, changing residence after to Lanzarote, in the Canaries, where the writer died in 2010.
This story could be a normal one, with nothing to talk about, but Saramago was a brilliant writer. He show his love for is wife in every novel that went out after the two were together, always dedicating it to Pilar. “A Pilar, como se dissesse água (To Pilar, as if saying water)”, “A Pilar que não deixou que eu morresse (To Pilar that didn’t let me die)“ or “A Pilar, que ainda não havia nascido, e tanto tardou a chegar (To Pilar, who was not born yet and take so long to arrive”. “A Pilar, os dias todos (To Pilar, everyday)”. “A Pilar, meu pilar (To Pilar, my pillar)”.
In 2010, by the hand of Miguel Gonçalves Mendes, their life surpassed to film in the acclaimed documentary “José e Pilar”, where we can see how intimate and confidants their were. In the movie, Saramago tells that once Pilar ask him what do you want of me, he answered, continue myself. She said yes. Even with twenty years apart, this is love.