Yesterday morning, in the presence of the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, General João Cartaxo Alves, the Mayor of Figueira da Foz, Pedro Santana Lopes, the President of the Municipal Assembly, José Duarte Pereira, the Mayor of Buarcos and São Julião, Rosa Batista, senior Air Force officers, various local mayors and the general public, the inauguration ceremony of the monument commemorating the 73rd anniversary of the Air Force (FA), located in Praça da Europa - Manuel Alfredo Aguiar de Carvalho.
In his speech, João Cartaxo Alves stressed the FA´s “enormous pride” and ‘privilege’ in “being present in Figueira da Foz, ”in a city that is constantly changing, that wants to reach the future and that can be seen in the day-to-day life of its people". “A city that´s bubbling over, that´s effervescent with culture, with wanting to be, knowing how to be,” he said.
The general said that “In the Foz of change we [FA] carry the future, always with Figueira da Foz in our hearts”.
On the subject of the institution whose “adventure began in the 1950s” and which has been “undeniably at the side of the Portuguese, at the side of its population, at the side of its fellow citizens”, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force stressed that it is “highly prepared”, with “no parallel in our country”, as well as "continuously at the service of those who are part of it. At the service of the Portuguese, at the service of the population."
Pedro Santana Lopes, for his part, thanked the head of the FA for his words, and it wasn´t “out of mere retribution”, he stressed.
“You have been an inspiration, in fact, for Figueira da Foz and its current situation,” stressed Pedro Santana Lopes, who praised the “symbolism of this monument and the phrases you chose.”
The mayor recalled that it is necessary to “work hard in the present in order to aspire to a future that is equal to the enormous challenges that the world presents and the opportunities it presents”, and underlined the pride that “the Portuguese have in their military, in the armed forces”.
Pedro Santana Lopes stressed that in the FA “everything is an inspiration”, from “the way they treat everything, to their attention to culture, new technologies, looking at space, looking at the new time and the new world that is coming”. He also advocated that “the world should be every day, with a week or a month of FA.”
Recalling the words of Confucius “When my finger points to the moon, the idiot looks at his finger”, Pedro Santana Lopes said that “we [Figueirans] always want to look, in the present and in the future, where the FA is pointing”.
Source: https://www.cm-figfoz.pt