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* A possible reference to Luís de Sttau Monteiro’s 1962 play Felizmente há luar! (Fortunately There’s a Moon!), which was banned because it was deemed to be critical of the Salazar regime and, in particular, of the Delgado-Tomás presidential campaign.
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* A reference to the dramatic escape in January 1960 of ten leading members of the Portuguese Communist Party being held in the high-security prison in Peniche.
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* A reference to the hijacking of the Portuguese liner Santa Maria by the DRIL (Directorio Revolucionário Ibérico de Liberación) in 1961. The “pirates” sailed the ship out into the Atlantic and renamed it the Santa Liberdade, gaining the attention of the world’s press and hoping to undermine the Salazar and Franco dictatorships.
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* Gugunhana, or Ngungunyane, was a tribal king of a territory in Mozambique. He rebelled against the Portuguese and was defeated by General Joaquim Mouzinho de Albuquerque in 1895. He lived the rest of his life in exile, first in Lisbon and then in the Azores, where he died in 1906.
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* All are names of Portuguese viceroys of India in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
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* Presumably a reference to Salazar’s entirely cynical view of rural life as some kind of idyll or paradise (for example, there were often competitions to find the most Portuguese village in Portugal). This paradise may not have a doctor, but there will always be a dragon or two in the form of a PIDE agent.
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* An ironic reference to the first line of Luís Vaz de Camões’s poem The Lusiads, Portugal’s great epic, published in 1572. It glorifies the great Portuguese navigators, who set sail to discover new worlds. It is, of course, also an echo of the opening line of The Aeneid.
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* The expression in Portuguese is “em Abril aguas mil”—literally, “in April a thousand waters”—because April is traditionally a rainy month. This is Saramago’s version of that familiar expression.
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* The Largo do Carmo barracks was where Marcelo Caetano (appointed prime minister after Salazar suffered a stroke) took refuge, only to find himself surrounded by revolutionary troops.
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* Presumably a reference to an incident that took place during the Carnation Revolution in 1974 near the PIDE headquarters in Rua António Maria Cardoso, where a few desperate PIDE agents opened fire on the troops and the crowds surrounding the building. Four people in the crowd were killed. These were the only casualties in an otherwise bloodless coup.
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* These figures appeared on the bank notes of the time.
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