The programme, which is taking place until the end of May, was presented in Lisbon by Portuguese director of the Camões Institute for Cooperation and Language, Luís Faro Ramos.

“We have scheduled 190 initiatives in 56 countries. And the numbers are growing every year, which shows the importance and recognition by the countries of the celebration of the fifth most spoken language in the world,” Ramos told journalists.

He explained that the initiatives are “very diverse,” but will “focus on the areas of cinema and literature,” and highlighted the planned celebrations in the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, Cuba, China and Russia, countries with which Portugal is celebrating anniversaries of diplomatic ties.

Cuba celebrated on Friday 100 years of diplomatic relationship with Portugal, Russia celebrated on 23 April 240 days of diplomatic ties with the Portuguese and China will celebrate 40 years on 5 May.

The Chinese ceremony will take place in Shanghai, with the first edition of the Portuguese Language Cinema Show, while Macau promotes a video contest and a book party.

“Portugal is not the owner of the Portuguese language,” Ramos said, adding that “the Portuguese language is spoken by over 270 million people in all continents and there is a progressive involvement of the other CPLP countries.”

Portugal’s secretary of state for cooperation Teresa Ribeiro said that the Portuguese language “currently knows a circumstance favourable to its expansion boosted by demographic evolution in Portuguese-language countries [except Portugal], namely in Africa, by the technological revolution and vulgarisation of digital media.”

However, she said, “it is not enough to rely on positive inertia provided by an auspicious context, it is key to put it [the Portuguese language] in the centre of public policies.”