We hereby close, with this October 2021 edition, the period dedicated to the commemorations of the eighteenth anniversary of CV&A. In all the geographies we currently operate in, we have the reputation we have built up. Employees who are with us and others who are not, having left on their business or personal career paths in addition to those who have joined and the clients we have been winning and losing – the market is dynamic – enable us to close the year as market leader. The numbers of those companies complying with the law and submitting their accounts in due time demonstrate this. However, this only brings an additional challenge: how to maintain this leadership. This is not easy as some of the competition is good.

We finish these eighteen years with eight fewer very good friends. Rosalina Machado, Diogo Vasconcelos, Horácio Roque, Alberto da Ponte, Rui Semedo, João Soares da Silva, João Vasconcelos and then, earlier this year, Jorge Coelho. They were loyal friends from whom we received counsel and diverse teachings and with whom I created a relationship stretching far beyond the professional and, for this reason, I believe that at this time when closing the commemorations I owe them words of great thanks. To each in their own fashion and each, in their own area of intervention in society and economy, giving a great deal to the country. Rosalina, Rui, João Soares da Silva and Jorge became very close friends. I cannot, for this reason, go into detail about what I store of each of them. But were it not for them, I would not know much of the little that I today do know. Horácio, who knew me as a boy and who I reencountered professionally, started out as Commander Sir and soon turned into a very special relationship. Alberto, who I met professionally, became a friend who was always there to help whenever such was possible. Diogo and João taught me with their youth and competences, to enter into hitherto uncharted waters: the virtual, such as the new technologies as they were then called during the time of Diogo at UMIC and CISCO, and all the world of web summits and start-ups, a future in the present as João would fondly refer to them. Both were happy, for example, at Expo Dubai that is now taking place. I would conclude here by sending my condolences to the family of General Colin Powell: a man who was at CV&A conferences and who has now left us.

This was, once again, an atypical year – I think it becomes typical when we repeat the same for three years in a row -, with the pandemic and the limitations this has imposed. Business was not ongoing in the normal way and remote working is not the strength of a company with a culture of proximity as in the case of CV&A. However, the obligation to make that happen has brought us new competences with all the difficulties of having to adapt each of our homes into an office with children wandering through in some and partners also simultaneously working in others. I understand today that, while continuing to prefer seeing and interacting personally, we emerge from this situation as more agile. And I would like to thank you for the efforts made by almost everybody during this period of remote working.

There was also the news of our connection to a new branch of agencies – /amo – with which the recent past and the present has revealed enormous potential for the future. May that be so. I would like to thank our colleagues at the /amo agencies with which we have collaborated, in Portugal, in Brazil and in Angola, for the professional and friendly way they have welcomed us. And this connection demonstrates how we maintain relationships with third parties whenever there are no conflicts of interest. For example, in Dubai, the always ours Cristina Ramos (who practically founded CV&A with me) who works in another agency was another clear example of this external collaboration. For those thinking that the texts in this editorial should be more philosophical, economic or less personal, here is some information: they are this way because they are for our collaborators and who, from the Minho to the Algarve, in the Autonomous Regions, in Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau, in Brazil, Spain and in Colombia, all deserve a word that only they understand.

If everything goes well, we shall finish the year inside the budget. In 2022, we are going to pay taxes for ourselves and for those who do not pay. If everybody complied with their duties, taxes could indeed be lower. However, nobody seems concerned about raising fiscal literacy. There is so much to change in the country and in Europe and we work always with the hope of contributing towards the change. Extremists need to be banned, whatever their respective type, tolerance needs to prevail and we should know how to produce, that is, deserving the rights that we gain for complying with our duties, both the natural duties and those that are imposed upon us. Peace in the world, the ending of poverty, religious, ethnic and gender hate, among others, have to be permanent objectives. The errors of the past do not get erased, especially by hatred against those who, after all, did not commit them. Because the truth remains, for example, that the people of today are not the same as those that practiced horrendous crimes, such as under Hitler or Stalin. Nor should the history of peoples be eliminated: especially to educate future generations to respect those who fought for them. What there cannot and should not be is two standards and two means of measurement. Those who suffer are always the same. School education and culture should be strongly backed. Only educated and cultivated people may bring an end to the extremisms. And, on the day when they end (within two or three generations) the world will be a better place. Only a country of educated people is a civilised country. And our special thanks to the Secretary-General of the United Nations for the work that has been done.

This edition of Prémio displays the same characteristics as the previous; seeking to provide the reader with what market magazines don’t. We have received countless commentaries about the online edition, which is to undergo significant improvements in January 2022, and questions about whether or not it is worth printing the paper edition – while still praising its respective quality, design and the fact of being recycled. We are pondering the future, seeking to guarantee that this exist and be ever richer in content. As regards the format, as one leader, who made a great contribution to my life, would say, “The Future shall see!”