An ambassador’s postbag usually consists of a few gold-edged invitations to state occasions – instead, Antonio Santana Carlos is swamped by emotional letters from the British public about the disappearance of a little girl.
After Madeleine McCann went missing, the onslaught was overwhelmingly negative. Now, he says, it is mixed – the impassioned camp of Portuguese-blamers, joined by those who condemn the parents, with a lunatic fringe unhealthily excited by the case and who think that they know where the body is. Six months on the mail keeps coming.
Perhaps initially it was some relief for Mr Santana Carlos to come to London after years of conducting highly sensitive negotiations over the hand-over of Macau to China. But only six months after he arrived in Britain the McCann case broke and he was back in a diplomatic minefield.
Some reports in the British press branded the Portuguese police as lazy, inept, secretive and drunk and, in the hysteria, an impression was created that the place was a haven for paedophiles. Relaying these reports back to his home country gave Mr Santana Carlos a heavy heart – they caused uproar among his fellow citizens.
The drowning of a group of British holidaymakers in the Algarve this week has added to the tensions. Britain and Portugal have, as he said, “the oldest alliance in the world” between two states, dating back to 1386, still flourishing in the form of two million British tourists visiting Portugal every year. Now things are looking jittery.
Although he appreciates that both countries have a free press, Mr Santana Carlos is concerned at the hostile tone of some of the coverage of the Madeleine investigation, with insults bandied back and forth. (Times On Line)