Territórios que Contam

The project

Territórios que Contam is a four-year literary and theatre programme across five low-density municipalities of the Alentejo: Santiago do Cacém, Montemor-o-Novo, Alcácer do Sal, Grândola and Ourique. Each year, established Portuguese authors work alongside local students to create four new works, which premiere together at an annual Festa do Livro e do Teatro in Santiago do Cacém. The programme is promoted by Fundação Caixa Agrícola Costa Azul and aligned with Portugal's National Reading Plan 2027.

To tell, and to count

The title turns on the double meaning of the Portuguese verb contar: to tell, and to count. These five municipalities have stories to tell, stories their own authors, students and communities can write, draw, stage and film. And they count for Portuguese culture, deserving to be treated as a place of creation rather than a backdrop. That double meaning is the reading key for the whole project, from the choice of authors to the editorial concept of the books and the dramaturgy of the plays.

Four languages, one per school cycle

Every year produces four works, each matched to a stage of schooling. An illustrated children's book is co-created with primary pupils, a graphic novel with the second cycle, a young-adult novel with the third, and a stage adaptation is performed by secondary students. The creative team brings real weight to the classroom: Nuno Caravela, an author-illustrator with more than a million books sold in Portugal; novelist and scriptwriter Sara Rodi, raised in Évora; writer Margarida Azevedo with illustrator Marta Calado; and screenwriter, actress and director Mafalda Santos leading the theatre. Year one is a concentrated pilot in Santiago do Cacém, and the following years rotate the creative work through the other four municipalities.

Why it matters

Over four years the programme leaves an original body of work behind it: twelve literary titles, four plays, a short documentary each year recording the creative process, and sixty encounters between national authors and local schools. Twenty-five thousand copies are distributed free to students, so the books end up in the homes and libraries of the places that helped write them. For a sparsely populated territory, it offers something rarer than an event: a lasting cultural asset that binds five municipalities together, and a generation of young readers who have seen how a book is made.