Susana

Susana, on the day you arrived, Wednesday the 21st of January 1981, the whole world seemed to be catching its breath. Coimbra was doing what Coimbra does in deep winter, with grey skies over the Mondego, students in black capes hurrying up the hill to the old university, and cafés steaming with bica and gossip. Somewhere in that quiet bustle, you made your entrance, rather gracefully we assume, like a dancer who has already mastered the timing of a perfect first step.

The timing was remarkable. Just the day before, Ronald Reagan had been sworn in as the 40th President of the United States, and within minutes of his oath, Iran released the 52 American hostages it had held for 444 days. On the very day you were born, those freed hostages were landing in West Germany to a hero's welcome, and the world's television sets were full of tearful reunions. Portugal had its own drama. Less than two weeks earlier, Francisco Pinto Balsemão had become Prime Minister, stepping in after the shocking death of Francisco Sá Carneiro in a plane crash at Camarate that December. President Ramalho Eanes kept watch over a young democracy not yet seven years past the Carnation Revolution. It was a country still learning its own choreography, finding its rhythm one cautious step at a time.

Pop culture, meanwhile, was in mourning and in bloom at once. John Lennon had been killed only six weeks earlier, and his songs ruled the charts, with "(Just Like) Starting Over" sitting at number one in America while "Imagine" topped the British charts. For a movie lover like you, the timing was rich: cinemas were still buzzing over Alan Parker's Fame, the film that made every teenager want to leap onto a taxi roof and dance in the street, and audiences everywhere were laughing at Nine to Five. Television viewers had only just learned who shot J.R. on Dallas. Fashion leaned into big shoulders and bigger hair, and music came on vinyl or cassette, rewound with a pencil when the batteries ran low. And over in London, a young woman named Helen Folasade Adu was singing with a Latin-funk band called Pride. Within a few years she would simply be Sade, and Smooth Operator would be waiting for you.

Snapshot facts are AI-generated and may occasionally contain inaccuracies.

In Coimbra, January meant chilly mornings around five or six degrees, afternoons barely nudging past thirteen, and the kind of persistent Atlantic rain that makes the cobblestones of the Alta gleam. Football, naturally, dominated conversation: Sporting were the reigning national champions, and Académica's fans kept the faith as only Coimbra loyalists can. Yoga, your own sport of choice, was still regarded in much of Portugal as something mysterious and faintly exotic, practised by a few curious souls on rugs in chilly living rooms. Nobody had yet imagined a studio on every corner.

So that was the world that welcomed you: one leader newly sworn in, another newly arrived, the airwaves heavy with Lennon, and a whole country still discovering what freedom felt like. Much has changed since, and the cassettes are long gone, but some things have a way of lasting. The best songs still find us, the best films still pull us into the dark, and the joy of moving to music never goes out of fashion. Happy birthday, Susana. The world had been rehearsing for a while, and then you walked on stage.