Portuguese Embassy hosts webinar on European diasporas in America

Loretta Brennan Glucksman’s great-grandparents all emigrated from Ireland. They were coal miners, brewers and bakers—and all four ended up in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Anthony Tamburri, meanwhile, grew up in a very Italian neighborhood in Stamford, Connecticut. Eleni Kounalakis is the daughter of a Greek real-estate developer from the village of Rizes.

Today, Glucksman heads the American Ireland Fund and co-chairs the Glucksman Ireland House at New York University. Tamburri is the dean of Calandra Italian American Institute at New York’s Queens College. And Kounalakis is the lieutenant-governor of California.

On Jan. 29, the three officials joined Frank Spula, president of the Polish American Congress, and Angela Costa Simões, president of the Portuguese American Leadership Council of the United States (Palcus), for a virtual discussion on how to strengthen Europe’s diaspora communities on this side of the Atlantic.

The conversation was arranged by Domingos Fezas Vital, Portugal’s ambassador to the United States. It is the first of six monthly webinars in the OutSpoken series marking Portugal’s six-month presidency of the 27-member European Union, which began Jan. 1.

“This is the fourth time Portugal holds the presidency of the EU,” the ambassador said. “Our priorities are to respond to the challenges facing the EU—the pandemic and economic recovery—but also, in the medium and long term, fostering our already unique transatlantic relationship. For us, that’s a top priority. We strongly believe we could hardly find a better ally in pursuing that goal than the European diaspora in this country.”

The chat also featured a short welcome from Kristin M. Kane, chargé d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Lisbon, and ended with a virtual concert by Portuguese cellist Mafalda Santos

The community already boasts four Portuguese-American members of Congress, including Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey, a Republican whose mother’s grandparents were all born in the Azores. In addition, there’s a Friends of Portugal group in the Senate co-chaired by Toomey and Sen. Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island.

According to a recent Palcus survey, Angela Costa Simões said, “87% of our community has visited Portugal and plans to again in the future. Almost 50% say they’would buy property in Portugal in the next five years, and 82% say they would invest in a business in Portugal over the next five years.”

The Portuguese Embassy plans more webinars in its OutSpoken series between now and June 30, when Portugal hands over the rotating EU presidency to Slovenia.