Concept
The Community of Portuguese Language Countries (Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa; : CPLP), also known as the Lusophone Commonwealth (Comunidade Lusófona), is an international organization and political association of Lusophone nations across four continents, where Portuguese is an official language. The CPLP operates as a privileged, multilateral forum for the mutual cooperation of the governments, economies, non-governmental organizations, and peoples of the Lusofonia. The CPLP consists of 9 member states and 32 associate observers, located in Europe, South America, Asia, Africa and Oceania, totaling 37 countries and 4 organizations. The CPLP was founded in 1996, in Lisbon, by Angola, Brazil, Cabo Verde, Guinea Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal, and São Tomé and Príncipe, nearly two decades after the beginning of the decolonization of the Portuguese Empire. Following the independence of Timor-Leste in 2002 and the application by Equatorial Guinea in 2014, both of those countries became members of the CPLP. Macau (a Special Administrative Region of China), Galicia (an Autonomous Community of Spain), and Uruguay are formally interested in full membership and another 17 countries across the world are formally interested in associate observer status. The idea of a type of international community or political union of Portuguese language countries had been proposed and studied numerous times in history. However, the idea for what would become the CPLP came about in 1983, during a state visit to Cabo Verde by Jaime Gama, Foreign Minister of Portugal, when he first proposed a biennial summit of heads of state and government of Lusophone countries of the world and the idea of regular meetings between ministerial counterparts of the member states. The Community of Portuguese Language Countries was officially founded on 17 July 1996 at the 1st CPLP Heads of State & Government Summit, in Lisbon, Portugal. In 2005, during a meeting in Luanda, the ministers of culture of the member states declared the 5 May as the Lusophone Culture Day (Dia da Cultura Lusófona in Portuguese).
