Marcelo considers it "strange" that there are no texts by the only Portuguese Nobel laureate in Literature in the mandatory 12th-grade reading list

Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa argued that it is “a little bit strange” that texts by José Saramago are no longer mandatory in schools. Commenting on the Ministry of Education's proposal to remove the requirement in secondary education, the President of the Republic considered that even if they are not full books, there are “fragments and texts” that should be known by everyone.