Diáspora is a public memorial located in Praça Postiguinho de Valadares, in Castelo Branco. It was created as a tribute to Amato Lusitano and to those persecuted because of intolerance, exile and religious repression.

Diáspora memorial

The work was created by the Spanish artist Machaco and inaugurated on 20 March 2012, during the civic commemorations connected to Castelo Branco and the memory of Amato Lusitano. Contemporary reports describe it as a public artwork dedicated to Amato and to those who suffered persecution.

The memorial should be read within the wider local recognition of João Rodrigues de Castelo Branco, known as Amato Lusitano. Born in Castelo Branco in 1511, he came from a family of Jewish origin and became one of the major physicians of the sixteenth century.

Amato Lusitano and exile

Amato studied medicine in Salamanca and later lived in several European cities, including Antwerp, Ferrara, Ancona, Rome, Ragusa and Salonica. His career was shaped by scholarship, medical practice, publication, movement and exile.

His most important medical legacy is associated with the Centuriae Curationum Medicinalium, a collection of clinical cases that records patients, symptoms, treatments and observations. This work helped establish his reputation as one of the important clinical writers of Renaissance medicine.

Jewish and New Christian memory

The title Diáspora connects the monument to the forced displacement experienced by Jews, New Christians and other people persecuted for origin, belief, thought or religious identity. In this context, the memorial marks Amato Lusitano not only as an individual figure, but also as part of a broader history of persecution and Sephardic displacement.

In Castelo Branco, the Diáspora memorial stands alongside other contemporary forms of public remembrance connected to Jewish and New Christian history, including the statue of Amato Lusitano and the Casa da Memória da Presença Judaica.