The Portuguese footwear industry has been celebrating the arts and the national culture for 13 years. Last year, it honoured Portuguese culture with an artistic recreation of eight of the most famous Portuguese paintings, but, in 2023, it has chosen a Portuguese artist to embody an industry that is always reinventing itself. Marcelino Sambé, a dancer of the Royal Ballet School in London, who has just been selected as the personality of the year, the Martha de la Cal prize for the foreign press, awarded by the Foreign Press Association in Portugal, is the protagonist in the new Portuguese Shoes Campaign.

"Our feet can be the help, the support, the foundation, and the health. In dance, as in life, having the feet well-placed makes a difference in performing a pirouette. In the success of a rehearsal. In the beauty of a jump. This is what Marcelino Sambé teaches us about the beauty of feet in dance, but also about walking towards new stories, conquering new stages, and reaching higher levels", says the Portuguese Footwear, Components, Leather Goods Manufacturers' Association (APICCAPS).

In the past 13 years, Portuguese footwear exports increased by 67%, reaching now 2011 million euros, but the sector intends to continue walking, every day, towards the future: the goal is to be an "international benchmark and strengthen exports, combining virtuously sophistication and creativity with productive efficiency, based on technological development and management of the international value chain, thus ensuring the future of a national productive basis, sustainable, and highly competitive", added APICCAPS.

"The footwear sector is very proud of its recent achievements, but is already setting in motion a new decade of growth", says Paulo Gonçalves. For the Director of Communication of APICCAPS, "after two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is time for the Portuguese footwear industry to return in strength to international markets”. And Marcelino Sambé, for whom shoes are one of his main tools, representing his health as a dancer, will help just that, as he is also the representation of a successful history.

He started dancing quite early, at the age of four or five, and soon caught the attention of his mentors in a Community Centre, and ended up being oriented to the Lisbon Conservatory. He began taking part in national and international competitions, and, at 15, he participated in the Prix de Lausanne in Switzerland. He did not win, but the director of the Royal Ballet School, who was on the jury, granted him direct entry to the school. Two years later, he was invited to be part of the cast of the Royal Ballet, where he has been for 10 seasons.