A Portuguese Grandpa Didn’t Have A Rainbow Flag At Pride So This Person Traded With Him And It’s Wholesome
"He was so surprised and gestured as if to say 'For me?'", Lily Martins, the person who traded flags with the grandfather told Almost.
A heartwarming moment of a Pride attendee and a grandfather exchanging Pride and Portuguese flags during a parade in Portugal’s Porto has melted people’s hearts.
In the viral moment on June 29, a grandfather exchanged his Portuguese flag with the Pride flag of 29-year-old London-based software engineer Lily Martins, before the two hugged each other.
Martins told Almost she had been at the event with her girlfriend when she noticed the man had come out from his home, carrying a Portuguese flag, and was gesturing to her to go to him.
She said she was initially hesitant to approach him as the Portuguese flag, like many other flags in Europe, has been co-opted by the far-right and associated with neo-Nazism and violence.
“People were a little confused because he could be a supporter of the cause but he could also be a conservative, nationalist trying to demonstrate some disdain towards the protest,” Bianca Ferreira, a 22-year-old student who captured the moment on video, told Almost.
Martins said she ultimately decided to approach the man as he kept gesturing to her.
“By the time I made it to his front door, I was so ready to hug him, so I smiled and he came in for a hug too,” she said. “It was incredible.”
She said when she broke away from the hug, she noticed he had wrapped the Portuguese flag over her and said, 'This is for you.'”
“The only thing I could do next was to do the same and offer him my flag,” she said. “He was so surprised, and gestured as if to say 'For me?'”
“So I said yes and wrapped it around his shoulders,” she said. “We just held on to each other in an embrace that now feels ways too short and we just cried.”
Ferreira said people who were around also started to get emotional.
“We were all just weeping like babies. I don’t even know how I got my phone out to record this,” Mara Nunes, a friend of Martins who also captured the moment, told Almost.
Ferreira had shared the video only to her Instagram stories and did not expect it to go viral.
“That day, I felt like I gained another grandpa,” Martins, whose grandfather had died when she was five years old, said.
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