De Sousa was summing up after his two-day state visit to Senegal, during which he was greeted enthusiastically by hundreds of students of Portuguese at the University of Dakar, and received in a festive atmosphere on the island of Gorée, a former slave depot that Portugal controlled five centuries ago.

In comments to journalists in Gorée, the president said that the warm reception he was given showed that "Portugal has in the world indeed a singular welcome" and that its citizens "don't have any reason to have a very low self-esteem".

The Portuguese, he said, "are admired in all the world, they have no antibodies, there's nobody that's an enemy of Portugal." That, he said, has been the case for centuries and it remains so today, representing "a trump card in international politics".

As an illustration of what he was saying, he recounted what happened at the dinner that was held in his honour on Wednesday in Dakar: "There's wasn't an ambassador of a country that wasn't interested in closer relations with Portugal, whose head of state or head of government hadn't had, or was going to have, a meeting with the Portuguese president or with the prime minister.

"To such an extent that the others were amazed and said: 'my goodness, you have a unique diplomatic platform,'" de Sousa continued. "Indeed, we do, we have a unique diplomatic platform."