It thus assured on the merit of the persistence, raised the voice promises for my real word, that I will make to construct to a convent of franciscanos in the village of Mafra if the queen to give a son to me in the stated period of one year to count of this day where we are. (SARAMAGO, 1997, P. 14) Its attitudes disclose then that he is vain person, self-centered, megalmano and that it governs consonant its desires and dreams, where the ways justify the end, thus disdaining the misery of the poor persons and sacrificing the people and the wealth of the country on behalf of the concretion of its bigger dream. The Memorial workmanship of the Convent in two histories parallel bars: Joo V retraces the history of Portugal through the construction of the Convent of Mafra for D.; parallel counts the history of love between Baltazar and Blimunda involved in the construction of the Passarola machine to fly, idealized and projected for the Bartolomeu Priest Days. History is ironic and critical, it discloses episodes of Portuguese history in the time of construction of the Convent of Mafra, a huge monument constructed for king D. Joo V, who persuaded for the clergy, offers to the workmanship the God so that the queen engravide and gives a heir to it.

The construction of the Convent of Mafra involves the sacrifice of the poor population, making many victims in the shipment of the great rock for the porch. Saramago satiriza and ridiculariza the habits of the royalty, desnudando the power exerted for the elite and the clergy on the oppressed people. The narrator of the Memorial of the Convent operates, when removing of the origin of Mafra its part of national echo, for reduziz it the personal vote of the king, one another loss if imposes: the absence of justification of the monument as symbol of the nationality.