Cape Verde with the colonial masters, who nevertheless refused to provide the local authorities with more autonomy. In 1951, Portugal changed Cape Verde's status from a colony to an overseas province in an attempt to blunt growing nationalism. In 1956, Amílcar Cabral and a group of fellow Cape Verdeans and Guineans organised (in Portuguese Guinea) the clandestine African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC). It demanded improvement in economic, social and political conditions in Cape Verde and Portuguese Guinea and formed the basis of the two nations' independence movement. Moving its headquarters to Conakry, Guinea in 1960, the
Literature of Cape Verde Notebook) in 1955 which won the Camilo Pessanha Award, the first Cape Verdean book to be awarded. Aguinaldo Fonseca was the forgotten poet, though his poems were published in "Linha do Horizonte" collection in 1951. At the time, writers like Manuel Lopes would be linked to resistance movements. Some writers were exiled to some European countries in the years before independence. Cape Verde became independent on July 5, 1975. Cape Verdean literature began to flourish further, the work "The Island of Contenda" was published in 1976. Writers like Henrique Teixeira de Sousa, Gabriel Mariano and others continued to write and