Well you nailed it! It is indeed an elephant footprint sculpture in front of the José Saramago Foundation in Lisbon (which is also an interesting historic palace in its own right, the Casa dos Bicos), commemorating the author/book.
It's interesting for pilgrims because Saramago's birthplace, Azinhaga, is on the CP and there are a lot of things commemorating him there too. While on camino there in 2020 we spent our afternoon in Azinhaga seeking out all the Saramago sites. I remember talking to other foreigner pilgrims that evening who hadn't heard of him and hadn't done any 'Saramago tourism' that day, which is of course fine but it reinforced to us that the more knowledge/interest you have about a given place, the more you get out of visiting it. I was reminded of that many years ago when a friend and I were talking about our respective trips to Egypt, and he had studied Egyptology in school and I hadn't, so that made it more meaningful for him to visit these places he had studied.
But back to the elephant footprint in Lisbon, there is an olive tree next to it that was brought there from Azinhaga and replanted. Although it's not specifically mentioned at the site, Saramago's ashes are buried underneath the olive tree. So I'd recommend that pilgrims check out the foundation before starting the camino and then that will make Azinhaga more interesting.
I should also add that, personally, I find Saramago hard to read (in Portuguese, no less), so he's not a favourite of mine but he's a significant figure as one of only two Portuguese Nobel Prize winners, IIRC.
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