Practically bloodless (four deaths), popular, romantic and surreal in due doses and enviable (Romanian soldiers, like the Portuguese, put carnations in their rifles in the revolt against Ceausescu in 1989), the April 25 revolution in Lisbon, the last in Western Europe, it was also particularly fortunate, as a repressive regime of 48 years whose figure, António de Oliveira Salazar – a unique case of a fascist dictator – collapsed in a matter of hours illustrated–, had already disappeared four years earlier, in 1970. April 25 is not Portugal’s national holiday, but it is particularly significant, it marks the birth of the modern country and is cause for commemoration, this year more than ever.
The President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, said on the eve of the anniversary that “the right shares the same pride in the peaceful transition” that April 25 represents. For some, this would imply emptying the content of a left-wing civic-military revolt. That date was followed by a revolutionary period that lasted 19 months, with a wide social mobilization that involved the working class and the middle class, the university or the media, and generated weight changes. All this, between attempts to carry out a counter-revolution – precisely by the man who became the head of the country in April, António de Spínola, a general with a monocle – and up to six provisional governments in that period , which arrived in November 1975. Some of the results were precisely the participation of the Communist Party in those governments and finally the hegemony of the Socialist Party on the Portuguese left, with the return from exile of their respective leaders, Álvaro Cunhal and Mário Soares. Although the revolutionary period is still worthy of study, its conclusion was a transition to a liberal democracy, which is what the popular “President Marcelo” referred to.
More clear are the events of April 25, and above all the epic of what was in principle an attempted coup d’état, carried out among the officials of the land army, the so-called “Captains of April”, with commander Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho as strategist. The hero among them all is the captain, instructor at the Practical Cavalry School in Santarém, who on the night of the 24th leads an armored column towards Lisbon. On the morning of the 25th, the rebellion of the garrisons is a fact, people take to the streets in support of the soldiers, one of them receives a carnation – which will become a symbol – and Salgueiro goes to the headquarters of the Republican Guard , where the prime minister, Marcelo Caetano, has taken refuge. “Stop him”, will order Saraivaa Salgueiro, who will resist saying that he is only the captain. Caetano will surrender to General Spínola and will be evacuated in an armored car called Bula (today restored) as the first step towards exile.
The charismatic Salgueiro Maia, who will not claim honors, summarizes the origin and meaning of the revolt. He is a veteran of the wars in Angola (breaks out in 1961) and Guinea Bissau (1963), which will precede the one in Mozambique (1964). Salgueiro is one of the soldiers aware of the absurdity and disaster towards which Portugal, impoverished and isolated, is heading. Colonial wars have an enormous social impact: 700,000 men mobilized, more than 8,000 dead and around 200,000 refugees from a country that requires four years of military service, two of which overseas. We must add the repression of the political police and the lack of perspectives. This explains the civilian population’s support for the coup and the regime’s inability to resist.
Thus, it will be colonial resentment (in the territories mentioned, which will become independent, we must add Cape Verde, São Tomé and Timor-Leste) that causes insurrection and change. Despite this, President Rebelo de Sousa himself told the foreign press on Tuesday that “we must pay the cost” of centuries of slavery and “colonial massacres”. The message confronts the rise of the racist extreme right embodied by the Chega party, with 23% of Portuguese nostalgic – according to the Institute of Social Sciences – of the Salazarist regime, which precisely cultivated the myth of a benevolent colonialism ( not very different from that of Spain with respect to America), which still leaves an open chapter in the history of the April revolution.
