The 25th of April Revolution: how Portugal won its freedom with flowers instead of bullets
Tomorrow is the 25 April, and for anyone interested in the events, here is a well written piece I found about it:
⠀
A high-level overview
⠀
On 25 April 1974, a group of mid-ranking military officers overthrew the Estado Novo, the authoritarian dictatorship that had ruled Portugal for 48 years. Despite being a military coup, it was remarkably peaceful. Rather than descending into civil war, the transition unfolded with civilians flooding the streets of Lisbon and placing red carnations into the barrels of soldiers' rifles. In a single day, nearly five decades of censorship, political repression and brutal colonial wars came to an end, and Portugal was set on the path to becoming the modern European democracy you see today.
1. The seeds of dissent
By the early 1970s, Portugal was a country increasingly isolated from the rest of Europe. The regime, led first by António de Oliveira Salazar and later by Marcello Caetano, was pouring men and money into a series of draining colonial wars in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau. These wars were unpopular with the Portuguese public, financially crippling, and with no end in sight. It was a group of low-to-mid-ranking officers, organised under the banner of the Movimento das Forças Armadas (MFA), who eventually concluded that a military victory was impossible, and that the only way out was a political one. And that meant bringing down the regime itself.
2. The secret signals
The revolution was launched using two songs broadcast on the radio as coded signals. The first came at 10:55pm on 24 April, when "E Depois do Adeus," Portugal's Eurovision entry that year, was played on the national airwaves. This was the instruction for the conspirators to prepare. The second signal, and the one that actually triggered the operation, was broadcast at 12:20am on 25 April. It was "Grândola, Vila Morena" by Zeca Afonso, a folk song so associated with left-wing dissent that the regime had banned it from the airwaves. The moment it played, troops began moving into Lisbon to seize the airport, the radio stations, and the key government ministries.
3. The siege at Carmo
The most dramatic moments of the day unfolded in central Lisbon. Although the MFA had urged civilians to stay indoors, thousands ignored the warnings and poured onto the streets to join the soldiers. Marcello Caetano, the head of the government, took refuge in the Carmo Barracks, a fortified building in the heart of the old city. Rebel forces led by Captain Salgueiro Maia, one of the most respected figures of the revolution, surrounded the barracks and demanded his surrender. After a tense standoff that lasted several hours, Caetano finally gave himself up in the afternoon, insisting that he would only hand over power to a general, so that the country would not fall, in his words, into the hands of the rabble.
4. Why "carnations"?
The name "Carnation Revolution" comes from a woman named Celeste Caeiro. A restaurant worker in Lisbon, she was carrying bundles of red carnations that had been intended for an anniversary celebration at her workplace. When she came across the soldiers on the streets and realised that a coup was underway, she began handing the flowers out. The soldiers placed them into the barrels of their rifles and pinned them to their uniforms, and the image spread rapidly. What could have been a day of violence became a day of flowers, and the carnation became the global symbol of a peaceful transition from tyranny to liberty.
5. Impact and legacy
The changes that followed were both immediate and radical. Portugal swiftly granted independence to its African colonies, bringing to an end more than five centuries of empire. The feared secret police, the PIDE, was abolished overnight. Censorship ended, political prisoners were released, and exiles were invited home. The first free elections in half a century were held exactly one year later, on 25 April 1975.
Today, if you visit the Largo do Carmo in Lisbon, you are standing on the very spot where the dictatorship fell. And if you are in Portugal on 25 April, you will notice red carnations everywhere, worn on lapels and laid at monuments in honour of the Captains of April who gave the country back its freedom.