Practically bloodless (four dead), popular, romantic and surreal in the right doses and enviable (Romanian soldiers, like the Portuguese did, put carnations in their rifles in the revolt against Ceaucescu in 1989), the April 25 revolution in Lisbon, the last in Western Europe, was also especially fortunate, as a 48-year repressive regime collapsed in a matter of hours, whose figure, António de Oliveira Salazar – a unique case of an enlightened fascist dictator – had already disappeared four years earlier, in 1970. April 25 is not the national holiday of Portugal, but it is especially significant, it marks the gestation of the modern country and is a reason 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, that would imply emptying a civil-military revolt that was left-wing of its content. That date was followed by a revolutionary period that lasted 19 months, with extensive social mobilization that involved the working class and the middle class, the university and the media, generating far-reaching changes. All this, between attempts to carry out a counterrevolution – by precisely the man who was put at 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 ends 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 towards a liberal democracy, which is what the popular “President Marcelo” was referring to.
The events of April 25 are clearer, and above all the epic of what was in principle an attempted coup d'état, conceived among the officers of the land army, the so-called captains of April, with commander Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho. as a strategist. The hero among them all is Captain Fernando Salgueiro Maia, instructor at the Practical Cavalry School in Santarém, who on the night of the 24th leads a column of armored vehicles 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 Guard headquarters Republican, where the Prime Minister, Marcelo Caetano, has taken refuge. “Turn him on,” Saraiva will order Salgueiro, who will resist saying that he is only the captain. Caetano will surrender to General Spínola and will be evacuated in an armored vehicle called Bula (now 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 (it broke out in 1961) and Guinea Bissau (in 1963), which will be followed by that of Mozambique (1964). Salgueiro is one of the soldiers aware of the absurdity and disaster facing Portugal, impoverished and isolated. Colonial wars have an enormous social impact: 700,000 men mobilized, more than 8,000 dead and another 200,000 fleeing from a country that requires four years of military service, two of them overseas. To this 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 the colonial drag (to the aforementioned territories, which will become independent, we must add Cape Verde, Sao Tome and East Timor) that will cause the insurrection and change. However, President Rebelo de Sousa himself told the foreign press on Tuesday that “we have to 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 Salazar regime, which precisely cultivated the myth of a benevolent colonialism (not very different from of Spain with respect to America), which still leaves an open chapter in the history of the April revolution.
