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PORTUGAL: FIFTY YEARS SINCE THE CARNATION REVOLUTION  
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John Green
April 26, 2024
Monthly Review
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_ From today’s perspective, fifty years after the revolution, how
can we assess its legacy? _

, Courtesy of John Green

 

Fifty years ago, on April 25, 1974, Portugal was shaken by an
earthquake. Not a geological earthquake, like the one in 1755 that
razed Lisbon to the ground and killed around 50,000 people, but a
political one, with only four victims. It was an uprising that would
overnight bring Europe’s longest lasting fascist dictatorship
tumbling down.

Shortly after midnight on April 25, the popular song “Grândola Vila
Moreno” (Grândola, my swarthy town) rang out over the airwaves of a
private Portuguese radio station. To the nervous soldiers in their
barracks listening out for it, this was the signal for them to start
the engines of their tanks and armored cars and begin their revolt by
rapidly taking Lisbon, the capital, and other large towns by storm.
Within only a few hours, the hated fascist regime of over forty years
had collapsed. The coup sent shockwaves around the world.

It caught everyone by surprise. Portugal’s dictatorship had
collapsed in an almost bloodless coup and the dictator, Marcelo
Caetano, fled the country—four civilians shot dead by the fascist
secret service, the General Security Directorate, on the morning of
April 25 were the only casualties. This left-wing military coup would
usher in a genuine revolution, which became known as the Carnation
Revolution, after the many red carnations that the rebellious soldiers
placed in their gun barrels to emphasize its peaceful nature. It was a
revolution that shocked establishments throughout the Western world
but gave inspiration to the left and those fighting for freedom
worldwide.

António de Oliveira Salazar had been prime minister since 1932.
Having come to power under the National Dictatorship, he reframed his
regime as the Estado Novo (New State), a corporatist dictatorship. In
1968, he resigned for health reasons and handed the reins over to
Caetano, who continued the dictatorship.

Between 1961 and 1974, Portugal had been waging wars of attrition
against liberation forces in its overseas colonies. At their height,
those colonial wars were consuming up to 40 percent of the Portuguese
budget. They were costly not only in monetary terms, but also in terms
of lives lost. The obligatory conscription of young men into the army
with mandatory two-year tours in Africa was strongly resisted, many
preferring exile to army service. Apart from many ordinary soldiers, a
considerable number of young officers, usually from middle-class
families, were also losing their lives in what were widely seen as
unwinnable wars, creating increased resistance to the wars at home
across classes. Disaffection within the army was spreading and finally
triggered the overthrow of an intransigent and ossified regime.

In February 1974, Caetano had decided to remove military officer
António de Spínola from the command of Portuguese forces in
Guinea-Bissau in the face of his increasingly vocal dissatisfaction
with the direction of Portuguese colonial policy and its military
strategy. He had published a book, _Portugal and the Future_, which
expressed his political and military views on the colonial wars. This
inspired several military officers who opposed the war, such as
Francisco da Costa Gomes, Vitor Alves, Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, and
Vasco Lourenço, to set up the clandestine Movement of the Armed
Forces (MFA) with the aim of liberating Portugal from the fascist
Estado Novo regime and introducing what they saw as necessary reforms.

The date chosen for the coup was April 25. Two secret signals were to
be broadcast over national radio to trigger the military uprising.
First, “And After the Farewell” (Portugal’s entry for the 1974
Eurovision Song Contest), to be aired at 10:55 pm on April 24; and
second, the broadcasting on Rádio Renascença of “Grândola, Vila
Morena
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by popular folk singer José Alfonso, who had been banned from
Portuguese radio—at 12:20 am on April 25. “Grândola, Vila
Morena” would become the unofficial anthem of the revolution. The
strategy was to initiate rapid, multiple strikes and take over
strategic points of power in the country, avoiding loss of life at all
costs.

The need for secrecy meant that only a few trusted officers in the
armed forces were apprised of the coup plans. As a result, the rebel
officers had no certainty that the majority of the armed forces would
welcome and join their uprising. However, as it was largely a
conscript army made up of ordinary working men, most did side with the
rebels. Only the oppressive forces of the state—the Estado Novo’s
political police, the International and State Defense Police, later
the General Security Directorate—offered any opposition, albeit only
token opposition. These repressive forces were the ones that had
persecuted opponents of the regime, imprisoned, tortured, and killed
them, so had little support among the people.

On the morning of April 25, despite repeated radio appeals from the
“captains of April” (the MFA) advising civilians to stay at home,
soon after dawn tens of thousands of people swarmed onto the streets
of Lisbon and expressed joy over the end of their forty-year
nightmare.

One central gathering point was the Lisbon flower market. Here, some
of the soldiers began placing red carnations in their rifles—an
indication of their peaceful intentions and a May Day icon, given that
May Day was less than a week away—and many others followed suit.
Images of soldiers with carnations in their gun barrels were
transmitted around the world and lent the revolution its name.

No mass demonstrations had preceded the coup, but spontaneous
civilian involvement rapidly turned the military coup into a popular
revolution. Although initially led by radical army officers,
rank-and-file soldiers, workers, and peasants readily joined the
uprising using the language of socialism and democracy.

Although on the surface it did appear to be a purely military coup,
this is deceiving. The Portuguese population, despite having lived for
decades under an oppressive state apparatus, had not done so
passively. Over the years, opposition forces had attempted
unsuccessfully to bring about change. An active Communist Party had
continued to work underground and had built up a significant
following, particularly among agricultural and industrial workers and
small left-wing groups had also carried out acts of protest and
opposition.

During the period of dictatorship, tens of thousands of young people
had been driven into exile by the rampant poverty, lack of work, and
political oppression; many returned once they heard that the old
regime had been toppled.

Caetano found refuge in the main headquarters of the Lisbon military
police, but the building was soon surrounded by units of the MFA. He
agreed to capitulate but insisted on handing over the reins only to
General Spínola, allowing him to assume a prominence he would
otherwise not necessarily have had, contrary to the plans of the more
radical leaders of the MFA. The formation of the Junta of National
Salvation in the days following the revolution allowed Spínola to
take on the interim role of president. Although he had become the
figurehead for dissatisfaction within the military, he was
nevertheless very much a member of the ruling class, a conservative
man whose only aim was to introduce a certain political liberalization
so the civilian leadership could adopt a more “realistic” military
posture in the colonies. Despite this, many of his co-conspirators and
fellow officers had a much more radical vision of what the goals of
the revolution should be.

The core of mainly young officers that led the revolution had formed
the MFA and were responsible for setting up temporary
post-revolutionary structures to run the country, in collaboration
with leading civilian democratic forces from across the political
spectrum, until free and democratic elections could be held. To avoid
civil unrest, a determination to create and maintain unity between the
armed forces movement and civilians emerged, and slogans emphasizing
this unity would echo around the streets, at public gatherings, and
political rallies in the days following April 25.

The revolution had taken the world, including the United States, by
surprise. The United States had a strong presence in Portugal through
NATO’s Joint Force Command Lisbon, one of the largest bases in
southern Europe and responsible for the Iberian Atlantic area.

Initially, many on the left had illusions that the country was indeed
undergoing a socialist transformation into a workers’ state. Seen
from the narrow perspective of Lisbon, it could appear that such a
vision was plausible: on May Day of that year, tens of thousands
packed central Lisbon waving red flags and chanting revolutionary
slogans; workers were occupying factories and turning feudal estates
into cooperatives; and there were calls for the nationalization and
expropriation of businesses with strong links to the dictatorship. The
atmosphere was reminiscent of Petrograd in 1917, when the Russian
Bolsheviks took power.

Once the success of the coup had been broadcast around the world, many
of those living in exile began returning home to join the movement.
Álvaro Cunhal, general secretary of the Communist Party, flew in from
Moscow. The leader of the Socialist Party, Mário Soares, returned
from Paris, and others followed.

The Portuguese Communist Party had been the only oppositional
political party to have maintained a continual presence—although a
clandestine one—inside the country during the dictatorship. This had
earned it a great deal of respect among sections of the industrial and
rural working classes. The party was keen to preserve the emerging
unity between the armed forces movement and the people to prevent the
revolution from becoming a solely military operation, leading to the
establishment of a military junta and was determined to maintain as
broad a consensus as possible among the population at large.

On May 1, a massive gathering and rally was held in Lisbon’s Alameda
Dom Afonso Henriques and the central stadium, attended by tens of
thousands. Here, Cunhal stood alongside socialist leader Soares and
military officers leading chants of “The people and armed forces
united.” The stadium was a sea of Portuguese and red flags; everyone
was singing and chanting. Though any onlooker could easily imagine
that this vast crowd, in apparent complete and unshakeable unity,
represented the country as a whole, this was not the case.

The coup unleashed a tsunami of activity throughout the country. The
people did not wait to be told what to do. The first housing
occupations took place on April 28; within a week, there were around
one hundred strikes, many calling for _saneamento_—the purging of
those owners and managers with links to the dictatorship. Hundreds of
workplaces were occupied and over the next months, country estates
owned by absentee landlords were taken over. Crèches, health centers,
community organizations, and cultural centers were speedily set up.
Grassroots democracy blossomed. European leftists flocked to join in
and celebrate the renaissance of revolutionary ideas in the country.

Spínola, as interim president of the revolutionary government,
remained in office from May 15, 1974, until September 30 of that year.
Confronted by a clear left-wing momentum among leading officers of the
MFA and the country more broadly, he tried unsuccessfully to intervene
politically to stem the popular movements that were demanding more
radical change—not just cosmetic change by the new, temporary
government.

Spínola was not alone in trying to suppress revolutionary demands.
The business and political elite of the old regime were not idly
waiting while the revolutionary tide lapped at their feet. They were
given moral and financial support by outside interests, including the
powerful United States, determined to prevent Portugal from turning
socialist.

Not long after his meeting with Nixon, on September 28, 1974, Spínola
made a public appeal to the “silent majority” in the country and
attempted to organize a large popular demonstration in the capital
aimed at stemming the revolutionary tide. However, soldiers of the MFA
and left-wing parties, led by the Communist Party, organized
countermeasures and successfully blocked access to Lisbon with
barricades and road checks at various access points around the city.
The situation threatened to devolve into civil war, but at the end of
the day Carvalho, the head of the Operational Command of the
Continent, the military defense force, was able to announce that the
MFA was in complete control of the situation.

After the failure of his call to arms and just four months in power,
Spínola was forced to resign and hand over his post to Costa Gomes, a
left-wing general more in tune with the aspirations of the radical
officers and mood of the country. Spínola’s resignation was the
result of a profound shift to the political left that the revolution
had taken. Nevertheless, this confrontation reflected the fact that
among those military officers who led the coup, there were still
differences of opinion and political viewpoints; there was no
unanimity.

Vasco Gonçalves, the interim prime minister, decreed “victory over
reaction,” but the country faced another troubled year. In a memo to
U.S. president Gerald Ford, Henry Kissinger wrote pessimistically at
the time: “Perhaps the most important lesson from the weekend’s
events in Portugal is the close coordination between the MFA and the
Communist Party. Between them their control of the situation was so
complete that in all practical respects the country was in their
hands.”

General Gonçalves, who was indeed close to the Communist Party, had
become prime minister in July 1974 and remained in office until
September 1975. Under his leadership, the interim government proceeded
to accelerate radical change, calling for the nationalization of
Portuguese-owned capital in the banking, insurance, petrochemical,
fertilizer, tobacco, cement, and wood pulp sectors of the economy, as
well as the huge Portuguese iron and steel conglomerate Companhia
União Fabril, major breweries, large shipping lines, most public
transport, two of the three principal shipyards, radio and television
networks (except that of the Roman Catholic Church), and important
companies in the glass, mining, fishing, and agricultural industries.
This was socialism in action.

These measures were deemed steps too far for the right wing, and with
support from the United States and European Social Democratic forces,
Spínola and other right-wing military figures mounted a last-ditch
effort to stem the leftward trajectory of the revolution. On March 11,
1975, they mounted a coup to bring the government down. Two air force
training planes attacked an artillery barracks, strafing them, while
paratroopers stormed them. One soldier was killed and several wounded.
It was a short-lived and botched coup attempt that was easily
contained. Carvalho hinted that he believed the United States was
involved. He told Portuguese reporters that the U.S. Ambassador, Frank
C. Carlucci, “had better leave after what happened today.”

Spínola fled to Spain with his wife and eighteen officers. Several
other senior Portuguese officers took refuge in the West German
Embassy. Costa Gomes appealed for calm on radio and television. He
said Spínola’s name headed a list of twenty-eight officers who were
to be “arrested, tried and punished.” There was outrage in the
armed forces and among those citizens loyal to the government. In
central Lisbon, crowds attacked the headquarters of the conservative
Center Democratic party, which was deemed a supporter of the attempted
coup.  Although the coup was defeated, it served to further
destabilize the situation and increased anxiety among the civilian
population.

In the summer of 1975, supported by the MFA, many grassroots
assemblies emerged and came to be seen as the highest political
expression of popular power. It is estimated that about 380 factories
became worker self-managed, and 500 co-ops were in operation by
mid-1975. The struggles of the working-class and the associated social
movements led to far-reaching social reforms, such as the creation of
a health care system similar to the British National Health Service.
All these events were taking place against a backdrop of six
provisional governments, as the left and right battled for control of
the process of transformation. There were also several coup attempts
and, behind the scenes, NATO and right-wing machinations.

The United States and other international forces of the capitalist
establishment soon realized that to counter the Communist Party and
any genuine socialist aspirations, they needed to promote Soares and
his party, which had no real commitment to socialism of any sort but
purported to offer a non-Soviet route to socialism. Given its strong
backing by European social democratic parties and the United States,
the Socialist Party managed to gain rapid support. Confusing many, its
loudspeaker vans toured the capital blaring out “The
Internationale,” traditionally the anthem of the international
communist movement, and Soares promised a “democratic” socialism,
as distinct from the Communist Party’s aim, which he alleged would
bring in Soviet-style communism. The country received visits from
leading social democratic leaders, who queued up to visit the country:
François Mitterrand, Willy Brand, and James Callaghan were among
those who threw their weight and their money behind Soares and his
Socialist Party.

A U.S. spokesperson described the situation at the time thus:
“By 1975, the Portuguese Communist Party and other Marxist-Leninist
groups had won virtual control of the government, and it seemed that
all of the Lusophone and Ibero-American countries in South America and
Africa would fall to communism as well.”

The United States was seriously worried about the possibility of a
radical government becoming entrenched and were determined to nip it
in the bud. To that aim, they immediately installed tough guy Frank
Carlucci as their new ambassador to mastermind the counterrevolution.

Carlucci had been a career ambassador and foreign service officer in
Africa and Latin America from the 1950s onward. But he would really
make a major impact during the time he was ambassador to Portugal from
1975 to 1978. Carlucci was sent to Portugal during what he described
later as “a period of utter chaos.” In fact, it was a period of
calm and order despite the behind-the-scenes jostling for dominance;
civilian life continued in an orderly fashion, with little violence.
It was Carlucci and his cohorts who brought chaos. The right-wing
press was full of stories of the imminent danger of a hardline
communist takeover and fear was whipped up by the media. Communist
Party premises were attacked and bombs detonated, with the aim of
associating the Communist Party with violence and civil strife.

A critical part of Carlucci’s career had been spent during the 1950s
and ’60s in Congo and Brazil. He had been involved in the overthrow
of the democratically elected left-wing João Goulart government in
Brazil, as well as in the murder of Patrice Lumumba in Congo.

Leveraging the United States Agency for International Development and
other forms of U.S. soft power, Carlucci was a key figure in steering
Portugal’s democratization process and engineering the election of
Soares as its first prime minister. In an interview that Carlucci
gave to the Gerald Ford Foundation later, he said: “If Portugal
hadn’t gone democratic, it’s questionable whether Spain would
have. And Spain set the pace for Latin America.”

In Portugal, Carlucci, unlike Kissinger, was willing to work with
Socialist Party leader Soares not out of any sympathy for his avowed
socialist outlook, but because, from Carlucci’s perspective, Soares
was the only game in town capable of preventing the Communist Party
and its allies from coming to power. Carlucci’s pay-off came when
Soares became prime minister in 1976, cementing ties with NATO and
instituting International Monetary Fund-approved austerity measures.

The combined forces of internal reaction, a powerful, deeply
conservative Catholic Church, sophisticated U.S. destabilization
tactics and the role played by the European forces of social democracy
all helped create an effective campaign of demonizing the Communist
Party.

On April 25, 1975, exactly one year after the coup, the first free
elections since 1925 were held to establish a Constitutional Assembly,
which would write a new constitution to establish a parliamentary
democracy. This would have a strong socialist undertone and be the
forerunner of elections later to form a new and permanent democratic
parliament and government.

In the run up to this election, the Communist Party had campaigned to
maintain a political consensus and expressed preparedness to work
together with the Socialist Party, but was spurned by Soares. Unlike
the Communist Party, Soares’s Socialist Party had no real base
within the country and had been a relatively recent creation. It had
been founded in West Germany only in April of the previous year and
had been given substantial support by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung
(the fund of the West German Social Democratic Party). In the early
days of the revolution, ex-chancellor Willy Brandt made secret visits
to Portugal to give Soares advice and financial aid. Unsurprisingly
many people saw a vote for the Socialists as a safer bet than one for
the Communists. Even though a majority of the electorate voted for
parties that claimed to be socialist, it was Soares’s Socialist
Party that won the most votes and, with its allies in the Assembly,
lost no time in denouncing the government of interim prime minister
Gonçalves, whom it accused of left-wing extremism. The Communist
Party’s strenuous efforts to maintain unity between civilian forces
and the progressive military were in the end unsuccessful. Political
differences within the MFA itself were also becoming more acute and
would eventually lead to its splintering and dissolution.

Finally, in 1976, the first parliamentary elections were held, giving
rise to the first constitutional government. The Socialist Party won
38 percent of the vote, the Social Democratic Party won 26.4 percent,
the Portuguese Communist Party won less than 13 percent of the vote,
and the right-wing Democratic and Social Center Party won less than 8
percent. The first constitutional government, led by Soares, took
office. This was the first election in which universal suffrage was
introduced and women were allowed to vote with the same rights as men.
Succeeding governments amended the constitution and were able to erase
almost all progressive elements introduced by the early revolutionary
government of Gonçalves.

From today’s perspective, fifty years after the revolution, how can
we assess its legacy? Undoubtedly, its greatest achievement was to
accelerate the liberation of the former Portuguese colonial
territories in Africa, India, and China. It also ensured that Portugal
itself became a stable and pluralist parliamentary democracy. What it
did not achieve was any permanent radical transformation of the
country or the eradication of poverty and inequality—Portugal is
still one of the poorest countries in the European Union. Succeeding
governments have followed neoliberal economic policies and imposed
austerity measures on the country. Nevertheless, the Carnation
Revolution of 1974 remains a beacon for people around the world who
are still struggling for radical change. The left can still learn
lessons from that revolution, both from its achievements and its
failings.

At the time, many on the left—and I was one of them—felt that
Portugal would emerge as a new socialist country on the world map. It
demonstrated people power—workers taking over factories, farms, and
banks; trade unions operating freely; residents forming housing
co-operatives, setting up nurseries, clinics, and so on. This appeared
to be real grassroots socialism in practice. However, we certainly
underestimated the strength of non-socialist forces in the military
leadership who most clearly wanted a democratic system to replace the
old fascist one but were not prepared to go as far as demanding
full-bloodied socialism. We also underestimated the abilities of the
United States and its European allies, together with the Catholic
Church, to frustrate those aspirations and maintain their iron grip on
the country.

The most recent elections, in March 2024, reflect the divisions that
still plague Portugal. But they also reflect the fact that the
Communist/Green group and Left Bloc together only won nine seats is a
worrying reflection of the left’s lack of support. More worrying,
though, is the upsurge of the far right, populist Chega party,
following in the footsteps of Italy, France and Germany.

_JOHN GREEN is a London-based journalist and author. He covered
Portugal’s Carnation Revolution and its aftermath as a television
journalist._

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* Portugal
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* Carnation Revolution
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* dictatorship
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* revolution
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* nationalization
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* decolonization
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