Portugal celebrated 50 years of freedom after the Carnation Revolution

The blood-red carnations inserted into soldiers’ rifle muzzles on April 25, 1974 lent their name to the day Portugal overthrew its dictatorship – the Carnation Revolution. Along with our adopted country, we joined in the 2024 celebrations for 50 years of freedom and democracy.

April 25 – Dia de Liberdade [Freedom Day] – has been a national holiday for the past 50 years, always with special events. But this year, the celebrations extended to even more elaborate parades, concerts, fireworks, special artwork and exhibits, films, museum openings, ceremonies, wreath layings, plaque unveilings, and more.

On the surface, it’s a celebratory day. But, as we’ve come to learn more about Portuguese life under the dictatorship, we’ve received a better understanding about just what a monumentally important day April 25 was… and is. After we visited two museums dedicated to resistance and freedom, I began thinking: Where was I on April 25, 1974? If I’d lived in Portugal under the dictatorship, what could I have done to resist fascism? And what would I have done?

Carnations everywhere

Clay figurines made in the town of Estremoz help illustrate the Carnation Revolution. In Alcobaça, ceramic artist Liliana Sousa created a tribute to April 25. Nearby, a series of carnations is “planted” next to the Rio Baça and a mural is dedicated to carnations [cravos].   

Anyone who visits Portugal will see carnations if they pay attention. Alcobaça, for example, has a sculpture of carnations, like a small army of standing flowers, installed on a concrete pier next to the Rio Baça. Across the street is a mural with a poem about carnations [cravos].  

But the ruffly red flower was ubiquitous in the weeks leading up to April 25 this year. A local school had a big carnation poster on the front door, with red cut-outs of children’s hands forming the flower. A pottery shop displayed ceramic carnations. The craftspeople of Estremoz, who have been molding and painting clay figurines called bonecos for centuries, exhibited special Carnation Revolution bonecos.

One artist even installed a giant anti-fascist medicine box, decorated with a carnation, over the grave of dictator António de Oliveira Salazar. The medicine, called Liberdade [Freedom], was described as an “anti-fascist probiotic.” 

“We cannot be distracted and take freedom for granted,” said the artist Bordallo II. “On the contrary, we have to defend it and exercise it every day. April 25^th also serves to remind us of this!”

What happened on April 25, 1974?

During our September 2023 visit to Lisbon, we happened upon the cast and crew of a movie being filmed about the Carnation Revolution.

After decades of repression under the Salazar dictatorship, the Portuguese people and the armed forces in particular had had enough, especially after 13 years of fighting against colonies that wanted their independence (it was like Portugal’s Vietnam). Military officers who opposed the dictatorship formed the Armed Forces Movement, joined by a civil resistance campaign, and planned a military coup.

Radio – the social media of the day – played a significant role by signaling the revolution’s start. On April 24 at 10:55 p.m. a Lisbon radio station played “E Depois do Adeus” [And After the Farewell] – the song that represented Portugal in the 1974 Eurovision competition. The song alerted rebel soldiers that the revolution was coming. And then at 25 minutes after midnight, early on April 25, Radio Renascença played “Grandola, Vila Morena” [Grandola, Swarthy Town] – the signal for armed forces troops to occupy certain strategic military and government points, including radio stations and airports, across the country. (The popular song, connected to communist ideals, continues to be sung during April 25 celebrations.) The revolution was underway.

The new Museum of Talking Machines in Alcobaça, which opened on April 25, 2024, described another key role that a Lisbon radio station played.

“At 3:12 a.m. on April 25, a group of soldiers occupied the Lisbon studios of the Portuguese Radio Club, transforming it into the ‘Command Post of the Armed Forces Movement’,” said the museum’s historical timeline. “At 4:26 a.m. that morning, a communiqué by journalist Joaquim Furtado informed the country that the Armed Forces had taken to the streets, ready to overthrow the regime and establish democracy in Portugal.”

I couldn’t help wondering what I had been doing on April 25, 1974. I’d have been 15 years old, in Grade 9 in a safe Canadian high school, and probably worried most about making it onto the track team, studying for exams, and stewing about which boys liked which girls. I had a sheltered, privileged upbringing.

In Lisbon that day, the rebel soldiers marched through the city, taking control. The final confrontation played out at the National Republican Guard (national police) headquarters in Largo do Carmo, where President Marcelo Caetano had taken refuge. (In 1968, he had succeeded Salazar who had had a stroke; he died in 1970.) The standoff and negotiations lasted for hours. Finally, at 5:45 p.m., Marcelo Caetano surrendered, and jubilant cheers rang across the newly freed country.

Why carnations?

Newspaper photos of soldiers with carnations raised the ruffly flower to iconic status.

How the carnation came to symbolize the day is a lovely story. On the morning of April 25, 1974, Celeste Caeiro carried a basket of carnations to the restaurant where she worked. The owners had planned to give out flowers to all customers because it was their one-year anniversary. However, because of the coup, the restaurant was closed.

Carrying the flowers home, Celeste saw the tanks and learned about the revolution. She handed out the carnations to soldiers who stuck them in the muzzles of their rifles and tank guns. Flower sellers then got in on the action, donating more carnations to decorate the guns. Photos of the guns with flowers raised the carnations to iconic status as a symbol of the peaceful revolution. (Well, not entirely peaceful; almost no shots were fired but four people were killed.)

It’s hard to find a town or village that doesn’t have a street or square or monument named for April 25. The big bridge in Lisbon that looks like the Golden Gate Bridge of San Francisco, U.S.A., was originally called the Salazar Bridge when it opened in 1966. But right after the Carnation Revolution, it was renamed the April 25 Bridge.

Aljube Museum of Resistance and Freedom

The original bars on the Aljube prison windows still overlook Lisbon’s Cathedral; Salazar used the Catholic church to help repress people. The solitary confinement cells measured just 1×2 metres.

Life was repressive under Salazar. The long list of banned activities and organizations included trade unions, strikes, any political party other than Salazar’s National Union, press freedom, education for girls beyond Grade 3, women’s rights, and any discussion of the church, family values (as defined by Salazar), government, authority, the homeland (as defined by Salazar), or the duty of work. Propaganda, censorship, the Catholic church and political police kept order. Known as PIDE, the political police terrorized people and attempted to suppress opposition by using brute force, imprisonment, torture and death.

But an underground resistance movement couldn’t be suppressed – and that’s what’s honoured in the Aljube Museum of Resistance and Freedom in Lisbon. It’s housed in the actual prison – the Aljube – where resistance fighters were imprisoned, tortured and many killed. It’s not exactly a fun place to visit, but it’s important if you want to understand the roots of the Carnation Revolution and what older citizens today lived through.

Describing itself as “an activist museum,” it documents how Portuguese people struggled, but eventually overthrew the dictatorship for freedom and democracy.

Salazar certainly “supervised” newspapers – they were heavily censored and used to spread his propaganda. But resistance journalists operated secret printing presses and typed stories in sound-muffling boxes.

We watched video interviews of now-elderly people recalling their experiences trying to get food during rationing and protecting their home while trying to write underground articles. One woman taught children illegally and wore wigs to disguise herself from PIDE when she went out.

Descriptions of the various types of torture endured by prisoners, and the physical effects on their bodies, was chilling. The statue torture was a new one to me – forcing people to stand still like statues for days on end. There’s seemingly no end to the cruel things humans can dream up.

Since I’m a retired journalist, I found myself drawn to the exhibits about how reporters worked in secret and under the constant threat of arrest and jail to publish newspapers on secret printing presses that could be easily disassembled to move to another secret location. Special sound-muffling boxes with holes for the hands held typewriters so nosy neighbours couldn’t hear the tapping and snitch to PIDE.

Would I have had the nerve and bravery required to be a journalist then? I like to think I would have. But what an enormous risk – not only to yourself but to your family. Neighbours, co-workers and “friends” routinely squealed on one another. Who could you trust? On the other hand, how could you not oppose such an inhumane regime?

National Museum of Resistance and Freedom – Fortress of Peniche

Displays in the new National Museum of Resistance and Freedom include cell blocks, many photos of political prisoners, the visitor room, and a display of secret ways prisoners sent messages to each other – in false bottoms of buckets and shoes, inside tuna cans, sliding compartments in clothes pins, and even in walnuts.

Another museum dedicated to resistance and freedom just opened on April 27, 2024 in Peniche, on the Atlantic coast just north of Lisbon. It’s housed in another former prison – the Fortress of Peniche – that was also used for political prisoners between 1934 and 1974. I didn’t understand why the museum hadn’t planned to open on April 25, until I learned that the political prisoners held there weren’t released until April 27, 1974.

We walked through the stark visitor room, where barriers prevented prisoners from touching their family members. Prison guards forced them to speak loudly so their conversations could be heard. If a guard stopped a visit, the prisoner would be punished – by having visits suspended, banning recreation or a visit to the so-called “segredo” – the dank, windowless punishment cell that we also saw.

Many of the exhibits corroborated what we’d learned at the Aljube Museum, but here we toured two blocks of cells that had been renovated in 1968 (I can only imagine how bad they were beforehand). In one narrow corridor of cells, I squeezed past a group of elderly visitors using canes and crutches. They most certainly would have remembered life under Salazar, if not had personal recollections of this prison. I wished that my Portuguese was good enough to have asked them what they were thinking as they surveyed the cell doors, the barred windows, the rough wood cots.

As part of the museum’s opening ceremonies, 37 busloads of anti-fascist resistance fighters, former political prisoners, and their families from all over Portugal took part. To them, the Salazar dictatorship could not be a musty note in a history text – they lived the experience and don’t want it forgotten. The Diário de Notícias newspaper story told of a grandfather who talked about his two years imprisoned in the Peniche Fortress, but it was his 24-year-old granddaughter who couldn’t hold back her tears. 

“I’ve been listening to my grandfather tell me about these times since I was a child,” said Joana. “It still moves me. It will pass from me to my children, and so on.”

Valentina Marcelino wrote a first-person story published by Diário de Notícias, about the excruciating nightmares she suffered for years after PIDE arrived at night to haul her father off to the Peniche Fortress. Her father’s name is amongst the 2,626 names of political prisoners listed on the prison’s memorial.

We had recently rewatched the excellent movie Night Train to Lisbon, which illustrates what life was like for resistance fighters, in particular a doctor. My dad was a doctor and an idealist, so I’m sure he would have been drawn into the resistance to help people and been arrested. Would I too have suffered nightmares after the police arrived at 4 a.m. to arrest him? Would we have had our prison visits interrupted by guards?

Recent election: a return to the right?

The celebrations of April 25 included many exhortations to never forget, to fight every day to keep the dream of freedom and democracy alive. People acknowledged that democracy is fragile and needs protection.

But, Portugal’s March 10, 2024 legislative election returned strange, unclear results. The centre-right Democratic Alliance party won 28.8 percent of the vote and 80 seats – a very small margin over the incumbent centre-left Socialist Party, with 28 percent and 78 seats. The far-right Chega party surged in popularity, winning 18.1 percent, 50 seats and the theoretical balance of power.  

However the new Democratic Alliance government has said it will not work with either Chega or the Socialist Party to get the needed votes to pass legislation. The new prime minister, Luis Montenegro, has described the far-right Chega party’s leader as “often xenophobic, racist, populist and excessively demagogic.” Do we hear echoes of Salazar?

Meanwhile, how will any legislation get passed or any forward motion be possible? Even recent news stories indicate the parties haven’t solved the problem. Many Portuguese people expect another election before the year is out.

Before the election, a survey suggested the Portuguese are at risk of being seduced by the far right. “The Portuguese consider themselves progressive, defenders of the environment and the rights of homosexuals and immigrants, but they distrust politicians, criticize the quality of democracy and risk being seduced by right-wing populism in the near future,” said a story in The Portugal News.

Although governments the world over are leaning right these days, it’s hard to believe any Portuguese people would welcome a return to the far-right days of fascism. Or maybe that’s just me hoping… Democracy is fragile.

Alcobaça celebrations

Many of Alcobaça’s April 25 celebrations took place in front of the Monastery, along the esplanade that’s officially called Praça 25 de Abril.

We joined in Alcobaça’s April 25 celebrations. Just like last year, we took part in the seven-kilometre Caminho para Liberdade [Walk for Freedom] that began at the Monastery, circled around town and through the Green Park, then back to the Monastery.

In the evening, we watched the giant lighted marionettes called Lumen parade through town and act out a love story in front of the Monastery, which was lit with its own sound-and-light show. Near the end, red carnations swirled and flowed over the Monastery façade as people cheered. And then fireworks erupted from the castle ruins on the hill.

We were happy to share in this beautiful small-town celebration of love, freedom, resistance and democracy, especially now that we know how hard-fought it had been.

We celebrated the 50^th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution on April 25, 2024. Find out where we are right now by visiting our ‘Where’s Kathryn?’ page.