Was Portugal’s Carnation Revolution Inevitable?
‘The Estado Novo was in a cul-de-sac of its own making’
Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses is Professor of History at Maynooth University
The answer to this question depends on what we mean by ‘Carnation Revolution’. If it is the Portuguese army’s coup on 25 April 1974, designed to topple Marcelo Caetano’s government and set Portugal on a path towards democracy and decolonisation, then the answer is a qualified ‘yes’: the Estado Novo (New State), inaugurated by António Oliveira Salazar in 1932 and led by Caetano since 1968, was in a cul-de-sac of its own making, unable to evolve while tied to a set of unwinnable wars in Africa. Junior and middle-ranking officers, who bore the brunt of the fighting, understood that a political solution acceptable to the African liberation movements would not emerge from Lisbon while Caetano remained at the helm, and resolved to act. That their plotting should have evaded the attention of the secret police was a surprise (a rising in March had failed), but there is no doubt that Caetano had run out of road.
If, however, we mean the much longer revolutionary process, which lasted at least until November 1975, resulting eventually in the formation of a parliamentary democracy, then the answer is a certain ‘no’: no one could have predicted the twists and turns that Portugal and its colonial territories would have to navigate before the former found stability and the latter became independent. Portugal was the scene of repeated political crises as numerous struggles were played out: between rival factions within the military, which controlled the country and acted as a protector of the ongoing, open-ended revolution, increasingly radical as the months passed; between political parties, some of them old (like the venerable Portuguese Communist Party), others formed hurriedly after April 1974; and between civilian and military authorities. This last was a clash between the legitimacy conferred by the ballot box (elections were held on 25 April 1975, resulting in an unambiguous vote for democracy) and a revolutionary legitimacy that ignored, or deliberately misread, the will of the majority. Portugal’s evolution was further complicated by foreign interference in its internal affairs and the need to negotiate a swift end to its colonial wars, welcoming back over half a million ‘retornados’ from Africa.
‘Whatever Marcelo Caetano’s real intentions, he failed’
Rita Luís is Researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History, NOVA University Lisbon
No event is completely inevitable, but they can be highly likely. That is the case with the Carnation Revolution: political change was probable, but its revolutionary afterlife was not.
Marcelo Caetano had first addressed the need for change and liberalisation in 1968 when, following Salazar’s cerebral haemorrhage that August, he became leader of the Estado Novo. His tenure remains a contested issue among historians. Did Caetano truly intend to carry out reforms, but fail in his attempts to do so? Was his policy of liberalisation (‘Marcelism’) a genuine effort to address the attitudes and desires of the new, modernised urban class emerging since the mid-1960s? Or was it simply a series of gestures, reliant on a few symbolic acts? Caetano allowed the return of the political exile Mário Soares from São Tomé, for example, and the election in 1969 of a ‘liberal wing’ in the National Assembly. He also attempted to hide the state’s repressive apparatus through a change in nomenclature, with the political police (PIDE) morphing into the ‘Directorate-General for Security’ and censorship replaced by ‘prior examination’ offices. Whatever Caetano’s real intentions, he failed.
But modernisation was not the regime’s only problem. The captains of the armed forces who seized power on 25 April had been fighting against independence movements in Africa for more than a decade. Colonial war had been underway since 1961 in Angola, 1963 in Guinea and 1964 in Mozambique. The economic and human costs were huge, triggering large migratory movements, and the lower ranks of the military had had enough. They articulated their demands in political terms: democratisation, decolonisation and development.
The crisis engulfing the regime explains – as the historian Boaventura Sousa Santos has argued – why the Portuguese bourgeoisie, whose aspirations the dictatorship could no longer satisfy, initially embraced the revolutionary process that followed the coup d’état. The combination of the fall of Portugal’s overseas empire and the domestic desire for modernisation and democracy paved the way for a revolutionary path – the route of which was far from inevitable.
‘The “revolution” came at a precarious moment globally’
Pedro Ramos Pinto is Associate Professor in International Economic History at the University of Cambridge
Maybe the dictatorship could have extended its life – had it not chosen to bet everything on a desperate war to keep its African colonies; had Salazar’s successor Marcelo Caetano managed to liberalise a little more; had it been able to answer demands for better living conditions. But those are many ifs, and by 1974 the regime had lost its purpose and many of its supporters. What would follow the dictatorship was the great uncertainty.
The events of 25 April sparked wild celebrations, but also posed questions about the future. The ‘revolution’ came at a precarious moment globally: Western economies were rocked by the turmoil following the 1973 Oil Crisis; postcolonial nations were forging their own paths and calling for a ‘new international economic order’; the ripples of the 1968 student protests produced a swathe of alternative societal visions and a new generation of activists.
Over the next two years Portugal saw a social revolution unfold that shook the foundations of the deposed regime – property, hierarchy and religion – and opened a space for contending visions of the future. The threat of a right-wing countercoup and a return to the past was never far away; it was attempted twice in the following months. Revolutionaries of all stripes searched for models (Peru, China and even Albania were mentioned) while the army took inspiration from its former adversaries in Africa and declared itself the ‘liberation movement’ of the Portuguese people. Many spoke of an ‘original Portuguese route’ towards socialism. These were not mere theories: on the streets, in occupied businesses, at neighbourhood councils or on newly created co-operative farms, the Portuguese belied the stereotype of passivity and threw themselves into politics.
In the end the promise of a future modelled on those of the richer European countries that many Portuguese migrants knew well won over. Despite a tense summer, the contending factions backed down. The ‘normalisation’ that ensued ended lively experiments in participatory politics; yet the parliamentary democracy that is the legacy of the revolution has, despite many challenges and shortcomings, survived.
‘Various groups have tried to take ownership of “April” and what it represented’
Alison Roberts is a journalist based in Lisbon
It is a commonplace in Portugal that, for those who experienced the revolution, the day of the coup was the happiest of their life. This unalloyed joy was described by Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen in her poem ‘25 de Abril’ hailing the ‘dawn’ of this ‘initial whole and clean day’. Images captured on the streets show excited crowds mobbing startled-looking soldiers.
Not everyone was taken by surprise, of course, not least the officers behind the coup. And soon various groups were trying to take ownership of ‘April’ and what it represented. The May Day after the coup, which saw unprecedented demonstrations nationwide, was in its proximity a gift to the Communist Party, which emerged from decades underground primed to grasp power, flexing its muscles through the labour organisations that it dominated. To this day the party seeks to identify itself in voters’ minds with the promise of 1974: one slogan for this year’s general election was ‘Semear em março para colher abril’ (‘Sow in March to reap April’). The strategy never fully succeeded, given the proliferation of leftist groups and, above all, the rise of the Socialist Party under Mário Soares, himself a symbol of opposition to the dictatorship.
Others have since sought to wrest control of the narrative, with the centre-right government of José Manuel Barroso marking 25 April 2004 with posters bearing the word ‘revolution’ but shedding the ‘r’ – suggesting that ‘evolution’ was really the goal. That attracted ridicule, but the same party’s next spell in government, making deep spending cuts as part of a eurozone bailout, saw an unprecedented boycott by representatives of the Associação 25 de Abril (which is made up of former officers involved in the coup) of official 25 April ceremonies in 2012.
This year’s 50th anniversary comes at what to many feels like a historical turning point, with the rise of the far-right Chega party making the celebrations anything but unalloyed. Even as the official commemorative commission (chaired by a historian) focuses on educational programmes and public participation, there are signs of a new confidence among opponents of established orthodoxies, with history teachers in at least one Lisbon private school told not to cover the revolution, despite its forming part of the statutory curriculum.
