Dara O’Cogaidhin
The Carnation Revolution: The Day Portugal’s Dictatorship Fell by Alex Fernandes, Oneworld, 2024, 400 pages, £22
Following the military coup of April 25th, 1974, Portugal experienced a revolutionary period characterised by unprecedented levels of class struggle and political radicalisation. With its new armed forces movement and proliferation of workers’ councils, Portugal held out the genuine possibility of revolutionary socialism. Divided into three parts, Alex Fernandes’ book focuses on its central protagonists, the young army officers, providing a vivid account of the overthrow of the Estado Novo, the collapse of the Portuguese Empire, and the ‘dual power’ that existed briefly for a time.
One thousand acts of resistance
From 1932 to 1968, António de Oliveira Salazar ruled over Portugal’s fascist regime, the Estado Novo (‘New State’), built on the pillars of Deus, Patria, Familia (‘God, Homeland, Family’). Salazar was not the archetypal ‘strong man’ figure associated with fascism at that time, with Fernandes describing his voice as “carrying a weedy sibilance more suited to a schoolteacher or clergyman than a fascist leader”. Salazar forged his reputation as an academic and economist, who helped stabilise Portugal’s currency and inflationary economy in the late 1920s, before presiding over a backward and underdeveloped country where workers’ wages were the lowest in Europe. Described as an ‘Atlantic Albania’, a million-and-a-half Portuguese people emigrated between 1960 and 1974 in search of work and better opportunities.
The brutal colonial wars (1961–74) proved an enormous human and financial drain on Portuguese society, consuming up to 40 per cent of its budget, leaving little money for social, health, and cultural needs. Revolutionary guerilla movements in Angola (MPLA), Guinea-Bissau (PAIGC), and Mozambique (Frelimo) inflicted heavy casualties on Portuguese forces and gained ground slowly. There were major atrocities, including the massacre of 400 villagers at Wiriyamu in Mozambique. Dissatisfaction grew in the ranks of the Portuguese army, with many officers internalising leftist ideologies and, in some cases, even sympathising with the anti-colonial resistance.
A key protagonist in Fernandes’ account is the young officer, Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, who witnessed the brutality of the Portuguese war effort in Angola. He arrived home from his first tour of duty ‘convinced of the ardent need to put an end to the dictatorship’. When stationed in Guinea-Bissau, Otelo read Amílcar Cabral’s Revolution in Guinea—An African People’s Struggle. Convinced by its arguments, he reached out to leading militants in the organisation. This brought him to the attention of General António de Spínola, commander-in-chief in Guinea-Bissau, who would also later play a key role in the revolutionary period. Back in Portugal, meanwhile, resistance to the regime was also growing as a nascent workers’ movement began to organise.
Operation Historic Turn
The Movimento das Forças Armadas (‘Armed Forces Movement’; MFA) emerged in the early ‘70s as a movement of captains opposed to the unwinnable colonial wars, panic measures to fast-track officers to fill gaping holes in recruitment, and the yoke of dictatorship. Fernandes provides vivid descriptions of their conspiratorial meetings and subsequent leadership of the revolution, immersing readers in the struggles and triumphs of the army officers. On March 15th–16th, junior officers in the 5th Infantry Regiment based at Caldas da Rainha took higher ranks captive. Under threat of bombing, they surrendered. Following the arrest of 200 officers, the MFA moved quickly to avoid any further clampdown. The week of April 22nd was chosen by Otelo—the main organiser of the coup.
In the end, it took one day to overthrow half a century of fascist rule. Employing a tactic that was used to coordinate Pinochet’s units in the Chilean coup a year earlier, the popular ballad Grandola, Vila Morena was played on Rádio Renascença at 12.25am on April 25th, 1974: it was the signal to mobilise the army divisions under the command of the MFA. Fernandes highlights the song’s military connotations and resonance as a protest song, with José Afonso’s ‘voice overlapping with the sound of feet marching on gravel’, while the lyrics speak of ‘a promise to a town whose history of struggle runs deep as the roots of ancient oak—a promise to keep up the fight’.
Captain Salgueiro Maia was at the sharp end of the Carnation Revolution for the whole of that fateful day. En route to the Carmo barracks (the GNR headquarters), where the Prime Minister Marcello Caetano was in hiding, Maia’s detachment was confronted by tanks from the 7th Cavalry Division. However, after a brief standoff, they went over to the side of the coup. As Maia’s troops lay siege to the Carmo barracks, thousands of people came on to the streets and a new chant gripped the crowd: Está na Hora (‘The time has come’).
Caetano, realising his days are numbered, rang General Spínola to negotiate his surrender: ‘General, I have to recognise that I’m beaten. I can hear a wailing crowd outside, and they tell me the square is full of combat cars under the command of a captain’. Maia entered the barracks to confront a ‘pale, unshaven’—Caetano, threatening to raze the building if he didn’t surrender. Caetano refused to surrender to anyone under the rank of general, but Spínola required the authorisation of the MFA to accept it. Otelo gave the order: ‘Consider yourself mandated by the Armed Forces Movement to receive the surrender of the president of the Council, and of power’. It’s over in a few minutes— a practically bloodless coup had brought down Europe’s oldest dictatorship.
Ongoing Revolutionary Process
On April 26, the MFA declared that a Junta de Salvação Nacional (‘Junta of National Salvation’; JSN) would rule until a provisional civil government was formed, with elections within a year. The MFA reflected a range of political views and almost immediately tensions in the JSN came to the fore, with Spínola refusing to recognise the self-determination of colonies, while junior officers like Otelo recognised that the wars were unwinnable and the colonies deserved their freedom. The days following the coup saw an influx of former exiles return to Portugal including Álvaro Cunhal, leader of the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP), and his former protégé, Mário Soares, leader of the Socialist Party (PS).
Fernandes describes ‘the signs of a new landscape for the working class’ that emerged in the first days after the coup. The vacuum left the repressive state encourages workers to drive the bosses out of the factories and the landowners off the land: the removal of those sympathetic to the Estado Novo was known as saneamento (‘purification’). Fernandes highlights the examples of workers at a metallurgical plant in Alverca, calling for a monthly minimum of 6,000 escudos, having their demands met by ‘a management terrified of their workforce’. The majority of strikes in 1974–75 were organised by workers commissions led by elected leaders subject to recall at any moment, similar to the Hungarian workers’ councils of 1956. Homeless people seized empty properties in the Lisbon neighbourhood of Boavista, prompting the creation of residents commissions around the country.
On his arrival back in Portugal, Cunhal is offered a position by Spínola in the First Provisional Government. Aware that the transitional period will see an unprecedented upsurge of class struggle, Spínola hopes the inclusion of the PCP and PS in the cabinet will lead to a ‘tempering of those struggles’. As Spínola calculated, Cunhal and the PCP put out calls against strike action, even supporting the government sending in the army to quell disputes. Despite their acquiescence, Spínola ‘decries the communist influence’ as factional divides begin to emerge in the government. Meanwhile, a tacit alliance between the MFA, who were excluded from government, and the PCP emerged.
When Spínola demanded greater powers, the MFA refused and the First Provisional Government fell. A new Prime Minister, Brigadier Vasco Gonçalves—for years linked to the PCP—was appointed. A revolutionary guard, COPCON, was established under Otelo to circumvent the line of command from Spínola. However, Gonçalves and COPCON, with support from the PCP, continued to repress the strike wave, but there were numerous cases of soldiers being sent to break strikes and crossing over to join workers. To test the balance of power, Spínola called for a demonstration of the ‘silent majority’ for September 28—a counter-revolutionary coup. Carvalho was detained by Spínola, but workers set up armed roadblocks to stop reactionary groups moving on Lisbon. At midday on the 28th, Spínola conceded defeat.
A section of the MFA leadership around Otelo were moving leftwards, favouring a ‘society without classes, obtained through the collectivisation of the means of production’, but based on the Cuban model of top-down ‘workers’ revolutionary councils’. There was deep suspicion of Stalinism, particularly in a country that had just emerged from totalitarianism, that was exploited by Soares and the PS. On August 29th, having lost his majority, Gonçalves was forced to resign as Prime Minister and was replaced by Admiral José Azevedo. The MFA became increasingly polarised; a ‘Group of Nine’, supported by the PS, emerged as leaders of the MFA, while more left-wing soldiers amalgamated into Soldados Unidos Vencerão (‘Soldiers United Will Win’), effectively ‘forming a split with the MFA and its ‘counter-revolutionary’ tendencies’.
On November 13, 30,000 construction workers demanding higher wages and the nationalisation of all building sites surrounded the assembly. Again, Otelo and COPCON troops refused to intervene, siding with the workers during the 36 hour siege. Azevedo is forced to accept the workers’ demands, breaking the siege, but the Sixth Provisional Government move to dismiss Otelo, suspend COPCON, and purge PCP members from their ministries.
Right-wing groups set up barricades on November 24th, to isolate ‘Red Lisbon’ (‘ungoverned and ungovernable’), and the next day a state of emergency was called. The trade union federation Intersindical— dominated by the PCP—failed to resist. On November 25, power had been restored to the Sixth Provisional Government and the revolutionary process was over. After 18 months of frenetic revolutionary action, Fernandes notes ‘the thrumming vibrancy of the revolutionary left on the streets and in the government is suddenly and unceremoniously silenced’.
Fighting for a new revolution
In his Epilogue, Fernandes reflects that ‘the seeds of fascism were never truly eradicated from Portuguese society’. After the defeat of the revolution, the country experienced a ‘slow descent into privatisations, inequality and austerity’. In more recent years, both the PCP and the Left Bloc (BE) supported a pro-business, minority PS government in 2015. In a case of history repeating itself, the PCP and BE continued their support for the government when they mobilised the military to break a national lorry drivers’ strike in 2015. The PCP and BE’s abandonment of the class struggle created the space for the far-right Chega to present itself as an ‘anti-systemic’ protest party. It’s slogan—‘God, Homeland, Family, and Work’—is borrowed directly from Salazar. Chega is now the second largest party in the Portuguese assembly.
A new right-wing Democratic Alliance (AD) government now intends to further liberalise the economy, impose harsh austerity measures, and to commemorate November 25—the defeat of the Carnation Revolution. Fernandes’ book demonstrates why historical memory is of enormous importance: the experience of victory can be repeated, while lesson of defeat can be learnt. The lessons of April 25 demonstrate that its necessary to build a revolutionary socialist party for the working class based on a programme of class independence. In bringing the events of 1974–75 vividly back to life, Fernandes reminds us that revolutions, as Trotsky argued, are only impossible until the moment they become inevitable.