Carnation Revolution (1974): Portugal's Bloodless Coup

The Carnation Revolution was the military coup of 25 April 1974 that overthrew the Estado Novo, the authoritarian regime that had ruled Portugal for over four decades. Organised by junior officers tired of endless colonial wars in Africa, it met almost no resistance and was greeted by crowds who placed red carnations in soldiers’ rifles. It led to democracy in Portugal and independence for its African colonies.

Background: the Estado Novo and the colonial wars

Portugal had been a dictatorship since a military coup in 1926. From 1932 it was dominated by António de Oliveira Salazar, whose 1933 constitution created the Estado Novo (“New State”): a conservative, Catholic, corporatist regime without free elections or free trade unions. Censorship was strict and the political police, the PIDE (renamed DGS in 1969), arrested and tortured opponents.

Unlike Britain and France, Portugal refused to give up its empire. From 1961 it fought independence movements in Angola, from 1963 in Portuguese Guinea (now Guinea-Bissau) and from 1964 in Mozambique. By the early 1970s the wars were absorbing a large share of the state budget, and Portugal had one of the highest proportions of men under arms in Europe. Hundreds of thousands of Portuguese emigrated, many to escape poverty or military service.

Salazar was incapacitated by a stroke in 1968 and replaced by Marcelo Caetano. Caetano promised cautious reform, but the wars and the dictatorship continued.

The Armed Forces Movement

Discontent grew in the army, particularly among captains and majors who had served repeated tours in Africa. A 1973 decree that eased promotion for conscript officers angered career officers and helped them organise. Their clandestine group became the Armed Forces Movement (Movimento das Forças Armadas, MFA).

In February 1974 General António de Spínola, a former governor of Guinea, published a book, Portugal e o Futuro (Portugal and the Future), arguing that the wars could not be won militarily. Spínola and the chief of staff, Francisco da Costa Gomes, were dismissed. A premature uprising by a regiment at Caldas da Rainha on 16 March 1974 failed, but the MFA continued its preparations under the operational planning of Major Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho.

25 April 1974

The signals for the coup were broadcast on the radio. At 10.55 pm on 24 April a Lisbon station played Portugal’s Eurovision entry, “E Depois do Adeus”. Just after midnight Rádio Renascença broadcast “Grândola, Vila Morena”, a song by Zeca Afonso, a singer disliked by the regime, confirming that the operation should go ahead.

Units across the country moved to occupy radio and television stations, the airport and key ministries. A column from the Cavalry School at Santarém, led by Captain Fernando Salgueiro Maia, took control of the Terreiro do Paço, Lisbon’s main government square. Loyal forces sent against them refused to open fire.

Caetano took refuge in the barracks of the National Republican Guard at Largo do Carmo. Salgueiro Maia’s troops surrounded the building as thousands of people gathered. In the evening Caetano agreed to hand power to General Spínola, “so that power does not fall into the street”, as he reportedly put it, and was flown into exile.

The only deaths came when agents of the DGS fired from their headquarters on a crowd in the Rua António Maria Cardoso, killing four people. One DGS agent was also killed. The political police surrendered the next day.

The carnations

According to the most widely told story, Celeste Caeiro, a restaurant worker in central Lisbon, was carrying carnations meant for customers when she met soldiers on the street. One asked her for a cigarette; she had none and gave him a carnation instead, which he put in his rifle barrel. Others copied the gesture, and flower sellers handed out more. The image of flowers in guns gave the revolution its name. Details of the story vary between tellings, but the carnation quickly became the symbol of 25 April and of the peaceful character of the coup, and it still appears on posters, murals and commemorative stamps.

Key people

Fernando Salgueiro Maia (1944–1992), a 29-year-old cavalry captain, led the column that took the Terreiro do Paço and besieged Caetano at Largo do Carmo. He refused political office afterwards and is remembered in Portugal as the modest hero of the day.

Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho (1936–2021) drew up the military plan and directed operations from a command post at the Pontinha barracks. He later became a leading figure of the radical left and was convicted in the 1980s in connection with the FP-25 armed group, before being amnestied.

Marcelo Caetano (1906–1980), the last prime minister of the Estado Novo, spent his remaining years in exile in Brazil.

António de Spínola (1910–1996), the monocled general whose book helped trigger the crisis, became the first president after the coup but was soon sidelined by the left.

Francisco da Costa Gomes (1914–2001) succeeded Spínola as president and steered the country through the most volatile phase of the revolution until 1976.

The revolutionary process, 1974–1976

A Junta of National Salvation took over, with Spínola as president. Political prisoners were freed, exiles such as the socialist Mário Soares and the communist Álvaro Cunhal returned, and the press became free. Huge May Day celebrations in 1974 showed popular enthusiasm.

The following two years, known as the PREC (Ongoing Revolutionary Process), were turbulent. Spínola resigned in September 1974 after clashing with the left, and a failed right-wing coup attempt on 11 March 1975 was followed by the nationalisation of banks and large industries and by land occupations in the south.

On 25 April 1975, exactly a year after the coup, Portugal held its first free elections, for a Constituent Assembly. Turnout was over 90 per cent, and the Socialist Party won the largest share of the vote, with about 38 per cent. Tension between the moderate parties and the radical left peaked in the summer of 1975, but after a confrontation on 25 November 1975 moderate officers prevailed. A new democratic constitution came into force on 25 April 1976, and General António Ramalho Eanes was elected president in June 1976.

Decolonisation

The new authorities quickly accepted independence for the colonies. Guinea-Bissau was recognised in September 1974, Mozambique became independent on 25 June 1975, Cape Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe in July 1975, and Angola on 11 November 1975. The Angolan Civil War broke out as rival movements fought for power, and Indonesia invaded East Timor in December 1975.

Between roughly 500,000 and 800,000 settlers, known as retornados, came to Portugal from Africa in 1974–1976, a large influx for a country of about nine million people.

Timeline

• 1961, February: Armed conflict begins in Angola.
• 1968, September: Marcelo Caetano replaces the incapacitated Salazar.
• 1974, 22 February: Spínola publishes Portugal e o Futuro.
• 1974, 16 March: A failed uprising at Caldas da Rainha.
• 1974, 25 April: The MFA overthrows the Estado Novo.
• 1974, 30 September: Spínola resigns as president.
• 1975, 11 March: A right-wing coup attempt fails.
• 1975, 25 April: Elections to the Constituent Assembly.
• 1975, 11 November: Angola becomes independent.
• 1976, 25 April: The new constitution enters into force.

Why it matters

The Carnation Revolution ended western Europe’s longest-lasting dictatorship and the last great European colonial empire in Africa. It began what the political scientist Samuel Huntington called the “third wave” of democratisation, followed soon after by Greece and the Spanish transition to democracy.