Carnation Revolution, a wind of change that blew from Portugal 50 years ago

By Nur Asena Erturk

Portugal marks on Thursday, April 25, the 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution that ended the dictatorship and led the country to democracy.

The bloodless military coup orchestrated in 1974 was a wind of change that blew from Portugal during the Cold War, and marked the memories with the images of the revolutionary soldiers with carnations inserted in their rifle barrels.

The military coup took over then-Prime Minister Marcelo Caetano, and the dictatorial regime of his predecessor, Antonio de Oliveira Salazar.

Historian and associate professor at the Catholic University of Portugal, Jose Miguel Sardica spoke to Anadolu about the political and social context that led to the exceptional coup, its motives, and consequences.

- Political, social context leading to military coup

Portugal is the westernmost and peripheral country in Europe, isolated not only geographically but also due to having "one of the two remaining dictatorships alongside Spain in Western Europe," Sardica said.

The country, however, had another problem in contrast to its neighbor -- the ongoing colonial war in Africa.

A closed, relatively poor, and agricultural country with high illiteracy rates, Portugal was nevertheless a country "on the move" with the 1960s trends when the industry started to overtake, and the European Free Trade Association helped it "develop the new urban literate middle class."

Under an authoritarian regime where the politics were veering right, "the society was already being transformed by the energy of the 1960s, and the revolution was prepared by these mental, and social, and economic changes that the country was undergoing in the 1960s, peaking in 1974," Sardica explained.

He pointed out a "Europeanization" of mentalities with a younger generation that wanted to consume and travel freely, and eager to have European habits.

Sardica recalled that in Western Europe, Antonio de Oliveira Salazar and its dictatorial regime was the longest one, apart from that of Francisco Franco in Spain.

"The 25th of April was a classic military coup. Some people call it the revolution of 1974 because it was the onset of a revolutionary process that lasted at least two years," he said, adding that the coup was staged by junior officers who "were risking their lives and postponing their lives in Africa, fighting in Africa."

"The prime motive of 25th of April was to solve the colonial war, … but behind the military, they would not have acted if they did not sense that political change, and social change, and economic change was desired by the people, by this younger generation that no longer looked at Salazar as the ‘hero’ that saved the country from the anarchy of the First Republic, the ‘hero’ that had defended the country against communism sparking from Spain in the Civil War in the 1930s," the expert emphasized.

The Portuguese people aspiring for democracy thus backed the military who sought to end the colonial war.

The reason why it is called the Carnation Revolution is due to the soldiers who carried, at some point, carnation flowers in their rifles’ barrels during the military operation.

The story goes that soldiers who came to Lisbon for the military operation endured difficult circumstances. They asked a flower-selling lady in the street for cigarettes, who had nothing to give but flowers. Spontaneously, soldiers and the cheerful crowd members surrounding them during the operation started putting the carnations on the soldiers’ rifles, Sardica said.

The reason why the military coup succeeded is that the regime and its leaders had no one to defend them since "the army and the navy were infiltrated by revolutionaries."

- Wind of change blowing from Portugal

Jose Miguel Sardica referred to the American political scientist Samuel P. Huntington’s book, The Third Wave, according to which the world went through three democratization stages: the first one in the 19th century, the second after 1945, and a third wave pioneered by Portugal, which ended up in the liberation of the eastern countries in 1989.

"Liberation was April 1974 in Portugal, then in Greece Colonels’ Regime fell in June 1974, then in Spain which transitioned to democracy in 1975, then you have Brazil or Argentina transitioning to democracy in the early 1980s, and then you have the eastern countries, the fall of the wall in Berlin, the unification of Germany, the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, the liberalization of Poland with Lech Walesa, and peaking with the demise of the Soviet Union," Sardica narrated.

- End of Portuguese colonial era

Sardica recalled that Portugal’s colonial war in Africa lasted for 13 years.

"By 1974, the Portuguese state was spending half of its budget with military, the ongoing war effort," he said, and noted that "more than 1 million Portuguese served in Africa through this almost a decade and a half."

"Proportionally speaking, it was a war effort bigger than any other country in a colonial war or even the United States in Vietnam," he compared, stressing that the comparison was not in terms of raw numbers but proportionally.

"People agreed with decolonization. People did not want to spend more money or men defending Africa. So there was not a sense of a traumatic loss (of the colonial empire) … because the empire was not that valuable in terms of economy," Sardica said.

He further said that 600 to 700,000 Portuguese -- "the returned ones" -- came to Portugal from Africa, after being expelled from Angola and Mozambique for symbolizing the "old colonizer," although they were born in those countries.

That community was the victim of post-colonialism, however, losing African colonies "was not a traumatic identitarian problem in Portugal, because Portugal was already understanding that to replace the empire, there was a destiny called Europe," Sardica said.

- Portugal’s European perspective

After the military coup, there was a conflict in the summer 1975 "due to a confrontation around the future of Portugal," the historian explained.

The context was that of a democratic feast, according to Sardica, with some 50 parties running for the elections, and more than 90% of the population voted, with an abstention rate of only 8%.

The Portuguese population tangibly showed its will to be part of Europe at the time.

"We cannot underestimate how important the European destiny was for Portugal, … democracy offered the Portuguese a goal," he said.

"The desire to join Europe was a political desire. Europe would stabilize democracy. Aside from providing financial help, the main argument was a political one," the expert added.