Celebrating 50 Years of Democracy in Portugal with flowers and a song

A banner image of a carnation decorates the city hall in Grândola, as part of the celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution in 1974.

(Grândola, Portugal) Fifty years ago this week, the Carnation Revolution of April 25 1974, ended more than forty years of a brutal dictatorship in Portugal. The Portuguese celebrated the anniversary with marching bands, parades, flowers and an iconic song–Grândola Vila Morena.

This song, by José “Zeca” Afonso, was played on the radio as a signal to the Armed Forces Movement (MFA) to begin the coup. Captain Fernando José Salgueiro Maia is remembered as a hero of the day for facing down forces loyal to the government led by Marcelo Caetano.

By the evening of the 25th, the coup succeeded and Caetano resigned without blood being spilled. Instead, the brilliant red carnation became the image of the revolution when a restaurant worker, Celeste Caeiro, gave a flower to a soldier who put it in the muzzle of his gun and–to use a 21st century phrase–it went viral!

Archive photos used in the film about the 1974 revolution, “A Hora da Liberdade”

Night and Silence during the dictatorship

The years of the Estado Novo, from 1933 to 1974, were grim for the Portuguese people. Under the stern and autocratic António de Oliveira Salazar, and his successor Caetano, thousands of people were imprisoned and tortured, women were subservient, unable to even open their own letters, and public gatherings were banned. Even Coca Cola was prohibited lest it threaten the Portuguese wine industry.

Portuguese poet Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen expressed the deep joy as the country emerged from this dire period with the words”

“Esta é a madrugada que eu esperava, O dia inicial inteiro e limpo, Onde emergimos da noite e do silencio.

Rough translation: This is the dawn I longed for, the first day complete and clean, when we emerge from the night and silence”

A marching band plays “Grandola Vila Morena” at a flag ceremony in the town of Grandola on April 25, 2024, the 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution that ended a decades long dictatorship.

Disturbing /new trend

Despite the joyful celebrations, a recent election showed Portugal, like other European nations, is trending to the right. Throughout most of the past fifty years, Portugal has had centrist or mildly socialist governments. In 2019 a new hard right party, Chega, appeared. That year it received a mere 1.3 percent of votes. But it has steadily gained in popularity. In an election held March 10 this year, it received 18 percent of the votes.

50th Anniversary of the Carnation Revolution on 25 April, 1974.

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Portugal Celebrates 50 Years of Democracy

Dancing in the streets on April 25, 2023, bigger celebration planned this year.

Next week Portuguese people throughout the country will celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Carnation Revolution. The bloodless event freed this small nation and allowed it to move forward with the rest of Europe.

Portugal endured more than 40 years of a brutally repressive regime which began in 1932 and ended in 1974. During the “Estado Novo” which was created by Prime Minister Antonio _de_Oliveira_Salazar , there was strict censorship of the press, books, music and arts. People lived in fear of being reported to the secret police, the PIDE (Policia International e de Defesa do Estado). Thousands were arrested, tortured and imprisoned during those years.

Women unable to open their own mail

Conditions for women under the dictatorship sound similar to present day Afghanistan under the Taliban. The teacher at the Portuguese classes I have attended told us that during that period women were not allowed to travel, work outside the home or open their own mail without their husband’s permission. Groups of people were not allowed to gather together in public. Coca Cola was forbidden because Salazar believed it might threaten Portugal’s wine industry.

Colonial Wars

Salazar was a staunch supporter of Portugal’s colonies; Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau, in Africa, Goa in India and Macau in China. In the early 1960s Portugal sent troops to quell independent movements in the African colonies. These colonial wars were very costly and unpopular. Many Portuguese fled their home country to go work in France so they didn’t have to participate in those conflicts. (When I moved to Portugal in 2019, I quickly found that many older Portuguese speak fluent French from their years there.)

Salazar suffered a debilitating stroke in 1968, was replaced as prime minister by Marcelo Caetano, and died in 1970. Meanwhile, many of the lower ranking officers serving in Africa began planning to overthrow the dictatorship. The Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) was also active in organizing opposition.

Popular Song Gave the Signal

On April 25, a song played on the radio, “Grandola Vila Morena”, was the signal for the armed forces, with widespread popular support, to overthrow the regime. The coup gained its name because people in the streets handed red carnations to the soldiers who put the flowers in their gun barrels or on their uniforms. Within a few hours Caetano had resigned and the Estado Novo came to an end with hardly a shot fired.

Soon after the overthrow of the regime, the former colonial countries in Africa began their own struggles to complete the transition to independence. Back in Portugal a major symbol of the change was the renaming of the iconic bridge across the river Tejo in Lisbon from the Salazar Bridge to the 25 April Bridge.

The iconic April 25 bridge over the river Tejo in Lisbon.

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Portugal celebrates the season

Christmas goodies on display at my local Intermarché supermarket in Portugal

As Christmas approaches, stores in Portugal are brimming with decorations, boxes of chocolates and mounds of foods appropriate to the season. Friends, neighbors and people in the stores are offering each other the traditional Christmas and New Year’s wishes, which in Portuguese are: “Feliz Natal e Prospero Ano Novo.” New Year’s Eve is called “Passagem do Ano” or passing of the year.

Fireworks are typical at the New Year season and the past two years even my rural area has, at times, sounded like the middle of a battlefield. Unfortunately the latest surge of Covid infections has forced the cancellation of many traditional firework displays and other public celebrations. Still, the city streets are decorated with colored lights and the atmosphere is festive.

Christmas decorations in Praça do Comercio and Rua Augusta in Lisbon, Dec. 2019.

While Portugal has a wealth of pastries for sale every day at its thousands of cafés, the traditional sweet eaten during the Christmas season is Bolo Rei or King’s cake. This is a round bread-like cake decorated with crystalized fruits. It is especially typical on January 6, the day celebrated for the arrival of the Magi, or three kings.

Turkey has become a staple of Christmas meals in the US and UK. Cranberry sauce is a regular accompaniment in the US, while brussels sprouts or parsnips are popular in the UK. When I lived in western Norway the Christmas dish for Julebord was pinnekjøtt made from dried salted ribs of lamb served with boiled potatoes. Here in Portugal traditional Christmas fare is bacalhau (dried salted cod) and cabbage. It seems counterintuitive that this would be a festive dish since dishes featuring bacalhau can be found on the menu year round at any restaurant. But there you go.

Bacalhau is an age old way of preserving codfish by salting it and drying it. Before it can be cooked it must be cut in pieces and soaked for many hours and the water changed several times to remove the salt. Huge slabs of dried cod are stacked in every supermarket year round, giving off a – shall we say – “distinctive” odor.

Stacks of bacalhau, dried salted cod, for sale at my local Intermarché supermarket.

Be sure to follow my blog to hear tales of everyday life in Portugal. Feliz Natal!