A crowd celebrates 50 years of democracy in Portugal

(Lisbon) Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Lisbon on Thursday to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Carnation Revolution, a bloodless coup led by young officers to end 48 years of dictatorship and 13 years of colonial wars in Africa.

The culmination of hundreds of initiatives spread over several weeks, the traditional popular parade along Liberty Avenue brought together a huge crowd in the afternoon.

“April 25, always! Fascism, never again,” shouted the demonstrators, red carnations in their hands or in their buttonholes.

“It’s a great pleasure to be here,” testified Helena Pereira, who was 16 at the time of the events, 50 years ago. “I experienced it intensely and I will remember it all my life. (…) Until that day, life was very, very hard,” added this retired storekeeper.

A 28-year-old student, Tiago Farinha, marched for the first time on an anniversary of the advent of democracy, “because of the current political context”, marked by the rise in power of the far right in the legislative elections of last month.

He holds up a poster which reads: “God, country, family, my ass! “. “It is a cry of revolt, because we have more and more populist forces who support this type of slogan,” he explains, referring to the maxim of dictator Antonio Salazar.

“A toxic subject”

Thursday began with a military ceremony in a large square in the center of Lisbon, on the edge of the Tagus estuary, in which military vehicles from the period restored for the occasion took part.

It will end with an event bringing together the Portuguese president, the conservative Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, and his counterparts from African countries that became independent after the advent of democracy: Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe.

Mr. Rebelo de Sousa, however, created a surprise ahead of this commemoration, by raising the question of possible colonial reparations.

“We are responsible for what we did there. (…) We have to pay the costs,” he said Tuesday evening during an informal meeting with the foreign press in Lisbon.

This position immediately encountered opposition from the new moderate right-wing government. “It’s a toxic subject” and “inappropriate,” said a government source cited by the weekly Expresso.

During the “solemn session” organized Thursday morning in Parliament, the president no longer mentioned his suggestion, ignored by the left and criticized by the right.

Far-right leader André Ventura was the most virulent, accusing Mr. Rebelo de Sousa of having “betrayed the Portuguese”. “Pay what? Pay to whom? (…) I am proud of the history of this country,” he said.

“A peaceful revolution”

In the elections of March 10, his “Chega” (“Enough”) party clearly strengthened its rank as the third political force in the country with 18% of the votes.

According to a survey published last week, half of those questioned believed that the authoritarian regime toppled in 1974 had more negative aspects than positive ones, but a fifth said the opposite.

In any case, 65% considered that the revolution of April 25 was the most important event in the history of Portugal, far ahead of the accession in 1986 to what was to become the European Union.

“The main motivation was to resolve the problem of the colonial war,” recalled retired colonel Vasco Lourenço, president of the April 25 Association, heir to the “captains’ movement” which organized the uprising.

The Carnation Revolution was so named because the population, who immediately sided with the putschists, distributed these spring flowers to certain soldiers who planted them in the barrel of their rifles.

“It will be above all the images taken that day which will transform the red carnation into a symbol of the April 25 Revolution which will end up giving a romantic, poetic vision to an act which had a lot of heroism, even if this revolution was particularly peaceful,” explains historian Maria Inacia Rezola, responsible for the vast program of commemorations.